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'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

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Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#21

Post by hga »

dfc wrote: post #18
hga wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"..." I guess all I can say is that you believe you have better insight into the mind of Glenn Reynolds than e.g. I do.

My use of an ellipsis was to indicate that I cut some material from the quote. I do not understand why you quoted "..." My comment had to do with the reason why it is the number one downloaded paper.

"..." is a convention I first found in manga, which indicates a character has no (immediate) verbal reply to what was just previously said or happened.

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#22

Post by diminoten »

dev360 wrote: post #15
diminoten wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem comes with how the government uses the data it has on you. Say, for example, I have... 10,000 points of data about you. 10,000 HN posts + Facebook posts + Reddit posts, etc. You've said a lot during your Internet career. I can take what you've written, and form a profile of you from these words. They're just words, you've done nothing wrong. Freedom of speech being what it is, and let's even say you…

Another thing that bothers the CRAP out of me is that now I feel like I can't say how I feel with friends because I know government is monitoring me. Its not that I am a terrorist or criminal, but this feels /exactly/ like I'm living in some unfree communist piece of shit country where you cannot speak how you feel without facing scrutiny from informants or stasi style police; UNLESS its in the comfort of your four w…

You can, you just can't do it over Facebook without employing client-side encryption.

Something your friends probably don't give a crap about and won't do. I know mine wouldn't if I tried to get them to - it's just too hard.

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#23

Post by dfc »

hga wrote: post #21
dfc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My use of an ellipsis was to indicate that I cut some material from the quote. I do not understand why you quoted "..." My comment had to do with the reason why it is the number one downloaded paper.

"..." is a convention I first found in manga, which indicates a character has no (immediate) verbal reply to what was just previously said or happened.

I'm confused, you have a verbal reply right below the manga ellipsis.

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#24

Post by Karunamon »

diminoten wrote: post #11
woodchuck64 wrote: post #7

So people are willing to tolerate the infinitesimal personal risk of an invasion of privacy by the government in order to diminish the infinitesimal personal risk of a terrorist attack. Not sure what all the fuss is about.

Well, the problem comes with how the government uses the data it has on you. Say, for example, I have... 10,000 points of data about you. 10,000 HN posts + Facebook posts + Reddit posts, etc. You've said a lot during your Internet career. I can take what you've written, and form a profile of you from these words. They're just words, you've done nothing wrong. Freedom of speech being what it is, and let's even say you…

> Now you're suddenly interesting to the authorities, even if you've done literally nothing wrong. Or have you?
This argument could be taken to mean that the fear isn't that information is being collected, aggregated, and analyzed, but fear in that algorithms will be wrong and results will be misinterpreted or misused.

As technology advances, both of these problems will reduce more and more.

Furthermore, if I came up with some kind of math that could determine with a high degree of certainty that someone is a (terrorist/communist/pedophile/father raper) given their online activities, the authorities would be negligent not to follow up on that information and determine if it's valid or not.

Much like spam, verified false positives help train the filters further.

That leaves only the abuse argument.. and honestly, I don't see /potential/ abuse as an argument against any kind of technological advance. We have ways of dealing with abuse.

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#25

Post by hga »

dfc wrote: post #23
hga wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"..." is a convention I first found in manga, which indicates a character has no (immediate) verbal reply to what was just previously said or happened.

I'm confused, you have a verbal reply right below the manga ellipsis.

I had no immediate verbal reply....

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#26

Post by diminoten »

Karunamon wrote: post #24
diminoten wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem comes with how the government uses the data it has on you. Say, for example, I have... 10,000 points of data about you. 10,000 HN posts + Facebook posts + Reddit posts, etc. You've said a lot during your Internet career. I can take what you've written, and form a profile of you from these words. They're just words, you've done nothing wrong. Freedom of speech being what it is, and let's even say you…

> Now you're suddenly interesting to the authorities, even if you've done literally nothing wrong. Or have you? This argument could be taken to mean that the fear isn't that information is being collected, aggregated, and analyzed, but fear in that algorithms will be wrong and results will be misinterpreted or misused. As technology advances, both of these problems will reduce more and more. Furthermore, if I came up…

I'd argue that we don't have any good ways of dealing with abuse/misuse, and that's precisely the problem with such a system.

And let's not forget the "verified false positives" are counted in lives ruined/ended. Could we do it? Yeah, no one's denying that. But if we throw out ethics in the name of technological progress, we could do a lot of great things.

There's not really a deterministic line, beyond which a person is "certainly" a threat. At the end of the day, a person has to decide what is and isn't a threat, all the computer can do is help that decision along. A person pulls the trigger, and as we all know, people can really suck sometimes.

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#27

Post by dasil003 »

woodchuck64 wrote: post #7

So people are willing to tolerate the infinitesimal personal risk of an invasion of privacy by the government in order to diminish the infinitesimal personal risk of a terrorist attack. Not sure what all the fuss is about.

So you don't recognize the difference between one infinitesimal and another? The fact that they may be orders of magnitude difference, thereby implying that the amount of collateral damage may be significantly higher than any benefit to society?

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#28

Post by jleader »

Karunamon wrote: post #24
diminoten wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem comes with how the government uses the data it has on you. Say, for example, I have... 10,000 points of data about you. 10,000 HN posts + Facebook posts + Reddit posts, etc. You've said a lot during your Internet career. I can take what you've written, and form a profile of you from these words. They're just words, you've done nothing wrong. Freedom of speech being what it is, and let's even say you…

> Now you're suddenly interesting to the authorities, even if you've done literally nothing wrong. Or have you? This argument could be taken to mean that the fear isn't that information is being collected, aggregated, and analyzed, but fear in that algorithms will be wrong and results will be misinterpreted or misused. As technology advances, both of these problems will reduce more and more. Furthermore, if I came up…

"As technology advances, both of these problems will reduce more and more."

For the first problem (that algorithms' results will be wrong), you're assuming that the technology to avoid false positives will progress faster than the technology to collect more data. On what do you base that assumption?

The second problem (that the results will be misinterpreted or misused) isn't a technological problem at all, so how will the advancement of technology reduce that problem?

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#29

Post by mkruso »

MarkHarmon wrote: post #19

"Privacy, then, is not the trumpeting of the individual against society’s interests, but the protection of the individual based on society’s own norms and values." Was it intended to be "Privacy, then, is not the trumpeting of the individual against society’s interests, but the protection of the individual FROM society’s own norms and values."? I want to make sure I'm understanding the concept. The original means to…

While I agree with your last statement, I don't think the author made a mistake. His point here is that privacy is about more than protecting the individual for the individual's sake.

In context of the preceding paragraphs:

Etzioni viewed privacy as a battle between the interests of individuals and society.

Dewey proposed that privacy is also a social interest, not just an individual interest.

The author is agreeing with the latter: "the value of protecting the individual is a social one."

Really, this means both of your interpretations. A society with privacy values protecting individuals from some of its other norms and values.

I've never heard of these people before reading this, and I'm not trying to be pedantic. Just my textual interpretation.

[edit - for clarity, but I may have made it worse.]

Re: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [pdf]

#30

Post by Torn »

susi22 wrote: post #5

Daniel Solove also wrote a longer version of this in his book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300172338

He's written a further compilation of his works in a book titled "Understanding Privacy": http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Privacy-Daniel-J-Solove/...

It's a great read, and includes a section on the 'nothing to hide' fallacy

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