Comment by sdrothrock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdrothrock | Hacker News Reader

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> If you're giving your data freely to companies, I don't understand what kind of oversight mechanism could or should protect you.

This argument doesn't make much sense to me.

What if I said,

> If you're giving your money freely to banks, I don't understand what kind of oversight mechanism could or should protect you.

I think the crux of the issue is that if I get a car ride with Uber, I have a reasonable expectation that I am paying for the service of a car ride. There is no reasonable expectation on my part that I'm giving them money for a car ride AND ALSO giving them the information about me/my ride to use freely, regardless of what the TOS may say.

The expectation on the customer's part is that ride remain private, much like anything that goes on in the doctor's office. The reality, of course, does not match that expectation, which is why I think there should be some hypothetical oversight mechanism that manages the differences between the customer's expectation and Uber's reality.

Just because Uber has data on me doesn't mean that I have given it to them to do whatever they want with it.

I'd like to be clear that I totally agree with you: data given to a service you pay for should remain private.

All I'm saying is that if you enact regulation to try to enforce this, you're going to cause a lot of unintended consequences. It may even prevent the Airbnb's and Dropbox's of the future from forming altogether.

Are you sure adding another law is the right response?

> Are you sure adding another law is the right response?

I'm not sure, but I do think that it would be beneficial to have an overarching framework that could be used to protect information that is commonly believed to be "private." I've thought about it a bit more and instead of simply "transportation companies may do this and not this in situations A, B, and C," I feel like we need a modern day "Bill of Information Rights" and a general reform in how anyone -- government included -- can collect, use, or distribute information without explicit permission.

Piggybacking off the parent comment something like the "Bill of Information Rights" sounds very similar to "The Right to be Forgotten"

Sure in this context it sounds like a great idea, but down the line it becomes a tool for the rich with time to censor information.

If the choice were between safeguarding the right to privacy and slowing the rate of innovation, I would pick privacy every time. It's the whole "trading liberty for security" thing: Civil liberties are the prime mover in any society, and losing it has a much more far-reaching impact.

> Are you sure adding another law is the right response?

Well, not having one sure isn't working very well, now is it?

Yesterday, myself and a woman I'm not married to paid for transportation. We are both quite identifiable, being a very tall white guy and a black woman taller than most men (in Delhi we stand out). Do I have a reasonable expectation that my rickshaw driver will not tell his buddies about this?

As far as I know, doctor/patient confidentiality is the exception - you have no expectation of privacy anywhere else.

> Do I have a reasonable expectation that my rickshaw driver will not tell his buddies about this?

No, but what I'm trying to get at is that you have a reasonable expectation that your rickshaw driver will not go out and try to find people to sell that information to or publish it in a newspaper or something.

Why not? That type of thing happens to celebrities all the time. The only reason I have a reasonable expectation that it won't happen to me is because I'm not famous, and not one cares about what rickshaws I take.

So you're happy with the NSA spying on you? I mean, the only reason you've never attracted the NSA's attention is because you're not the kind of famous the NSA is interested in, right? Are you saying that anyone with the capacity or opportunity to invade your privacy is justified in doing so?

I don't follow. Alice transmits a message to Bob. Alice has no expectation that Bob does not have this information or transmit it to a third party.

Therefore Alice cannot be annoyed when Eve (a random third party) intercepts her communications?

I've never bought "it happens all the time" as an argument against "it shouldn't happen."

I've never bought "I'm ignorant of how the world works" as an argument for "I don't expect X to happen". If X does happen with regular frequency, the fact that you didn't expect it to doesn't really matter.

I'm aware of how the world works. However, I expect

1. Parents will not abuse their children.

2. There will be mechanisms in place to detect and deal with those kinds of incidents.

3. Child abuse is not acceptable, regardless of whether it happens in reality or not.

In a similar vein, I would like it if there were a framework in place such that:

1. Companies could not abuse my personal information.

2. There will be mechanisms in place to detect and deal with those kinds of incidents.

3. Abuse of collected personal information is not acceptable, regardless of whether it happens or not.

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