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Comment by zak_mc_kracken | Hacker News Reader

You seem to think that "pro-privacy" is equivalent to "don't collect any private information".

It's not. Not at all.

That's exactly what privacy means. When I'm dancing naked in my house, I don't care if the guy holding the IR camera across the road is a government employee or a company's employee. All I care is that he has a camera.

If some private data of mine (including, but not limited to pictures of my genitalia) ended up someplace other than on a medium I own, that data is no longer private. I.e. it was a privacy breach.

This is exactly what "Apple-is-better" people on this thread do not get.

They are suggesting that the Apple IR camera is good because it improves the user "experience by syncing with itunes to play a song with the right tempo as you dance" as opposed to the Google IR camera which will result in sun-burn cream ads. What the typical person would want is no IR camera at all.

Apple collects far less personal data than Google/etc. In this stupid analogy, Apple don't even have an IR camera.

> Apple collects far less personal data than Google/etc

Agreed.

I don't know if we are disagreeing. Or perhaps you disagree with the notion that the ideal situation for privacy is when no personal collection is done?

You seem to be operating with some Newspeak definition of privacy.

Privacy is seclusion. Ruffling through someone's dirty laundry, but keeping all the findings to themselves is not "pro-privacy".

So then why does Google collect my private information, if they are "extremely pro-privacy?"

You're going to run out of superlatives by the time you reach DuckDuckGo.

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