Related: https://whyprivacymatters.org
Why Privacy Matters
61–70 of 96 posts
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#62I do not understand what this article is trying to communicate. It starts with a rambling anecdote and ends with a list of some unrelated terms barely tangential to privacy.
I loved the anecdote on the Jewish census. Because I am always struggling to find examples about why sharing information might not be dangerous now, but it can be later, and you never really now.
I wish the article were about that, about what kind of information we are sharing in the present time, that may come to bite us back.
Here is my spin: Information can be used to your advantage (Relevant ads are good when they work), but it can also be weaponized (Oh, you search a lot for medical conditions?, maybe your insurance provider is interested. Or worse like we saw with Cambridge Analytica, "you seem to be democrat, let me see if I can bias you a little by hitting you where it hurts")
Here is my personal take on the situation from my experience: We are in a data collection period. Google, Facebook, Amazon, even Apple. Apple might be the worst actually. Silently amassing and hoarding data, researching the proper databases that can hold the data. We have seen things coming up in the last years like NoSQL, like Spark, massive analytical tools and real time databases. This is the equivalent of building a weapon.
Then the time of using that weapon comes. How? I wish I knew. I remind myself that we are just one CEO away of things being really bad. We are now under the shadow of people that grew in a different time, with a different set of ethics. Google still has the original founders on the board, Tim Cook is of the Steve Jobs school, Amazon is on its first CEO run. A few decades down the board, a new CEO gets appointed, and new CEO finds that he/she just inherited a massive data repository that can be used whatever he pleased. "Oh, we will never do that"? Sure, wait for the next guy to change their mind very fast, in the name of profits, or protecting a stock going down, or less strict ethics because they didn't live in the time where lack of privacy can kill you personally.
Sometimes I hold from sharing my thoughts, because people might label me as a conspiracy theorist :) But it is indeed on the back on my mind.
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#63When I discuss privacy with a friend who doesn't share the same liberalism as me (Chinese, make of that what you will), I often have to point out that it's easy to forget that the spooks will get into bed with political conspiracy - Watergate, COINTELPRO for example. There are very few checks and balances in the US, and arguable none in the UK (You can at least put the US Constitution on your pocket) "I have nothing…
The "I have nothing to hide" trope is patently false. We hide all the time - we hide our private parts under the clothing; in our dwellings, we hide ourselves behind blinds and curtains; we hide most of our thoughts by keeping them to ourselves. 99% of all information is hidden (and should stay that way).
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may wish to give Wordpress a look. It's infamously easy to install, and will happily run on a $5/month digitalocean VM. Installing a caching addon (one or two clicks from the store) will make a site that can survive being linked to directly on HN. Last I knew Squarespace had an export option, so you might be able to just bring all your content over without much hassle.
Thanks! I had a WP site before, but it was getting too complicated for me. I have basic CSS skills, but they weren't enough so I was always asking my SO for help. I had plugins to update but I was never sure of how safe they were, if they were going to break the site, etc. With the skills I have, something like Squarespace is more manageable and easier to tailor
Get a fully managed wordpress from wordpress.com. That will cost you a few dollars per month and you won't have to manage Linux/PHP/SQL or any plugin. There is a bunch of themes included that look pretty good overall.
GitHub Pages are also a good suggestion but they don't come with comments, stats or themes. There's quite a bit of development and design to do to match squarespace/wordpress.
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#65I'm not sure who this article is meant for.
If the idea is to convince non-technical people of the importance of privacy, the article should have just stuck to that. Parts like the free vs. open source discussion seem unnecessary.
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#66I learnt "why privacy matters" from this Glenn's TED: https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matter...
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#67I don't think that striking high chords, historical and political, is all that useful when talking to people about these things. They tend not to take it seriously or at best just file it mentally with other bad things in the world that they have little agency about. Of course, you may already get the broad societal ramifications if you're already in the privacy camp, but perhaps it's not a very effective entry point.
(It's another thing if we're talking about politics, not about individual choices. In pure politics big picture arguments, like "what if there'll be a dictatorship", might be more proper).
I would try to frame it, for individual people, as a question of quality and technical savvyness. If a supposedly hi-tech company behaves like a scammy phone marketing operation selling you garbage bundled with hidden subscriptions, we should treat is as such. They should be able to treat you seriously, i.e. give you good quality, reliable products for the money, without scheming behind your back and siphoning all the data they can. Their business model should be sound without this. If they don't, it's just an inferior product and you're being exploited.
A related point is that I don't like products being sold solely on privacy. The tone should be more, we provide you an excellent thing (inside our capital constraints) and of course, it also respects your data.
Currently I see a tendency among people to be more-or-less aware of privacy invasions and their potential, but to think that's ultimately a fact of life and they'd have to be some crazy nerds to do something about it. The thinking should be more that they're using low quality stuff and hurting themselves. (I'm not saying that you should now go and antagonize people in your social bubble, just that it may be a communication strategy if there's an opportunity.)
Besides, trying to defend ourselves from the future state will be probably always perceived as kooky. Better do something about politics directly if you're in a moderately free country. It's more about rogue actors inside the companies and in the broad underworld. There was a time when people installed the damn antivirus.
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#68I do not understand what this article is trying to communicate. It starts with a rambling anecdote and ends with a list of some unrelated terms barely tangential to privacy.
I loved the anecdote on the Jewish census. Because I am always struggling to find examples about why sharing information might not be dangerous now, but it can be later, and you never really now. I wish the article were about that, about what kind of information we are sharing in the present time, that may come to bite us back. Here is my spin: Information can be used to your advantage (Relevant ads are good when the…
"I loved the anecdote on the Jewish census. Because I am always struggling to find examples about why sharing information might not be dangerous now, but it can be later, and you never really now."
The best example of this is the handwritten notes of the Tsars Russian imperial intel/police services in the very late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Handwritten records and notes stored in shacks that were retrieved and indexed around (forgive hazy dates) 1905 and used to track down "revolutionaries".
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
uBlock says 9 domains, and the article starts with a "trigger warning". Hard pass.
> the article starts with a "trigger warning". Hard pass. You're passing because someone is attempting to help people with mental health problems? Perhaps the problem is with you, not the warning.
Or perhaps the problem is taking a concept that is poorly understood by most, and running it into the ground until it loses its meaning.
Triggers and warnings are concepts that are absolutely real, but in most usage is instead a fad and a virtue signal. That much is obvious in this case, when the author puts up a warning for authoritarianism. Please.
Re: Why Privacy Matters
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your knife analogy is poor. Banning/destroying data is not what privacy is about. Privacy is about ensuring no one has your data who shouldn't. Knife safety also involves ensuring no one has a knife who shouldn't, such as toddlers. Assuming all information is public and fixing the issues that arise is like giving everyone (even toddlers) a knife and then fixing the issues that arise from that. There is no fix…
>Privacy is about ensuring no one has your data who shouldn't Yes and that is because that someone can use it to harm you and you'll suffer. Ensuring no one has your data who shouldn't is only one way but not the only way to prevent the suffering. Let say you know my credit card account number, the reason I don't want other people to know the number is because it can be used to stole my money. But what if there is wa…
I'm fairly certain we will always require privacy. If I have your credit card number and I want to use it to hurt you, I can, unless there's something else I need that I don't have, perhaps a security code. If someone can figure this out without needing privacy that'd be pretty phenomenal, but my little brain can't conceive of such a thing. And until then, we need very strong privacy.