Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by ohthehugemanate » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:05 AM UTC

Laaw wrote: post #4

I have two unrelated thoughts. "Chilling effect" has always been a profound term for me, because I imagine the "cold" (numbness really) sensation a human body often senses when something truly awful (disembowlment/dismemberment) occurs. The body's way of protecting itself is to go "cold", and in many ways that's exactly the effect taking place here, as well. There's also an undeniable part of this conversation that r…

Does it bother you that national highways are used by kidnappers, and civic electricity is used by rapists?

It's infrastructure, so it's all inherently neutral. SSL is used by banks, protesters, and criminals alike. You can't weaken it for one group without weakening it for everyone. It's also global: you can't backdoor an IRC client only for marijuana users in the US, for instance.

So if you get to surveil pedophiles in the US, it means that Saudi Arabia gets to surveil homosexuals. We're on the same infrastructure.

Also, it's important to recognize that illegal behavior is a critical part of Democratic change. If SSL could discriminate based on your intent to break a law so we could arrest them all, people campaigning for marijuana legalization would all be in jail, and the law would not be changingl. So would people in the 60s campaigning for civil rights, and every homosexual in the country. There is always a grey area period of time in which people break a law because they don't believe in it. That period of civil disobedience is how laws end up getting changed. Even (especially) morality laws against things like sexuality, drugs, or alcohol. It's important to a living democracy that the police are not a perfect force.

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

#72

Post by laughinghan » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:07 AM UTC

tobbyb wrote: post #64

I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance. We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically. Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethic…

Have you seen the Idle Words talk, "Haunted by Data"? http://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm

Pretty compelling talk, culminating in:

    I believe there should be a law that limits behavioral data
    collection to 90 days, not because I want to ruin Christmas
    for your children, but because I think it will give us all
    better data while clawing back some semblance of privacy.

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

#73

Post by rhino369 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:09 AM UTC

tobbyb wrote: post #64

I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance. We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically. Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethic…

One thing people seem particularly blind about is that private companies holding data from their own purposes is the huge point of failure for privacy.

The government can get your gmail, facebook, verizon, amazon data because those companies keep that data about you. The NSA doesn't need to spy on you, google already does. I don't think the NSA is reading my email, but I know Google is.

Not to mention that when all these tech companies are spying on your for profit, your privacy is already destroyed.

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

#74

Post by rhino369 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:11 AM UTC

Sir_Substance wrote: post #70

tobbyb wrote: post #64

I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance. We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically. Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethic…

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…

How is Google or Facebook any better? They are spy agencies for advertising purposes instead of national security.

Or companies that deploy ad sense or otherwise depend on companies like Google or Facebook.

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

#75

Post by ohthehugemanate » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:17 AM UTC

exodust wrote: post #2

Very good, but it's funny how on the "why IPVanish" page he links to, the first reason given for using a VPN is, to watch Netflix from any location! Oh the horror of limited localised Netflix content. We must protect ourselves. (Really it is awful, I use a VPN for that purpose too). But the point is, it doesn't seem popular to hide metadata from ISPs with VPNs. Will it ever be popular? I'm not so sure. For good or ba…

But the problem is, it IS easy. Even anonymized at assets are de-anonymized trivially,using secondary datasets. You can uniquely identify more than 87% of the US population with gender, birthday, and zip code. For more than 50%, you can use the municipality name instead of zip.

If your friend uses a separate, privately maintained email address for everyone and every service, that will help a lot. Then we only know his identity because email is sent in the clear, even between his own server and home computer. Of course, everyone uses separate email addresses for everyone, right?

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

#76

Post by hueving » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:17 AM UTC

tobbyb wrote: post #64

I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance. We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically. Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethic…

Doctors have classes that teach them ethics early on in school/training because the vast majority of professional doctors agree on what is ethical. On the other hand, you can't even get many university professors to agree that something like collecting metadata is unethical.

The idea that we could get the majority of the industry to agree on ethics is pretty far-fetched when a large portion think surveillance is making their country safe.

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

#77

Post by rhino369 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:29 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #31

blitzprog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all thank you for respecting my opinion. I appreciate it. 1.) Free speech is a completely different topic. Snowden's quote on this page makes no sense to me no matter how often I re-read it. If free speech didn't exist I wouldn't be able to express my opinion about privacy :) 2.) Privacy means hiding the truth. Hiding what really happened. Hiding who you really are. I believe it is a flaw of the human person…

This is all true and I agree wholeheartedly. And when The People incorrectly decide that based on data you raped a 15 year old, you will be in prison for the duration of the trial, you will be on the sex offender list forever, and you will be inconvenienced with anything requiring a background check. You , not The People. Ideologically, I agree, privacy is a lame side-effect of how groups of people work. Pragmaticall…

How is privacy really a good solution to the problem of mistaken convictions?

The lack of privacy may very well reduce the amount of false convictions. Sure, you looking up pix of teen boys might look suspicious. But the lack of privacy might catch the real criminal too.

If we had accurate gps for all people all of the time, it would probably reduce false conviction rates.

Plus, the way the system works now is that once you are a suspect, you really don't have privacy anymore. That's how the Constitution works. Once there is probably cause, the state will rifle through your stuff, ask your friends and family, etc.

On the mistaken conviction issue, I'd probably rather live in a privacy free state than a state with privacy. Assuming I was innocent.

Though I prefer privacy for other reasons.

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

#78

Post by mirimir » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:34 AM UTC

DonaldFisk wrote: post #67

mirimir wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limiting privacy to stuff that's "not Evil" is unworkable, because there's no reliable way to distinguish "good" from "evil". For example, many Wahhabi Muslims consider homosexuality to be at least as evil as child pornography. And indeed, some decades ago, that was virtually the case in the US.

That's moral relativism. It can be used to argue that blood transfusions are evil, or that slavery isn't. It would be better to ask whether someone, who is not a willing participant, is harmed by the activity. That's easier to establish.

Yes, I agree. But still, there must be some entity that tests for non-aggression. And everything can be gamed. It's far safer to bake in privacy such that it can't be compromised.

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

#79

Post by blub » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:35 AM UTC

tobbyb wrote: post #64

I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance. We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically. Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethic…

Large parts of the tech crowd are making big money from advertising and tracking people. Unsurprisingly, it seems these developers and entrepreneurs have a hard time understanding why their source of income has negative effects on society.

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

#80

Post by blub » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 8:42 AM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #74

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…

How is Google or Facebook any better? They are spy agencies for advertising purposes instead of national security. Or companies that deploy ad sense or otherwise depend on companies like Google or Facebook.

Exactly. Between themselves, Google & Facebook have access to a disturbingly large amount of the private information and the thoughts of billions of persons. Pictures, emails, messages, social graphs, you name it.

And now Microsoft decided they also want a piece of the pie.

The kicker? I see people still defend Google all the time, nowadays with bullshit arguments like "I am tired of this you are the product meme" and still excuse Facebook because they need it to keep in touch with others. And they found startups based on advertising and tracking, they work for them and generally support analytics as an inalienable right of software development.