Re:Why 'I Have Nothing to Hide' Is the Wrong Way to Think Ab...
by nicbou on Friday July 23, 2021 @05:44AM
(#27928916)
This article is not very convincing.
My greatest argument for privacy is that being observed "freezes" your behaviour. You know that you are being judged, and that this has consequences, but the rules of the game are opaque to you. You can't tell which actions and labels your behaviour triggers. This will push you to err on the side of cautiousness, and to suppress any quirk that could draw attention.
For example, if your browsing history is made public, you might worry about what a person would conclude from it. Perhaps you like German military history a little too much, so you'll watch fewer videos about that. Perhaps you are a bit too keen to defend socialism, so you will moderate your speech. Let's not get started about the porn you watch.
Not only that, but the judgement is now done by a machine that sees, remembers and cross-references everything. The machine has authority, but no credible oversight. Its thinking process is opaque, and possibly inspired by the biases of its predecessors, from which it learned. If it considers you guilty, its owners also will. It will be your job to prove your innocence.
What is collected about you is remembered forever. It's not on an index card in a box deep in some archive. It's in a well-indexed, instantly accessible database record. It can be machine-processed, machine-scored and machine-judged in seconds, without leaving a trace. It can be duplicated and shared with third parties, also in seconds. There is no telling where that information will end, and how it will be used.
If it's not used now, it could be later, by a different group. It could be used against the person you are not anymore. If you think cancel culture is bad, imagine it being applied to the things you don't say.
My greatest argument for privacy is that being observed "freezes" your behaviour. You know that you are being judged, and that this has consequences, but the rules of the game are opaque to you. You can't tell which actions and labels your behaviour triggers. This will push you to err on the side of cautiousness, and to suppress any quirk that could draw attention.
For example, if your browsing history is made public, you might worry about what a person would conclude from it. Perhaps you like German military history a little too much, so you'll watch fewer videos about that. Perhaps you are a bit too keen to defend socialism, so you will moderate your speech. Let's not get started about the porn you watch.
Not only that, but the judgement is now done by a machine that sees, remembers and cross-references everything. The machine has authority, but no credible oversight. Its thinking process is opaque, and possibly inspired by the biases of its predecessors, from which it learned. If it considers you guilty, its owners also will. It will be your job to prove your innocence.
What is collected about you is remembered forever. It's not on an index card in a box deep in some archive. It's in a well-indexed, instantly accessible database record. It can be machine-processed, machine-scored and machine-judged in seconds, without leaving a trace. It can be duplicated and shared with third parties, also in seconds. There is no telling where that information will end, and how it will be used.
If it's not used now, it could be later, by a different group. It could be used against the person you are not anymore. If you think cancel culture is bad, imagine it being applied to the things you don't say.