Privacy is the most important concept of our time

My advice is to try to understand that your judgement is probably not aligned to malice of the intruder, instead verify with friendliness and if they’re still “creepy”, by all means proceed with your action plan.

Love each other and our neighbors. Dude probably just wanted to send it to his girlfriend what he found interesting on the way. Sure the means of communication has changed, but back in the day it would be a photo taken on a Kodak disposable camera and majority of the narrative would have been through story telling.

I'm a millennial and indeed, it seems perfectly normal to take pictures of things you want to remember later. Photographing a person without asking them is more questionable and I can imagine creepy ways to do it, but photographing a house seems 100% unobjectionable. I don't feel that I have any right to privacy when I'm in a public space, someone else taking a photo of me doesn't harm me in any way.

It's unfortunate that the solution seems to be to just leave—(I don't think stopping and trying to make a friend is realistic the vast majority of the time, or even safe sometimes)—and I'm realizing I'm at that same conclusion.

Calling the cops is a ridiculous reaction to just about anything these days other than someone has been shot.

> If I was flat out telling my family I didn't like race X and wished that religion Y could be outlawed, and then shared in the public realm that racists are terrible and that freedom of religion for all is paramount...shouldn't someone be able to call me out on it? And if not me, imagine a person of some power or influence: don't we want to know when someone's public political stance is different to how they really feel?

You can call out people in private for the bad stuff they share in private. However, you are right it is no so clear cut: we need to find balance. The issue is that making a special exception for powerful and influential people it is dangerous because it is not clear who are. In some way almost anybody has some authority: you might be a parent, the go-to guy for technical things in a community, the administrator of a forum or a open-source project, etc.

> If I was flat out telling my family I didn't like race X and wished that religion Y could be outlawed, and then shared in the public realm that racists are terrible and that freedom of religion for all is paramount...shouldn't someone be able to call me out on it? And if not me, imagine a person of some power or influence: don't we want to know when someone's public political stance is different to how they really feel?

perhaps it's because I'm privileged, but I don't really see how this is a problem? does it really matter if someone holds abhorrent beliefs privately if everything they do in public (and at their job) is consistent with their publicly espoused views? if instead of only confiding in close family members, the person abused the privacy protection to spread their views to many private groups, this would start to blur the line.

a more clear cut example would be if someone privately expressed a credible and imminent plan to harm someone else. you would definitely want an exception for that.

I want to see my social graph across different proprietary data stores and either charge a dime for use of my data, or reclaim a node.

Auth is one issue, building that graph is another, and hiding data from regulators is the last I can think of right now.

Regardless, the sentiment remains.

When I write this comment, it's work. I made some content for y'all. But if a scraper comes through and builds a social profile of me, it should compensated or controllable in some form.

I wasn't selling this data, but it's not really anyone else's data to sell either. Even if ycomb decides they are going to sell this information, I'd like to know that.

IDK what the solution is. It's probably reclaiming ownership via private servers. It's probably grand trust and code contracts. It's probably even a mandated anonymity filter where PII is opt-in by default and only a certain degree of information can be traded.

I am just under the impression that there has been a massive overreach and that the majority of people online have lost control.

No, not your business. You're not supposed to know everything about everyone.

I think this goes to the heart of the problem with the article in the OP. Everyone knowing everyone's business leads to a lot of good things. Like if you knew a subordinate was beating their wife you'd probably fire them. But since they beat her in the privacy of their own home they get away with it.

More broadly, if everyone knew everyone that smoked pot or was homosexual or cheated on their taxes there would be pressure to change some laws and follow others. Social shaming is a powerful tool. Like any tool it can be used for good and for evil.

The assumption that privacy is protection against anything isn't supported by history. The Nazis, the Soviets, the Chinese, the Khmer Rouge, along with many others all conducted their reign of terrors without the use of modern surveillance. Privacy was no shield then and would be no shield now. The only real protection is not letting people like that into power.

( aside from other points: )

But it seems political positions are somewhat arbitrarily chosen within the many possible positions and position-combinations and then you also have to change in lockstemp or not? So you have two parties (or a few more in different systems) and they have largely adopted specific positions, so you have to decide on one of the two positions on a issue (e.g. democrats with high taxes dont like corporations etc -> need to be in favour of high corporate taxes instead of vat+no corporate taxes+vat and redistribution-transfers 2) and then share their specific combination (instead of pro-choice rep or pro-gun dem etc)(and there are so many positions that you have to keep track of like tax-structure (income, vat, corporate-tax(corporations are bad -> high tax etc)), abortion, guns, climate change, lgbt, religion/religious-freedom, foreign policy 1) for all these positions and then also change whats your positions somewhat in lockstep with the party (eg support/opposition for foreign inventions, sexual, crime (90s vs today etc), gun rights (like how police unions used to be in favour etc)). (But if you loo at any issue objectively/remotely (i dont mean like objectively right, but somewhat separated from partisan-/party-influence) it seems like people would get to a wide variety of positions on just one issue (just like there are hundreds of possible positions) and then an even greater variety of combinations of this variety of positions (and then againan even greater variety in changes of positions and position-combinations etc).)

Not saying it doesnt make sense to have political duopoly (of alliances) so that complicated and unclear will can be somehow translated into power/actions. But asking a politician to honestly believe what he says seems somewhat like asking them to never remotely look at things and just try to directly assimilate into him whatever polls good for some time (without really any inner thinking or critical judgement etc a bit like a robot etc)(because all that wouldnt do that would then need to resign latest at the next position-change and only would remain etc).

Shouldn't it be OK to call you out for your regressive hate speach? He said the N word in private! Nuggets! How very dare. Don't we all have a right to know that secretly he wishes he was still allowed to eat nuggets?

Physical locks also rely on a minority that truly understand them. A bit less true now that you can find lockpicking tutorials all over the place, but most people just trust their locksmith, who, in turn, trust lock manufacturers.

> And no encryption has ever gone unbroken with time.

Depends on what you are meaning by "broken" and by "time". For example MD5 is broken for collision, but not for preimage, and some algorithms are broken only in theory. As for time, what do you mean? 5 year, 50 years, the age of the universe? And anyways, it is the same for almost every security measure, including physical locks.

> Should there even be a contrived concept of property in the digital universe?

It is an interesting subject because you are probably going to get very different answers if you are talking about DRM or if you are talking about personal data, even though they are both tied to the concept of property. And in every case, it is backed by law. A burglar is not allowed to steal your stuff because your lock is weak, and picking a lock without permission from the owner is illegal. In the same way distributing copies of copyrighted material is illegal without a license, especially if you crack the DRM, and personal data is protected by law (unless you give a license).

Absolutely. Property in law designates rights. Frequently multiple different types of rights are bundled and coexist. This enables the same physical property to be the subject of several and often competing interests e.g. ownership, possession, custody, freehold, leasehold, legal and equitable interests. Having a property right means being able to exclude others from that property to a greater or lesser extent. This may then be modified in different legal contexts but not radically. The statement holds true grosso modo. Online property rights are modelled on traditional property rights without need for more. The discussion of online property is normally about rights of transferring, managing etc. or rights in the manner of acquisition, dealing, disposal etc. Of course this refers to physical assets, but since property is rights and these are created and managed digitally it is online property ipso facto.

Economics hasn't really caught up with the situation of zero marginal cost enabled by computers and the internet. Surely there must be a better way than artificially limiting supply?

AES somehow evaded it since 1998. Coincidentally it was selected in the first open competition.

I know that Benjamin Franklin said this in a completely different context and for another purpose, [1] but it makes sense to me to repeat his saying:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Both are existential threats with high degrees of uncertainty.

As a devil's advocate, if EVERYTHING, absolutely everything was public, and "common knowledge" and accepted (you sleep without clothes, oh god! scandal!) a lot of things would be easier.

Of course the fact that people are judged for their choices is what makes us value privacy... but the right thing would be for them NOT to be judged by those choices.

I understand at the basic level it is an unpopular opinion, but I submit this as a thought process on the same level that Asimov, Heinlein and other SciFi authors proposed to test our basic social assumptions.

When they control your every move through an invasion of privacy how can they stop burning the oil that fuels you lest they lose their position of power?

Privacy is a social problem. Automation is too(And my guess in the near future, it would be a much bigger problem).

Social problems get resolved very slowly, if at all. So those 2 seem more worrysome.

There's an old saying about this: "Good Fences make Good Neighbors". A fence (border) make it easy to say "you can't plant that tree there."

Borders (largely) define where one government can affect resources claimed by another government. For example, it would suck if it was easy for the US to send loggers into Canada's forests because the US claims that those forests belong to them. A border makes it clear that "forest X is within Canada's borders, and thus belongs to Canada".

The location of the border may still be disputed, but it simplifies a lot of other interactions.

On the flip side, borders also make it easier to create accountability for a resource (like who maintains roads near/between countries).

Indeed, here are two papers on this topic that might be of interest: A Taxonomy of Privacy (Solove, 2005) [0], Conceptualizing Privacy (Solove, 2005) [1].

[0] https://ssrn.com/abstract=667622 , mirrored https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

[1] https://ssrn.com/abstract=313103 , mirrored https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

If we limit ourselves to this sentence then I agree wholeheartedly, and it’s a bigger problem than just politics. For example, many scientists in Sweden simply don’t agree that Richard Feynman’s description of the scientific method is a fairly good one. Fewer and fewer people seem interested in learning anything, but that doesn’t stop them from claiming to know everything better than the giants on who’s shoulders we used to stand. Fundamental concepts (like the scientific method) seem to be losing their meaning, being replaced with just ritual.

It is not just what we say, they also judge who we are in their own terms.

> It's the news cycle, the constant barrage of irrelevant information. The murder of effective discussion and thought.

I agree that it is a big problem. In some ways we are the most educated civilizations in the history of mankind and yet public discourse is the stupidest it has ever been. I think this happens also [1] because everything we said is taken out of context, therefore only the simplest ideas can travel among the public. Imagine that you are a politician that want to disagree with their own party, what do you think people will hear more probably: 1) they are a traitor 2) they fully support our cause, however they disagree with this particular course of action because X

Without spaces and community in which we can discuss freely and with trust, complex opinions are difficult to form and defend. Since most discussions are either moved online or are easily shareable online by even one party we need strong privacy norms to allow such discussions to happen.

[1] it is not the only reason, of course

http://www.seth-smith.org.uk/images/laughter/expletives.pdf

https://www.businessinsider.com/brainstorming-sessions-begin...

http://keele.ac.uk/media/keeleuniversity/facnatsci/schpsych/...

https://www.medicaldaily.com/bad-words-people-who-curse-and-...

What you say about private communities is also true. However, I was referring more to the fact that everybody seem to nonchalantly use violent words and dangerous statements to express their disagreement, i.e., people are not just wrong, they are evil bastards that must be removed from public life and the nation itself.

If you think of stormfront when talking about privacy, you seem to have learned that from pretty strange sources.

"Privacy cloisters extremism" is a pretty insane statement to be honest.

The connection between freedom of speech and privacy was just an example of how privacy affect other rights, too. I used it because I did not want to be too abstract. I used just one example, because I did not want to write too much on this. I wanted to write something that could be shared and read by a few people, rather than just hardcore privacy enthusiast.

Actually I really like your observations. Frankly this is another way (maybe a better one) to say what I was thinking:

>Privacy is about denying other people the information that they may use to obtain power over you in some way.

Violation of privacy might lead to the situation that someone will be unemployed forever because of something that he or she wrote 20 years ago on Facebook or employees managed to fetch data that a person was depressed, has many kids, etc.

Massive abuse of privacy will lead sooner or later to some kind corporate version of Chinese social score system. For now it looks innocent, someone gave you a bad ranking on AirBnB, who cares? But in 10 years some bad ranking on some future social platform might keep person homeless because nobody will want to rent a flat because someone's kids stained the walls in the rented apartment.

Those in poverty, unemployed, in debts will be first victims of such system.

Health care -- it's too expensive

Wages -- Working a 40 and being able to make it in a reasonable, modest way.

Environment -- Things are changing rapidly, risk goes up, cost goes up

People are concerned about privacy, and it's important, but basic life is well above it on the radar.

Your comment seconded, the point being "most important" is very highly debatable, depending on what one may be experiencing.

And I would add, improvements on all those fronts would free people to get more involved, and that may well impact how well we can address privacy.

The whole most important is a straw man kinda argument anyway, because it's possibly to have more than one "very important thing", and for the difficult stuff in life you often can't optimize for just one thing.

Exploiting private information has also made some companies very rich. There is an element of fairness of distribution here... If you take from me what I have not willingly given and you make huge profits, you should share your wealth and/or invest in my community.

I agree that people who live in a democracy are privileged. Whether they will be wise enough to contribute depends on their education.

But education is a hard problem. Instead of citizens, we often find foolish purchase-zombies. "Why vote? It's all so corrupt, what can we do? Let's go to the sale instead!"

At this point I do my best to avoid social media , theirs a ton of potential downside for very little benefit.

In case of cars though wrong design choices in older cars could be phased out eventually but in case of online platforms the choices will remain there for more number of people in terms of market penetration given the explosion social networks are having in the last decade. Even if vast majority of people prioritize other things over privacy, vocal and knowledgeable minority need to raise the concerns of the choices unknowingly being made by less knowledgeable people.

Lot of people do not have the luxury to focus on privacy concerns, the same way lot of people do not have the luxury to care or focus on climate issues. Does that make privacy and climate concerns something reserved for "people with privileged life"? It seems quite clear to me that's not the case. They are both a concern for everyone but some have more freedom to spend time caring about them. Lot of people are struggling with other more immediate issues, but that doesn't reduce in any case the importance of privacy.

When those nations are solved from their immediate problems, they will also need to deal with privacy and these ethical questions. We just have a head start and we can already ask the the questions and find solutions for it.

I would hardly call life in the GDR 'privileged'.

It's easy to forget today and from a Western point of view that privacy is a basic human right, not a feature of your smartphone to protect from tracking ads.

Famine, debt, etc are well known issues but we know about them from bygone eras.

Privacy is changing in ways that are only apparent recently. Who'd have thought 20 years ago about your personal data being mined for profit? Apart from a few forward thinkers, probably not too many.

The hardness to maintain privacy will be used as a means of significant control over access to money in all ways.

Also: I hate your use of "priviledge" to argue anything anytime in any context without a proper thought. You haven't even made a point.

Freedom and equality are also competing concepts. If you make everyone equal, you have to limit the freedom of some people. Then again without equality your freedom is very likely limited.

Sometimes they’re quiet online about their sexuality, or that they are trans; sometimes it is about politics; sometimes it is about religion; sometimes drug use or attitudes about legalisation.

They all talked to me about those things IRL, but the lack of privacy online means they can’t comfortably reach out online to others in the same position as themselves.

In the example I was talking about in the article, I was trying to say that nowadays people have different norms and opinions on what is fair. That is great, however this means that without privacy I can hurt you simply by sharing something about you with a a certain community. For instance, I can take something you said in private, or one fact about you (i.e., you are a member of party X, or have a certain sexuality, or belong to a certain religion) and share with a community that will misinterpret or attack you for that.

In the past we allowed the press to violate privacy of important people for something nefarious (i.e., they hunt people for sport). Now everybody has the power to violate privacy of anybody for any reason they see fit.

So, now maybe we should forbid everyone to violate the privacy of anyone, otherwise we will lose freedom of speech, because will be afraid to say anything for fear of being taken out of context. Maybe we should all agree that if you disagree with somebody you cannot call a mob to defend your opinion, but you should call them with your speech. That is not an obvious choice to make. As others have commented, what about actually powerful people? Just disagreeing with them will not change their opinion, because they are more powerful than you. So, I am not saying that is easy to understand what to do, but that privacy can actually change how we use other rights.

He described a moment when he was in a tiny midwest town, walking down the sidewalk, and a fella passed him and said, "Hi Jerry." very casually and kept walking. He said that was the greatest thing ever.

- - - -

You're right that "something" is threatened. I once tried to offer to help people quit smoking on a "quit smoking" support forum and my God did they ever give me hell for it. I'm sure that if it had been IRL I might have been in physical danger.

I had found a technique that helped me quit smoking and I wanted to try it out with other people. The folks on the forum were outraged. Howling mad. They called me a scammer and worse, and clucked to each other about "how dare he?", and basically did their best to make me feel like shit.

It was shocking, I was shocked.

I can't imagine (despite being something of a "fringe" character) what it would be like for a major portion of your life to fall into the burn-the-heretic category. You have my sympathy! Hang in there! "Don't let the turkeys get you down!"

The majority of ways people are giving up privacy right now are optional - it's a consequence of using certain devices and software products. By declaring privacy dead you're only opening the door for things to get worse and for privacy violations to become non-optional - constant tracking devices that you can't take off, your home being monitored by default instead of your having to bring in a device that listens to you, no option to use encryption and so on.

To answer your question, I think people have much less agency than we think we do. Our brains run the show, not our minds. It would take so much energy to do something about e.g. surveillance capitalism that the brain settles on a useful illusion (agency) and ignores the data that would require energy expenditure for dubious returns (most people in the panopticon are doing relatively well, eh?)

It's not a very good answer, I know, but I have been convinced that there's no deeper reason. It's caloric cheaper to be a good "coppertop" than to wake up and become "Neo". (Yes, a Matrix reference. I am not ashamed.)

These are very intrinsically-linked concepts.

I think here privacy is very important as it allows identity-trying. If there is no privacy then somebody can't try different incompatible identities that they find interesting and they also need to be very careful in their current identity not to anything that is permissible in their currenty identity, but might be a problem in future identities (theyre behavior is limited activities that are current-identity approved and all possible future-identities approved.) E.g. non-major drug-crimes like posession might not be seen as very bad in your current country/setting but when immigrating to the US they seem to play a big role1 (kidnapping/robbery can get waived, almost all drugs not iiuc). (somewhat related to some parts of mysticism) E.g. someone who lives openly gay(/or in faith/opinion/group) in a region but might want to return to his more negative former country where it would be better to hide this tendencies from family umfeld/authorities (eg during an college exchange term or whatever). This basically goes for everything whether it be a complete lifestyle (eg hippies vs traditional business executive (in 60s archetypes) or whatever people do or just their personal or political/world-view opinions (eg personx thinks persony is z or political opinion or whatever or worldview from like causality to like what determines behavior or basis of justice/legitimacy of behavior etc)) And in general depth of social bonding is strongly related to trust and intimacy and that is greatly facilitated by privacy (eg when you google psychologist one suggestion is even indicating that people love their psychologists and maybe also this experiement2))(edit: could be further facilitated with privacy-regulation (like with formerly mentioned psychologists or sexting that we already have)

2: some study where two people together do a quiz on personal questions and then they love each other afterwards iirc (there was some nyt-article about it)(possibly very stupid study dont know just an suggestion) EDIT: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/style/no-37-big-wedding-o... (google-result) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866933 was discussed here (possibly different to nyt-link) i think i read the article and dont think i read the study or not more than the abstract if (but im not sure about complete former sentence) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014616729723400...

1: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/for-what-types-crime... You may be able to get a waiver if you are inadmissible for one of the following: a crime involving moral turpitude (except for murder or torture) two or crimes with a combined sentence of five years or more (except for murder or torture) one offense relating to simple possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana prostitution or commercialized vice, or having committed a serious criminal offense, claimed immunity for that offense (for example, diplomatic immunity), and left the United States, without thereafter being prosecuted in a U.S. court for that offense. You will not be eligible for a waiver if you are inadmissible for one of the following: any drug crime (other than an offense related to simple possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana) drug trafficking murder or torture significant trafficking in persons money laundering, or having committed a particularly severe violation of religious freedom while serving as a foreign government official. [eg getting a waiver doesnt seem simple at all, but they couldnt even get one]

Please, do not use theory as a synonym for hypothesis. Evidence has failed to validate the anarchy hypothesis at scale.

In my experience real anarchy, in the way you describe, has never been achieved. So, when I hear that it reminds me when people say that real comunism is great, it is just that the URSS was bad, fake communism (it happens here in Italy, not sure if that happens where you are). The only historical anarchy that I know is the one where there is no control. Maybe we can do a better version in the future, but for now that it is what happened.

To be fair, I am Italian, so maybe I am overreacting on the whole barbarians thing.