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I'd point you towards Brenden Eich's tenure as Mozilla CEO for an example of why it matters. He supported a (at the time) popular measure, Prop 8, which later became unpopular. 7-8 years later Prop 8 is widely condemned as homophobic and his support of it was used to oust him from his job.

This might be a little off topic because I don't think his personal browsing habits are what exposed the information, but I think the principle remains - you don't know what currently "reasonable" or "private" thing you do now will cause you a lot of trouble in the future.

Considering Moz.org's trajectory since then I am of the belief that was an excuse fomented to oust him for other reasons. Most people will have a hard time agreeing with, or even liking, many of the decision makers at the top. Hyper-focus on celebs & politicians is disingenuous and weaponized by detractors to further their agensas. We are all fallible & human.

*I do not agree w/ Prop 8 or any such discrimination as to how consenting adults choose to live their lives. Nor do I consciously employ xenophobic limits to those who look, speak or act differently from me. If it's to be a "global" community, we must be more inclusive rather than assimilating, IMO.

Prop 8 at the time it was announced was widely seen as homophobic. The only people who didn't see it that way were...wait for it...usually homophobic themselves.

Because even though it might be accepted in the future, these things have real consequences now and for the foreseeable future.

That's kind of circular isn't it? I understand we care because it has real consequences. But why does it have real consequences?

That's what I'm wondering and have been for a while. Where does the outrage come from? We all know we all watch porn. But if it comes out that so and so important figure watches porn, suddenly it's the end of the world? Why? Who decides which instance breeds outrage and which doesn't?

For me, this is why it's such a big deal: I don't think it has to be porn to be used against you. It just needs to be some minor character flaw that breaks with your public image.

And I guess more troubling still, this kind of stuff could be used to blackmail normal people in the same way revenge porn is. What about threatening to reveal your porn habits to friends & family?

Again, doesn't need to be porn. What about your browsing history for medicine, self-help etc? All that stuff could be used to blackmail someone, especially if they're psychologically vulnerable.

>That's what I'm wondering and have been for a while. Where does the outrage come from? We all know we all watch porn. But if it comes out that so and so important figure watches porn, suddenly it's the end of the world? Why? Who decides which instance breeds outrage and which doesn't?

Well, ultimately others decide, so it's beyond your and my control.

Others decide because we allow them too. We could make an effort to read less about the private habits of others. "That's private, I'm not clicking it." And yet for all the privacy advocates on HN, there's still a great deal of interest in salacious stories.

> Where does the outrage come from? We all know we all watch porn.

Let's say Politician A runs on a platform of making legislation and supporting other things that make the lives of LGBTQ difficult (or dangerous). He gets totally awesome support, everyone loves him.

Then it is found that Politician A is browsing twink pr0n on his work computer. Or worse, he is blackmailed because of it, becomes corrupted, then is outed for his browsing habits.

You don't think this can't have real consequences? What if this was found long before, and he is being coerced into introducing legislation by some more powerful person or group who will expose his (now hypocritical) habits to the public, unless he pushes for legislation that will punish those that other group/person wants?

That's only one example (probably flawed in ways), but people get really bent when a politician says one thing, but is secretly doing another and it is found out - especially when that politician is doing things that oppress others. Some call it self-hate, or projection, or similar - which it may be. Whatever it is, it is justified to feel angry over such things.

What I don't understand is why people keep giving politicians such "benefit of doubt" before electing them - we always seem to regret it in some manner afterward (sometimes only a bit, sometimes a lot - very, very rarely do we see or get someone who is a benefit to everyone).

and the reverse, we use these examples to highlight things you might not want to come out now but what happens when there's a marked shift in the political stance to e.g. Homosexuality/Transgender people?

Say an ultra-conservative government was elected on a platform of hate towards people that we're currently moving towards accepting, wouldn't you want it to be hard for someone to find out if you spent a lot of time looking at certain materials relating to those topics?

You don't need to cast it as some outlandish scenario, since there are many countries where being gay (or, to use the example in the OP, watching porn) are illegal and violators are really subject to penalties.

To be clear, my stance is that laws that make it illegal to be homosexual are wrong.

With that said, in your example those people are actively breaking the law and if you're using the internet to break the law today I don't see a lot of problem with the government tracking that back to you. My concern is large scale collection of records of acts which are then turned into crimes/persecuted groups and I think that's what people should primarily concern themselves with when it comes to the present internet privacy debate.

The point is, it may be accepted now, but in the future it may become cause for a great deal of concern - and that is why we cannot allow ourselves to submit to the heinous evil of state surveillance. This is a de-evolutionary impulse.

Well there's two ways this can go down.

Either these things that we all do become illegal and we're all criminals and the government uses it as a form of repression when people need to be put away for whatever reason the regime deems necessary. Or these things remain legal and become socially acceptable because once everyone understands everyone is doing it, we'll collectively stop caring.

Right now we're in this weird transitionary period where things are not illegal, but are frowned upon in polite society and it's first coming out that you know what, we're actually all weird behind the scenes and there's no such thing as normal. So we have weaponized public outrage.

I'm curious which way we'll go. Hopefully it's not the "we're all criminals" way. That would suck.

I'm reminded of the suffering of the Jewish people, who returned to Vienna after a long period of persecution, because they were 'made legal again' .. and yet, only a few years later, were again destroyed as a people and a culture by the change of power.

We must never forget the betrayal that occurs before every human atrocity. Setting ourselves up for betrayal belies a very weak culture.

Yeah and when Captain Kirk kissed Uhura it was a small scandal because it was the first time a black woman and a white man kissed on US TV.[1] Are we expecting those tensions to come back any time soon? Should interracial couples hide their relationships?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss

Your sci-fi fantasy is a straw man, but I will say that this point:

>expecting those tensions to come back any time soon?

.. has to be answered. The answer is, yes, we must always expect society to regress, and never assume that because we made the world okay, our children will too.

When we open the door for discrimination, hatred and intolerance come pouring through - at first as a trickle and then as a flood. The law that says "all your data belongs to us" today may not be cause for harm; but would you want the next leader, whose policies may be more discriminatory, to have such powers?

The price of freedom is constant alertness. We must always be prepared for the doors of intolerance, hatred and bigotry to open - having total access to all our information is a very, very wide, open door.

"Those tensions" are not gone.

>Are we expecting those tensions to come back any time soon?

Sure, why not. For example in a lot of European cities honor killings (e.g. killing your daughter/sister etc because she has been or even eyed some man or your son because he is gay), have been re-introduced in practice after over a century due to hardcore islamic immigration.

This is from an official EU report: " In Sweden, the government estimated that up to 2004, 1 500 to 2 000 girls and women had been the victims of 'honour' crimes".

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/57387...

You should be careful with these statistics for three reasons.

1. Their provenance is sketchy. The EU report sources data from private advocacy organizations. That data is in turn extrapolated, premised on the idea that most "honor crimes" are unreported.

2. Their definitions are sketchy. By the report's logic, the difference between an honor crime and domestic violence is cultural intent. Domestic violence is highly prevalent across Europe (and, of course, the United States, where it accounts for a plurality of all those currently incarcerated in major metro jails, despite a microscopic population of people from cultures where "honor crimes" are a thing). And, of course, almost none of these crimes are murder or attempted murder.

3. The goals are sketchy. There's an extent to which reporting on "honor crimes" can be seen as a way to take a universal phenomenon, separate out the Muslims, and pathologize their incidence of that phenomenon.

Certainly, with this report, you are nowhere close to having presented evidence for the extraordinary claim that "hardcore Islamic immigration" has created an epidemic of "honor killings". You should, again, be more careful than this.

We’re getting quite OT here, but since where already at it... Why the quotes around the term honor crimes? I do believe there is a credible argument that domestic violence and honour-based violence are not the same thing. It’s not just private advocacy organizations that say this. Some interesting quotes from a report published by the UK government:

2.13. The rationale for HBV [honour-based violence] differs from other related crime types such as domestic abuse in that it usually occurs to preserve perceived social, cultural or religious traditions or norms. HBV can involve multiple perpetrators taking drastic action which may be premeditated.

2.14. The other difference between HBV and other forms of abuse is that there are potentially significant risks to people associated with the victim, for example the victim’s children, siblings and friends as well as members of various authority groups and organisations who seek to assist the victim.

So based on this I would say HBV isn’t exactly the same thing as domestic violence. But of course, this is not only about muslims. Far from it. HBV is taking place in many different cultures and countries.

2.9. HBV is not linked to any one religion, culture or society. It has been identified as mainly occurring among populations from South Asia. However, it can occur in other cultures and communities, such as African, Middle Eastern, Turkish, Kurdish, Afghan, parts of Europe (including the United Kingdom) American, Australian and Canadian. HBV is not associated with any particular religion or religious practices and has been recorded across a number of faiths, including Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities.

Source: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/wp-content/u...

I don’t know how prevalent these practices are in Sweden/Europe so I have no idea about the reliability of the stats from the EP briefing that was cited by 'coldtea. But I think it’s important that the authorities are aware about the specifics of the issue in order to help the victims in a proper manner. If we just say that it’s all domestic violence we might not be able to help the victims in a relevant way.

>Certainly, with this report, you are nowhere close to having presented evidence for the extraordinary claim that "hardcore Islamic immigration" has created an epidemic of "honor killings".

Notice how the word "epidemic" (and thus the rendering of my claim as "extraordinary") is yours.

I only said that honor killings "have been re-introduced as a practice" in Europe [1] due to fundamental muslim immigrants, which is neither extraordinary nor up to argument.

Seems like the word "sketchy" has also been thrown around a lot aiming to delegitimize any claim that such things can and do happen nowadays in Europe and based of specific, religious and regional based, cultural values.

For all the sketchiness in favor of over-reporting such things that you mention, there's as much an underreporting out of fear of looking as culturally insensitive/racist/etc, and out of lack of access (of social workers, police, etc) in those communities.

And this is not some fringe right-wing publication I've linked to, this is an official EU briefing report.

And it makes total sense that the difference between "an honor crime and domestic violence is cultural intent", since by definition a honor killing is a cultural act, based on the idea that one's status/standing in the community has been compromised because of the behavior of its daughter, children, etc. Domestic abuse is a more widespread umbrella category. You can have domestic abuse without honor crimes. Or you can practice various kinds of domestic abuse AND honor crimes (which is often the case in families that would consider honor crimes acceptable). Domestic violence is indeed highly prevalent across Europe and the US, but it is also highly prevalent across subcultures that consider "honor crimes" an acceptable practice.

[1] This also shows that I have no problem to admit that those were once a common enough practice by christian Europeans too. It has been on the wane all through the 20th century, though, before being reignited by newly arrived populations.

In case I'm not being clear:

Most domestic abusers make some sort of excuse --- the victim is always "asking for it" somehow. Only when that excuse involves some kind of foreign culture do we separate it out of the morass of all domestic violence into a scary new "honor crime" category.

>Only when that excuse involves some kind of foreign culture do we separate it out of the morass of all domestic violence into a scary new "honor crime" category.

There's nothing new about "honor crime". We had that in Europe, by Europeans, for ages, and it was a common enough practice up until quite recently (up until the 50s or so). There are lots of studies about honor crimes and the relevant cultural notions behind them.

As for the cultural connection is in there by definition. The "honor" part implies a cultural impetus about what's "honorable" and how a daughter/son/wife/etc should behave, that is not the same as the personal motives (e.g. jealousy, feeling of inadequacy, etc) for general domestic abuse.

In other words, it's a special case of domestic abuse, with it's own, long, history.

And it's by no means invoked only "when that excuse involves some kind of foreign culture". It might seem like that to someone from a place with no major cultural history of "honor" codes and "honor crimes", but in several cultures in Europe, e.g. in Spain, Italy, Greece, etc., honor crimes were a thing (and occasionally pop up still), and we still clearly differentiate them from domestic abuse, have different terms for them etc. In our own country and culture -- no second culture involved.

(Wikipedia: "Honour in the Mediterranean world is a code of conduct, a way of life and an ideal of the social order, which defines the lives, the customs and the values of many of the peoples in the Mediterranean moral") -- as a mediterranean, this is quite accurate.

It has been abandoned for the last 5-6 decades to virtual non-existence, but it's coming back recently because people come from places where this is still acceptable: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghanistan-wom...

This is a lot of words, respectfully, none of which respond to my point. I have no trouble believing that Europeans have spent many decades ostracizing people from West Asia.

I know I'm repeating myself but I want to be clear: I'm not apologizing for "honor crimes". I'm suggesting that West Asia and Western Europe share a pattern of violent abuse, but call them different things, and that Europe exploits that to deflect attention to domestic violence by blaming things on the lurid crimes of immigrants.

There are xenophobes that use the term HBV to push their own murky agenda. That’s wrong. But when women from e.g. Kurdistan report about HBV I believe that their stories are worth listening to and taking serious. If we want to do something about these issues we first need to understand them.

This is a false dilemma. We must urgently take the victims of domestic violence --- of all sorts --- seriously.

There are plenty of things that 1% or 0.1% of people are doing - common enough that widespread discovery would have a large societal impact, but rare enough it could easily remain stigmatised.

I can't imagine that sex workers or adult diaper fetishists or whatever will suddenly find acceptance from their neighbours just because it's all out in the open now.

>Right now we're in this weird transitionary period where things are not illegal, but are frowned upon in polite society

That's not just 'right now'. That has been going for millennia of recorded history.

And any change towards e.g. more transparency can be reverted at any point in the future too (history usually moves in circles, not towards some end goal of progress -- even slavery has been abolished and then re-introduced several times. And racism is a relatively modern (a few centuries) invention. There were black kings with white subjects back in history and nobody batted an eye, but it would be unthinkable in 18th century USA/Europe).

> I'm all for privacy and there are things I wouldn't care to expose on the internet (like my home address and exact apartment number)

I hope you don't have a registered domain name, because then this information is in the WHOIS database, which is public.

Not if you buy the domain through a proxy, which every domain registrar trivially offers.