Or you have the right to remain silent... Just give up on the exhibition platforms, nobody you care about cares about what you post, it can only be held against you.
Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
101–110 of 126 posts
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#102For privacy to exist, you need a shared understanding of something effectively "sacred," where the ethics that stem from it are self enforcing. I have trespasser and loiterer problems where I live because newer people in my area don't recognize private property unless it has high fences or walls around it. Their understanding of privacy does not incorporate the norms of the society they have joined, and it creates tension with the locals.
Imagine some strangers decided your house was a tourist attraction and developed a subculture and social scene around it. This might seem insane to you, where if your sentiments toward them as the resident did not matter to them, but the symbol of being somehow associated with your home and property did, this would be an encroachment on your privacy. To them, legally they're just in public looking at things they desire (your property), and using the peace and effect of your property as their own relative privacy so that they can have sex in their cars away from people who might recognize them.
The lack of privacy in this case is a lack of shared norms, and an inability to enforce or resolve them without conflict. When it comes to electronic privacy, the same dynamic applies, where you're "just a user," and not a person, but rather an object that is subject to some process by an other.
Privacy also definitely breaks down at scale, and it might actually be defined as relating only in a context on a certain scale - or that privacy itself is an artifact of context in a given scale. It needs re-thinking because it's not a value that is universally shared, it requires an enforcement mechanism, and it also seems to require a certain belief in basic dignity that is separate from material concerns. It presumes some natural rights that are not natural to everyone, and I don't think it's something an individual has unless they can actually defend it.
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The mind-reading stuff is still a fantasy and will be so also in the future. Fantasy today, sure — judging by advertising categories I was getting placed in at least a few years back, the AI don't generally have the ability to infer much from revealed preferences, despite the odd headline every so often. But in the future? Even ignoring the possibility that the aforementioned advertising-AI get better, there's Neur…
> Even ignoring the possibility that the aforementioned advertising-AI get better, there's Neuralink and whatever competition it ends up getting. I am skeptical. AI, Neuralink, or whatever might infer better on many things, sure, but these certainly will not be able to infer what non-dogmatic people think about, say, philosophy or politics already because humans have always a capability to change their minds, while A…
Wires on synapses, however, are very good at sensing exactly what's up.
They're too expensive right now, and I really hope Neuralink turns out to be as much of a business disaster as buying Twitter, because if it's as much of a world-changer as Tesla or SpaceX…
…well, if cheap-and-good BCI comes, there's too many dystopian ways for it to be abused for comfort.
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#104privacy is important but the article is strange because all of the things described can be opted-out of. in the case of Telly you are explicitly trading off privacy in order to receive a free product. don't consume if you don't agree. there are certain situations in which you might be OK with the privacy implication. I, for example, would be OK with receiving a free car ride if I had to watch an advertisement while t…
"Sure, but it's ultimately not necessary for your participation in society"
I'm going to push back on this. I've opted out of Facebook before when I was part of some active social groups, and known others who've done so. Opting out of these providers absolutely hampers participation in society, depending.
So many groups and activities require a Facebook account. If you're not there you miss out on discussions and maybe miss being invited to things altogether because "out of sight, out of mind."
At the minimum, not using these things introduces friction in participating in society. Whether they're necessary really depends on what you want your participation to look like and what you consider "society." For some people, it's very easy to cast off the Facebook chains because their social circles don't use Facebook.
But say you have kids and want to participate in a school parenting group or external activity and they've decided to organize things via FB. It's in or out. You aren't just making a choice for you now, it drags your spouse and kids into it too. Maybe your extended family.
And this is by design. Facebook absolutely designs its products to ensure that the maximum number of people must have accounts and that not having an account makes it difficult or impossible to participate or even observe content related to things.
Now, government tracking is harder to avoid and even more concerning, but let's not handwave away the impact people face if they refuse to use FB or Google. It is limiting for a large swath of people.
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#105I can’t get any normies interested in privacy. Even my wife, who is the most tin-foil-hat woman I know, is perfectly fine with NSA spying, the TSA, etc. Given that, how can anyone say that privacy is “one of the most fundamental human rights?” The masses obviously don’t agree. And who else even has standing to decide what’s a human right and what isn’t?
Sorry for the confusion, but what is TSA and what did they do?
in the United States, the Transportation Security Administration is most commonly responsible for airport security screenings. This typically involves scanning passengers' belongings with xray equipment and passengers themselves with at least metal detectors. As such there is a markedly reduced expectation to privacy when passing through an airport security checkpoint.
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even ignoring the possibility that the aforementioned advertising-AI get better, there's Neuralink and whatever competition it ends up getting. I am skeptical. AI, Neuralink, or whatever might infer better on many things, sure, but these certainly will not be able to infer what non-dogmatic people think about, say, philosophy or politics already because humans have always a capability to change their minds, while A…
Wires on synapses, however, are very good at sensing exactly what's up. They're too expensive right now, and I really hope Neuralink turns out to be as much of a business disaster as buying Twitter, because if it's as much of a world-changer as Tesla or SpaceX… …well, if cheap-and-good BCI comes, there's too many dystopian ways for it to be abused for comfort.
> ... well, if cheap-and-good BCI comes, there's too many dystopian ways for it to be abused for comfort.
I am all for dystopia; already with VR/XR/etc. you can probably infer a lot, especially once they start (or have done already?) scanning retina movements and such. But still: stimuli is a one thing and mind-reading (thought control?) is another.
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
This discussion isn't about the word life, it's about privacy; I'm sure the question of "life" will become harder if we end up creating sentient AGI... Privacy in this discussion can mean different things, where there are definite overlaps, but also distinction: * privacy of action (being sure that no one is watching what I'm doing) * privacy in communication (being sure that my priviliged information isn't compromis…
We should be concerned with those who pretend that historical precedent is a thing when it comes to questions of ethics, indeed anyone who conflates ethics with legalistic frameworks. IMO the largest barrier to progress today is that too many people think the point of laws is to dictate ethics. This leads them to believe that legal things are good and illegal things are bad, and then you get horribly circular argumen…
So privacy is now an ethical question but not a human right?
Historical precedents no longer matter, so we as a humanity can again commit all the atrocities of the past? Lunacy.
Sorry to disappoint you: we ("people") should be especially worried about technologists eager to define what is ethical and trying to overcome laws with their own interpretations. No wonder many companies are constantly in courts because of their "ethics".
Besides, the interplay between ethics and law runs through the whole Western philosophy.
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#108In the discussion of losing privacy we focus on the social freedoms lost as a result of loss of privacy. I agree with all of those arguments but missing from these discussions are the economic freedoms we might lose. People like to portray their least favorite countries as being engaged in corporate espionage in other developed countries, but what stops your favorite big corp from stealing what you create? Going forw…
> your fierce competitors had access to all your phone calls, texts, google docs, spreadsheets etc.? I'll take this a step further into the Sci-Fi realm: what if your competitors could use all that data to model a simulation of your thoughts and generate your own ideas faster than you can? There's a philosophical argument here as ownership of those produced thoughts are contestable. The data is from you, so do you ha…
> would that society stop communicating openly and watch their words carefully?
I think we already live in that society, to be honest.
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#109> Our mission is clear - we aim to unravel the magic of FOSS, Linux, and self-hosting to individuals seeking a break from the shackles of Big Tech. IMO, it's not only Big Tech that poses a threat on privacy and freedom. Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it.
>Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it. Whenever people complain about Big Government I like to remind them that any attempt at regulating industries like Big Tech is decried by the owner class as "Big Government", which is often parroted by conservatives, libertarians, and other pro-business groups. So is it Big Government when it protects the interests of Big Industry to t…
As near as I can tell, when people complain about "big government", what they're really complaining about is just the government doing things that they dislike.
I've never heard anyone decry "big government" in response to governmental actions that they like, so I don't think it's usually a principled position.
Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> your fierce competitors had access to all your phone calls, texts, google docs, spreadsheets etc.? I'll take this a step further into the Sci-Fi realm: what if your competitors could use all that data to model a simulation of your thoughts and generate your own ideas faster than you can? There's a philosophical argument here as ownership of those produced thoughts are contestable. The data is from you, so do you ha…
> would that society stop communicating openly and watch their words carefully? I think we already live in that society, to be honest.
I think this is starting, but I'm not sure it has been internalized. People still frequently quote Goebbels and saying "my data isn't useful." I think one key change that is happening now is that our data and decisions have really changed. For example, with the advent of LLMs I've thought of not just deleting accounts (despite being semi-anonymous) but purging them, so that my data cannot be used for future training. This is something that wasn't reasonably predictable 5-10 years ago, despite understanding the information was public and utilized for other means. Maybe we need to update how accounts are handled. On HN you can only delete your account. You can't purge and the reason was to ensure that there's a record of conversations for future readers. But the environment has changed and thus we need to weigh the threat model of privacy now vs the consistency argument.
Dang, if you're poking around, I really would be curious about your thoughts here. Are you thinking about allowing account purging due to this new environment change?