This is why privacy, while it is a legitimate need to shield things like personal info, bank accounts, bills, your own home or communication with coworkers, friends, family, etc, when it is used to shield illegal activities, almost always, if not always, it is to the detriment of the person.
Now, some will cry foul to what I said... "If you're careful enough, you will never get caught".. or the best one, "If you've a group of people to support you (i.e. mafia style :), organized efforts are harder to break"... or "if smart people who are wicked join you..." etc.
Go ahead, try it, I double dog dare you. Come post on HN how it went. Or maybe we'll read about you on Ars or HN, but not from your direct reporting.
This is an extremely fallacious argument. How are you supposed to know who they are before they've been caught?
And for your point - I am sure we hear only about the "stupid" ones that made a silly mistake; we would never hear about the clever ones that can restrict themselves when they don't have 100% control of the situation. They do exist. And most men can't even spot clear signals when their wife is cheating on them, not mentioning the ones that can blend in perfectly... Often the balance of power is achieved by secrets the ones in power know on each other via MAD, so when there is no deviating data, there is no secret to crucify you for.
So, between all that, I think you're dramatically overestimating how effective both police and surveillance dragnets are. ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearance_rate
I want to expand on your point about privacy by pointing out that arrests are often entirely up to police discretion. A suspended license could result in a warning, a ticket, or an arrest; ultimately, it comes down to whether an officer is in a good mood when he stops me or whether he likes my face. Allowing surveillance dragnets just makes it easier for law enforcement to have something to charge you with if they don't like you.
More in my area or classified as missing persons to make murder rate look lower. Common trick in a lot of places, esp small towns. Yeah, clearance rate is a great measurement showing how often crooks get away with stuff. I didn't think of that now obvious piece of data. :)
" it comes down to whether an officer is in a good mood when he stops me or whether he likes my face. Allowing surveillance dragnets just makes it easier for law enforcement to have something to charge you with if they don't like you."
This is true. We already see that in some U.S. states and European countries. There are all kinds of BS laws on the books. The cops or courts want money. So, some percentage of people are pulled over with an assortment of "violations" to use against them. Troublemakers might be hit with a more serious version of it. Especially can be used to squelch dissent or activism.
Aaron Schwartz is a perfect example of the power prosecutors hold in a given situation. Because of who he was and his crime, they decided to go all out to set an example of him rather than keep charges lower or ignore it given students were supposed to have access. Discretion can make or break a person's life.
Best stick to bills tendered as change only. Although who knows what red flags someone trying to hide their spending habits might be able to trip, alerting the feds that someone frequenting your favorite restaurant is trying to hide their trail...
https://network23.org/inputisevil/2015/09/06/how-html5-apis-...
"In the OSF-specified algorithm for generating new (V1) GUIDs, the user's network card MAC address is used as a base for the last group of GUID digits, which means, for example, that a document can be tracked back to the computer that created it. This privacy hole was used when locating the creator of the Melissa virus." from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globally_unique_identifier
Apple device uDIDs are generated by concatenating the serial number, the MAC address, and some other things, then running the result through a hash function. (I don't have a source at the moment, sorry).
Hope that was clear.
I don't know what the justification for Hacker News not allowing Tor is since there's no economic incentive to track users.
Hopefully more people will be made aware of this and start asking the question: Why do you need to know who I am?
Obviously every service has different trade-offs to consider, which is why "Tor traffic is always worth it" is HN comment idealism.
How do you differentiate between legitimate new users with a bunch of existing users vouching for them, and a returning shitposter's 10000th spam account with a bunch of existing stealth-mode accounts vouching for them?
I think you're using an extremely weak definition of "solve".