> Who is talking about secrets?
We both are.
> What I have been saying all along is that none of this information is particularly secret or sensitive.
What is the point of forcing this binary distinction that doesn't exist in reality? There is no binary distinction between "secret" and "public" in reality. There is only information, and effort required to obtain it. "Secret" is the label we commonly use for the end of the spectrum where it's close to impossible to obtain information, "public" was traditionally something along the lines of "can be obtained with medium to no effort".
Just because some information isn't impossible to obtain, doesn't mean that the distinction between "can be obtained with medium effort on a single person" and "can be trivially obtained on everyone" is of no consequence to how information can be used and abused.
> Your address is not a secret. Your employer or the fact that you have children is not a secret. Your religion is not a secret.
Except they all are, to a degree. That is, they are all not necessarily known to you exclusively, but that doesn't mean that there is no difference between everyone knowing their neighbour's religion and a company having a database of the religion of every single person on the planet. This binary distinction that you are insisting on is what is preventing you from seeing the actual structure of the world, and the actual consequences of aggregation of information in the wrong hands.
> Even Jews, who have more cause to be concerned than anyone, do not go to great lengths to hide their religion, nor should they. If anything, many outwardly wear markers of their religion in public, and why should they live in fear and hide as you would have them do?
I would not have them do anything, that's just a problem with your authoritarian attitude. You are only seeing the options of forcing people to do A or forcing people to do B. But the non-authoritarian solution to this problem is to give people the individual choice between A and B. Noone wants to force anyone to hide their religion. But everyone should have the option to do so if they wish, and not be forced to reveal it because that is what you want.
> As you go about interacting with people in the public sphere, you will necessarily expose certain pieces of information about yourself. That is unavoidable. You want to live in a place where the government collects taxes and pays for roads and police and such? Well, then the government is going to need to know your address. You want to have public school for your kids? Well guess what, there's going to have to be a record somewhere that you have kids.
So? How is that relevant to the unnecessary collection of information?
> You want to go to church in an easily accessible building in a public space and not in a secret underground bunker? Well, people are going to be able to see that you go to that church.
See what I wrote above about that useless binary distinction. There is no logical argument connecting "I want to go to church in an easily accessible building in a public space" to "therefore, we must accept that someone is going to archive high-resolution footage and use it to build a detailed profile of me and everyone else visiting that church" or whatever other abuses would be possible with that information that you insist to categorize as "public".
> Unless you want to live alone in the forest as a hermit, a certain amount of information-sharing is necessary to participate in society.
OK. Again: How is that relevant to the unnecessary data collection that happens in addition to that?
> The fact that that information can be collected and aggregated is also unavoidable.
... because? I mean, it sounds like you are saying that it is in principle impossible to ever prevent people from collecting information? As far as I can tell this is a completely unsubstantiated claim, that's also obviously contradicted by reality, where we all the time prevent people from collecting information just fine.
> What happens next, the actions that particular people or groups take with that information, THAT is what is avoidable, and where our efforts should be concentrated.
... because? You are just making those claims, but what is your justification for that?
> The fact that there is a database of people's addresses is not a problem. If there is a goon squad rounding up people at those address, the goon squad is the problem.
Yeah, I got that that is your claim. But just making unsubstantiated claims is not convincing.
I assume that you would agree that a goon squad that wants to round people up but doesn't know where to find them would not be particularly successful with their goal, right? And a goon squad that does know where to find the people and thus does indeed round them up ... would have worse real-world consequences, wouldn't it? And the difference between the two is that one knows the addresses, the other doesn't, right? So, how do you justify then that the difference that decides whether people end up rounded up or not is not a problem?
Mind you, I agree that the existence of a goon squad that wants to round up people is a problem. I am only addressing your claim that the availability of data is not a problem, even though it obviously makes a difference in the consequences.