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Comment by WizzleKake | Hacker News Reader

Why is spying on children any different than spying on adults?

While in absolute terms it's not any more ok to spy on adults than children, the idea of spying on children being more morally repugnant is based around the idea of children as innocent and by spying on then we're depriving them of that and allowing malicious actors to prey on that innocence (hey, now someone knows where this child will be, when, and most of the important things happening in their life; much easier to trick.)

In reality the same arguments apply to adults, but we find it less morally repugnant because adults aren't innocent and are expected to gaurd themselves against such actions. However, it becomes more and more difficult to guard against.

> While in absolute terms it's not any more ok to spy on adults than children, the idea of spying on children being more morally repugnant is based around the idea of children as innocent and by spying on then we're depriving them of that and allowing malicious actors to prey on that innocence (hey, now someone knows where this child will be, when, and most of the important things happening in their life; much easier to trick.)

This seems like a very mushy reason. I'm pretty sure the real reason is that children are not considered able to knowingly consent to many things - including contracts such as EULAs or TOS. Given this, a child is also not expected to be able make a reasoned decision about privacy tradeoffs.

The reason it's "ok" to spy on adults is that they can make an educated decision about whether they're ok with being spied on. I don't necessarily agree that this is true in practice, but I think that's the theory.

It is not "ok" to spy on adults. It simply doesn't elicit a feeling of disgust in most people.

I think it does elicit the feeling of disgust, but most people don't know it's happening. (Or downplay the risks - such claiming that it's only machines and not people watching).

It should also be completely illegal, but the justice system can't keep up with technology. Imagine you found out that your next door neighbor has drilled a hole through the wall and fed a camera into your house - what do you do? (Call the police, certainly). Is it really any different when the camera feed isn't a physical wire but done over the internet?

Because with kids it's much more obviously evil thing to do. For adults one can perhaps argue that they (being adults) can choose for themselves whether to give or not to give the permissions - just like with everything else in their life, it's their responsibility to know better. Kids can't really be expected to make informed decisions on actions that are potentially dangerous, they need to be protected by adults.

> For adults one can perhaps argue that they (being adults) can choose for themselves whether to give or not to give the permissions

That's wishful thinking. Most people can't tell the WWW from Facebook. People are so bad at writing emails that there are Workshops for Composing E-Mails which sell out quickly. Many disable SIM PINs because they forget them or don't want to bother remembering them. The people who read permissions an app requests make such a little percentage of smartphone users that they can't even be considered a minority.

I beleive we need some kind of CE for software. It's easier to make sure that your parmigiano reggiano comes from Emilia-Romagna that it is to make sure that you can rely on a certain online service provider / platform. That's simply unacceptable.

So? They are still adults. If they want to know if works, they can learn it.

Most of them don't care.

And they'd rather not care. A life where we had to make sure every single thing we have and every tiny peg or thing in them is of a certain quality would be hell. Have you read "I, pencil"? I suggest it becomes compulsory reading to every single person. Things involve lots of other things and all we have is some governmental and international bodies helping us have some trust in what we possess.

> CE for software

Yes, and hardware at the firmware level.

Children are more vulnerable and less able to beware of the risks.

Sexually explicit information of children.

We generally believe that sexual exploitation of children is worse than of an adult. We don’t allow for consensual sexual relations, creation or mere posesion of explicit material with a child.

In fact drawings of said material can get you in a lot of trouble in many, liberal, countries.

That being said, I hate what the internet has become.

Good point. All that spying crap should be illegal. Including governments' spying crap. But good luck on that :(

COPPA.

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