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Comment by sushisource | Hacker News Reader

The thing I've never really understood about this is... to what end? I get that, on a philosophical level, it sucks that in theory your privacy can be violated and that choice has been taken from you.

But on a practical level, that's just wildly unlikely to ever happen or ever have an impact on a normal person's life, so why stress about it?

Don't get me wrong, it's not to say we shouldn't advocate for govt. orgs not doing this sort of thing - but I also don't know why you'd spend so much time and mental energy trying to avoid a theoretical bogeyman.

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This is similar to the flawed "nothing to hide" argument. "Nothing to fear"?

Data is eternal, and is analyzed and aggregated forever. Just because there's nothing realistically to fear _today_, doesn't mean that a future AI won't find reasons in that data to label you a terrorist/murderer/wrongthinker, and apply whatever policies are deemed acceptable at that time. We're really not far off from a Minority Report future.

This may happen by accident, BTW. "Whoops, we sentenced you to prison on a wrong conviction" happens far too frequently. People spend decades getting out of the system once they're already in it, and lives are ruined by this.

You can think of all this as hypothetical, but realistically, there are other concerns as well. Do you trust your government to keep the data they collect on you safe from corporations and other governments? Aside from the top intelligence echelons—and maybe not even those, I'm not sure—governments are awful at information security. Data leaks can happen anytime without your awareness, at which point you can only hope that you're not an interesting target for whoever now has access.

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument#Criti...

> But on a practical level, that's just wildly unlikely to ever happen or ever have an impact on a normal person's life, so why stress about it?

Because, one day, you will make a mistake or say something wrong. And then they will correlate this wirh all the information they have about you.

Remember NKVD ? Remember STASI ? Remember Gestapo ? Remember CIA ?

Currently in the United States, several people who organized a bail fund for protesters are sitting in jail on terrorism charges.

In the 50s, people who organized civil rights bail funds were called in front of the Anti-American Activities Committee to be blacklisted from their careers and communities.

If anything, privacy is incredibly important because the powers at be continue to prove they will use state-sanctioned violence against people who protest these systems. We like to tell ourselves its only those other bad countries, but rights in the US are just as delicate. Enough money or power behind a charge and you have to real ability to uphold your rights.

I always wonder about consequences for today's children. One can't take away those things from them as all friends use it, but who knows who might have all the information about them in 50 years time, for whatever purpose.

All the information on who they are friends with, where they hang out, maybe even contents of images or text messages, the searches they did on the net. In a period of the life where the try out many things and often are curious. And then combined with details about their whole life and career.

> One can't take away those things from them as all friends use it

I personally assure you that you can. You also don’t need to have cable tv, YouTube or unlimited video games. The positive impacts can be significant

I denied cellphones, live tv, anything with ads, unfiltered internet, Roblox, TikTok and many other things until they were 16+ and could demonstrate self restraint and future-oriented decision making abilities.

Don’t abdicate your responsibility to your own flesh and blood to anyone.

I've largely removed ads from my life about 5 years ago. I've saved so much money not being manipulated into wanting something I didn't really want and certainly don't need.

> Wildly unlikely to ever happen or ever have an impact on a normal person's life, so why stress about it?

Every time government abuses its power and isn't held accountable, the likelihood of future abuses goes up. Eventually the frog is fully boiled, and "wildly unlikely" becomes "commonplace."

> But on a practical level, that's just wildly unlikely to ever happen or ever have an impact on a normal person's life, so why stress about it?

Even assuming that's true for an ordinary person, which I don't think it is, let's consider what constitutes an ordinary person. Maybe it has no effect - if you never run for office. Or if you never participate in a political campaign. Or if you never challenge the political status quo with direct action. Or if you never run a business and express views that could be viewed as potentially threatening the status quo. Et cetera. In other words, it's fine if we're controlled as long as you're ok being controlled. But if you think, "I'd like things to be different," you're in danger, because the police and other government orgs know everything about you.

Don't ever speak up, don't ever take a position, don't ever have a thought.

But even that's not enough.

Stuff can happen that's not under your control. Suppose you're accused of a crime because you fit a profile or were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or you're actively framed for a crime because you fit a profile close enough. Or suppose you witness a government official being corrupt or breaking the law. Or suppose you don't take a bribe and those offering the bribe take revenge. Or a psycho develops an infatuation with you and stalks you. Or you piss off the wrong person in an online game and the 2030s version of being "SWAT"ed is getting ratted out to the wrongthink police by some snot-nosed teenager.

The fact is that no one should hold this data about anyone. No one should have that kind of power. That's the bedrock of privacy.

Not just privacy, but egalitarianism and justice. A society is not fair nor just when its members hold asymmetric power over others.

But on a practical level, that's just wildly unlikely to ever happen or ever have an impact on a normal person's life

Wait for an advanced AI to get hold on that information. Not even for its own purposes, just one serving a rival power.

every once in a while I take a look at someone's phone who is not techically saavy.

Constant stream of beeps and buzzes, notifications, text messages and phone calls from unknown origin, phishing attempts and more. They are conditioned to enter their phone number or email for the most trivial of reasons, to use apps for everything, and to leave them on their phone forever, sapping their attention and privacy.

I think it's nice to see people pushing back and telling others about it.

I think you should help normalize the pushing back, not the giving in.

For the same reason you vote, stop buying products, and read history books.

To shape the society you want to live in.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/24...

> But on a practical level, that's just wildly unlikely to ever happen or ever have an impact on a normal person's life, so why stress about it?

There are a number of ways to answer this.

This is the type of mentality that led to sudden surprise with "What? We have to take our shoes and belts off? Not just those guys but us?" It is an example of how ignoring the issues could end up having them affect you.

At the time of this writing, there are over 270 comments in this thread. I submit to you that it is very likely that multiple commenters have been directly impacted. I've known two people charged with bogus terrorism offenses. One of them stuck it out, had his day in court, and was acquitted - at the cost of over a million dollars in legal fees that his family had to pay. The other guy was not as wealthy and was presented with a fantastic deal by the prosecutors that he took the deal and pleaded guilty. He's out of prison now but with that record, his life is ruined. And he very likely was not guilty.

Another guy I know was messed up by the government on similar grounds - it destroyed his livelihood and cost him his marriage. He did, however, manage to (mostly successfully) sue the government for what they did to him, although one of the suits went to the Supreme Court and he lost the case there. He didn't have the means to mount these lawsuits - thank heavens for the ACLU who did it on his behalf!

I know a few people who were on no fly lists for extensive periods of time. They were never accused of anything. Just all of a sudden ... could not fly.

My gentle suggestion is that you expand your social circle to get to know how not rare these things are.

I also submit that more people are directly impacted by this than are directly impacted by gun violence. Would you agree we should chill out about guns?

If you're white, you are a lot less likely to be impacted by police brutality than an African American. Would you argue that white people shouldn't be bothered by the issue?

Having said all that, I do agree to the utility of what you are saying. I tend to be more concerned with corporate surveillance than government surveillance, and have gone extended periods with primarily cash purchases and limited CC usage. I didn't get a smartphone for a long time for the same reasons (and oh boy, when I did the privacy loss was very palpable). And yes, I can say right now that I have discovered that the utility of using those devices and paying with CC definitely exceeds the risks - for me. I have automated flows tied to both and they are very valuable.

Still, though, the comment you are responding to is not discussing anything extreme. I've not installed GrapheneOS but I have installed custom ROMs like LineageOS. It's not a big burden. An hour of effort perhaps? The main down side was things like Netflix not letting me download episodes and the inability to use Google Wallet (which I didn't want to use anyway!)

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