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Comment by montrose | Hacker News Reader

There's a whole genre of articles based on conflating two senses of "your," belonging to you, and about you. If I observe that you have blue eyes, that's a fact about you, but it doesn't belong to you, at least not without redefining what "belong" means.

It would be helpful if, instead of deliberately conflating these two senses of "your," articles on this subject went in the other direction and explicitly discussed the distinction.

We have from time to time redefined what "belong" means, but these redefinitions tend to be very complicated and have all sorts of unforeseen consequences. My guess is that a redefinition on the scale of facts about you = your property would be a disaster.

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The funny thing is based on the way you described belong...it really made me realize the collection of data really seems to be eerily similar to this definition:

>Obtaining information with reference to the identity, habits, conduct, movements, whereabouts, affiliations, associations, transactions, reputation, or character of any society, person of groups of persons.

Guess what that is? It’s, in part, the statutory (legal) definition of private investigator, which is prohibited by law without a license.

So sure under the law we don’t necessarily own that data about ourselves, but the collection of the data is highly regulated for a reason. Obviously tech companies obtain user consent to collect data (at least some of the time), but if PI’s can be regulated in their activities so can a tech company or digital product, and it’s not to difficult to see regulations that say a tech company can’t collect user data and turn around and sell it to third parties.

I am curious though, how exactly would such a legal framework be a disaster in your opinion?

And here you're conflating "public facts about you" with "facts that only your cell phone / mattress / underpants / web browser know about you."

"Facts about you" falls into at least two categories: "Facts which you want and reasonably expect to remain private", and "facts which you display to the world and have no expectation of privacy about."

Which is fine as far as semantics go, but in the context of this thread the first category doesn't exist unless you're under 13 and in the US, or subject to the GDPR, or a few other nooks and crannies of international laws.

There's a simpler, shallower issue too: 'you' in headlines is a linkbait trope, so headline writers drop it in wherever they can. This one managed it twice. Presumably we're all wired to respond to "hey you!"

Since clickbait is against the site guidelines, we replace such titles with neutral ones. Usually we do that by copying a representative phrase from the article itself. But that was surprisingly hard to do this time.

I think it is pretty easy. The moment you start storing this data outside your brain, it's "my" data. You can memorize or observe it all you want but not store it permanently or semi-permanently elsewhere.

I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later" (most skip the latter part anyway, if not confronted with a shitstorm) mentality.

> I think it is a sad state of affairs that it had to come to this point resulting from "don't ask for permission upfront, ask for forgiveness later"

Huh. I actually believe most western societies are incredibly tilted in the "ask permission" direction. You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing.

Personally, I prefer freedom: do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't violate someone's rights (and no, Imaginary Property doesn't count).

> You have to petition to start a business, cut someone's hair, buy a gun, get married, copy a book... I could probably find a hundred things you're supposed to ask for permission before doing.

The rules are very selectively enforced depending on what class you belong to though.

As a guy with a pair of scissors, I can't start cutting hair without "asking permission" in the form of a license. As a guy with a cart, I can't sell hot dogs on the street corner without getting some sort of vending license.

I can't just start driving around and picking up random fares in my car without applying for a limousine license or taxi medallion.

But then you get Uber, whose business model was based around ignoring these regulations and scaling to such size where they were too big to prosecute (easily).

Just the same, I'll get fined if I catch too many fish from the local pond whether or not I've gone to the trouble of applying for a fishing license, but Acme Megacorp will go ahead and dump toxic waste into the same pond until it's forcibly stopped from doing so (and the taxpayers are forced to clean it up via Superfund).

Agreed. The little guy has to ask for permission; the big guy can usually ignore it. (There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.) That's why I'm so against the idea that, as a society, we should tilt even more in the direction of asking for permissions.

My ideal is Leary from Demolition Man - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JizGkM6gbvQ - and no, I don't think that leads to living underground.

I disagree.

You're trying to distinguish between privacy and identity.

If there's a dividing line, it's very, very hard to discern.

To be fair, modern privacy laws blur the same lines.

If you collect data about me in the EU, I have legal control over that data. I can order you to give it to me. I can order you to delete it.

Sounds like ownership to me.

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