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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

> Move, the owner of real-estate app Realtor.com—which sent information to Facebook about properties that users liked, according to the Journal’s tests—said “we strictly adhere to all local, state and federal requirements,” and that its privacy policy “clearly states how user information is collected and shared.” The policy says the app collects a variety of information, including content in which users are interested, and may share it with third parties. It doesn’t mention Facebook.

Then local, state, and federal requirements are lacking. "Privacy" is taking a new meaning in today's world than what it would have been understood to mean previously. Yes, I think the scope of the concept of privacy needs to expand to match the expanding capabilities of all actors to violate it. We could have more privacy by living like Ted Kaczynski but that's not conducive to participating in today's society.

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> "Privacy" is taking a new meaning in today's world than what it would have been understood to mean previously.

Try to imagine the most personal and private thing about a person, what would it be? Their medical and biological information, of course! In the future we'll be able to look at 3d renders of our body systems, see real-time health statistics, and be able to discover our ailments near instantaneously.

Now, who else should have this data? In my opinion, only the doctor. Definitely not the government, and definitely not my neighbors. Possibly some businesses for product development. Possibly medical researchers, for educational advancement.

I'd rather have the government have it than any company. The government's (usual) mission statement, in practice, is our well-being; any company's mission statement, in practice, is money.

Governments have far more capacity to harm people though.

But we have far more capacity to change governments.

Why do you say that?

Far more industry leading companies (much less companies as a whole) have rose and fall in power, changed their goals/products/management/etc in the past 5/15/50/etc years than governments. Turnover is far higher in corporation management positions than congresses and parliaments, and further, there is no law saying that I have to buy any specific good from a company, whereas I don't get a choice in which government I pay to build the the roads or police where I have established my life.

Do you mean you would rather have our current government to have the data, or a specially crafted government that we can control?

If you pick the former, then I'll assume that you're naive to the abuses in our government. If you pick the latter, then I'm going to leave and be productive somewhere else, because you're never going to get it.

> Definitely not the government, ... Possibly some businesses for product development.

Presumely, usage by the business would be open-ended and very openly for the gain of the company first.

Meanwhile, a government agency were (at least in theory) bound by publicly available purposes and regulations.

Out of curiosity, why would you trust the private company more than a government agency?

I understand your point though and definitely agree with your on the sensitivity of the data.

American government is something unique. The Constitution provides a framework for operation, and the Bill of Rights restricts the government from alienating our implied/explicit rights. Originally the federal government was meant to be small, while the states were supposed to manage civil laws (see A9/A10). Since 9/11, I've seen insane power grabs at the federal level, in what I see as an attempt to get citizens accustomed to having their rights washed away (see Patriot Act, NDAA, TSA, NSA hacking tools, etc...).

Put simply, I personally don't trust the American government at the federal level, and it's hard to find reasons why anyone should. People who restrain criticisms of the feds often like to pretend that all they need to do to prevent corruption is get into office any make the changes we want. Unfortunately that's extremely naive and huge waste of effort, especially when Congress has no term limits. I believe the only way to reign in federal abuse is by taking its power away.

My point here is that the government has a long track record for abuse at the highest degree, quite literally, and giving them my most personal and private data is terrifying. The problem is that we can't change governments on a whim, thus if we have a crappy one, we have to deal with it. In a free market however, if a corporation is caught with abuses, we can bury them in court and move to a competitor.

Yes, the free market is making it very easy to move away from Facebook.

Is this sarcasm? Because I'm fine without Facebook and there are plenty of social media options.

Yes, it was sarcasm. They're more entrenched than you'd like to admit. They have a monopoly on social networking, they control a huge portion of digital advertising, and together with Google, they've bought a huge swath of Washington D.C. (see McNamee's new book). The results aren't surprising: regular abuse of customers, exploitation of human psychology to cultivate addiction, the peddling of a harmful product to minors. They're a consolidated version of the cigarette industry. Free markets ain't working—we antitrust action and regulation.

You are not compelled by law to use it. You may be addicted but it is a different problem. So the short answer is it just you that makes it difficult.

> You may be addicted but it is a different problem.

Not everyone is addicted, but rather Facebook has become arguably necessary because of its network effect.

Facebook has become the de facto standard of communication in some institutions. For example, in some universities, important notices on due dates or class cancellations is done solely through Facebook. One may be very heavily pressured to use it.

The original article points out that you don't even have to use Facebook yourself for someone else to put your data there.

That's true, and I'm not sure what rights Americans have in this case, it's hard to tell. Could claim defamation possibly, or impersonation?

The usual one that's claimed it that it's facebook's free speech. Can't defame someone with unpublished, accurate information ..

I suppose they do have a right to express what they observe.

Yeah, and kids aren't compelled by law to smoke. If you think that Facebook addiction is the result of human weakness, you need to wake up. Facebook has methodically exploited human psychology for years to cultivate addiction. Check out Roger McNamee's new book.

By the way, I don't have a Facebook account.

> not the government

Point of information: "the government" should not be regarded as a monolithic entity unless it actually behaves as such. As a Brit, my medical records are held by the nationalised health service, but this doesn't mean that random cabinet ministers or police can go leafing through them on a whim.

For me, they're held with https://nhsnss.org/how-nss-works/ ; quite a lot of England actually has them held by a private company, Serco.

(edit: should probably add another distinction between "illegal" and "doesn't happen at all")

As a Brit, my medical records are held by the nationalised health service, but this doesn't mean that random cabinet ministers or police can go leafing through them on a whim.

Yet.

If they decide to legislate to read them, the fact that they're stored in a private company, on a blockchain, or on the surface of the moon becomes irrelevant.

No it doesn't. A private company has an obligation by contract to protect that information, even from the government. Our 4th amendment privacy rights apply to businesses as well.

Edit: I thought we were talking about America.

The answer for America, as far as I can determine from brief googling of a foreign legal system, is "no it doesn't": https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/huse-v-texas/ and https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/court-of-criminal-appeals... ?

> obligation by contract to protect that information, even from the government

Contract never trumps statute anywhere.

> Contract never trumps statute anywhere.

The 4th Amendment to privacy trumps statues everywhere (i.e. neither the feds nor state can just legislate their ability to read private company data). The contract between the customer and the org. should prevent the org. from just handing it over willingly.

The 4th amendment having any legislative teeth is honestly a joke at this point. The NSA spying programs show the US government has very little interest in upholding the 4th amendment.

Now, does this mean no company will take the government to court to protect their user data? Maybe not, but the list of companies that I can think of which will do that is vanishingly small. And let's not forget that the AT&T NSA spying case was dismissed by the appeals court, and was not accepted by review in the supreme court. Do you think the outcome would be any different next time?

This is where I express my concern that the American government is operating outside of the Constitution and are guilty of violating our rights. Many constitutionists consider these three-letter agencies to be entirely unconstitutional.

Sure, and I'm in favour of constitutional bills of rights (in Australia we have no strong protections of that kind, it's mostly ad-hoc and common law with the only really significant protection being the "on just terms" concept of compulsory acquisition).

The problem is that if there is no way to effectively "petition a redress of grievances" (to borrow a phrase) about some constitutional violations, what is the point of that clause of the constitution? If you have legal protections of your rights, you must also have a court system that is willing to actually hold the government to account over violations of your rights -- and my impression of the US (as an outsider) is that this is not the case for 4th amendment violations.

Yeah, and I really wish I had a better solution than just excavating the cancerous parts of the government, but Americans aren't very rehearsed on the Constitution or their rights, and finding people who openly advocate for them in their entirety is rare.

I think we need need term limits in Congress, so the same stale minds can't dominate forever. Also I think states should start flexing their 10th amendment rights to show the feds that they care about their rights (state legalization of drugs, prostitution for example).

In general our court system is fairly good at upholding constitutional rights. It's not uncommon for a trial to be thrown out because some evidence was collected without a warrant, for example. However you're right that certain events question the viability of upholding our rights against a tyrannically government. That of course is why the 2nd amendment exists.

> on a blockchain

Fuck that! Seriously. Why do people keep wanting to put data on the blockchain? All that does is make the data public. Sure, it can't be decrypted __now__, but do you want to take the risk that it will always be encrypted? Even if you update the security of the entire chain the previous blocks are still decryptable (and we repeat the with same problem).

We don't need a fully audit-able system this type of data. There are advantages to centralized data systems and I would even take a decentralized approach over a BC method. Unless you can give a very compelling reason why the data needs to be audit-able through the entire history.

Not even the ones with friends at GHCQ et al?

I value your idea about language, and sometimes I use 'government' in general terms. In your example however, I believe given the opportunity, scumbag ministers and police would indeed look into people's medical records, and would indeed abuse this information.

As an American, I'm constantly upset with our government's abuses, especially by our police and their access to otherwise private info.

Not that it's not happening, but the ICO seems to be consistently ruling that it's illegal: https://www.digitalhealth.net/2017/08/ico-warns-nhs-staff-th... ; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/07/03/googles-de...

More on confidentiality: https://www.gponline.com/confidentiality-when-gps-disclose-i...

Speaking of Kaczynski his manifesto points to quite a few of these problems that are happening now. Also, I'm not endorsing him or anything he did but do find it interesting that some of his technology fears are correct.

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