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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

I feel like... I'm actually OK with this?

Social media is public. It's intentionally public. That's really the whole point. It's your choice to post things to Facebook or Twitter or Snapstergram.

Of all the privacy issues that we should be worried about it feels like this should not be one of them. If you don't want your social media info used... don't post it to social media!

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Despite the headline, social media isn't the privacy issue or the main story. It's just that we have evidence that social media makes up one of the Bulk Personal Datasets (BPDs) [1].

The actual story is that the oversight body wasn't informed that BPDs were being shared with foreign governments, law enforcement and industry partners. There is no oversight of the process. Partners don't have to meet any standards on use of the data. There are no penalties for misuse of the data. This makes it possible to circumvent UK regulations. These are the privacy issues.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/12/isc-report-privacy-and-sec...

It's intentionally public.

Is it? I was under the impression that I was sharing information with my "friends".

Its not that simple. Facebook creates "shadow profiles" of people that don't use Facebook, and can be be populated by friends/family posting pictures of you or mentioning you/tagging you in a location. So - not their choice at all to have their information mined.

Thing is, if they make a profile about you that includes race, religion, and sexuality, what is stopping them from denying a certain group of people a job in the public sector? Or to use it as basis to spy on you because "this type of profile tends to be violent/terrorist/communist/not patriotic enough".

Or to not give you social aid since you aren't the right type of profile.

You mean like the European countries where you must have an id card that has race and region and the number of kids you have on it.

The European custom of attaching a photo to your cv is more dangerous and the eu should have outlawed that rather than say the silly cookie law

> You mean like the European countries where you must have an id card that has race and region and the number of kids you have on it.

What European countries would those be? The only country I even know of that tracks 'race' in census data is the US.

Germany the id card data base holds a lot of very personal data

Hmm.. looking through what data the German resident register stores[1] there's not too much information I would deem too personal, apart from the religious affiliation maybe. They certainly don't track race as you wrote in your previous post.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melderegister#Inhalt

I gather you're from a country without a resident register?

EDIT: Also you shouldn't mix up the content of a resident register with the information you find on a public ID card. The information printed on those is a lot more limited.

>If you don't want your social media info used... don't post it to social media!

While I definitely heed this advice, it seems a bit like saying, if you don't wan't to be robbed or murdered, don't go outside your house!

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