Comment by a-priori | Hacker News Reader

Comment by a-priori | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, I think to ensure your privacy by never revealing personal information to third parties, through using open source software and strong cryptography, requires too much inconvenience and vigilance and technical knowledge to be applied properly even by experts, never mind the average person.

It's a dead end because, if the average person can't do it, then strong privacy will forever be on the fringes of society, something only weirdos and techies are worried about. It'll be vulnerable to the 'if you don't have anything to hide [like me]...' arguments.

The answer is instead, I think, strong legal protections on personal information such that we can trust third parties with our information. That third parties are bound by consumer protection and privacy laws to only use the information in acceptable ways and only reveal the information under due process, such as court orders (sparingly given).

People who care about privacy should work with our legal and legislative systems, not against them.

I agree that preserving privacy is expensive (almost unsustainable), and that only few select entities are technically capable of keeping a substantial part of their activities secret.

However, I don't believe that regulation and laws are solution to anything. I also don't think that it's reasonable to expect entities, even large ones, to be 100% secure and keep your data secret at all time. Ultimately, I'm convinced that the world has MUCH MORE to gain from transparency than from privacy (secrecy).

Fundamentally, what makes you think that people actually should have a right to privacy? Where does that expectation come from, if not as a side-effect of inefficient communication? People believe that they're entitled to privacy, but I can't find any reasonable argument for it.

I don't see many people claiming their right to lie, their right to fraud, their right to steal. What makes privacy so different?

Fundamentally, why shouldn't people have a right to privacy? Are you saying that there isn't any information about yourself that you'd want to keep private? Why are the details of my life anybody's business but my own?

> I don't see many people claiming their right to lie, their right to fraud, their right to steal. What makes privacy so different?

Well, for one thing, privacy is neither immoral nor illegal. How are these things even related?

> Fundamentally, why shouldn't people have a right to privacy? Are you saying that there isn't any information about yourself that you'd want to keep private? Why are the details of my life anybody's business but my own?

You don't own yourself. Everything you do is an interaction with the world (including your own body and mind), which belongs to everyone equally.

Whether or not the imperfect beings we are want to hide things from others doesn't justify it to be right. People want to keep things private because they gain something from it. There's a lot of things I want from this world, but society don't hand them to me in the form of a fundamental right.

> Well, for one thing, privacy is neither immoral nor illegal. How are these things even related?

Says who? I would argue that privacy is actually immoral. Above all, though, what's immoral is to make illegal any non-coercive acquisition of data. Making that illegal is the real mistake here. And I don't suggest we make privacy illegal, that wouldn't be possible.

> You don't own yourself. Everything you do is an interaction with the world (including your own body and mind), which belongs to everyone equally.

This is an extreme view. How can we even begin to talk about desires and rights under this assumption? If I don't own myself, how can I own anything? We have to throw out the idea of property, the concept of theft and so on. Is murder even wrong in this context?

> We have to throw out the idea of property, the concept of theft and so on.

Of course.

> Is murder even wrong in this context?

Murder is not wrong. Murder is just an action that reflects a decision. Whether it's good or not depends entirely on whether the outcome is optimal or not. Murder is not qualitatively different from, say, breaking a window. The only difference is one of quantity and scale. Generally, much more time and energy is invested in a living person than in the creation and installation of a window.

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