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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 organ

by 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.
- kardos 11y ago
  I agree that technology /enables/ behaviours, but it's people who use/abuse it and the society who needs to instate the controls. If we attack this purely from a technological angle and manage to ramp up to ubiquitous E2E encryption, society can ban encryption: jailtime for possession of data that the government can't read. Is that a technology problem or a social problem? > Most people won't give up their Facebook or e-mail, or start learning how to do PGP because some vague notion of "privacy". This is a defeatist attitude. There's always going to be people who don't care. What's the voter turnout rate in your country? I'm sure you can find some starving people who will pick food over privacy, or some junkies who'll pick drugs. Those people are not part of the privacy conversation because they have other priorities. Anyhow: the goal is not to nag everybody into locking up all their personal information. The goal is (or should be) to build a society where people have control over the dissemination of their personal details/communication, rather than "everything is collected by powerful entities, deal with it".

by kardos 11y ago

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.

kardos 11y ago
I agree that technology /enables/ behaviours, but it's people who use/abuse it and the society who needs to instate the controls. If we attack this purely from a technological angle and manage to ramp up to ubiquitous E2E encryption, society can ban encryption: jailtime for possession of data that the government can't read. Is that a technology problem or a social problem? > Most people won't give up their Facebook or e-mail, or start learning how to do PGP because some vague notion of "privacy". This is a defeatist attitude. There's always going to be people who don't care. What's the voter turnout rate in your country? I'm sure you can find some starving people who will pick food over privacy, or some junkies who'll pick drugs. Those people are not part of the privacy conversation because they have other priorities. Anyhow: the goal is not to nag everybody into locking up all their personal information. The goal is (or should be) to build a society where people have control over the dissemination of their personal details/communication, rather than "everything is collected by powerful entities, deal with it".