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xkbarkar

When privacy is criminalized, only criminals will have privacy.

Cant be bothered to search for who said that to give credit.

Phrase still stands

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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann

Creator of PGP

This is a very American and by extension Western civilization point of view. One not shared in other societies.

One survey that I found really interesting (can’t find it now) was one done in Singapore.

A vast majority 70%+ agreed with the statement “a stable society is more important than adhering to democratic principles”.

So all this commentary in the West about Singapore being a flawed democracy doesn’t register with Singaporeans. They are more than happy to give up democratic rights as long as the government delivers as promised.

It’s a view that is quite prevalent across Asia (including Vietnam).

I would say it’s a western point of view, and by extension, an American one. Not the other way around, America isn’t the prospector or even a very good exemplar of democratic ideals. On the other hand, much of Asia, especially east Asia’s focus on stability over democratic principles is very much a product of China’s dominate role in that region.

> much of Asia, especially east Asia’s focus on stability over democratic principles is very much a product of China’s dominate role in that region

Not really. Giving up democracy for stability is increasingly a theme in South Asia, too. The West had their turn at it, too, in the 1940s; Asians don't have a monopoly over less-democratic governments. In fact I daresay the stereotypical nondemocratic example that comes to mind is Nazi Germany, which is distinctly Western.

People have a tendency to give up democracy for stability and improved quality of life when they've been trampled over, told they are inferior to other people with reduced melanin production, and generally not given opportunities to thrive.

Both China and India have massive inferiority complexes, and not without reason—they want a say in the world stage, and they'll get it by hook or crook. Together they have nearly two-fifths of the world population.

Democracy is a long developed ideal in the west, from when the Greeks invented it. Yes, Europe goes through spates of authoritarianism and was under autocratic rule for much of its history, but the direction is clear, Germany and Italy had no cultural problem in snapping back to democracy after WW2, and Portugal and Spain saw little value in continuing dictatorships after Franco and Salazar either.

I find skin tone to be a much bigger deal among the elites of India and China than in the west. It’s clear that classism plays a huge role in those countries, where the elites rule with little regard for the common people.

Human rights (like privacy) are fundamental and not cultural, racial etc.

Obviously.

It's interesting how in the US people rail against government moves like this in Vietnam while giving a pass to private companies doing the same thing. Ostensibly, it's OK because the companies don't have the law to enforce participation, but practically speaking there are lots of ways to coerce people into giving up their privacy by making the consequences of not giving it up such that they are effectively excluded from economic life. Of course these companies do sell the data, and they sell it to governments, so the end result is the same. The extra step allows the middleman to turn a profit, so in western neoliberal economics it's not only permissible, it's laudable.

When privacy is the price of a hamburger, those who hold their privacy dear will cook for themselves.

When privacy is the price of participation in society, those who hold their privacy dear will live in a tent under a bridge or as an off-the-grid hermit in the woods.

Employment, credit, medical care, access to shelter, transportation, utilities are all hard-gated behind 'voluntarily' giving up your personal information to firms that will either sell, or share, or leak it.

(I just got a notification that Delta Dental is very sorry it lost mine, I guess I should add dental care to that list.)

In the US the political zeitgeist is to rail against any kind of government overreach, while closing both eyes and plugging both ears to overreach or abuse done by anyone who has a profit motive.

It's interesting to see people rail against China's social credit score which seems quite similar in function to the what we in the US just call a credit score. People really miss the forest for the trees.

I also tell people who support strong immigration enforcement that this sort of ID scheme would be quite fundamental to identifying citizens, but most people don't seem to want to hear it.

China's social credit score has a much broader application, though. In US, you do have some creep beyond the original intent of approving/denying credit (e.g. I've seen leases gated on credit score checks), but it's still much more limited. And since it's not government-mandated, you can still rent from a different place that won't do it.

That said, yes, it's absolutely a problem in US as well, and people have been making explicit comparisons between the likely eventual state of our system and what China already has.

> people who support strong immigration enforcement that this sort of ID scheme would be quite fundamental to identifying citizens

Also, voting. It's rather ironic that the same people who demand voter ID tend to oppose universal free government-issued IDs.

A lease of real property is a form of granting of credit.

No it's not, you pay at the start of the month for a month of access. A newspaper subscription isn't a form of credit.

Since you can’t evict someone immediately, it has very similar (pretty much identical) risks as extending credit.

If everyone paid everything as agreed, there’d obviously be no need for credit scoring anywhere.

I would say there's more than "some" creep. Think about how Uber and AirBnB use ratings to punish some customers, or how algorithmic pricing works, it's using similar concepts. If the objection is that these are paid services so it's still a financial transaction, my counter would be that in the US goods and services are overwhelmingly provided by commercial interests, because that's how the socioeconomic system works here. Even most services associated with governments are outsourced or provided through public/private partnerships.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90394048/uh-oh-silicon-valley-is...

People rail against it all the time. They just don't walk the walk.

I will say though. Theoretically you can still "opt-out" of it. Visit with old people and see how you don't need to live with all these services lol

The version of that quote that I know is about freedom. It's by Tom Robbins. I don't know if he's the original source.

When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

The original is "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

I don't think such thought-terminating clichés are useful in the modern era.

So only criminals don't file their SEC statements or their taxes? Yes. That is true. And we make it true because otherwise the injury society suffers granting such flavors of privacy is greater than the benefits society gains safeguarding such privacy. It allows bad actors too much freedom of movement in the dark if we don't enforce tax law or SEC disclosure law.

As always, privacy is a balancing act between personal integrity and public need.

> because otherwise the injury society suffers granting such flavors of privacy is greater than the benefits society gains safeguarding such privacy

Ideally this statement would be true of every piece of law or regulation that reduces individual liberties, including that of privacy. However, what actually seems to happen in practice is that:

- government employees are incentivized to make things easier for themselves by expanding their own powers

- elected policymakers are incentivized to enact sweeping new laws with their name stamped on them, and are not disincentivized from or punished by engaging in government overreach

- ordinary people are not sufficiently inconvenienced by any single new breaches of privacy

It all adds up to a ratcheting mechanism that only goes in the direction of less privacy and fewer individual liberties over time, and only "crackpots" (or people principled to the point of removing themselves from everyday society, e.g. rms when it comes to free software) oppose it.

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