Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
1–10 of 329 posts
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#2Very 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 bad, I'm suggesting most people don't care that their IPs are recorded. Email content is not seen, nor what I type into this comment form.
Also, when I send an email to my friend "laserpants@something.com", sure the data captures the send-to email address. But the data doesn't know who laserpants actually is, nor does the email content get saved. I'm not saying laserpants can't be found if the law decides to investigate, but I doubt it's a matter of pressing a button to bring up the real name of laserpants. Especially if laserpants uses different email addresses and a shared internet.
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#3[deleted]
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#4I 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 rarely gets addressed simultaneously, and I'd like to see it sussed out more in concert; what about the folks who are doing Evil in these private channels? It's unacceptable to me that TOR gets used for child pornography, and it's unacceptable to me that my government finds out I'm gay before I come out to my family.
I don't want to provide those who would do Evil any safety or quarter. I also want to give people a powerful shield to protect themselves against judgement and persecution from the public and sometimes the law.
We should talk about achieving both of these goals, but we generally don't.
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#5Privacy is less important than the ability to trust your government won't do blatantly illegal things like put innocent people behind bars, steal their money or property, when they actually know that they are innocent. The biggest problem with America is that the government can not be trusted to follow the rules, their own rules.
I don't live in the US, but the stuff the government whether local, state, or federal gets away with is very scary to me. What scares me even more is how the United States encroaches on everyone else's legal system. That's the underlying problem. Under such governments that are actually out to get people at times without much cause breaking all sorts of rules, that's what's scary.
The type of soft totalitarianism that exists and passes as common place is very scary. And that's really the people you should be scared of, and that's who you really want to protect your information from. Your run of the mill government that's actually trying to do a good job and not break its own rules, that sort of government like my government, scares me a lot less. Despite the fact that they encroach on my privacy. I know heads are going to roll if it comes out that they do things that are blatantly wrong or abusive with the information that they are collecting.
Not so in the US. They always have a half-ass lie that still somehow passes muster.
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#6I 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…
what about the folks who are doing Evil in these private channels?
Evil is agnostic of location. Your question is of no significance. You might as well be perturbed over "Evil" people living in houses or eating food. Unsurprisingly, evil people are people and will tend towards the same activities people generally engage in.
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#7I 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…
what about the folks who are doing Evil in these private channels? Evil is agnostic of location. Your question is of no significance. You might as well be perturbed over "Evil" people living in houses or eating food. Unsurprisingly, evil people are people and will tend towards the same activities people generally engage in.
Yours is a defeatist attitude, I think, and there is plenty of evidence that Evil can be stopped/averted in many cases. It's beyond obvious that there is no complete solution for Evil, but if you keep ignoring this question/problem, then people will continue to pick the "no Evil/no privacy" option over your "Evil/privacy" alternative, which is ultimately devastating to everyone.
We need to talk about how to create "no Evil/privacy", or at least how to approach something of that kind, even if an absolute version doesn't exist.
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#8I 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…
>I don't want to provide those who would do Evil any safety or quarter. I also want to give people a powerful shield to protect themselves against judgement and persecution from the public and sometimes the law.
I agree, but it's nearly impossible to have the best of both worlds.
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
what about the folks who are doing Evil in these private channels? Evil is agnostic of location. Your question is of no significance. You might as well be perturbed over "Evil" people living in houses or eating food. Unsurprisingly, evil people are people and will tend towards the same activities people generally engage in.
Yours is a defeatist attitude, I think, and there is plenty of evidence that Evil can be stopped/averted in many cases. It's beyond obvious that there is no complete solution for Evil, but if you keep ignoring this question/problem, then people will continue to pick the "no Evil/no privacy" option over your "Evil/privacy" alternative, which is ultimately devastating to everyone. We need to talk about how to create "n…
I'm really curious what you think evil is since you keep capitalizing and speaking of it as some spiritual essence that can be eradicated.
You have not established the slightest bit of an operational definition, and resort to pathologizing neutral transmission channels as hosts of "Evil". This is a complete non-starter and not worthwhile to deliberate. "Evil uses Tor" is as useful as "Evil uses paper".
Re: Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
#10Many would trade their privacy for what they think is safety.