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Comment by irishcoffee | Hacker News Reader

> The other challenge is that in the modern era the houses, papers, and effects of most people have been partially signed off to corporate entities who are more than happy to consent away their access into our effects.

Do you mean those who rent their homes?

I rented for a long time. I bought a house. None of my house, papers, or effects are owned by anyone but myself. I guess a credit union owns the mortgage, but they haven't and won't sell it.

To those who will jump to disagree with me about the credit union selling my mortgage: they won't. They don't engage in that market, never have.

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> None of my house, papers, or effects are owned by anyone but myself.

Do you self host your own email? No? Those are "papers" that your email hosting provider can consent to providing law enforcement access to without a warrant.

Do you use search engines? Your search history is in the same boat with the search engine company.

Don't use a VPN? All of your internet traffic is in the same boat with your ISP

You use a VPN? All your internet traffic is in the same boat with the VPN.

The list goes on and on. It is almost certainly true that some company has private information about you that they can turn over without a warrant.

You forgot “houses” there, boss.

Amazon's echo and other such IoT devices do extend this to "houses" but isn't quite as ubiquitous.

My house, papers, and effects aren’t not tied to whatever you’re calling out about the internet, not in the sense you’re insinuating.

You’re conflating ideas to make a point. I admire the effort, you’re just not correct.

> You’re conflating ideas to make a point

I am talking specifically about the ideas you are disputing:

>> partially signed off to corporate entities who are more than happy to consent away their access into our effects.

I haven't conflated anything. You may be confused and think we're talking about ownership or physical access though.

You forgot to respond to anything except the "houses" part of this.

It's obvious what GP and others are saying - that the concept of things like "papers" and "effects" are no longer as concrete as they used to be. What used to be physical letters stored in one's home are now emails stored on any number of servers.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Oh, sorry. None of my papers or effects are in jeopardy either.

Renters are one (large) category. No wasn't referring to mortgaged houses, iiuc those belong to the owner, the lender merely maintains certain rights to reposses in the case of a default.

I was more referring to the average US resident or American who agrees to broad terms and conditions with, their ISP, Microsoft 1 drive, Roomba of the year, microphoned smart TV, email provider, cell service provider, etc. Many of which are essential for navigating modern society.

I think he meant things like his personal notes and files stored in an app like Evernote, which law enforcement can request copies of. I don't like the idea of someone reading my private notes...

Me either.

You can write them down on paper.

If we all acknowledge that the internet is a beautiful disaster that shan’t be trusted, which it always has been and always will be, we can all collectively get over ourselves about privacy on the internet. “Hey world I went overseas for vacation/holiday! I cooked this amazing dinner! I’m cheating on my SO using an online chat app!”

Maybe stop doing all 3 of those things. I can’t tell you how liberating it’s been since I got off all social media in ~2008. It’s super easy to be very private if you so choose. Having any kind of internet presence is a voluntary sacrifice of privacy.

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