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Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

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Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#91

Post by matthjensen »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #15

> Our mission is clear - we aim to unravel the magic of FOSS, Linux, and self-hosting to individuals seeking a break from the shackles of Big Tech. IMO, it's not only Big Tech that poses a threat on privacy and freedom. Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it.

And big government, which demands information in many cases by law, is terrible at keeping that info "safe" in its hands once it's been collected.

Taking the U.S. federal government as an example, by my count we've already seen over 60 notable breaches in just this young decade: https://github.com/MattHJensen/US-gov-info-losses. Certainly many others have gone unreported or unnoticed.

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#92

Post by diegoholiveira »

printacorn wrote: post #62
diegoholiveira wrote: post #15

> Our mission is clear - we aim to unravel the magic of FOSS, Linux, and self-hosting to individuals seeking a break from the shackles of Big Tech. IMO, it's not only Big Tech that poses a threat on privacy and freedom. Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it.

>Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it. Whenever people complain about Big Government I like to remind them that any attempt at regulating industries like Big Tech is decried by the owner class as "Big Government", which is often parroted by conservatives, libertarians, and other pro-business groups. So is it Big Government when it protects the interests of Big Industry to t…

> Whenever people complain about Big Government I like to remind them that any attempt at regulating industries like Big Tech is decried by the owner class as "Big Government", which is often parroted by conservatives, libertarians, and other pro-business groups.

I disagree. Big Government means the government getting into every subject possible. The opposite of this is that you have a government that only enters into essential matters for the well-being of society.

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#93

Post by ska »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #92
printacorn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it. Whenever people complain about Big Government I like to remind them that any attempt at regulating industries like Big Tech is decried by the owner class as "Big Government", which is often parroted by conservatives, libertarians, and other pro-business groups. So is it Big Government when it protects the interests of Big Industry to t…

> Whenever people complain about Big Government I like to remind them that any attempt at regulating industries like Big Tech is decried by the owner class as "Big Government", which is often parroted by conservatives, libertarians, and other pro-business groups. I disagree. Big Government means the government getting into every subject possible. The opposite of this is that you have a government that only enters int…

> enters into essential matters for the well-being of society.

Which has poorly defined boundaries because people disagree on essential.

In practice "Big Government" is used only for PR value. It sometimes seems the more a politician or policy wonk uses it, the more they are actually likely to increase government spending when they are in power.

Most people seem to use "Big Government" to mean they don't like something the government is supporting or regulating, and "Essential Government Function" to mean something they want the government to pay for or regulate.

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#94

Post by RajT88 »

booboofixer wrote: post #69

In the discussion of losing privacy we focus on the social freedoms lost as a result of loss of privacy. I agree with all of those arguments but missing from these discussions are the economic freedoms we might lose. People like to portray their least favorite countries as being engaged in corporate espionage in other developed countries, but what stops your favorite big corp from stealing what you create? Going forw…

Information already leaks like this between huge tech companies.

Chrome, Edge both by default send your URL's back home. This is just the official telemetry features you can turn off.

I try to avoid both Edge and Chrome. Brave seems better (of course we are taking them at their word).

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#95

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 »

printacorn wrote: post #62
diegoholiveira wrote: post #15

> Our mission is clear - we aim to unravel the magic of FOSS, Linux, and self-hosting to individuals seeking a break from the shackles of Big Tech. IMO, it's not only Big Tech that poses a threat on privacy and freedom. Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it.

>Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it. Whenever people complain about Big Government I like to remind them that any attempt at regulating industries like Big Tech is decried by the owner class as "Big Government", which is often parroted by conservatives, libertarians, and other pro-business groups. So is it Big Government when it protects the interests of Big Industry to t…

>or Big Government when it regulates it to protect the interests of the people?

We (the "owner class," parrots, what have you) would argue for the government regulating itself, not the companies. Facebook showing you fursuit ads as a result of your history isn't as big of a problem as the government showing up at your door now that you've shared the wrong idea online. Governments should not be allowed to indiscriminately collect data from (that is, to spy on) it's citizens. Giving the governmemt more power doesn't seem like the right solution here, being that that is exactly what we are trying to limit. Companies should not be unregulated, but more important is that the government itself should be regulated: specifically, minimized in it's powers.

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#96

Post by anfogoat »

AlexandrB wrote: post #90
anfogoat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not even close to comparable. Worrying about privacy and then focusing on Big Tech is like trying to swat away a mosquito while you're being devoured alive by three bears.

A huge amount of government surveillance either depends on Big Tech contractors or explicitly leverages Big Tech's disregard for privacy. For example "geofence warrants" wouldn't be possible if Big Tech wasn't collecting and storing all that location data in the first place.

Let's rein in Big Tech. Now what? Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are going to leave it at that and not seek alternative paths? I do not understand how anyone is more eager to address something that merely facilitates the problem than the actual problem itself.

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#97

Post by godelski »

booboofixer wrote: post #69

In the discussion of losing privacy we focus on the social freedoms lost as a result of loss of privacy. I agree with all of those arguments but missing from these discussions are the economic freedoms we might lose. People like to portray their least favorite countries as being engaged in corporate espionage in other developed countries, but what stops your favorite big corp from stealing what you create? Going forw…

> your fierce competitors had access to all your phone calls, texts, google docs, spreadsheets etc.?

I'll take this a step further into the Sci-Fi realm: what if your competitors could use all that data to model a simulation of your thoughts and generate your own ideas faster than you can?

There's a philosophical argument here as ownership of those produced thoughts are contestable. The data is from you, so do you have the rights? The machine that produced the thoughts was built by a different person and they fronted all the costs and other such things, just not the data. You can make strong arguments either way.

And to keep with the sci-fi dystopian theme, would that society stop communicating openly and watch their words carefully?

I'm dialing it up to 11, but in some respect this is possible today or in the near future. But for our scenario, let's keep it dialed to 11 and assume this is/can be perfected. (I'm not convinced this would be effective today fwiw, far too much noise)

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#98

Post by nologic01 »

Once the invasion of privacy proved monetarily and politically profitable and legally a gray area its fate was sealed.

In a sense the age of moving fast and breaking things helped us see what the system is made of: What sort of moral reflexes exist, how quickly they get mobilized, where this happens institutionally, geographically and socially etc.

Needless to say that it has been the bleakest of revelations.

What is deeply ironic though, is that the system is in self-destruct mode.

The privacy destruction happens in parallel with the annihilation of ownership / copyright that is discussed in other threads. A new "world order" is instituted, uglier and poorer.

The prosperity and social stability of the West has been based on instituting, respecting property rights, privacy, individual agency as the bedrock of liberal market democracy.

It turned out the pillars on which the edifice was standing have rotted over time and nobody knew.

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#99

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 »

coremoff wrote: post #13

I disagree that it's a fundamental right. Over most of history privacy has been rare for most people, with the provisio that if you really wanted a private conversation you could have one in the middle of an open field in daylight with a reasonable expectation that your conversation would not be compromised. These days there can be no such expectation, and we need to separate out discussion of day-to-day privacy from…

There is no such thing as a fundamental human right. There is no such thing as human rights at all except insofar as it descibes the belief that it exists. For many people, the existance of human rights would be beneficial. They beleive in these rigths and create (or attempt to create) a society in which the rights have been secured. Saying a right is fundamental is saying that it is important to those people and is generaly a right that they believe further rights are built on.

There is a similiar meaning of "rights" as a word used to descibe what people are able to do. The fact that I have legs gives me the right to walk, for example. Within this idea, there is a further idea of natural rights, which descibes what the rights (that is, abilities,) of people in nature — or more aptly, people not in civilized society — have, which I think is what you are refering to. There are people who believe in human rights that use natural rights to discover human rights but it is not necessary to do so. A more popular definition of human rights is what the people decide or what people who study human rights decide.

Realizing that rights are not real, that is, something that you "have" or are born with, is important if you want to truly understand them.

Re: Privacy: One of the Most Fundamental Human Rights, yet Constantly Under Threat

#100

Post by dale_glass »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #92
printacorn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Big Governments are other threat that, IMO, it's much harder to fight against it. Whenever people complain about Big Government I like to remind them that any attempt at regulating industries like Big Tech is decried by the owner class as "Big Government", which is often parroted by conservatives, libertarians, and other pro-business groups. So is it Big Government when it protects the interests of Big Industry to t…

> Whenever people complain about Big Government I like to remind them that any attempt at regulating industries like Big Tech is decried by the owner class as "Big Government", which is often parroted by conservatives, libertarians, and other pro-business groups. I disagree. Big Government means the government getting into every subject possible. The opposite of this is that you have a government that only enters int…

I don't know what's the difference supposed to be.

A void of power never creates a favorable outcome for the common person. If there's room for commercial activity in the area, you can expect all sorts of unethical tactics to eventually surface, like we see in cryptocurrency. In a free-for-all capitalism people will lie and scam and cheat for profit.

So I don't really know what could the government get out of that would make things better.

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