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I wish I could upvote this more. One reply mentions how easy anti-sodomy laws would be to enforce if we had no privacy. Considering how much faith people put in

I wish I could upvote this more. One reply mentions how easy anti-sodomy laws would be to enforce if we had no privacy. Considering how much faith people put in democracy and the democratic process, you'd think that people would concede that it's the law and our influence over it that's the problem, not privacy. One question I like to propose to those who disagree with this sentiment is as follows: Imagine you live in a hypothetical world where all things you consider moral, just and socially acceptable were legal and societally acceptable and where everything else was illegal and societally reprehensible. What role would privacy play in such a society? What benefits would it provide? I have yet to get a good answer to that question; if peeing in public was ok with me, everyone else and perfectly legal, what reason would I have not to do it? (You can mention shaming and whatnot, but I posit that in this hypothetical world based on my morality, if I didn't shame people, no one else would either). tl;dr: the problem isn't privacy, the problem is law and our inability to influence it, for which our best tool for the problems that arise from our lack of influence is privacy.

teddyh 11y ago
If we assume that laws can never be perfect, it is obvious why perfect enforcement of laws can never be a completely good thing. Not to mention corrupt officials, selective enforcement, etc.
- nunyabuizness 11y ago
  Again, corrupt officials, selective enforcement, etc are the problems, not lack privacy. There are a number of ways to make the nature of law better (free markets for law, direct democracy, actual representative democracy, etc), which would all render the need for as much privacy as people are advocating moot. The minute you declare privacy enforcement a greater problem than fair law-making and fair law enforcement, you've started a losing game for which the oppressors (the ones you're using privacy as a defense against) have already won.
nmjohn 11y ago
> Imagine you live in a hypothetical world where all things you consider moral, just and socially acceptable were legal and societally acceptable and where everything else was illegal and societally reprehensible. What role would privacy play in such a society? What benefits would it provide? Sure, that hypothetical would be great for _you_ (you being the decider of morality) - but what about everyone else living in the world? It is fundamentally impossible for a world to exist where your hypothetical can be true for everyone. Consider this - the hypothetical you describe is currently true for some set of people. And yet it ruins lives and causes misery for millions of others.
- nunyabuizness 11y ago
  Precisely! So the issue to solve is how do we create a world that places everyone in their own private moral world, a result of which is a significantly lower dependence on the losing battle of privacy! There are a couple ways to give us that world: free markets for law, voluntarism, or to a significantly less extreme, smaller federal governments and more influential, perhaps larger local governments, for which you have a significantly greater say in making law. Other patches to the problem of shitty law include greater accountability of elected (politicians) and appointed officials (i.e. police, bureaucrats). These are only the proposals off the top of my head, but already, in the process of tackling this problem, many other problems dissipate for free.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    Your proposals aren't really solutions, but ways of kicking the can down the road. The disagreement still exists, it's just hidden in the remainder. They can serve to minimize that disagreement, but it can never be eliminated. The simplest counter-sentence to how you've stated the problem: let's say someone thinks it is moral to impose their will on to others - how do you give them this world? The only way to actually achieve your utopia is VR. Good fences make good neighbors - privacy is a fence.
    - nunyabuizness 11y ago
      Championing privacy over fixing the reasons we need privacy is the ultimate kicking of the can down the road - encryption won't prevent the government from harassing me based on my skin color or my choice of employment, or anything else I do or am that can't be encrypted. > let's say someone thinks it is moral to impose their will on to others I don't know how to respond to that as any rights and morals you could legitimately give yourself or obey by definition can not depend on other people's compliance. > Good fences make good neighbors - privacy is a fence. Really? Do you even know your neighbors? Would you really argue that you'd know them less or that they or you'd be "worse" if you didn't have fences?
jib 11y ago
Privacy is a protection and insurance for the future. Things, like say, recording the religion of someone in an open, embracing and understanding society that has full religious freedom, so you understand what your population identifies seems harmless, right? It certainly seemed like it to the Jews in the Netherlands in the 1930s.
- miguelrochefort 11y ago
  Hitler's a good guy. Jews should have been more discrete. Too bad they didn't have encryption back then. /s
- nunyabuizness 11y ago
  Would privacy protect a black in 1930's Poland? Would it matter to them if they did or did not register their identity or religion with their government of full religious freedom? Where's their right to privacy (of their ethnicity)? The only insurance against unrestrained power for anyone's future is restraining the power, not privacy. Privacy is what you resort to when all else fails, which even then is clearly not enough for everyone.
  - jib 11y ago
    It is well established that the extended civil records of the Netherlands in the 30s contributed to the high rates of mass murder in the Netherlands compared to other countries with less developed systems. This is a real life example of where a lack of privacy thinking, even though not done with bad intent, led to significant loss of life. Protection of personal rights is not about a single solution, it is about multiple systems in a Swiss cheese model where privacy is one of those layers. Other layers are a judicial system, democratic elections etc. Stating that there are situations where one of the layers fail isn't proving anything, it is obvious that they fail some of the time. The question is if a layer adds something significant some of the time. Privacy does.
    - nunyabuizness 11y ago
      You didn't answer anything I proposed - if I'm being oppressed based on something that can't be made private, what difference does privacy make? > it is about multiple systems in a Swiss cheese model where privacy is one of those layers. True, but acting like it is the cardinal solution for which ultimate personal freedom will emerge is a farce and is ignoring the real reasons we want privacy in the first place - we don't have the freedom of transparency b/c of legal actors over which we have little to no control. > Stating that there are situations where one of the layers fail isn't proving anything, it is obvious that they fail some of the time The point of pointing out the flaw is not to prove that privacy isn't important, but that it's not nearly as important as the underlying issues for which privacy still won't fix. > The question is if a layer adds something significant some of the time. Privacy does. Until the unchecked power discriminates based on things that can't be made private. Watch the watchman and privacy becomes a nice bonus rather than a critical component of a half-solution.

teddyh 11y ago

If we assume that laws can never be perfect, it is obvious why perfect enforcement of laws can never be a completely good thing. Not to mention corrupt officials, selective enforcement, etc.

nunyabuizness 11y ago
Again, corrupt officials, selective enforcement, etc are the problems, not lack privacy. There are a number of ways to make the nature of law better (free markets for law, direct democracy, actual representative democracy, etc), which would all render the need for as much privacy as people are advocating moot. The minute you declare privacy enforcement a greater problem than fair law-making and fair law enforcement, you've started a losing game for which the oppressors (the ones you're using privacy as a defense against) have already won.

nmjohn 11y ago

> Imagine you live in a hypothetical world where all things you consider moral, just and socially acceptable were legal and societally acceptable and where everything else was illegal and societally reprehensible. What role would privacy play in such a society? What benefits would it provide? Sure, that hypothetical would be great for _you_ (you being the decider of morality) - but what about everyone else living in the world? It is fundamentally impossible for a world to exist where your hypothetical can be true for everyone. Consider this - the hypothetical you describe is currently true for some set of people. And yet it ruins lives and causes misery for millions of others.

nunyabuizness 11y ago
Precisely! So the issue to solve is how do we create a world that places everyone in their own private moral world, a result of which is a significantly lower dependence on the losing battle of privacy! There are a couple ways to give us that world: free markets for law, voluntarism, or to a significantly less extreme, smaller federal governments and more influential, perhaps larger local governments, for which you have a significantly greater say in making law. Other patches to the problem of shitty law include greater accountability of elected (politicians) and appointed officials (i.e. police, bureaucrats). These are only the proposals off the top of my head, but already, in the process of tackling this problem, many other problems dissipate for free.
- mindslight 11y ago
  Your proposals aren't really solutions, but ways of kicking the can down the road. The disagreement still exists, it's just hidden in the remainder. They can serve to minimize that disagreement, but it can never be eliminated. The simplest counter-sentence to how you've stated the problem: let's say someone thinks it is moral to impose their will on to others - how do you give them this world? The only way to actually achieve your utopia is VR. Good fences make good neighbors - privacy is a fence.
  - nunyabuizness 11y ago
    Championing privacy over fixing the reasons we need privacy is the ultimate kicking of the can down the road - encryption won't prevent the government from harassing me based on my skin color or my choice of employment, or anything else I do or am that can't be encrypted. > let's say someone thinks it is moral to impose their will on to others I don't know how to respond to that as any rights and morals you could legitimately give yourself or obey by definition can not depend on other people's compliance. > Good fences make good neighbors - privacy is a fence. Really? Do you even know your neighbors? Would you really argue that you'd know them less or that they or you'd be "worse" if you didn't have fences?

jib 11y ago

Privacy is a protection and insurance for the future. Things, like say, recording the religion of someone in an open, embracing and understanding society that has full religious freedom, so you understand what your population identifies seems harmless, right? It certainly seemed like it to the Jews in the Netherlands in the 1930s.

miguelrochefort 11y ago
Hitler's a good guy. Jews should have been more discrete. Too bad they didn't have encryption back then. /s
nunyabuizness 11y ago
Would privacy protect a black in 1930's Poland? Would it matter to them if they did or did not register their identity or religion with their government of full religious freedom? Where's their right to privacy (of their ethnicity)? The only insurance against unrestrained power for anyone's future is restraining the power, not privacy. Privacy is what you resort to when all else fails, which even then is clearly not enough for everyone.
- jib 11y ago
  It is well established that the extended civil records of the Netherlands in the 30s contributed to the high rates of mass murder in the Netherlands compared to other countries with less developed systems. This is a real life example of where a lack of privacy thinking, even though not done with bad intent, led to significant loss of life. Protection of personal rights is not about a single solution, it is about multiple systems in a Swiss cheese model where privacy is one of those layers. Other layers are a judicial system, democratic elections etc. Stating that there are situations where one of the layers fail isn't proving anything, it is obvious that they fail some of the time. The question is if a layer adds something significant some of the time. Privacy does.
  - nunyabuizness 11y ago
    You didn't answer anything I proposed - if I'm being oppressed based on something that can't be made private, what difference does privacy make? > it is about multiple systems in a Swiss cheese model where privacy is one of those layers. True, but acting like it is the cardinal solution for which ultimate personal freedom will emerge is a farce and is ignoring the real reasons we want privacy in the first place - we don't have the freedom of transparency b/c of legal actors over which we have little to no control. > Stating that there are situations where one of the layers fail isn't proving anything, it is obvious that they fail some of the time The point of pointing out the flaw is not to prove that privacy isn't important, but that it's not nearly as important as the underlying issues for which privacy still won't fix. > The question is if a layer adds something significant some of the time. Privacy does. Until the unchecked power discriminates based on things that can't be made private. Watch the watchman and privacy becomes a nice bonus rather than a critical component of a half-solution.