4 ms·

Cannataci read Cerf's full quote: > Privacy may actually be an anomaly. Privacy is a construct of the modern industrial age. In the past, everyone lived in sma

by lukasm 11y ago

Cannataci read Cerf's full quote: > Privacy may actually be an anomaly. Privacy is a construct of the modern industrial age. In the past, everyone lived in small, self-contained communities where everyone knew who was dating the baker's daughter and what the sheriff had for lunch. It is only when populations started migrating en mass to cities that anonymity emerged as a by-product of urbanization. >This, Cannataci said, was "pure, undiluted rubbish," adding: "I cannot understand how a person of the intelligence of Vint Cerf could say anything so dumb. It's just dumb." I just finished rereading What You Can't Say. Maybe "privacy is dead" is the modern taboo?

pdkl95 11y ago
> "privacy is dead" "What we used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And now people are saying privacy is dead." (Jacob Appelbaum) Framing and language are important. Unfortunately, a lot of people have accepted the new doublespeak. edit: subject-verb agreement
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I wish people would taboo[0] the word "privacy" in such discussions. They often mean too many too different things; the whole discussion is done at too low resolution. [0] - https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationalist_taboo https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationalist_taboo
- PavlovsCat 11y ago
  Also: > I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for, there's just no possibility for privacy left anymore and we just have to get used to it. And this is a pretty fascinating thing, because it seems to me that you never hear a feminist say that we're post-consent because there is rape. And why is that? The reason is that it's bullshit. -- Jacob Appelbaum, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Technological progress is not driving us towards more rape. It is driving us towards less privacy. The comparison is bullshit.
    - kardos 11y ago
      Privacy erosion is enhanced/enabled by use of technology, but it's ultimately a social issue. This is not an us-vs-skynet situation. Our society is simply organised incorrectly; power/control over private information is misallocated and the result is a privacy hostile world. It's not the first time we've run into this kind of power misallocation. And we've solved a variety of them: slavery, women's suffrage, segregation, gay rights, etc. We've tackled privacy before [1] in the dead-tree context. We can fix social problems, and privacy/surveillance is one for our generation to handle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Like I responded to the parallel commenter, I think social issues are driven by technology level, not the other way around. We have privacy issues because computing and the Internet, and we may solve them if the technology allows us, but I have a feeling it won't. All of history and numerous attempts at appealing to force change in people's characters (many of them ending bloody) tells us that, sans brainwashing[0], you can't make people do something else than whatever makes sense for them in their conditions by just asking nicely. Society seems to be reaching a stable state given a particular technology level it has. As long as giving away privacy means people can get the things they want and need easier, they will give away privacy. Most people won't give up their Facebook or e-mail, or start learning how to do PGP because some vague notion of "privacy". OTOH, if the process reaches the point when giving away privacy actually starts to hurt them in a visible way, they'll start caring. By the way, secrecy of correspondence is just a courtesy. Your letters don't get opened on the way because you live in a prospering state where people have better things to do than read your mail and couldn't care less about you personally. It wasn't and it isn't always the case; there are still countries in which you'd better not send money in an envelope. We may, and will, develop some limits around individual privacy that will be similar to the privacy of correspondence - i.e. just courtesy. But it's important to recognize them for what they really are. [0] - I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, but rather in a technical one. I grew up in a religion that is pretty serious about its beliefs and values. Most of the members were sincerely trying to improve their own characters, and would rather suffer horribly than lie or steal from a stranger. I saw that it's entirely possible to rewrite even scumbags to be like sheep, willing to help and improve lives of others, but it comes at a cost of accepting a particular belief system and joining close-knit communities that frequently remind themselves of their values and reasons for following them.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I always thought exactly like Mr. Cerf said in that quote, so could someone please tell me why is this exactly "pure, undiluted rubbish"?
- existencebox 11y ago
  Let me approach this from a purely historical angle; First; to make the broad generalization that "everyone lived in small self-contained communities" is frankly laughable, assuming the statement isn't taken out of a context that constrains the "everyone" in that quote. Yes, we didn't have the megacities we have today, but you certainly couldn't say "everyone would know who was dating the baker's daughter" somewhere like Pompei or Tikal. Secondly, even if you want to argue the cities case, national/international trade has existed almost as long as established civilization. It would have been VERY easy to move among trade lanes and find a new home, if your "anonymity" had been compromised in a way you didn't like in one place. Starting with a truly clean slate in the modern age is FAR more difficult; I'd argue that we've been slowly shrinking the degree of anonymity one can re-achieve. (there is good historical precedent for movement via trade if you look at, to pull one example off the top of my head, certain trade-oriented tribes in central-south native american culture. They would regularly spread out to other small groups in which their past was as anonymous as could possibly get; there is good record of american settlers traveling with them to embed themselves in the admittedly small tribal cultures, but the size alone does not moot ones ability to seek anonymity.)
- jpgvm 11y ago
  It's worth reading the rest of it too. Specifically he feels that the way Vint Cerf argued may have been applicable to his culture but many others less so. His point was that privacy was present in many of these cultures before the advent of cities and that cities did not simply invent privacy out of thin air. That said I think a lot of this is misconstruing on both sides. My personal opinion is privacy and an expectation of it existed well before cities or even towns and that what really come with cities was anonymity. Which is a different concept entirely. I think it would be fair to say if you sent a rider or a pigeon so a trusted advisor you had an expectation others would not hear/read your message, this is true of the postal system and one would expect of telephone and Internet communications. However, things get really rough when cities happened. Because of the rise of anonymity law enforcement needed new powers to actually find perpetrators of crimes. As such some privacy was sacrificed in the name of making our communities safer. Mostly in the form of allowing law enforcement some limited wire tap and post interception powers. Unfortunately this didn't map very well to the Internet because of the nature of the 2 mediums. Intercepting someones written and spoken communications between another human is one thing. Being able to spy on what is effectively their thoughts and interests is entirely another. The bandwidth and expression of the Internet and the rich mediums we have built on it are greatly underestimated by the frankly out of date politicians and policy makers of today. They don't realise how much damage they are potentially doing to the future of such a promising system.

by lukasm 11y ago

pdkl95 11y ago

> "privacy is dead" "What we used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And now people are saying privacy is dead." (Jacob Appelbaum) Framing and language are important. Unfortunately, a lot of people have accepted the new doublespeak. edit: subject-verb agreement

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I wish people would taboo[0] the word "privacy" in such discussions. They often mean too many too different things; the whole discussion is done at too low resolution. [0] - https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationalist_taboo https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationalist_taboo
PavlovsCat 11y ago
Also: > I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for, there's just no possibility for privacy left anymore and we just have to get used to it. And this is a pretty fascinating thing, because it seems to me that you never hear a feminist say that we're post-consent because there is rape. And why is that? The reason is that it's bullshit. -- Jacob Appelbaum, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Technological progress is not driving us towards more rape. It is driving us towards less privacy. The comparison is bullshit.
  - kardos 11y ago
    Privacy erosion is enhanced/enabled by use of technology, but it's ultimately a social issue. This is not an us-vs-skynet situation. Our society is simply organised incorrectly; power/control over private information is misallocated and the result is a privacy hostile world. It's not the first time we've run into this kind of power misallocation. And we've solved a variety of them: slavery, women's suffrage, segregation, gay rights, etc. We've tackled privacy before [1] in the dead-tree context. We can fix social problems, and privacy/surveillance is one for our generation to handle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Like I responded to the parallel commenter, I think social issues are driven by technology level, not the other way around. We have privacy issues because computing and the Internet, and we may solve them if the technology allows us, but I have a feeling it won't. All of history and numerous attempts at appealing to force change in people's characters (many of them ending bloody) tells us that, sans brainwashing[0], you can't make people do something else than whatever makes sense for them in their conditions by just asking nicely. Society seems to be reaching a stable state given a particular technology level it has. As long as giving away privacy means people can get the things they want and need easier, they will give away privacy. Most people won't give up their Facebook or e-mail, or start learning how to do PGP because some vague notion of "privacy". OTOH, if the process reaches the point when giving away privacy actually starts to hurt them in a visible way, they'll start caring. By the way, secrecy of correspondence is just a courtesy. Your letters don't get opened on the way because you live in a prospering state where people have better things to do than read your mail and couldn't care less about you personally. It wasn't and it isn't always the case; there are still countries in which you'd better not send money in an envelope. We may, and will, develop some limits around individual privacy that will be similar to the privacy of correspondence - i.e. just courtesy. But it's important to recognize them for what they really are. [0] - I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, but rather in a technical one. I grew up in a religion that is pretty serious about its beliefs and values. Most of the members were sincerely trying to improve their own characters, and would rather suffer horribly than lie or steal from a stranger. I saw that it's entirely possible to rewrite even scumbags to be like sheep, willing to help and improve lives of others, but it comes at a cost of accepting a particular belief system and joining close-knit communities that frequently remind themselves of their values and reasons for following them.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I always thought exactly like Mr. Cerf said in that quote, so could someone please tell me why is this exactly "pure, undiluted rubbish"?

existencebox 11y ago
Let me approach this from a purely historical angle; First; to make the broad generalization that "everyone lived in small self-contained communities" is frankly laughable, assuming the statement isn't taken out of a context that constrains the "everyone" in that quote. Yes, we didn't have the megacities we have today, but you certainly couldn't say "everyone would know who was dating the baker's daughter" somewhere like Pompei or Tikal. Secondly, even if you want to argue the cities case, national/international trade has existed almost as long as established civilization. It would have been VERY easy to move among trade lanes and find a new home, if your "anonymity" had been compromised in a way you didn't like in one place. Starting with a truly clean slate in the modern age is FAR more difficult; I'd argue that we've been slowly shrinking the degree of anonymity one can re-achieve. (there is good historical precedent for movement via trade if you look at, to pull one example off the top of my head, certain trade-oriented tribes in central-south native american culture. They would regularly spread out to other small groups in which their past was as anonymous as could possibly get; there is good record of american settlers traveling with them to embed themselves in the admittedly small tribal cultures, but the size alone does not moot ones ability to seek anonymity.)
jpgvm 11y ago
It's worth reading the rest of it too. Specifically he feels that the way Vint Cerf argued may have been applicable to his culture but many others less so. His point was that privacy was present in many of these cultures before the advent of cities and that cities did not simply invent privacy out of thin air. That said I think a lot of this is misconstruing on both sides. My personal opinion is privacy and an expectation of it existed well before cities or even towns and that what really come with cities was anonymity. Which is a different concept entirely. I think it would be fair to say if you sent a rider or a pigeon so a trusted advisor you had an expectation others would not hear/read your message, this is true of the postal system and one would expect of telephone and Internet communications. However, things get really rough when cities happened. Because of the rise of anonymity law enforcement needed new powers to actually find perpetrators of crimes. As such some privacy was sacrificed in the name of making our communities safer. Mostly in the form of allowing law enforcement some limited wire tap and post interception powers. Unfortunately this didn't map very well to the Internet because of the nature of the 2 mediums. Intercepting someones written and spoken communications between another human is one thing. Being able to spy on what is effectively their thoughts and interests is entirely another. The bandwidth and expression of the Internet and the rich mediums we have built on it are greatly underestimated by the frankly out of date politicians and policy makers of today. They don't realise how much damage they are potentially doing to the future of such a promising system.