The word Inherent is, I believe, extremely dangerous to use here because it can easily be attacked. (For example in your statement about hurting people it is fairly easy to argue that hurting someone might not be inherently evil in plenty of circumstances).

Ultimately, though, your example highlights the main problem: hurt is poorly defined. Hurt could mean anything from dumping them through to outright torture and everything in between.

Hence here is my worry in the privacy debate: I think everyone has a huge variation in what they class as privacy and how they feel it is being invaded. As a result we end up with lots of mixed up opinions - and, I worry, the risk that really serious invasions of privacy are passing us by.

I feel like we should be talking about it a lot more from a perspective of; ok these guys want to know about us, so can we sit and discuss how they can do that transparently and in ways that make us comfortable. At the moment I get this odd feeling it is turning into a 3 way combat between consumers, companies (who want data to use to make money: either ethically or unethically) and government who want it for a variety of reasons.

The government thing is the most worrying aspect. Im slightly biased because I count, really, as a consumer of private information - I "invade" peoples computers daily. I have only seen it ever done ethically but there is always the serious worry that someone could play the system or could be using it for their own ends. In the future that risk is only going to get worse; and when you add in the fact that once beurocrats get involved the data is even more at risk from outside attack it is a worrying problem.

How do we fix this? Completely no idea yet. But I do think blaming Google is a bad move; because they have stood up for our data in the past (publicly)... and perhaps it is not too late to get them fully onside?

Just because something is inherently evil (evil isn't the best word for use in utilitarian arguments, Jeremy Bentham uses pleasure & pain) doesn't mean you should never do it. If you take hurt as being inherently bad, you could argue that it is ok to do some bad to prevent other bad or cause good (Bentham again).

Besides that, I agree with you on everything else. If we are going to call invasion of privacy evil "just because," we should define it pretty soundly. If we try to define it, I think we find that it's mostly about expectations, so making some clear rules/agreements is important.

Se my comment upthread from here.

I think the point of contention here is the definition of "invasion of privacy." (The op didn't mention this term by the way, he just said "watched".) Anyone would agree that having their privacy invaded is bad, but you can talk to 10 different people and get 10 different opinions on what constitutes an invasion.

What I want someone to do is justify their claim, point by point, that what Google does with information is an outright invasion of privacy.

You're right. Asking you to accept anything as inherent is a big deal. If you do, you should have privacy pretty well defined.

I think that the problem is that private vs public is often a question of expectations. People know that when you sit in your car people can see you & when you site in your house people usually can't. If you become viewable (public) while in your house it feels like an "invasion" whether it is malicious (telescope) or not (neighbour's new attic window).

When we talk about privacy in complicated, non obvious & changing circumstances, people constantly feel invaded because they find out that they might be in public when they thought they where in private.

I think that invasion of privacy is mostly about knowing where you are at any given time & having private as an option.

This is exactly the problem. By saying something is 'inherent' you are essentially saying that there can be no debate on the issue. I believe that the whole notion of 'privacy' is actually a learned social construct, not something inborn like physical pain.

> I believe that the whole notion of 'privacy' is actually a learned social construct

I, and many others, including Schneier think you are wrong. Privacy is a basic human need, a fundamental part of our psychology that is as deeply entrenched as all our other basic needs and emotions. We are not whole, happy, fulfilled human beings without it. I guess one can debate whether this fits the definition of "inherent" or not. But I don't think it's necessary to pursue it beyond this point because it doesn't really matter - once something is a basic human need, taking it away from them is wrong.

> Privacy is a basic human need, a fundamental part of our psychology that is as deeply entrenched as all our other basic needs and emotions.

That is an assumption not an argument. Can you reference any studies or data to support your position?

The only place to find evidence I can think of would be to look at different cultures with differing level of privacy to see what inherent 'needs' there might be and what the results were in terms of people's mental well being. Totalitarian societies would not be a good example as they actually rely far more of secrecy than more open societies.

I would argue (without data I admit) that the desire for privacy is actually caused by the desire to avoid punishment, ridicule and/or social exclusion. If these could be avoided then I don't believe there would be much of a 'need' for privacy.

> I would argue (without data I admit) that the desire for privacy is actually caused by the desire to avoid punishment, ridicule and/or social exclusion. If these could be avoided then I don't believe there would be much of a 'need' for privacy.

I think you deconstruct things far too much. If you removed all those things from society right now people would still "need" privacy because we have been programmed by thousands or millions of years of evolution to need it. We don't need it on a rational basis (although there are plenty of rational arguments one can make for needing it), we need it because our brains evolved that way and we're stuck with it.

If you find a culture that has no privacy and no compensatory substitute for it then I'll readily grant that people in that society don't need privacy and we can qualify "basic human need" to something slightly more constrained. But it won't change the fact that we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.

> because we have been programmed by thousands or millions of years of evolution to need it.

Actually I think our early ancestors would have lived with much less privacy than we do today. Many of the concepts of privacy don't even make sense the further back you go. Living in a tribe, spending nearly all your time outside and visible to other tribe members, with no/limited clothing, sleeping in large groups would offer limited opportunities for privacy.

If anything I would think that many of the traits of 'privacy' would have evolved more from the desire of others not to have to experience the 'private' matters of their fellow tribe members (i.e. see them having sex/naked/aroused or be interrupted by their loud conversations).

Even now they say that in small towns 'everyone knows everything about everyone else'. Only with the anonymizing effects of very large groups is the modern concept of privacy possible. So to me this all suggests that the 'need for privacy' is not a innate.

> But it won't change the fact that we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.

I would argue that this is true primarily because of people's upbringing - in the same way that it would cause people discomfort to have to adjust to a world where they would routinely be naked in public.

> because we have been programmed by thousands or millions of years of evolution to need it.

Privacy seems a modern phenomena.

Your really going to have to cite studies to be honest...

> we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.

Look at Facebook. There are lots of fairly complete options for privacy there. And yet most people don't even bother locking up their settings.

Given a choice, it seems, they aren't too worried.

I agree it's problematic. But whenever you get fundamental about moral issues you face these problems. Causing pain is bad. making people happy is good. Freedom is good. Equality is good. Discrimination is bad.

You can try and justify any of these for other reasons. Discrimination creates civil unrest, it wastes some people's talents, it leads to civil conflict, etc. I think those are less satisfying. Discrimination bothers me regardless of its consequences.

I don't necessarily agree with Schneir I just think you have to admit some* arguments that things are inherent. We can reject this. Say that our inherently good/bad baskets are ful & that he'd better justify his need for privacy based on those inherently bad/good things.

I can agree that inherent feelings towards these sort of issues may exist but even then you can't assume everyone has the same inherent notions. For example historically a lot of people obviously found 'discrimination' to be OK/desirable and they found homosexuality to be abhorrent. They could just as easily use the 'inherent' argument to back up their case.

I personally think that the further you go away from direct sensation (causing pain/injury etc) the more difficult it become to disentangle inherent and learned attitudes. Even with pain their are sadists and masochists who do not seem to share the normal response.

So while arguments based on our own 'inherent principles' may resonate with others (especially those in our self selected groups) we should be very careful before assuming that these are universal.

We are getting into a slightly subtle territory here, but basically what I am saying is "Yes, inherent is a problem. But, we usually can't avoid it when we are talking about morally fundamental things."

The subtle place we parted (I think) is where you interpreted "inherent" as meaning something about people, their feelings, attitudes, etc. I (he, really) meant it in a more abstract sense.

I'm not sure if this is something that reflects your general world-view, but you are taking a very relativist position. You are equating moral with subjective attitudes. That is OK of course, but it is a minority view.

(BTW, I'm not agreeing with the author, just commenting on the position he has taken)

> That is OK of course, but it is a minority view.

Probably in the general population but I would have though it a fairly typical attitude of those who ponder these issues in depth with an open mind.

I should add that a great part of my relativistic attitude is informed by what I see as a great and inherent evil occurring in the world that apparently very few others seem to be bothered about - human caused animal suffering on a mass scale. I sometimes wonder if those who do not find this inherently bad can truly be sentient beings - but logic dictates that they are. Acknowledging that others don't share your point of view does not imply inaction in moral issues.

With some relativist positions it does mandate inaction. They are not very popular outside of very academic applications. One could argue that this is the true or strong relativist position.

The place where relativist-like arguments are popular is with anthropologist evolutionist thinkers. From there perspective treating ethics as simply human traits, like a taste for sugar or music. They rarely attempt the normative leap though, go from a relativist argument to a 'you should do this' position.

Most vegetarian thinkers tend to be utilitarians. Most people are instinctively utilitarian & deontologist. When these come into conflict (kill a baby to save a village, harvest organs from unwilling person to save 5 people) they feel conflicted.