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Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

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Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#251

Post by pdkl95 »

chishaku wrote: post #81
rhino369 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing people seem particularly blind about is that private companies holding data from their own purposes is the huge point of failure for privacy. The government can get your gmail, facebook, verizon, amazon data because those companies keep that data about you. The NSA doesn't need to spy on you, google already does. I don't think the NSA is reading my email, but I know Google is. Not to mention that when all t…

A lot of people are not blind about this at all. They understand fully that their data is collected and they expect nothing less than the top result of their Google, Amazon, and Facebook queries to match exactly what they are looking for.

The Tradeoff Fallacy: How Marketers Are Misrepresenting American Consumers and Opening Them Up to Exploitation

https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/publications/tradeoff-...

    ... the survey reveals most Americans do not believe that ‘data for discounts’
    is a square deal.

    ... Rather than feeling able to make choices, Americans believe it is futile to
    manage what companies can learn about them. The study reveals that more than half
    do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of
    control has already happened.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#253

Post by TeMPOraL »

pdkl95 wrote: post #250
TeMPOraL wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting point, and I generally agree. But RE "avoidable monopolies": > Why is there a copy of your photos on Facebook's servers? If one of your friends wants to see one of your photos, why are they not getting it directly from you? Then you don't have to trust Facebook with a copy of it. So the solution for this half of the problem is, disintermediate the avoidable monopolies. It's because decentralization lik…

It's only inefficient because NAT ruined the ability to publish.

Not really. Even if you could expect everyone to maintain their own servers (because a phone is not a device suitable for the task) - and remember, we're talking about the general population, not just techies - connecting like this would still be inefficient, compared to a bunch of central CDNs mirroring the data. Also, I can imagine it would be a logistics hell, unless you're willing to add more layers of indirection (e.g. trackers, the torrent kind).

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#254

Post by jacquesm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #246
nsns wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I actually feel it concerns much more than simply money. The avant-garde - be it technological, artistic or intellectual - has always shown a tendency to join forces with the darkest of regimes during the early stages.

I wonder if it isn't because the darkest regimes, when they're just starting, show the most promise for progress and positive changes. Didn't Nazis offer the Germans their wealth and their honor back, in the times they were most desperately in need of both? EDIT: But then again, fascination with "the other guys" is also a thing. See: the intellectual world of the West being in love with Soviet Union well into the Col…

Populists will claim to give you anything you want as long as you vote for them.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#255

Post by TeMPOraL »

jacquesm wrote: post #254
TeMPOraL wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it isn't because the darkest regimes, when they're just starting, show the most promise for progress and positive changes. Didn't Nazis offer the Germans their wealth and their honor back, in the times they were most desperately in need of both? EDIT: But then again, fascination with "the other guys" is also a thing. See: the intellectual world of the West being in love with Soviet Union well into the Col…

Populists will claim to give you anything you want as long as you vote for them.

True, but from what I remember from my history lessons, NSDAP was actually doing good on those promises. Which is something that rarely happens in politics.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#256

Post by natch »

blitzprog wrote: post #11

"This affects all of us. We must care." is not an effective way of convincing someone. I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. It's just my opinion. I know other people do but please don't generalize.

>I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should.

Maybe that's what you think. Let's see if you're willing to post the names, phone numbers, SSN or other ID numbers if you have them, and addresses of all your friends and loved ones. Got some weasel words about how that's not "personally"? Ok, start with your own info. Not going to do it? Didn't think so.

If you think you don't care about privacy, you probably haven't thought things through as others have.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#257

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

karmacondon wrote: post #106
kmonad wrote: post #83

Whenever I read one of these articles I am wondering why the examples of WHY mass surveillance affects ME as average Joe negatively have to be so weak / contrived: For example, imagine someone convinced by the argument "nothing to hide nothing to fear". Would this example convince them that in fact they do have to fear something? "You might think twice about contacting or meeting people (exercising your freedom of as…

Still not convincing, at least not to me and many of the people that I know. I'm pretty sure my insurance company has already calculated my premiums based on my demographics and claim history. I made not have told them "I have more than five drinks almost every weekend", but they know. They were making inferences from Big Data since back when it was just "data". And practically, I don't think most insurance companies…

Imagine some type of insurance that typically costs 100 USD/month in premiums per person and where the insurance company typically pays out on average 90 USD/month for damages per person. Now, imagine that one insurance company has figured out a way to detect a certain group of people who will only have damages of on average 50 USD/month, which make up about 5% of the potential customers, and detecting which of their (potential) customers is in that group costs on average 0.10 USD/month per customer. Do you agree that they will start offering lower premiums for that group of people, because that will attract new customers, and thus increase income?

And what if one company does this - what will other companies do? Will they keep the same price for that group as for everyone else? Then that group will leave for the company that's cheaper for them, right? Leaving the other companies with the higher-risk customers, right? So, they will have to pay out more for damages, right? Now, will they just go bankrupt? Or will they increase premiums to cover the costs?

Noone says that insurance companies aren't making inferences from data. It's just that the more data there is available to them and the more powerful computers and algorithms get, the better they will be able to model risks. And individual companies won't be able to ignore that, even if they want to. And it's the exact opposite of what insurance is intended to do: It's intended to distribute risk. The more exact insurance companies are able to model risks, the more insurance will become unaffordable to those who need it, and the cheaper it will become for those who don't need it.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#258

Post by hanniabu »

ap22213 wrote: post #207
jerf wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethics, constraints or consequences." No, we don't. We have probably a few hundred doing hard-core surveillance. We have another few thousand functioning as enablers by making social media and ad networks really attractive. We have a whole lot of non- engineers insisting on placing ads and tracking on their website…

You're really low-balling. Work in the greater D.C. area. Within a 150-200 mile radius, there are literally tens of thousands of developers working directly on surveillance. Probably even more. How do I know this? From random sampling. Go to any tech event, talk to any program manager at any government contractor. The work and money is in surveillance. And, that's just government surveillance. All that tech is then s…

> The solution: Use all of this surveillance tech and data to expose all of the VIPs. Publicly post where they are and where they've been, who they've been with, what they read, and what they buy. You do this and laws will be created pretty quickly.

Laws will be created pretty quickly, but only to protect VIPs.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#259

Post by Laaw »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #71
Laaw wrote: post #4

I have two unrelated thoughts. "Chilling effect" has always been a profound term for me, because I imagine the "cold" (numbness really) sensation a human body often senses when something truly awful (disembowlment/dismemberment) occurs. The body's way of protecting itself is to go "cold", and in many ways that's exactly the effect taking place here, as well. There's also an undeniable part of this conversation that r…

Does it bother you that national highways are used by kidnappers, and civic electricity is used by rapists? It's infrastructure, so it's all inherently neutral. SSL is used by banks, protesters, and criminals alike. You can't weaken it for one group without weakening it for everyone. It's also global: you can't backdoor an IRC client only for marijuana users in the US, for instance. So if you get to surveil pedophile…

I'm not content simply throwing my hands in the air as everyone else seems to be. We should talk about other options.

There might be a way to stop pedophiles and kidnappers, and rapists that we haven't thought of simply because we're not willing to talk about how we could do it.

Highways have police. Where are the digital police? I'm not sure I prefer such a thing, but why don't we even discuss it?

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#260

Post by natch »

elrodeo wrote: post #210
robmcm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because you assume the people who are collecting your data are ethical, secure and will always share your opinions and beliefs. Say your bank account information was stolen and someone used it to blackmail you because as you said it would have, "implications in some social aspects". Say the country you live in converted to a religion you are not part of or want to be any part of. Imagine if they had a record of y…

If we assume, that — by default — people are unethical, governments are corrupt and most people in power are criminal, then you're f*cked anyway. With or without mass surveillance.

The potential for harm is greatly increased with mass surveillance. If you can accept that, you're getting closer to seeing the problem.
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