Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation • Hacker News Board

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#41

Post by rayiner » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #33

rayiner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even a matter of "politicians wanting more power." The public wants the government to have power over people, because they are (reasonably or not), more scared of other people than they are of the government. People fall on different places on the spectrum for how they weigh the loss of privacy versus the need for security, but very few are willing to say "we need pervasive unbreakable encryption, whatever t…

It's natural for regulators to want more power - since they're good , they can always choose to not wield that power later . The motivation is the same at the smaller per-person scale, with democracy encouraging every person to think as a mini regulator - deciding whether a behavior should be prohibited or encouraged and then enforcing the majority's opinion onto the minority, rather than leaving the behavior unjudge…

I agree with most of your analysis. That said, between the time the telephone was invented to the time encrypted email was invented, we had a rather prosperous and progressive period during which there did not exist a convenient means of communicating over long distances the government could not access with the appropriate process. I think the whole system is more robust than you give it credit for.

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#42

Post by miguelrochefort » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 9:37 PM UTC

jpollock wrote: post #7

miguelrochefort wrote: post #3

None of these articles explain why privacy is a good thing. They just assume it to be a fact. I have some issues with this. What if the entire premise of privacy being beneficial is flawed? What if the actual problem is that we build systems and processes that rely on the unsustainable idea of privacy and the wishful ability to keep secrets? Do people not see that this makes everything more fragile and likely to brea…

Humans lie all the time. We lie to each other, we lie to the government. We cheat, break rules and break laws all the time. Societies rely on privacy to limit the intrusion of others into our lives. It becomes really easy to avoid enforcing a law when you can't see it happening. For example, without privacy, sodomy laws become much easier to enforce. No longer would it be 2 closeted gay men living together happily, i…

Are you arguing that it's my responsibility to be careful and discrete when I commit crimes that should be legal in the first place?

If both murder and sodomy are illegal to the eyes of the government, then wouldn't more accessible privacy protect both murderers and sodomists?

Clearly, the issues in the examples you describe are with the expectations of the government and its citizens. I don't want to ever have to lie about things I'm not ashamed of, and neither do I want to be ashamed of things I do. Society's foundation is Trust, and Trust starts with Honesty. We want everyone to be as honest as possible, and we should therefore change the system to motivate honesty. Only then will we have a clear picture of reality, human nature, and problems we ought to fix.

I want lying to be considered as the worst crime. I want a currency that's built on trust. I want every commitment and promises to be tracked and evaluated. I want fairness, and it starts with understanding reality.

We lie so much that we can't imagine a world without a right to it.

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#43

Post by miguelrochefort » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 9:45 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #29

nunyabuizness wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct democracy, free markets for law, representative democracy, voluntarism, etc. There are innumerable solutions to the emergent failure states of our legal system and as I stated elsewhere in this thread, if you declare privacy a greater need than better law, law-making and law-enforcement, you've already lost.

Let's assume for a moment that we can create a society with the most perfect law-making government, and that all laws are now perfect, and they're perfectly enforced. Would people still want privacy? I believe that the answer is yes. Simply because there will always be the fear that things may change. You only need one imperfect law or law enforcer and you need privacy to protect you. There will never be a point wher…

First, let's get rid of the idea that a central government has the authority to create and enfore laws. That's pretty much a recipe for disaster.

A free market would pretty much eliminate the need for laws. What's wrong to you, might not be wrong to me. Therefore, you might refuse to help or trade with a person that does X, while I might have no problem with it and even help him.

Moreover, do you have any idea what a world with total privacy would look like? Even without total privacy, how do you even decide where to start (what to make public, what to keep private)? Surely, people will live in fear and keep everything they can private. How would that even work? No Google, no Facebook, no phone directory, all authors will use pseudonyms, etc. Basically, no meaningful connection will be made between people and the IoT will never possibly see the day. We'll all wear masks. Evolution will stop, we'll all die.

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#44

Post by miguelrochefort » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 9:57 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #10

miguelrochefort wrote: post #3

None of these articles explain why privacy is a good thing. They just assume it to be a fact. I have some issues with this. What if the entire premise of privacy being beneficial is flawed? What if the actual problem is that we build systems and processes that rely on the unsustainable idea of privacy and the wishful ability to keep secrets? Do people not see that this makes everything more fragile and likely to brea…

You are of course welcome to your preferences and opinion, but shouldn't others also be able to make their own choice that they want privacy? Certainly many feel that way. I've tried to put together a smartphone that simply gives me the choice: Control over my own data. It seems nearly impossible without a large investment.

No. It's not up to you. You have no right (or at least shouldn't) to expect me from ignoring or forgetting any data whatsoever. You can't just come to me and ask me to forget that you crossed the street. You can't ask me to forget what I just heard. For some reasons, you people seem to think that you have exclusive rights over any information that involves you. In a way, it's just like the music industry trying to stop people from accessing their content through PIPA/SOPA. You're supporting censorship. You're destroying my freedom to information.

On the other hand, you hurt yourself the most. You don't seem to realize that you're rejecting all social interactions that lead us where we are today. You'd rather live alone in the mountains, isolated from evil people like me that want to capture your information. You fund Kickstarter campaigns that build devices and network that willingly gets rid of everything that makes them valuable. And you don't even realize that's a problem.

What I see is a group of people that are scared. Afraid to take risks. You pick the blue pill, hoping to reduce potential losses while completely ignoring all of the gains the red pill would make possible. I can't blame you, loss aversion is a bitch that drives you blind.

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#45

Post by miguelrochefort » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

dev1n wrote: post #8

miguelrochefort wrote: post #3

None of these articles explain why privacy is a good thing. They just assume it to be a fact. I have some issues with this. What if the entire premise of privacy being beneficial is flawed? What if the actual problem is that we build systems and processes that rely on the unsustainable idea of privacy and the wishful ability to keep secrets? Do people not see that this makes everything more fragile and likely to brea…

privacy is of the utmost importance to prevent the degradation of what makes us human; free will. If Fred goes to a certain three websites fairly regularly, and Joe (a bad guy, thug, gangster, terrorist) also goes to those three websites fairly regularly, some other authority monitoring Fred's traffic could say,"Hey, this Fred guy is following the same patterns as this other bad guy Joe, so we should probably interce…

So Fred should hide because some powerful entity could draw invalid conclusions about him?

Who let this powerful entity exist in the first place?

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#46

Post by mindslight » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 10:06 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #41

mindslight wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's natural for regulators to want more power - since they're good , they can always choose to not wield that power later . The motivation is the same at the smaller per-person scale, with democracy encouraging every person to think as a mini regulator - deciding whether a behavior should be prohibited or encouraged and then enforcing the majority's opinion onto the minority, rather than leaving the behavior unjudge…

I agree with most of your analysis. That said, between the time the telephone was invented to the time encrypted email was invented, we had a rather prosperous and progressive period during which there did not exist a convenient means of communicating over long distances the government could not access with the appropriate process. I think the whole system is more robust than you give it credit for.

That seems like a pretty short time period to claim "robustness", especially with the quantitative trends the entire time. Remote communication was not so heavily relied upon in the past, whereas now it is a staple of modern life. Furthermore, the scale and inhumanity of the system has increased geometrically, no longer limited by actions of individual agents to perform taps/investigations, but instead a court order (in name only) for an ongoing wireline/database dump of millions of people who are then all investigated statistically.

FWIW, your statement could be made even stronger by saying that never before in history has it been possible for individuals to securely communicate over long distances. But technology adoption does not respect a fundamentalist approach - talking in an isolated house with no electronics was a lot more relevant a hundred years ago than today! So we need to judge the autonomy of an individual carrying out his usual day-to-day tasks in both time frames.

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#47

Post by nunyabuizness » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

jib wrote: post #36

nunyabuizness wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could upvote this more. One reply mentions how easy anti-sodomy laws would be to enforce if we had no privacy. Considering how much faith people put in democracy and the democratic process, you'd think that people would concede that it's the law and our influence over it that's the problem, not privacy. One question I like to propose to those who disagree with this sentiment is as follows: Imagine you live i…

Privacy is a protection and insurance for the future. Things, like say, recording the religion of someone in an open, embracing and understanding society that has full religious freedom, so you understand what your population identifies seems harmless, right? It certainly seemed like it to the Jews in the Netherlands in the 1930s.

Would privacy protect a black in 1930's Poland? Would it matter to them if they did or did not register their identity or religion with their government of full religious freedom? Where's their right to privacy (of their ethnicity)?

The only insurance against unrestrained power for anyone's future is restraining the power, not privacy. Privacy is what you resort to when all else fails, which even then is clearly not enough for everyone.

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#48

Post by jib » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 10:33 PM UTC

nunyabuizness wrote: post #47

jib wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is a protection and insurance for the future. Things, like say, recording the religion of someone in an open, embracing and understanding society that has full religious freedom, so you understand what your population identifies seems harmless, right? It certainly seemed like it to the Jews in the Netherlands in the 1930s.

Would privacy protect a black in 1930's Poland? Would it matter to them if they did or did not register their identity or religion with their government of full religious freedom? Where's their right to privacy (of their ethnicity)? The only insurance against unrestrained power for anyone's future is restraining the power, not privacy. Privacy is what you resort to when all else fails, which even then is clearly not…

It is well established that the extended civil records of the Netherlands in the 30s contributed to the high rates of mass murder in the Netherlands compared to other countries with less developed systems. This is a real life example of where a lack of privacy thinking, even though not done with bad intent, led to significant loss of life.

Protection of personal rights is not about a single solution, it is about multiple systems in a Swiss cheese model where privacy is one of those layers. Other layers are a judicial system, democratic elections etc. Stating that there are situations where one of the layers fail isn't proving anything, it is obvious that they fail some of the time. The question is if a layer adds something significant some of the time. Privacy does.

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#49

Post by mindslight » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

nunyabuizness wrote: post #31

nmjohn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine you live in a hypothetical world where all things you consider moral, just and socially acceptable were legal and societally acceptable and where everything else was illegal and societally reprehensible. What role would privacy play in such a society? What benefits would it provide? Sure, that hypothetical would be great for _you_ (you being the decider of morality) - but what about everyone else living in…

Precisely! So the issue to solve is how do we create a world that places everyone in their own private moral world, a result of which is a significantly lower dependence on the losing battle of privacy! There are a couple ways to give us that world: free markets for law, voluntarism, or to a significantly less extreme, smaller federal governments and more influential, perhaps larger local governments, for which you h…

Your proposals aren't really solutions, but ways of kicking the can down the road. The disagreement still exists, it's just hidden in the remainder. They can serve to minimize that disagreement, but it can never be eliminated.

The simplest counter-sentence to how you've stated the problem: let's say someone thinks it is moral to impose their will on to others - how do you give them this world? The only way to actually achieve your utopia is VR.

Good fences make good neighbors - privacy is a fence.

Re: Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

#50

Post by asntbqjkwbaoeuc » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 10:56 PM UTC

miguelrochefort wrote: post #43

onion2k wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume for a moment that we can create a society with the most perfect law-making government, and that all laws are now perfect, and they're perfectly enforced. Would people still want privacy? I believe that the answer is yes. Simply because there will always be the fear that things may change. You only need one imperfect law or law enforcer and you need privacy to protect you. There will never be a point wher…

First, let's get rid of the idea that a central government has the authority to create and enfore laws. That's pretty much a recipe for disaster. A free market would pretty much eliminate the need for laws. What's wrong to you, might not be wrong to me. Therefore, you might refuse to help or trade with a person that does X, while I might have no problem with it and even help him. Moreover, do you have any idea what a…

In a free market, there are winners and losers. The winners have a strong economic incentive to keep their communication private, as has been the case throughout human history. If you want to prevent this, you need some sort of system that has power over all citizens. But you argue against a central authority of any sort, so how does this work?

In addition, I'm assuming given your distrust for the government and love of markets that all means of communication will be private. Private capital tends to monopoly, so we can expect in your utopia that all means of communication are owned by a small group of people. This group of people has practical control over everyone's data.

This group of people might decide to release everyone's data in order to appease your desire for a post-privacy utopia, but almost certainly they'll keep it for their economic advantage.

The resulting system you are advocating is one in which a tiny percentage of people has near-universal control over the populace.

You can try to equalize things by creating an alternative system in which all data is public, say by having cameras that stream to some publicly accessible resource. But the streaming and the cameras will be the private property of organizations that have a strong incentive for you not to do this. And since the entire infrastructure is owned by such organizations, you would be in violation of your end user agreement to start such a project. It would make you a "liar" when you signed the Internet EULA, which, as you say in another comment, is the worst crime imaginable.