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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

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jokoon

I disagree

What really matters is judiciary due process and the legitimacy of a government.

Companies are the ones gathering data, it's not the government doing it.

Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens.

The internet makes it more difficult for the government to catch criminals and fraudsters.

If you live in Russia or China or under Trump's administration, there are good reasons to hide.

If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected, there is no point in hiding, UNLESS you can really argue that due process and freedoms are eroding, but that's a different debate.

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> If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected, there is no point in hiding, UNLESS you can really argue that due process and freedoms are eroding, but that's a different debate.

This assumes usage of collected data stays the same forever. But regime changes do happen, and once the data has been allowed to be collected, you have no power. I think Trumpland was once considered a state where freedoms and due process were once respected.

It was once considered that, but it was never actually that. Ever since it was founded it was locking up or killing the people with different skin colours, over and over and over and over and over!

For example data of your period, if you're female...

Considering the reckless lawlessness of the current regime of "the shining beacon of democracy", I wonder if they could retroactively convict "murders of unborn babies" and find them by trawling to online health data and looking back at gaps of female periods.

> If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected

History and current events show that this is not a static fact you can rely on in the slightest.

Any country can turn to a dictatorship in three years. We just had a fine demostration.

Once your data is out there it's too late. If the hypothetical country you live in - where freedom & due process is respected - suddenly has an authoritarian change of direction, you're done.

It's my understanding that, organically or under external influences, many democratic countries in EU are at the emerging risk of going full fascists. I see that in France, Le Pen & friends don't hide the fact that they'd make a new constitution.

Richest guy in the world has vowed to use his propaganda power to make this happen for the sake of cancelling the EU, fun times

governments have always collected "data*", and use it for power/controll, any company doing so is actualy hoping that the government like's the stink of there particular shit, but now as forever, false positives/negatives will undermine and destroy a career. The true "nothing to hide" good honest decent folks, will almost certainly leave a convoluted trail of there meandering through life that can and will lead anywhere, but as the author points out, that other relentlessly "perfect" demographic is likely to be dangerous competition, rather than a general danger, and so will be assesed as to potential threat/uses, almost like a job interview...potentialy usefull idiots

Could you post your internet browsing history there, please? Don't be short on details.

> Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens.

Indeed, and there were some notorious examples of how that was abused for large scale oppression (with Holocaust being the pinnacle), so why would we want them to have even more data.

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