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Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

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Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#271

Post by TeMPOraL »

jacquesm wrote: post #265
TeMPOraL wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but from what I remember from my history lessons, NSDAP was actually doing good on those promises. Which is something that rarely happens in politics.

That was more of a temporary thing right up until the point that the Nazi party abolished large chunks of the civil rights granted by the German Constitution in 1933. They made lots of promises that they never delivered on (or even planned to deliver on). One of the more interesting ones: http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/vw.htm

That was a really interesting story, thanks!

Also, the very positive tone of the historical article was refreshing. I know it's pure propaganda, but still, we could use some positive articles in the news every once in a while.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#272

Post by logfromblammo »

teddyh wrote: post #238
logfromblammo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found that as an individual software worker, with no union or professional association with the muscle to back me up, any ethical objections I may have are meaningless, as the only thing I can do to object is lose all my household income and be replaced by someone more pliant. For instance, I find a user control that prevents the user from changing focus whenever the input is invalid to be unethical, or at lea…

> […] any ethical objections I may have are meaningless, as the only thing I can do to object is lose all my household income and be replaced by someone more pliant. “ How do you know the chosen ones? ‘No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother.’ Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame. For one person. In the dark, where no one will ever know, or see. ” — Babylon 5, Season 2, episode 2…

Nice quote, but...

"The Earth belongs in usufruct to the living; the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." --Thomas Jefferson, to James Madison, Sep 6, 1789

For all the influence exerted by people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., they effected change with their lives, and not their deaths. One should not choose to die for a cause, or against one. Rather, live for your own principles, and teach them to those others who wish to learn. Those who sacrifice themselves, expecting no reward, grow no greater in my eyes. They become memory, and immediately begin to fade, except to the extent that they are renewed by those who still live.

What manner of scoundrel would I be to suggest that another to sacrifice for my benefit, that I may treasure the memory of it? What sort of fool would assent? That is the mentality of the beehive, where the workers die to protect their queen. In a society of equals, for anyone to die unnecessarily is a tragedy. For someone to choose to die, it is a horror.

Attributing some nobility to self-sacrifice is an ethic for hierarchies, to convince the lesser people, against their own interests, to hurtle headstrong into situations where they may be killed. It makes pawns of people who might otherwise be greater. It is not fitting to convince anyone to believe they are so unworthy that the best way they might serve others is by throwing themselves into fires that need never have been lit.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#273

Post by miguelrochefort »

maxerickson wrote: post #204
miguelrochefort wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only concern at the moment is to get people to realize that privacy is not good. Only when people understand that our goal is transparency can we come up with a strategy to make the switch. Considering that we need to get to a transparent society, contributions to the privacy movement only ensures that the transition will be even more difficult and violent.

Have you written anywhere about how you arrived at such a radical position? (I mean radical in the traditional sense, not as a slur)

I don't see how it's radical. It's the only logical conclusion.

Many people have written about this. I haven't read a single convincing argument in favor of privacy as anything other than a defensive measure.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#274

Post by maxerickson »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #273
maxerickson wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you written anywhere about how you arrived at such a radical position? (I mean radical in the traditional sense, not as a slur)

I don't see how it's radical. It's the only logical conclusion. Many people have written about this. I haven't read a single convincing argument in favor of privacy as anything other than a defensive measure.

So no? I don't care about the labeling. I want to better understand the reasoning. Or at least, what pieces of information make it so obvious.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#275

Post by Casseres »

m1sta_ wrote: post #177
Casseres wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who pushes the "nothing to hide" argument probably wouldn't understand the implication of your response. I suggest a different approach: say "Okay, in that case what prescriptions are you taking, how much money do you have in your bank account, and how often do you have sex? After all, you have nothing to hide right?" That also puts them on the defensive side of the argument.

Are those really sensitive questions for most people?

For some people, no. I tried to cover several different bases, but you get the idea: ask sensitive personal questions. Maybe the money one should be about credit card debt.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#276

Post by Sir_Substance »

mattlutze wrote: post #119
Sir_Substance wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to agree. I'd like to see more active ostracisation against software developers that have worked for organisations like the NSA and GCHQ. If we can make it a career ending job, it will dramatically reduce their ability to recruit. However, I'd also like to see general software development think more closely about the role it has in normalising these things. Next time you start to create an account system…

But... NSA, GCHQ, BSI/BND, etc. aren't the "bad guy" in theory. It's within a nation's interest to, within the extent of law and respect for human rights, try as thoroughly has it can to know what's going on in the world. Electronic intelligence is part of that, and a growing part. In practice, the permissive reactions many/most/all governments have to allegations (or proof) that a comms intel agency has broken the l…

>NSA, GCHQ, BSI/BND, etc. aren't the "bad guy" in theory.

Theory is not really relevant when the practical reality is monstrous. The five eyes are not redeemable.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#277

Post by m1sta_ »

maxerickson wrote: post #274
miguelrochefort wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it's radical. It's the only logical conclusion. Many people have written about this. I haven't read a single convincing argument in favor of privacy as anything other than a defensive measure.

So no? I don't care about the labeling. I want to better understand the reasoning. Or at least, what pieces of information make it so obvious.

I'm of a similar (although not identical) opinion to miguelrochefort. The short answer is... if you imagine a utopia, do you imagine lots of secrets or lots of openness and acceptance?

The reality is that I came to this conclusion through a long process but I'm pretty tired. The process definitely considered whether the 'private' version of the world was even possible. I don't think it is. Surveillance will happen. Better we accept it and keep an eye on how it's used than pretend like we can prevent it in the long term. Even if you were able to discourage the ubiquitous 'high tech hackers' and 'big data' forms of surveillance (which I don't think you'll be able to do), bribes and drones will continue to be used for the powerful to get what they want.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#278

Post by AnthonyMouse »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #229
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to regulate any institution that collects data in the same way. I feel like this is too wide. Everyone collects data. I don't mean all tech companies collect data, I mean, for example, your friends have copies of the emails you've sent them. They have photos with you in them of places you've been with timestamps and GPS coordinates. Your coworkers have access to your calendar. Your mechanic has the service…

An interesting point, and I generally agree. But RE "avoidable monopolies": > Why is there a copy of your photos on Facebook's servers? If one of your friends wants to see one of your photos, why are they not getting it directly from you? Then you don't have to trust Facebook with a copy of it. So the solution for this half of the problem is, disintermediate the avoidable monopolies. It's because decentralization lik…

> It's because decentralization like that is stupidly, stupidly inefficient.

Disagree. If you're Netflix wanting to distribute Jessica Jones then you want something like a CDN (although in that context BitTorrent is also "something like a CDN").

But think about wanting to share photos with your friends. There are only thirty people who actually want to see the photos. Twenty five of them live in the same city as you, which makes direction connections to you about as efficient as a local CDN node, and the other five live in four different cities, so in all but one case there is nothing to be gained from caching in any of those places because there will only ever be one copy requested. In that one last case the CDN would conserve just one long-distance copy, and that's assuming we can't make P2P software smart enough to have the second person in Timbuktu get the photos from the first person there.

> we're not on IPv6 yet

This one is probably the main reason why this hasn't actually happened yet, but it's not like we don't know what to do -- how about we get on IPv6 already?

> or that people also use cameras

You seem to be implying there is some reason why a photo taken with a camera couldn't still be distributed using a mobile device (or plug server or PC or whatever you like).

> or that they change their phones

And then they can copy the stuff from one to the other.

> Not to mention that the assumption that your phone is actually on-line 24/7 is unrealistic

Availability is a different tack. OK, your phone doesn't have twelve nines of uptime, but it probably is actually online upwards of 90% of the time. And we know how to build reliable systems out of mostly-reliable pieces.

We're assuming that there is a piece of software on your device which already knows who your friends are. So now it just needs a check box that says "cache things for my friends if they cache things for me" and now your friends can get your photos from your other friends (or from their own device) even when your device is occasionally incommunicado.

> or simply want to free up space on SD card for something else.

I think there's a law of physics that says your photos, to exist, have to exist somewhere. I suppose "I would rather give my private data to Facebook than buy an SD card big enough to hold it" is the sort of thing you have to decide for yourself.

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#279

Post by Laaw »

Nutmog wrote: post #111
Laaw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not worthwhile for you, but there's a set of people out there who all agree on what Evil actually is (generally, obviously it's difficult to be exact), and we'd like to try and figure out how to limit its ability to act, while maintaining the shield of protection for the persecuted.

Many groups agree within themselves. But they disagree with other groups. Who can judge which group it right? What are the odds that it happens to be the group you're in, not all the others that previous generations were in or people in other cultures are in. Quick test - is looking at a photo of a naked child evil?

Quicker test - do you have a point, or are you just trying to bog down this conversation about privacy with a defeatist "we have to let murders/rapists get away with it" argument?

Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

#280

Post by Laaw »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #242
Laaw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is a defeatist attitude, I think, and there is plenty of evidence that Evil can be stopped/averted in many cases. It's beyond obvious that there is no complete solution for Evil, but if you keep ignoring this question/problem, then people will continue to pick the "no Evil/no privacy" option over your "Evil/privacy" alternative, which is ultimately devastating to everyone. We need to talk about how to create "n…

> [P]eople will continue to pick the "no Evil/no privacy" option If that was an available option, it would be fine. I'd choose no evil and no privacy because I'd know that my information, and more importantly the information of public officials and company leaders; folks who wield power; wouldn't be abused. But that's not an option that's on the table, and whatever it is they intend to pick it is not what people acco…

Please in the future consider the concept of rhetorical license. It's not literally zero Evil, it's actually "less evil" and "less privacy", vs. "more evil" and "more privacy".

This isn't a conversation about absolutes, it's a conversation about shifting degrees. I'd like to shift towards the "less Evil/more privacy", but no one here or anywhere wants to try to come up with ways to do that, because everyone just assumes privacy gives Evil room to grow.

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