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Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

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

#61

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

Jews in the Netherlands is a perfect example because I can't see how can one reasonably claim that it proves we shouldn't be doing censuses.

If an evil dictator wants to get you, he will get you, with or without a census available. There are countless other ways for him to explore. Shutting down every possible avenue of global optimization because it relies on knowing stuff about people is not a way to run a civilization.

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

#62

Post by TeMPOraL »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #38
sbov wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is important because people are assholes. My wife has an ex-boyfriend who went to prison. She was pretty terrified when there was an internet trail to our current home address (which I have since closed). Largely because of our Macy's wedding registry which showed up when you searched her name, which had my name, and there's only one of me in the US. We know he found the registry because he emailed her about…

Do you seriously believe that we can (or should) reach a point where nobody can be identified or located? Instead of getting rid of the bad guys (or preferably get rid of incentives that motivate actions you don't agree with), you seem to be suggesting that we should hide from them. I can imagine this would lead to a world with more bad guys (because no effort exists in preventing them), a lucky minority of people wh…

> Do you seriously believe that we can (or should) reach a point where nobody can be identified or located?

People believing such a thing probably don't understand the fundamental nature of reality. Everything forms a web of causality; all your actions spread outwards at the speed of light, affecting everything else around you. Quite often one can correlate back those effects to their original cause. This is what science does - figuring out new ways to correlate observations with their causes. Progress of technology only means we're getting better at it. I don't see how you can revert back to the pre-industrial levels of privacy without rolling back the industrial revolution.

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

#63

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> 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.

And this is fucking up things big time on this planet, and maybe it's high time for it to stop.

A lot of the problems you described have nothing to do with privacy, and are entirely because general population is bunch of hypocritical children. They get scandalized. It's a hallmark of a mature person that they don't get scandalized over things, but that they seek understanding instead.

If anything, sudden and total lack of privacy would show everyone just how hypocritical people are. How many of those against sodomy laws visit prostitutes? How many of those against prostitution are homosexual? Not saying that either is wrong - my point is that what privacy does is it creates power asymmetry. I can shame you all day long for your "sins" and you can't fight back because you don't know about mine. I'm not really convinced that the solution to this problem is more privacy.

Yes, telling people to grow up is a tall order, but I hope that as a civilization, we can reach it. And then, privacy will be something that isn't really needed much, and enforcing it only makes things less efficient.

That, and of course total impossibility of getting back the pre-industrial privacy levels while retaining XXI century technology.

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

#64

Post by mindslight »

nunyabuizness wrote: post #57
mindslight wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> encryption won't prevent the government from harassing me based on my skin color or my choice of employment, or anything else I do or am that can't be encrypted. Agreed. But if these are your overriding concerns, then go campaign for them. Don't campaign against privacy in hope of indirectly fixing your actual concerns. Surely you'd agree a world without privacy but still with governmental discrimination is the wor…

> Don't campaign against privacy in hope of indirectly fixing your actual concerns So that's my fault for conflating two things without making it explicit - 1) privacy is a non-issue b/c of my aforementioned reasons and 2) I believe that no one really wants privacy, they really want the freedom to act transparently without punishment (since we can't have that, we ask for privacy instead). > But that is not how you or…

> I believe that no one really wants privacy, they really want the freedom to act transparently without punishment

In that framework, punishment includes things like "being shunned by a friend due to exposing your personal beliefs". Yet that friend should have the right to freely associate with whom they please. Please resolve this conflict without requiring people conform to your specifications.

> the original problem is about the person and their world according to their morals

You said: "how do we create a world that places everyone in their own private moral world".

I'm asking how you create this private moral world for someone who's moral desire is to force their will on other people.

Schelling points also apply to abstract concepts, like the idea of property itself. Private property is an abstraction we could take or leave, so why do we find it so useful?

A property line, with a fence or without, very clearly delineates who has authority over which square inch. If your neighbor decides to store stuff on your side of the line, they are clearly in the "wrong". They can easily foresee this, so the situation likely does not even come up.

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

#65

Post by mystikal »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63
jpollock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. And this is fucking up things big time on this planet, and maybe it's high time for it to stop. A lot of the problems you described have nothing to do with privacy, and are entirely because general population is bunch of hypocritical children. They get scandalized . It's a hallmark of a mature…

I feel like there are legitimate and illegitimate reasons for privacy and the illegitimate ones are compromising the legitimate ones.

I also think that a lot of the time, we willingly part with privacy (always-on syndrome), and that you can regain it pretty easily without having to fight the government - just go for a walk without your phone.

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

#66

Post by mindslight »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58
mindslight wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> encryption won't prevent the government from harassing me based on my skin color or my choice of employment, or anything else I do or am that can't be encrypted. Agreed. But if these are your overriding concerns, then go campaign for them. Don't campaign against privacy in hope of indirectly fixing your actual concerns. Surely you'd agree a world without privacy but still with governmental discrimination is the wor…

Fences in the past were mostly symbolic. If your neighbor wanted to get past it, he could usually just walk over it. Enforcing privacy is an equivalent of contemporary closed-off neighborhoods, with cameras and guards always on post. The benefit you gain from making a Schelling point is a social kind of thing. It works because people agree it works. Just like all other customs. People bring up privacy of corresponden…

Completely agree with everything but the last sentence...

Defecting (reading things one "shouldn't") is economically profitable, just like walking into others' homes and making their stuff into your stuff. Furthermore, it's politically profitable to catch the "bad guys". So the best one could hope for is a social convention to not snoop, prohibition on private surveillance / data mining (what could that even look like?), and the government still snooping everything to ferret out undesirables.

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

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #42
jpollock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

> 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.

Hell yes. I too want people to start treating lying with seriousness it deserves. Lying, lying, lying. It's the thing that rots and destroys our societies. I too keep repeating that civilization starts and ends with trust. Trust people have in the system, towards their leaders, and towards each other. The less trust people have, the more defensive they get, more stupid things they do, and the less efficient everything becomes.

A perfect example is the growth of various anti-science movements, anti-vaccination being a prominent case. Where do you think it comes from? Many like to say that anti-vaxxers are simply stupid, can't comprehend biology or are motivated reasoners. But the reality is simpler, and you can see it by just observing them carefully. They are normal people, like everyone else. They want to be healthy and happy. They want their children to be healthy and happy. The only real difference is that they had their trust in authority broken on a serious level. They don't trust doctors, scientific consensus and government health organizations.

Is this surprising? Frankly, no. Because all of those authorities lie. They lie fucking big, and then they lie small. Not a day goes by when we don't hear about corrupt politicians, when we don't see bullshit papers published in respected journals, when we don't learn a drug is a scam, or plain dangerous. Governments lie, and so do businesses, big and small. They lie in ads, they cheat in stores, they sell us crap - from grocery store washing stale meat in dishwasher fluid through planned obsolescence to good old lying about specs and working hard to silence disgruntled customers.

Frankly, I sometimes wonder why I still trust anyone but people I know personally. I'd like to say that it's because of education, because I can evaluate claims critically. But it's bullshit - a dedicated liar will run circles around everyone but the few smartest people. The truth is, I'm talking a calculated risk every day. And so are the anti-vaxxers. They end up hurting people. But that's not because they're evil or stupid. It's because they've broken under the avalanche of lies.

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

#68

Post by miguelrochefort »

tremon wrote: post #60
miguelrochefort wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

> 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 But should I have the right not to tell you about myself? For that matter, do you have the right not to tell me your credit card number and expiration date?

Of course you have the right not to tell me something. I'm not advocating coercion, quite the opposite.

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

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

mindslight wrote: post #66
TeMPOraL wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fences in the past were mostly symbolic. If your neighbor wanted to get past it, he could usually just walk over it. Enforcing privacy is an equivalent of contemporary closed-off neighborhoods, with cameras and guards always on post. The benefit you gain from making a Schelling point is a social kind of thing. It works because people agree it works. Just like all other customs. People bring up privacy of corresponden…

Completely agree with everything but the last sentence... Defecting (reading things one "shouldn't") is economically profitable, just like walking into others' homes and making their stuff into your stuff. Furthermore, it's politically profitable to catch the "bad guys". So the best one could hope for is a social convention to not snoop, prohibition on private surveillance / data mining (what could that even look lik…

We could probably limit reasons for defecting by living a less competitive lives, but that's dreams of a better-than-Star-Trek-level utopia. Incentives are hard.

As for the government - a world where only the government gets to have privacy is a scary nightmare. A world with a government as transparent as possible, maybe it's workable. Honestly, I don't know. I need to study this more. I just don't like the costs that come with seriously increasing the amount of individual privacy. And/or I have too much faith in the good side of our nature.

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

#70

Post by miguelrochefort »

jib wrote: post #48
nunyabuizness wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mult…

Even if privacy successfully protected those people, I would argue that this would make things even worse. Why? Because privacy protecting the majority of people minimizes the apparent danger of the underlying problem (killing Jews), which cause people to ignore the problem as if it doesn't exists, during which the problem grows until privacy proves to not be enough.

Privacy is a painkiller. It gives us the impression that the problem isn't there, but in reality it keeps getting worse until death hits.

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