Privacy in public was possible 50 years ago, and no one was wearing masks or using pseudonyms. The existence of huge numbers of cheap machines that can identify people and which have perfect memories changed the system. We can't roll back to a time when the technology didn't exist, but that doesn't mean we have to allow its installation.
> If even one child could be saved from abominable acts of evil, even if it meant privacy was abolished in public and private, I for one would be willing to make that sacrifice.
That's textbook emotional manipulation and a failure to rationally consider the margins. You admit you'd be embarrassed, if two kids out of a billion make a childish mistake and it can't be forgotten, and they chose to commit suicide as a result, you've caused more harm than good. I don't even think that amber alerts do much good, most of those kids are just with one of their parents who lost a custody dispute, there have been zero proven cases where an amber alert saved one child, and I'd be willing to bet that there are more children hurt (not to mention adults, as they're less emotionally potent victims) when ten million drivers look down at their cell phones.
And your defeatist attitude towards the application of laws ignores the fact that we are not living in tribal caves ruled by the man with the biggest war club. Humans are able to organize into governments and make decisions and laws that limit some powerful people so that society is better overall.
My father assumes that a camera in a store is going to a fuzzy CRT display on a CCTV system, maybe watched by a sleepy security guard, and that the tapes will be overwritten in 24 hours. My son assumes that like a Facebook photo he's automatically tagged as having visited the store. We're likely to have a bit of a learning curve between the time that HN readers are aware of what can be and is being done with tracking cookies, IMEIs, cameras, and databases, and when the general public is tech-savvy enough to know what that means.
I appreciate the engagement.
> if two kids out of a billion make a childish mistake and it can't be forgotten, and they chose to commit suicide as a result, you've caused more harm than good.
In this hypothetical world where everyone knows everything about everyone else, I'd imagine that fewer people would go unnoticed (and untreated) for being at high-risk for suicide. Also, online bullies would have nowhere to hide, as they'd be exposed and stopped. And ultimately, the shame of everyone would either be too much for society to bear and it would crumble in on itself, or maybe we'd lose a little bit of our shame as we came to understand that we're all fallible creatures.
> Humans are able to organize into governments and make decisions and laws that limit some powerful people so that society is better overall.
You're right, I'm skeptical of concentrated power. If I'm wrong, and privacy in public is a good thing, then I'll at least hold on to my assertion that those who pass laws are not going to adhere to those laws when it becomes an obstacle to them remaining in power (whether governmental or corporate). The better choice is to widely distribute technology and information in order to level the playing field, rather than assuming that those in power won't continue to do whatever they please.
Then top it off with how quickly people are willing to surrender personal information for free or lower cost services. Privacy was given away for conveniences. People have already voted, they want as much as they can get for free and privacy is a coin they seen no value lost when trading it away. Worse many think that others don't deserve more privacy than they have because of some odd fairness perception, usually boiled down to that other group might be getting more.
The bootlickers don't bother leaving an explanation for their downvotes; you're under no obligation to operate on a higher moral plane to placate the demons who advocate for our subjugation.
On the contrary, you're preaching the conventional wisdom of today. And I also don't think you read the short article; it's simply about making more common-sense laws to at least achieve a modicum of privacy and put a leash on the data broker industry.
The technology can't be stopped, but we're still early enough in the game to limit data identification, correlation and discrimination.
Edit: I'd also like to recommend Schneier's books. For instance, his "Click Here To Kill Everybody" is a great look at how security with IoT is failing, why companies _want_ it to fail, and what sort of actionable legislation would fix these issues. He's not a pie-in-the-sky zealot for privacy.
Though regulation undoubtedly helps to allow the development of these alternatives.
So even with obviously hazardous chemicals, it still takes literal decades for the research and law to catch up. I'm imagining it will take twice as long for surveillance, which doesn't directly kill people/wildlife. Unless, perhaps, China's usage of the tech to oppress Uighur muslims gets decent coverage.
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>If even one child could be saved from abominable acts of evil, even if it meant privacy was abolished in public and private, I for one would be willing to make that sacrifice.
How is wanting to scour millions and billions of peoples minds and homes to try to find one person not an irrational fear driven decision?
>The presumption of corporations as evil is simply unintelligent. It is especially galling to see such knee-jerk stupidity in a forum dedicated to making corporations. The greatest engine of wealth mankind has ever invented are corporations unhindered by market manipulations.
It seems idolization of corporate profit seeking over all else has blinded you to the fact that this "greatest engine of wealth" is redlining in overdrive while steamrolling the planet, causing global scale ecological destruction which is well on its way to destroying the human race.
However, I encounter your defeatism/opposition in some of the privacy work I do, and it's good to see the prevalent narrative so boldly expressed. I would ask readers if they are willing to cede the field to the extent this person does? If not, an important first step in supporting privacy is rejecting the common penchant for defeatism.
This is a tautology not inherently, but because of how you're defining it. Privacy is not so simple as whether you can be surveilled in public or not. Technology opens the door to many complex ethical and legal nuances.
You offer a caricature of the future to start off this point, & then point out your own absurdity as a victory. Your examples of China are apt only to oppose your point. The technology in China is the best example we have of how surveillance tech enables specific uses and specific abuses. It is not the presence of the tech, but rather the state's monopoly over control over how the technology is used and abused, where the problem firmly lies.
2) Privacy in Public is economic sabotage
Your use of extreme theories and insulting language in this point doesn't deserve a response.
3) Privacy in private is overrated
Fortunately wiser and more experienced people than you wrote the US Constitution. They had found the elimination of privacy did not eliminate crime, but rather created more of it, concentrated in the hands of power. The elimination of privacy doesn't work how it ideally would in your fantasy.
3) Privacy is going to be lost.
The war is waging right now, and in the USA we're going to win. Laws, good people, and oversight do stop government abuses. Having multiple layers of competing governments does wonders for breaking monopolies of control, like what our friends in China have.
> Economically, the more corporations know about their customers the more that their business decisions — both strategic and tactical — will be made upon data rather than intuition. The less they know about their users — as any HN reader should know — the more their business is at risk of dying. The presumption of corporations as evil is simply unintelligent. It is especially galling to see such knee-jerk stupidity in a forum dedicated to making corporations. The greatest engine of wealth mankind has ever invented are corporations unhindered by market manipulations. The one exception being rules against monopolization and labor-abuse — i.e, practices that undermine the existence of corporations.
I'd like to note that there is no one here objecting to fairly compensated user surveys. Acquiring market data isn't free and information can be quite valuable, so why should companies feel entitled to that information for free? Once upon a time surrendering some of your privacy for market data would be a mutually agreed on activity - now it's cheaper to just take that information by force and without the consent of those involved.
Things like environmental concerns also act against raw economic progress, but are necessary for a healthy society as well.
For argument two, I don't believe owning your personal data is economic suicide. Imagine, instead of having ad companies track your every move and perform a bunch of expensive AI guesswork, they finally got smart and served opt-in ads that helped you research stuff in product categories _you_ tell them _you_ actually care about. Perhaps some of these services operate like "personal electronic shopping assistants". They're so good at saving people time researching cool new products people might otherwise never know about, people actually volunteer a little bit of their time in this process. Perhaps such heavily personalized ads makes clickfraud a thing of the past. Perhaps companies stop wasting money advertising diapers to 12 year olds watching minecraft videos on youtube. Perhaps this helps small businesses connect with customers and grow faster... Sounds like a better world to me.
Argument three falls apart when you remove the strawman. Privacy as data ownership doesn't stop you from allowing LEAs to issue amber alerts... Anyway, I'll leave it there since I need to go do other stuff.
Your own idolization of the utilitarian view is nothing provocative, nor is it rational -- just ignorant of history. Your own "thinking" on the topic is also like religious devotion, analogous to one that ignores evolution, and not even because you reject it, but because you've never taken the time to read about it.
I don't doubt it. But when I wrote that I was being unconventional, I wasn't talking about the academy. I was talking about the HN zeitgeist. While the sample size is small here, don't you find it curious that 1 out of 17 responses agreed with me? And that I was called a bootlicker and demon. And that you yourself jumped to conclusions about who I am and what I've done with my life. I would normally ignore the personal stuff, but in this context it makes sense. Because, ironically, if/when privacy erodes completely, we won't have to guess anymore about one another. And I'll make the HN-unconventional assertion that both your response (and this response itself) would have been a bit more understanding, more insightful, and more fruitful for the both of us. As it is, we're essentially blind to one another right now as pseudo-anonymous names on forum.
I've turned them off. I'm not sure it's much a privacy issue--at least any more than having my phone on is. But the likelihood that I'm going to be able to provide any useful information is miniscule vs. the inconvenience of an alert.
But you're basically arguing for ubiquitous monitoring (e.g. license cameras in the case of Amber alerts) becaause, who knows, it might help someone somewhere.
The ability for the individual to take actions that the hierarchy doesn't want and to get away with it is a form of power. Excessive surveillance removes this power.
If we do that, we might stabilize on an egalitarian equilibrium, otherwise I think we'll descend into a kind of techno-fascism.
That's why the events in Hong Kong are so important: can a distributed mass win out over a centralized authority?
Imagine you are walking somewhere downtown, visit some stores, eating out somewhere, whatever...
Would you like to be followed by a few dozen people, making notices about every move of yours, what you bought when and where, how (much) you paid, while phoning back to some (central) bank to ask how much of your whole balance/credit that was? And always taking photos. And even intrusively interrupting you by standing in your way, trying to push some thing or service you don't even want?
I'd call that harassment, or even fraud, because in case of offered services you don't have time to reason about the obligatory small print.
To your 2) What you are calling engines of wealth, others may call (mostly) a pile of trash, be it physical or virtual. That is not sustainable in the long term, because Ponzi scheme.
3) As others have already mentioned: Cheap move of yours. Think of the children!1!!
1) Privacy in Public is impossible
Besides being a contradiction in terms, imagine what an ideal society of public privacy looks like: a society where everyone is masked, where voices are obscured, where names are anonymized, where everyone is isolated from everyone by a wall that says, “why do you need to know?” It is patently absurd to promote privacy in public. And ultimately the winners are those who don’t follow the law — those in power in the first place. Do you really think governments and corporations are going to follow their own laws, or fail to ensure loopholes which only their and the cronies can fit through? Yes, look at China. The solution to advanced technology is not to pretend it can be stopped. The solution is to make it available widely and freely. Technology can’t be stopped. But it can be monopolized and misused.
2) Privacy in Public is economic sabotage
Economically, the more corporations know about their customers the more that their business decisions — both strategic and tactical — will be made upon data rather than intuition. The less they know about their users — as any HN reader should know — the more their business is at risk of dying. The presumption of corporations as evil is simply unintelligent. It is especially galling to see such knee-jerk stupidity in a forum dedicated to making corporations. The greatest engine of wealth mankind has ever invented are corporations unhindered by market manipulations. The one exception being rules against monopolization and labor-abuse — i.e, practices that undermine the existence of corporations.
3) Privacy in private is overrated
I received an amber alert on my phone a few days ago. If even one child could be saved from abominable acts of evil, even if it meant privacy was abolished in public and private, I for one would be willing to make that sacrifice. Yes, I’d be embarrassed. Yes, it would put an enormous weight on me to know that anyone could find out about anything I’d ever do or am doing. But for me, a society of truth is a society without a place for evil to hide — whether that evil is kidnapping or corporate corruption.
3) Privacy is going to be lost.
The war is over. We shouldn’t pretend that those who stand most to abuse privacy — the powerful — are the ones best suited to control their own behaviors. Laws won’t stop those passing the laws. Only unhindered permeation of technology will.
I recognize I’m saying something unconventional if not provocative. But when people are scared they make irrational decisions. I’ve never seen so much irrationality among the intelligent as when it comes to privacy. People’s “thinking” on this topic is akin to religious devotion, and that’s what scares me the most.