>Personally this is a tech that I would gladly postpone as long as possible, or at least until the whole tech-thing has stabilized.
Don't think this whole "tech-thing" is going to "stabalize" anytime soon. And by anytime soon I mean 'ever'. :)
I think that a fundamental problem with increasing invasions of privacy facilitated by rapidly changing technology is that the melting away of privacy occurs almost immediately as the tech becomes available.
It happens on two fronts. A)Governments adopt tech towards this end almost universally, and push (and often surpass) the legal limits imposed by law, and B)Citizens continually degrade it themselves in exchange for services. Just look at Facebook, and how seemingly every service we use is stripping out information about us to build or integrate with a social graph.
You get this effect where younger generations are born with an ever increasing tolerance of privacy stripping technologies, combined with governments continually pushing past the boundaries of whats allowed. When they do go over the line, they merely deny it until they are caught (if they are), and then change the law to make their behavior legal, with no sanction for past transgressions. The population, ever evolving to respect privacy less, does not fight this.
Unless there is a cultural shift to revise, reiterate, and anchor respect for privacy to a Constitution-sized stone, I think we will see the same trend continue in perpetuity. Especially when you consider what has happened despite our Constitutional privacy protections.
The conflux of private enterprise profit seeking and government desire for control is an extremely powerful dynamic operating against privacy, and it is operating against it every day, by degrees. You are going to get your targeted ads as you walk into a store someday (probably sooner than later), and law enforcement will almost certainly have trivial access to it without a warrant, as they do to many now. I don't see this dynamic changing, and obviously technological advancements aren't going to wait around for us to sort these complex issues out.
> At some point you simply come to a conflict in fundamental values and principles... a situation for which there is no real resolution.
I disagree - unless you actually treat privacy as irreducible, God-given value that needs to be protected; at that point there is no help. But I suspect you have practical reasons for your views, and those we can reduce and discuss based on facts and rational thinking until we figure out a common view.
Personally, I am not holding a political opinion on this topic, but a practical one. Dynamic, real-time optimization on the level of society, a city or a country requires the data privacy advocates fight to hide. To optimize traffic flow we need to track how and where everyone is driving. To optimize power distribution we need to know how much and when a person uses electricity. To simulate disease spread effectively we could use real-life movement patterns. Etc. Yes, you can do a lot of this using aggregate, anonymized datasets, but real-time non-anonymized stream would certainly be qualitatively better.
There are lots of things we should do to move forward as a society that go directly against privacy of individuals. Those things are not even discussed! Everyone is focusing on possibility of government abuse and the potential benefits offsetting those costs aren't usually mentioned.
And that's all still high-level problems. There's another, more low-level issue. New technology keeps reducing the amount of privacy available. 30 years ago it was very hard to keep someone under constant surveillance. Today, with technology in everyone's smartphone, it's trivial. So what are we supposed to do to protect our privacy? Halt all new technology development? Roll back the industrial evolution? Progress of technology is empowering individuals, that's the whole point - but it also means those individuals will be gaining abilities to reduce the privacy of otheres. Are we really willing to halt progress in order to accommodate privacy needs?
> Regarding privacy, I disagree with your conclusion. I think as people become more aware of the importance of their dwindling privacy they will pay more attention to it and protect it. Perhaps I'm just overly optimistic.
To believe that we'll still be forced to rely on privacy in the future is fairly pessimistic.
> Given current trends, I guess I'd say give it 6months?
I'm happy to give it 6 months until the technology is there to do it, if it's not already—but, as long as there's an owner of the technology (that is, as long as the technology is pre- the point where I can easily roll my own), I'm skeptical of any owner in today's privacy climate intentionally forgoing the opportunity to suck up personal data whenever and however they can.
Privacy will die if we let it die. It's not an inevitability. We have the power to prevent it (through law imo, not tech). As for it being equitable I don't see how that could ever happen. Having access to everyone's private information would be of zero use to me but would be very useful for governments and companies.
> It's not an event that can make the average person upset.
Not yet anyway, but public opinion is changing and faster than many think. Carr mentioned the updated European Data Directive due out today, but right on it's heels will be a report from the FTC[1] and one from the Department of Commerce[2] formalizing drafts released last year that outline privacy reforms in the US.
Events like Google recording Wifi spots, Carrier IQ gathering data and even the story of Apple secretly recording location data are becoming more prevalent. I think we are only 12-18 months out before scattered public opinion changes to real momentum for privacy rights activists.
> After the constant succession of revelations of the sorry state of privacy, along with myriad data breaches...
I remember reading an article about how Richard Stallman interacts with the internet a while back. I remember thinking that it seemed totally insane. But in light of the reality of 2018, I am coming around.
The way I see it, I can keep tweaking privacy settings in a browser, or opting out of collection, or doing any number of other things to attempt to protect my privacy, _or_ I could just stop using services that do not respect my privacy in the first place. Perhaps certain aspects of modern life have taken too much, and they need to be abandoned until they are reformed?
> Why do we continue to trade convenience for privacy?
I think there's a big misconception about privacy rights in America. I think a lot of people believe the government is actually allowed to collect otherwise private information, and that it's important they do so. I think this causes people to become complicit in giving away their information because they don't feel they have any choice, which allows people to become willfully ignorant, which makes it easy for the private sector to do the same.
Tldr, the government is setting a precedent where we shouldn't care about our privacy.
> Privacy is basically a historical accident belonging to the few hundred years in the west where transportation tech got ahead of information technology.
I don't think privacy should be dictated by whatever is possible with technology, it should be explicitly decided by people. Whichever way they decide.
> Clearly, your desire for privacy is far larger than everyone else.
Is it? How do you know? Most people don't have even a partial understanding of the risks associated with personal information collection. Most people don't even read terms of service and privacy policies. How many users even know what a cookie is?
The fact is people trust the service providers with the data. They assume that their data will be used responsibly for their benefit. Recent history shows that this assumption is completely unfounded.
> Why should they have to suffer for your desire. You could use privacy oriented services instead.
The fact is the vast majority of services are not and never will be privacy-oriented. Paid service or not, they'd make more money if they sold people's private information. Not doing that is a wasted opportunity to them, it's as if they were actively choosing to make less money. So instead of excluding people who don't agree with surveillance capitalism, it should be impossible to collect any information to begin with.
Besides, we should not be ostracized and be forced to live off-grid as if we were in some cyberpunk story just because we value our privacy.
> The only places I expect privacy are in my home and on the Internet (such as it can be).
That is nonsense.
If a group of people started following you everywhere in public, taking notes of everything you do, measuring anything they can about you that they can without touching you (which increasingly would include health information that is not readily apparent to everyone else) ... you are telling me that that would be perfectly in line with your expectation?
It is unhelpful to conceptualize privacy as binary. Of course, you expect to be seen by other people on the street when you go outside. That does not mean that you expect to be stalked, nor that stalking was somehow an implicitly accepted behavioural norm all along.
Technical capabilities change, and with it, we need to change how we enforce what was previously a natural outcome: You weren't invisible in public, but most people who saw you didn't recognize you and forgot about you within seconds to minutes of seeing you.
> My point is a lot of these seems to be a fear-based response driving extreme privacy reactions.
What world do you live in where fear is unreasonable? The world is not the happy place that you very clearly think it is.
I have personal friends and family who have very legitimate reasons to demand enforced privacy. People who've been abused by others; who've been abused by people who have made serious threats against livelihoods.
People whose opinions are different from those around them would be at significant risk to life, limb, and sanity if those opinions were to become known by others.
> I want a measured response that recognizes that data is hugely powerful in improving society
> This extreme privacy movement annoys the hell out of me. And, it is really strong on HN. *
You need to recognize that data is also hugely powerful in destroying it too. I think many on HN are able to and have recognized this.
> and we need strong regulations to protect both sides.
I agree; but I think the regulations and enforcement should absolutely err on the side of the user if there is ever a disagreement between the two.
The breakdown that is going to happen when Facebook and/or Gmail's database gets dumped and uploaded to The Pirate Bay or Wikileaks is going to be mind-blowingly tremendous.
On top of that, I wouldn't expect any slowdown after "a major privacy event". I fully believe that we are in a world where very few organizational secrets can be kept. Virtually no one, including major corporations and governments, has a correct concept of what is necessary to protect digital data. In the early days of the war, when everyone is still able to use the internet, the intelligence leakage is just going to be astonishing.
To heavily paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: those who would give up privacy to obtain moderately more relevant search results, deserve neither privacy nor relevant search results.
Privacy is freedom, knowledge is power, convenience is safety.
> Maybe where we differ is that I sort of see the end of privacy as a foregone conclusion
It might well be, but that doesn't mean it's not worth fighting for in the meantime. I don't believe human society is evolved enough to handle a complete loss of privacy quite yet.
> Credit card companies [...] [sell our] data with absolutely no compunctions
You've just reinforced my earlier point. This is precisely why we don't want Google to profit from our personal data. I want Google to stay on my side.
> I don't think it's fair to call Google "evil" until they actually do something evil
I didn't. But as I said earlier, if they allow themselves to enter into a situation where they're either forced to do "evil" or can't tell if what they're doing is "evil" or not, they are not adhering to the spirit of their motto.
However I think at this point we should call it a day and agree to disagree as we're starting to go around in circles. I did very much enjoy the discussion though and it gave me much food for thought.
I'll leave you with this:
Privacy has to be viewed in the context of relative power. For example, the government has a lot more power than the people. So privacy for the government increases their power and increases the power imbalance between government and the people; it decreases liberty. [...] Privacy for the people increases their power. It also increases liberty, because it reduces the power imbalance between government and the people. (Bruce Schneier)
> [personal data is] not, and should not be [a commodity]
I'm dubious that banning the sale of personal information is going to have a huge impact. Google and Facebook already violate laws as they please with the knowledge that they'll have to pay the fine. They seem to be ok with that arrangement.
From a technical perspective, I don't think it's even possible to prevent the collection and use of personal data. I like the idea behind Tim Berners-Lee's Solid[0], but it suffers from the same flaw as video game copy protection and movie DRM. At some point, you have to decrypt the data and let a webapp have access to it. The only way to avoid that would be to go all the way back to using native apps for everything and ditch the web altogether.
> think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem
I agree, and I'd add that that's because there isn't much money in privacy at the moment, and there's a lot of money in violating privacy. And, that's probably because there's too many people who don't understand privacy in technology, or don't consider it a priority. I think that regulation can't come soon enough. Anyone who helps privacy and tech politics move faster is a hero.
>installed all the privacy add-ons in the entire universe
Slightly off-topic, but it is very likely this is a net decrease in privacy.
I know your hyperbolizing, but your unique combination of add-ons could very well be used to fingerprint you with much more accuracy than someone solely using only Privacy Badger + HTTPS Everywhere, for example.
Hiding info is good, but blending in is better.
--
>The tech industry will continue to disrespect people's attention and privacy, because ultimately nobody really cares.
I'm generally pessamistic as well. But, the signs lately have been good. It's taking a long time for the non-tech savvy to catch up and realize what's happening with their data (and what that actually means), but as they do, the push will be stronger. We're seeing more lashback for privacy breaches now than we have ever before. Keep the momentum going. If the people like you and me quit out now, non-tech savvy or on-the-fencers will give up too. Then all really is lost.
>Ultimately, I have gone through all this struggle and stress for nothing.
Not for nothing unless you are only considering a visible, external impact as your metric. Realistically you've improved your life, reduced the amount of your life others know about you, and are participating in a cause (even if you don't feel like it's doing anything).
>This fight has been lost a thousand times throughout history - it will always be lost. I am wondering whether it's best to just shut up and get on board?
Don't think this whole "tech-thing" is going to "stabalize" anytime soon. And by anytime soon I mean 'ever'. :)
I think that a fundamental problem with increasing invasions of privacy facilitated by rapidly changing technology is that the melting away of privacy occurs almost immediately as the tech becomes available.
It happens on two fronts. A)Governments adopt tech towards this end almost universally, and push (and often surpass) the legal limits imposed by law, and B)Citizens continually degrade it themselves in exchange for services. Just look at Facebook, and how seemingly every service we use is stripping out information about us to build or integrate with a social graph.
You get this effect where younger generations are born with an ever increasing tolerance of privacy stripping technologies, combined with governments continually pushing past the boundaries of whats allowed. When they do go over the line, they merely deny it until they are caught (if they are), and then change the law to make their behavior legal, with no sanction for past transgressions. The population, ever evolving to respect privacy less, does not fight this.
Unless there is a cultural shift to revise, reiterate, and anchor respect for privacy to a Constitution-sized stone, I think we will see the same trend continue in perpetuity. Especially when you consider what has happened despite our Constitutional privacy protections.
The conflux of private enterprise profit seeking and government desire for control is an extremely powerful dynamic operating against privacy, and it is operating against it every day, by degrees. You are going to get your targeted ads as you walk into a store someday (probably sooner than later), and law enforcement will almost certainly have trivial access to it without a warrant, as they do to many now. I don't see this dynamic changing, and obviously technological advancements aren't going to wait around for us to sort these complex issues out.
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