Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

One practical reason to object to the government holding private information on everybody is that such information might be vulnerable to theft.

This is an example of a channel for information theft. What happens when someone submits a request for your information with your (forged) signature? That would be fraud, of course, but that doesn't mean it won't ever happen. Will they get all your texts and gmail?

Maybe they check requests very thoroughly and this isn't an exploitable security hole. But it changes the equation of storing data on 3rd party services: instead of just trusting the cloud provider and his software, you also have to trust the government to never make a mistake.

Indeed. The thought behind all the spying is that it creates security... but this forgets that privacy often enhances security. The upshot is we get one arm of the government opposing encryption, and another arm trying to mandate it (HIPAA and so on). I believe eventually time will show that, on balance, more privacy-enhancing measures are needed, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because our security demands it.

And what happens if they do make a mistake? Could you imagine the effects to society if this Complete Database were leaked -- if everyone's internet record were made public? It's mind-boggling.

It reminds me of this Asimov story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past

[Spoiler alert!] Someone makes a cheap time viewer (able to view only the past), forgetting that "5 minutes ago" is in the past. In the end the design leaks to the public, and the characters contemplate what they've just unleashed.

How does a yottabyte get leaked?

One byte at a time.

that's a yotta bytes

In 2013 that might seem unrealistic but maybe not in the not too distant future. They'll have a lot more data than that by then, but you'll still be able to get the whole of the worlds info from 2013.

Meh, just leak the last record on every person.. name, address, social security #, favorite porn site, etc.

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