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Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

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Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#111

Post by slg »

granibran wrote: post #102
slg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil rights are not a zero-sum game. One group of people gaining rights doesn't take away the rights from another group, but that is commonly used as an argument to manipulate people into opposing the expansion of rights without confronting what that opposition really means. We saw it with integration in the US often presented as an infringement on the rights of white people. We saw it with gay marriage when people…

Sometimes they aren't zero-sum. For example, trans-identifying people being protected from employment discrimination. This takes nothing away from anyone else, but makes this group's lives easier. But sometimes they are zero-sum. The right of women and girls to have female-only spaces, for example. If a subset of males are given the right to use such spaces, they cease to be female-only spaces. By doing so, this righ…

>But sometimes they are zero-sum. The right of women and girls to have female-only spaces, for example.

How is this different from a white person wanting a "whites only space"? Because you are seemingly arguing for a right to segregation. I think we are better off reconsidering the root desire and how that should manifest itself in a concrete right.

For example, what right do you think the children have in youth sports?

Do they have a right to win?

Do they have a right to be on a team?

Do they have a right to compete?

Do they have the right to compete against someone with equal talent?

Should it be allowed to force a younger kid to compete against older kids?

What about a short kid against tall kids?

Should a Muslim fasting for Ramadan have to compete against Christians with no dietary restrictions?

Can a white child complain about having to compete against black children?

What if only one girl wants to play a specific sport, is it legal to force her to compete on the boys team? What if all the boys are better than her?

I just don't know how you answer these questions consistently and end up in a place in which trans athletes are your only fairness concern.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#112

Post by trod123 »

fallinditch wrote: post #57

Governments will always seek more surveillance of citizens - it's like crack to them. If we don't push back and work hard to protect our freedoms and privacy then we will end up in something like Orwell's 1984. See what's happening in China. The surveillance and oppression are particularly severe in the Xinjiang region, where authorities have implemented a multi-layered system of monitoring and control. This includes…

The money part of the issue is based from preferential money printing which gets spread around, without this there's a finite amount of money that can be made. The market in this area would collapse.

Surveillance capitalism would disappear overnight the moment the Primary Dealers and Options Market (perpetuity) stop funding it with preferential treatment and funny money.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we already live in 1984. The system's described are turnkey, so its just a matter of time before they turn it on all at once.

The elites behind the decisions made in the backroom of the Fed are 'the party'.

Successful activism was always based on the inherent underlying threat of violence. Even with Ghandi, it was the British officials at the time being responsive which allowed change to occur. If they were unresponsive no change would have occurred until abuses became so abhorrent that violence forced them as a matter of rational self-preservation.

This threat is largely ignored today, leaders then are unresponsive to activism instead seeking to undermine through covert channels.

Of course, it also doesn't help the fact that many activist movements are funded by dubious origins (such as communism, and global elites [effectively the same cohort]), and often don't follow rational principles, and/or are sabotaged from the outset.

People have demanded these things for awhile, peacefully, nothing came of it. If nothing happens in a generation (20 years), it won't happen until someone forces it to.

A quarter of that time is generally sufficient to indicate a trend in the run-up.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#113

Post by slg »

seethedeaduu wrote: post #109
slg wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You inadvertently hit on another problem with this debate. The three historical examples you chose were identity theft, Muslims post 9/11, and trans people. The root of all those people’s problems isn’t privacy, it is some other broken part of society. So why focus on the symptom instead of that root issue? Muslim and trans people don’t want to hide their status, they want people to accept their status. Their effort…

> trans people don’t want to hide their status, they want people to accept their status They want both (stealth/passing and acceptance)

Fair point, but in the context of an oppressive society the variance from the perceived norm is what presents the problem. That makes the hypothetical "hidden" status I was discussing their gender and not their non-binary status.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#114

Post by granibran »

slg wrote: post #111
granibran wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes they aren't zero-sum. For example, trans-identifying people being protected from employment discrimination. This takes nothing away from anyone else, but makes this group's lives easier. But sometimes they are zero-sum. The right of women and girls to have female-only spaces, for example. If a subset of males are given the right to use such spaces, they cease to be female-only spaces. By doing so, this righ…

>But sometimes they are zero-sum. The right of women and girls to have female-only spaces, for example. How is this different from a white person wanting a "whites only space"? Because you are seemingly arguing for a right to segregation. I think we are better off reconsidering the root desire and how that should manifest itself in a concrete right. For example, what right do you think the children have in youth spor…

I see you're no longer claiming that this isn't zero-sum. Instead you now seem to be advocating that every single-sex space should be mixed-sex.

Just eradicate all female-only spaces entirely, is that the suggestion? This seems to be your logic here.

We had this arrangement with prisons, by the way. Up until the end of the 19th century prisons housed both sexes in the same estate. Female prisoners were routinely and regularly sexually assaulted, raped, impregnated. By men. That's why prisons are segregated by sex in most places today.

Now some prison authorities are trying this arrangement again. Converting female prisons to mixed-sex prisons. With the same results.

And for some reason you're making a parallel of this to racial segregation? Make it make sense, please.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#115

Post by trod123 »

class4behavior wrote: post #46

Privacy is not about secrets. Privacy is the right to sovereignty over one's personal/intimate sphere - whether it's insight to information about oneself or physical contact. The right to consent, for instance, would be a component of the right to privacy. It's about power. And by extension it's about the power balance between the people and any intruder of their private sphere, whether it's a friend, a stranger, the…

On a side note, it is also a critical dependency to safeguard that right in the first place.

A right to history and culture is also another dependency since people are functions of the culture they learn from their parents. The burning of books which destroys culture is universally accepted to be a bad thing, but its still done indirectly today (libraries budget is dependent on circulation metrics, classics may not be checked out often, books not circulated well get donated to third-parties who pulp, or resell and then pulp if not sold within a period of time.

Even Goodwill does this for content they deem is unsuitable, which is a value-based decision from some unstated individual.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#116

Post by slg »

granibran wrote: post #114
slg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But sometimes they are zero-sum. The right of women and girls to have female-only spaces, for example. How is this different from a white person wanting a "whites only space"? Because you are seemingly arguing for a right to segregation. I think we are better off reconsidering the root desire and how that should manifest itself in a concrete right. For example, what right do you think the children have in youth spor…

I see you're no longer claiming that this isn't zero-sum. Instead you now seem to be advocating that every single-sex space should be mixed-sex. Just eradicate all female-only spaces entirely, is that the suggestion? This seems to be your logic here. We had this arrangement with prisons, by the way. Up until the end of the 19th century prisons housed both sexes in the same estate. Female prisoners were routinely and…

I'm not conceding that rights are zero-sum. I'm trying to get to why you think people have the right to single sex spaces. What is the motivator for that belief and would that same motivator suggest that people have a right to segregation from other protected classes?

I think women have a right to safety. They have a right to privacy. They have a right to being given the same opportunities as anyone else. A girl has a right to compete in sports. She doesn't have a right to win at sports or even a guaranteed spot on the team. Those rights are not zero-sum. The rights of a cis girl are not violated when she competes against a trans girl.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#117

Post by trod123 »

mzajc wrote: post #8

Another argument I hear often is that "they have no reason to surveil boring ordinary individuals." Sure nobody might have bothered to look into your private exchanges past aggregable metadata until half a decade or so ago, but with recent advancements in LLMs it takes mere moments to summarize or search through large batches of messages.

Yeah it is a heavily flawed argument too. You really can't have a rational argument where someone accepts falsehoods as legitimate. Those people are inherently blind.

The people who were massacred at Hue would likely attest to the falsity of that fact if they had somehow survived.

The general story is the VC (communists) took Hue during Vietnam and their leadership had information that had been collected by the Russians on who spoke with Americans as dossiers.

Once they took Hue, they went door to door clipboards in hand and killed every single family that had an American connection.

Even today, the death estimate is not solid as they burned a lot of bodies before a count could be determined after-the-fact.

That massacre largely wouldn't have been possible, or as targeted without information gathering done beforehand. Any covert information gathering is an openly hostile intention and act. Its a necessary pre-requisite for any successful attack on your person.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#118

Post by granibran »

slg wrote: post #116
granibran wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you're no longer claiming that this isn't zero-sum. Instead you now seem to be advocating that every single-sex space should be mixed-sex. Just eradicate all female-only spaces entirely, is that the suggestion? This seems to be your logic here. We had this arrangement with prisons, by the way. Up until the end of the 19th century prisons housed both sexes in the same estate. Female prisoners were routinely and…

I'm not conceding that rights are zero-sum. I'm trying to get to why you think people have the right to single sex spaces. What is the motivator for that belief and would that same motivator suggest that people have a right to segregation from other protected classes? I think women have a right to safety. They have a right to privacy. They have a right to being given the same opportunities as anyone else. A girl has…

There are many, many reasons why we have sex-separated spaces: privacy, dignity, modesty, safety, fairness, peace of mind, personal hygiene, santiation, cleanliness of facilities, lesbian and gay socialising, group bonding, therapeutic efficacy, organizing and campaigning. And probably others that don't come to mind right now. This is generally for the benefit of women, but also for men too on some of these principles.

Tearing all this up and insisting that any man who says he's a women must be permitted to impose himself on female spaces quite obviously encroaches on this.

For example you refer to girls competing in girls' sport. When a boy who says he's a girl (or "trans girl" as you put it) is allowed to compete, this violates several of the above principles for actual girls. Fairness, due to male performance advantage. Safety, when it's a contact sport. Privacy and dignity, if he's also imposing himself on the girls' locker rooms. Peace of mind, as the girls are forced to contend with all of this for no reason other than to keep the male happy.

More generally, all this does is disadvantage women and girls, solely for the pleasure of some males who, by definition, don't even belong in these spaces but decided that they want to impose themselves anyway and, to them, that's all that matters.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#119

Post by advael »

seethedeaduu wrote: post #109
slg wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You inadvertently hit on another problem with this debate. The three historical examples you chose were identity theft, Muslims post 9/11, and trans people. The root of all those people’s problems isn’t privacy, it is some other broken part of society. So why focus on the symptom instead of that root issue? Muslim and trans people don’t want to hide their status, they want people to accept their status. Their effort…

> trans people don’t want to hide their status, they want people to accept their status They want both (stealth/passing and acceptance)

I mean I think as with many broad groups of people, different individuals likely want each of those things, as well as many wanting both or neither. My comment referred specifically to a subset that wants to assimilate, as they were more likely blindsided than activists who fight for acceptance, but we're nitpicking here

Regardless, the way in which surveillance harms them, as well as other minorities, whether political, racial, ethnic, sexual, or religious, isn't that their "secret" is revealed, it's that they are monitored and can be targeted. Their status can be used to aggregate and group them, but other information can be used to harm or target them. My point in bringing up minorities that suddenly become more prominent targets isn't that they need to hide their minority status and thus are uniquely harmed by surveillance. My point is that surveillance is a weapon, and you only feel the harms of it when it is used on you, not when it's being built

Again, the issue isn't that particular information is especially dangerous. It's that information is power, and there are lots of very concentrated and unaccountable powerbases being built through mass-surveillance, which can be deployed to harm people in all manner of different ways for all manner of different reasons. People feel violated when their privacy is invaded because it is an incursion of power that violates their autonomy, and power is quite versatile in the harms it can do

Re: Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

#120

Post by slg »

granibran wrote: post #118
slg wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not conceding that rights are zero-sum. I'm trying to get to why you think people have the right to single sex spaces. What is the motivator for that belief and would that same motivator suggest that people have a right to segregation from other protected classes? I think women have a right to safety. They have a right to privacy. They have a right to being given the same opportunities as anyone else. A girl has…

There are many, many reasons why we have sex-separated spaces: privacy, dignity, modesty, safety, fairness, peace of mind, personal hygiene, santiation, cleanliness of facilities, lesbian and gay socialising, group bonding, therapeutic efficacy, organizing and campaigning. And probably others that don't come to mind right now. This is generally for the benefit of women, but also for men too on some of these principle…

>There are many, many reasons why we have sex-separated spaces: privacy, dignity, modesty, safety, fairness, peace of mind, personal hygiene, santiation, cleanliness of facilities, lesbian and gay socialising, group bonding, therapeutic efficacy, organizing and campaigning.

But that was only half of the equation. Why are these "rights" only relevant for women? How can you define these as a right if other groups do not have the same protection?

>privacy, dignity, modesty,

Can a straight man cite his right for "privacy, dignity, modesty" when kicking a gay man out of a locker room?

>safety

Do you think it would be safe for a trans woman who has surgically transitioned to be housed in a male prison?

>fairness

I dedicated almost that whole previous post trying to get you to define what a right to "fairness" really means, but you ignored all those questions.

>peace of mind

Do you think a passenger should be able to force an airline to kick a Muslim off a plane to get "peace of mind"?

>personal hygiene, santiation, cleanliness of facilities,

Are my rights violated if I walk into a public restroom and the person before me didn't flush?

>lesbian and gay socialising

If homosexuals have a right to their own segregated socializing environment, can a school host a dance for only straight people?

>organizing and campaigning

Could a campaign event for a local white politician kick someone out for simply being black?

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