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Privacy is the most important concept of our time

inre.me

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Re: Privacy is the most important concept of our time

#61

Post by OpticalWindows »

raxxorrax wrote: post #33
williamtrask wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw - these two things are not as disentangled as one might think. Consider disinformation leading to the widespread climate change deniers. Both are existential threats with high degrees of uncertainty.

How is disinformation entangled with privacy?

Targeted disinformation.

Imagine being able to compile the cheapest pressure point for everyone in the world using surveillance and then exploiting it on a industrial scale. Most modern surveillance is in a legally ambiguous area of the law.

In theory you can target anyone with habitual use of a computer or with friends who use computers a lot for very cheap.

Re: Privacy is the most important concept of our time

#62

Post by scoutt »

umilegenio wrote: post #44
scoutt wrote: post #36

I don't get the link between privacy and freedom of speech. I can have private thoughts and private behaviors that don't necessarily have to do with speaking . In fact, many aspects of privacy have to do with what one does and thinks and not with what one says . Or freedom of speech is related to privacy (by the author) in a way that I can surely upload a video to Youtube telling that my neighbor cheats his wife beca…

I might have been unclear on this aspect. My point was that privacy can affect other rights in complex ways, including, as a way of example, freedom of speech. In the example I was talking about in the article, I was trying to say that nowadays people have different norms and opinions on what is fair. That is great, however this means that without privacy I can hurt you simply by sharing something about you with a a…

Ok. Thanks. Still I believe they barely overlap (privacy and freedom of speech). It's a grey area. For instance, I can violate your privacy and not telling it to anyone (peeking through your window), and I can also tell something about you in a community without violating your privacy (give an opinion, or take you out of context, or plainly lie, or defame you).

Or you can input all your info in my website, then I get hacked and all your personal info is now in a torrent somewhere (to mention something that has nothing to do with freedom of speech).

They overlap perhaps but I might just call it gossip.

So I don't believe it's a either freedom of speech-or-privacy battle, where one is the solution to the other, or the problem to the other.

Invading privacy is punished in most countries, and gets more serious if the info is published. The real problem is that doxxing and posting personal information in a community goes unpunished right now. The solution may be something I would never want, that is, non-anonymous internet access. At least paparazzis were known, they have a face and a name. You can sue them, and in case, punch them in the face if that's your thing.

It's true there is also a problem with the mob, but there is little that can be done about it. I recall the two guys making "dongle" jokes in a conference and getting fired when it reached Twitter.

Re: Privacy is the most important concept of our time

#63

Post by leetcrew »

docdeek wrote: post #8

The author goes too far when they suggest there should be laws (and one imagines punishments for those who break them) that prevent something being shared in one space from being shared elsewhere. For example, if I share something with my family, there should be a law that prevents a family member from making what I said public. Not only would this be a nightmare to police but it would give rise to some anti-social o…

at the very least, the speaker should probably have to indicate in some way that what they're saying is private. like if I invite you into my home and we have a discussion about the best brand of kitchen sponge, you shouldn't automatically be prohibited from sharing my recommendation with others.

> If I was flat out telling my family I didn't like race X and wished that religion Y could be outlawed, and then shared in the public realm that racists are terrible and that freedom of religion for all is paramount...shouldn't someone be able to call me out on it? And if not me, imagine a person of some power or influence: don't we want to know when someone's public political stance is different to how they really feel?

perhaps it's because I'm privileged, but I don't really see how this is a problem? does it really matter if someone holds abhorrent beliefs privately if everything they do in public (and at their job) is consistent with their publicly espoused views? if instead of only confiding in close family members, the person abused the privacy protection to spread their views to many private groups, this would start to blur the line.

a more clear cut example would be if someone privately expressed a credible and imminent plan to harm someone else. you would definitely want an exception for that.

Re: Privacy is the most important concept of our time

#66

Post by leetcrew »

GuB-42 wrote: post #26
dfischer wrote: post #4

Privacy and the concept of property blur in the digital. This is interesting when taking the philosophy of natural laws and what a nation like USA is built upon (ideas of natural laws including property, defending life, and so on) Encryption is the only way to have property in the digital universe, however the mechanics of property and cost are also entirely different. Once it exists it’s costless to reproduce in sai…

> However relying on encryption feels a little repugnant as it relies on transferring trust to a mathematical minority that truly understand it. Physical locks also rely on a minority that truly understand them. A bit less true now that you can find lockpicking tutorials all over the place, but most people just trust their locksmith, who, in turn, trust lock manufacturers. > And no encryption has ever gone unbroken w…

> Physical locks also rely on a minority that truly understand them. A bit less true now that you can find lockpicking tutorials all over the place, but most people just trust their locksmith, who, in turn, trust lock manufacturers.

physical locks are not nearly as essential to physical security as encryption is to digital security, although they are definitely important. physical locks are only useful because most people don't want to get spotted on your doorstep fiddling with your lock. a determined adversary will just kick the door down or break a window. encryption needs to resist opportunistic attacks that can come from anywhere, 24/7.

Re: Privacy is the most important concept of our time

#67

Post by mchusma »

Privacy (particularly medical privacy) is probably the most overrated issue of our time.

60M people die per year of preventable reasons, for example. Or the fact that we are very sensitive to extinction (single planet we are running some experiments on), another one.

Re: Privacy is the most important concept of our time

#68

Post by alexgmcm »

If you think privacy is the major concern of most people then no offence, but you've had a pretty privileged life.

I doubt it's even the major concern of most people in Western countries due to unemployment, poverty, debt etc. let alone developing nations which have the real risk of actual famine and so on.

Re: Privacy is the most important concept of our time

#69

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

I'm sorry, but this guy is a goofball. He proposes all kinds of rules but hasn't thought deeply, on a systems level, about what it means to have and enforce rules.

Rules about information are hard to define precisely and are often gamed. Information rules require the government getting involved in information transfers at a very deep level. It opens up society to all kinds of more serious threats in regards to civil liberties and totalitarianism.

Its very easy to say "we should have rules to do XYZ". Its much harder to say what those rules should be and figure out how to prevent those rules from creating ambiguity that enriches lawyers and impoverishes everyone else.

Everyone wants to make rules with good intensions but they are too arrogant to understand the systems implications of such endeavors. Everything has unpredictable second order effects, and OP is totally clueless. He should first work on some cross border applications that implicate user data and then he should make posts on the Internet about privacy.

Re: Privacy is the most important concept of our time

#70

Post by ascar »

newscracker wrote: post #57
Dumblydorr wrote: post #15

Not destroying our planet with GHG and rendering it inhospitable for millions of species, including humanity, is more important than a couple generations' data being spied on.

It's not an either-or situation. Both are important for humanity to survive and thrive. I know that Benjamin Franklin said this in a completely different context and for another purpose, [1] but it makes sense to me to repeat his saying: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." [1]: https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-fa…

However, the article's topic verbatim states privavy is "the most important", which makes it an either-or statement by the very nature of a superlative.

The person you replied to did in no way say privacy is not also important, but rightfully pointed out that the survival of life on the planet is more important than privacy.

If anything this says two things:

- superlatives are overused

- just because superlatives are overused doesn't mean we should ignore their semantics

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