41–46 of 46 posts
Even if the market wasn’t there, and I think it is, we shouldn’t ever give up on privacy. It acts as a balancing force to what companies want to do.
So DESTROY their market by finding and using substitutes or even substituting with being mostly off-grid in a social media sense. We lived just fine before and without the internet. It was far less exhausting, frustrating and crazy.
This reminds me of an observation whose name escapes my feeble attempts to Google, that roughly states government bureaucracies tend to find more things to grow into over time, rather than diminish. Wish I could find what it was… I remember reading about it in the context that if you wanted to grow your underdeveloped country, you should do as western countries did 50-100 years ago, rather than copying current instit…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need privacy at the societal level though. Even if I have perfect privacy for myself, bad actors who invade everyone else’s privacy are still able to influence society in a way that has never been possible before. Think of the election interference made possible solely by the huge amounts of data these companies have. Even if I have perfect privacy, I’m still screwed if I live in a society where 99% of people don’…
So construct a government where individuals are not secured or compromised their liberty depending on the outcome of an election. You speak of the popular will being corrupted by an external power, but the tyranny of the majority is enough of a threat to the safety of the individual and the tenants of natural law anyway. Your perfect society is everybody's perfect society, one where collective force is used to secure…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not sure how one could end up trusting such organizations besides "just taking their word for it" A legally binding contract with sufficiently punitive clauses. It's a solved problem for people who care about privacy/secrecy. Have you ever worked with highly proprietary or secret data/code in a professional context? > also this system sounds more flawed than what you could do with cryptocurrencies? I have no id…
> It's a solved problem for people who care about privacy/secrecy. Have you ever worked with highly proprietary or secret data/code in a professional context? You mean like Edward Snowden and stuff?
Illustrative example: Suppose I could get Visa to sign a contract that says they won't sell my personal info. The original parent asked why I would just "take their word" that they won't sell my info.
The answer to that query is that contracts or consumer protection laws with sufficiently punitive clauses are a perfectly fine mechanism.
You counter with Snowden. But... I'm not particularly worried about the CEO of Visa defecting to Russia so that he can tell the highest bidder how often I visit the liquor store. A sufficiently punitive contract with Visa prohibiting the sharing or sale of my information would likely be sufficient deterrent.
Now, figuring out how to get Visa to sign such a contract is difficult, of course. But the actual enforcement mechanism for mandating privacy is straight-forward and doesn't involve crypto foo nonsense.
But even if we were discussing criminal invasions of privacy, I'm not sure how digital tulips are supposed to prevent data exfiltration by an trusted insider. Or, for that matter, preventing the liquor store from selling exactly the same info as Visa by leveraging the facial recognition in their POS system.
One idea would be a "Privacy Bastion" business that proxies transactions for people. Maybe I'm authenticated with several, and distribute transactions across them. When they get hacked, I'm jacked, but still.
I was thinking of starting this kind of service, but I got scared by the potential liabilities and legal issues of giving a person basically a second identity. How would this work for hotels and stuff? Do you basically make a fake company, open a bank account in its name, and use that account to buy stuff discreetly? What if the person you a proxying for bought something illegal with the account? Who’s liable?
Also, incorporation in a suitable country, e.g. Switzerland.