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Comment by fsflover | Hacker News Reader

This is completely missing the point of why one should fight surveillance. Surveillance harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. It’s sort of like freedom of speech is necessary not just for journalists, but for everyone, even if you have nothing to say.

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>making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy,

Then I much rather for everyone to have no privacy so it level the playing field.

I don't have to worry about having to hide stuff.

You're onto the right idea I think. But the only way for everyone to have the same level of privacy, is to everyone have their privacy. Because since you can achieve privacy, in a world where it would be mandated to have no privacy, the powerful would still have ways to achieve it, while the less powerful wouldn't - and thereby making the world unjust. No level playing field.

It's also not you who should be worrying about hiding stuff. That would be the job of everything you use; making sure that they don't get sued or worse for violating your privacy. In the world where privacy is a properly enforced human right, of course.

As technology getting better and better, it becoming more and more difficult to hide information. Imagine smaller and smaller device that can record more and more information and transmit it faster and faster.

Information wants to be free.

Its simply more pragmatic approach to embrace and adapt to transparency.

> the powerful would still have ways to achieve it, while the less powerful wouldn't

The imbalance of power come from information asymmetry. e.g The government has more information then the citizen thus they are more powerful but if we strive for transparency for both side then the playing field is leveled.

Sure you can do that by privacy for both side but then you are fighting against the progress of technology.

I think I could say similar arguments, but for supporting privacy, instead of transparency. The imbalance of power absolutely arises from the information asymmetry, but we can't really design a system where everyone is equally watched, because some will have ways to hide some of their information, and therefore increase their power, and by that power hide even more information. Until you deny humans every form of autonomy, they'll have ways to achieve this, and will strive for this, and so transparency not just doesn't work, but in fact makes the power imbalance even worse.

Also, I don't think you can embrace transparency, no matter how much you'd like to, because of how humans work. How they work is of course not objectively described (yet), but the importance of privacy is recognized in places like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which describes individual privacy not less than a basic human right. Or, looking at the opposite, constant exposure can lead to things like the Chilling Effect, which, in layman terms, means always-on self-censoring due to constantly being watched, and therefore exposed to consequences. Which would indicate of the failure of the people embracing transparency.

>I think I could say similar arguments, but for supporting privacy, instead of transparency. The imbalance of power absolutely arises from the information asymmetry, but we can't really design a system where everyone is equally watched, because some will have ways to hide some of their information, and therefore increase their power, and by that power hide even more information. Until you deny humans every form of autonomy, they'll have ways to achieve this, and will strive for this, and so transparency not just doesn't work, but in fact makes the power imbalance even worse

Embracing and learning on how to adapt on transparency is the only feasible way. Technology is always progressing. As technology progresses information becoming easier, cheaper, faster to transmit.

Good luck trying to stop the progress of technology.

Yes someone will always try to hide they can try but its going to be come more and more difficult and increasingly costly.

>Also, I don't think you can embrace transparency, no matter how much you'd like to, because of how humans work

what do you mean by this ? How human works in this context according to you ?

>but the importance of privacy is recognized in places like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights,

Just because its written there doesn't mean its set in stone.

I certainly disagree that privacy is a rights.

>Or, looking at the opposite, constant exposure can lead to things like the Chilling Effect,

It can lead to that but then we should fix those thing instead of privacy

I'm not saying that transparency can solve everything. I'm saying that we learn/adapt on living with transparency.

>which, in layman terms, means always-on self-censoring due to constantly being watched,

When the root of the issue is fixed, the need of self-censoring is disappear.

Re "How humans work": My underlying argument is that humans are and behave in a certain way, and you can't change that. Humans, just live everything else, cannot be molded into anything you can imagine. There are certain constraints, certain effects that will happen no matter what, desires that always manifest themselves. Trying to break this, get over it, circumvent it or pretend that they don't exist won't work on the long run. We know this because many have tried, and failed.

But, what you can do is build on the collective experience of humanity. And that's what I was trying to do, when I picked the human rights declaration and the chilling effect, as two examples of the relationship of humans and their privacy.

You also write that some underlying issues need to be fixed. What issues do you mean by this? What is the root cause that you'd like to fix?

>Re "How humans work": My underlying argument is that humans are and behave in a certain way, and you can't change that. Humans, just live everything else, cannot be molded into anything you can imagine.

Disagree, if anything its the contrary, human as like any other living organism always evolve, always changing. Its language, its culture is constantly evolving/changing, even its physique.

>You also write that some underlying issues need to be fixed. What issues do you mean by this? What is the root cause that you'd like to fix?

Lets take one example, assume I'm gay. Let say If people know I'm gay I will be discriminated. There is 2 way to solve this issue: Hide that I'm gay or fix the discrimination issue. I would much prefer the later approach.

When the underlying issue is fixed, I would not need for self-censoring.

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