Privacy By Design | Hacker News Reader

Privacy By Design

binpress.com

24 pointspytrin9 comments

Forget the actual thesis of the post. I am immensely troubled by the flippant comment "ordinary municipal water fountains are replaced by hi-tech fountains, providing clean water for residents, ... and less of the dirt and homelessness often associated with water fountains".

So reducing access to free drinking water for homeless people is a feature? Maybe the real problem here is that municipal water fountains need to be improved, not that they should be discarded in favor of a private network.

Ditto. I thought this sentence was a cruel joke with no punchline.

agree about that sentence, really that's horrible. Replacing free water fountains with a private, paid alternative? The product itself is like a glimpse into some weird dystopia.

Devil's advocate:

(1) When things are dirty, the only people that will use them are those with no alternatives. And equally repugnant and racist phenomenon is found in inner citie schools ("the only people that will use them are those with no alternatives"). Except many of those people are black, not homeless.

(2) Dystopia is basically the theme of the piece. Its not clear if this was simply so flippant, or merely subliminal reminder of manipulation by second and third-order effects.

I feel like we're still thinking too small; the real problem is homelessness.

This is an Israeli company. It's not about homeless folks per se, but about Palestinians.

Somewhat beside the point of the article, but Woosh doesn't sound amazing, it sounds positively dystopian.

Water fountains are typically put up as a public amenity, and are intended at least in part for those who would otherwise not be able to water themselves. This would lock the neediest people out of an essential resource.

I mean - what possible benefit is there to me to have to sign up and have my identity logged in order to drink water? Oh, none. What benefit is there to eugenics, social exclusion, and racial cleansing? Plenty.

It's not about improving accessibility drinking water, it's about locking an entire sector of the Israeli populace (ethnic Palestinians) out of clean potable water.

"My recommendation is to plan privacy ahead. Think of your product as something that should not 'keep everything, analyze later' but 'keep what we must, and dump the rest'."

This is what we call "solving the wrong problem". Yes, those observations are good ones (albeit obvious) for anyone seeking to design a privacy-respecting service. But how do we get anyone to do that?

As long as companies are profit-oriented and legally able to do so, they will data-mine everyone as far as they can. What can be done about this? The author has nothing to say on this latter question.

While the article starts with a sort of moralistic and noble sentiment it has very little to do with privacy. It's more concerned with reducing risk for the company than increasing privacy for its clients. It's a happy coincidence that both company and clients are benefitting in the scenario described.

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