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"This affects all of us. We must care." is not an effective way of convincing someone. I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. I

"This affects all of us. We must care." is not an effective way of convincing someone. I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. It's just my opinion. I know other people do but please don't generalize.

dsacco 11y ago
I think your opinion is valid and should be fairly represented, but consider that your reasons for not caring about privacy may be flawed or inconsistent. Assuming that you don't care about privacy because you're apathetic, do you also not care about free speech because you don't say anything controversial? Do you care about your right to assembly even if you don't protest anything? As an extreme example upon which to build a baseline, would you mind if a neighbor had unmitigated access to watching you lounge in your underwear, take a shower or have sex? Why do you not care about privacy? Do you feel that you don't need it because you have nothing to hide, or are you willing to sacrifice it for some greater good (e.g. terrorism etc.)? Are you merely indifferent or do you aggressively oppose the concept?
- blitzprog 11y ago
  First of all thank you for respecting my opinion. I appreciate it. 1.) Free speech is a completely different topic. Snowden's quote on this page makes no sense to me no matter how often I re-read it. If free speech didn't exist I wouldn't be able to express my opinion about privacy :) 2.) Privacy means hiding the truth. Hiding what really happened. Hiding who you really are. I believe it is a flaw of the human personality that makes us want to hide information and eventually lie about it. I don't care if Google or the government knows that I'm searching "[insert embarassing keywords for you here]" or if Facebook knows my location, or if Twitter knows what I like based on the people I follow. Who is the government? It's people. People like you and me. If people decide to make assumptions based on data they collected and the assumptions aren't correct it's their own fault for assuming something in the first place (because...you know...it's an assumption...it can be wrong). I am not aggressively opposing the concept of privacy. I respect other people's opinion.
  - NhanH 11y ago
    > I believe it is a flaw of the human personality that makes us want to hide information and eventually lie about it. At the very basic, we want to hide things because other people do not like it (which leads to reaction from shaming to prosecuting and stoning). Fundamentally, the only way for it to not happen is to have a completely homogeneous society, or all human to turn into saints. I will just assert the former to be bad, and the latter to be impossible .
    - sdoering 11y ago
      I also feel, that some form of privacy is also needed to develop new ideas. To mull them, to test them out, before everybody with their own interpretations get's a say. How will we as a society develop further, if everybody will be more or less homogenized by means of ubiquitous surveillance and self censorship (or punishment for transgressions)? We need save (and private) spaces. At least in my view of the world, where I am on your side, not believing all people will turn into saints. Not even most of people. So killing privacy and upping surveillance of everybody, we as society will shoot ourselves in the foot and killing new ideas before they are even thought i fear.
  - Swizec 11y ago
    This is all true and I agree wholeheartedly. And when The People incorrectly decide that based on data you raped a 15 year old, you will be in prison for the duration of the trial, you will be on the sex offender list forever, and you will be inconvenienced with anything requiring a background check. You, not The People. Ideologically, I agree, privacy is a lame side-effect of how groups of people work. Pragmatically, please don't take it away.
    - blitzprog 11y ago
      I see your point. If society ends up believing in the fact that assumptions based on collected data have suddenly turned into "facts" then we will be truly...let me say it frankly...we are done for. I believe when this happens Hacker News won't exist anymore because the intelligence of human beings will be comparable to that of a fly. Luckily...this didn't happen yet because I can still have intellectual discussions, even on the internet. I like your separation of "ideologically" and "pragmatically". I agree, it's not a pragmatical approach.
subatomic 11y ago
Do you have curtains in your house?
andersonvom 11y ago
I think you mean "I don't care about my privacy at this moment". These are very different ideas. Or would you not care about your privacy if you visited a country where reading HN content was illegal? Or would you not care about the privacy of someone denouncing some government wrong doing? Or if someone started harassing you because of the things they found out you're doing? There are plenty of cases where privacy are important, even if you think they don't currently apply to you.
grecy 11y ago
What about the impacts of all all-knowing government in the future? 10 years from now a new government is voted in, and they severely dislike people with your political views based on some online comments you made in 2016. They could do anything from just making it really hard for you to vote, all the way to getting you fired, pulling your mortgage out from under you, etc. etc. You really have no idea what a future government or corporation will do with so much data about you. Based on history, I think it's best to assume it won't be good for you.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  And, I think it's important to point out: This isn't just a scary story to make people side with you. This actually happened, albeit before the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare
jfoutz 11y ago
The part i hate is the asymmetry. I don't really care if people know where i am. In the naive sense, there is a lot of value in knowing location. Restraining orders, for example, could become effective. "How did your cell phone get to the bank that was robbed if you weren't there?" stuff like that. Furthermore, politicians pander. being able to answer how many people showed up for that protest is valuable. what were their demographics? Perhaps this is an issue that matters. But the asymmetry is horrible. You want real time access to my location? ok, but make the location public for the police. and NSA employees. and senators. Having a record, that's made public after a few weeks or months seems pretty reasonable to me. Having a record that's secret and controlled by a handful of powerful people, which is what i think we have now, is much more frightening.
opo 11y ago
Mind posting your medical records and tax returns? Once we see them, we can let you know what else we would like to see.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
baddox 11y ago
From the perspective of political philosophy, I see no problem with you not caring about keeping your own personal information private. But that's very different than you proposing a government program that will forcefully prevent other people who do want to maintain control over their personal information from doing so. To phrase it differently, in a world where individuals have perfect control over their personal information, so can still post any of your own personal information to the Internet if you want it to be public. It's basically the difference between saying "I'm not personally a Muslim" and "I think practicing Islam should be illegal."
nahname 11y ago
Can I have access to your email account? I only want to read everything you don't care about protecting. Promise.
brandonmenc 11y ago
Can I have access to your Senator's philandering text messages so that I can bribe them to make a vote you don't support?
- logicallee 11y ago
  you don't mean bribe, you mean blackmail. It's a good example. When you get anonymous, credible, extortion/blackmail attempts a good reaction is to go to the FBI and say, look, some anonymous person is blackmailing/extorting me. (a crime). Now you can decide whether you want the courts to have any ability to connect that crime to the medium that you were communicated via, or whether that information should simply vanish in the ether, leaving anyone to blackmail or extort anyone else from the safety of their own home and behind an anonymous Internet connection. you've, in fact, made the opposite point to the one that you meant to :) when crimes start getting committed, sometimes society needs recourse.
  - brandonmenc 11y ago
    If you outlaw anonymity, only outlaws will be anonymous. But we were talking about privacy, not anonymity. My argument is that even if you don't have secrets, someone with power over you (politician, judge, general, CEO) may, and you should want their secrets kept.
enraged_camel 11y ago
>>I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. When late 19th century Germany started recording census data, a clerk made the suggestion that they should also record each person's religion. No one objected. What could be the harm, right? They were already collecting age, gender, occupation, etc. so they might as well collect one more thing. Half a century later, the Nazis were able to use those same historical census records to identify whose grandparents were Jewish, and therefore who must be Jewish, which greatly aided in rounding up those people. So imagine: a piece of information commonly believed to be harmless to reveal about oneself became the primary method that facilitated one of the greatest atrocities in human history. The lesson here is that tomorrow's government may turn out to be very different than today's. Information you willingly reveal about yourself today, or don't mind others (such as the government) finding out about you, may be used against you, your children or their children. That is why privacy is supremely important.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  This is the logical extreme. It may seem far fetched today, but it doesn't have to get nearly this bad to cause great harm.
- vixen99 11y ago
  Yes! Everybody should read https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_pr.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_... who quotes Cardinal Richelieu "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." As Schneier puts it: two proverbs sum it up: "Who watches the watchers?" and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
executesorder66 11y ago
> I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. I'd love to know why you don't care. 1) Do you really not care if people watch everything you do? Would you live in a Big Brother type house where everything you do is recorded and shown to the public? That includes you showing, shitting, picking your nose, having sex, watching porn, every conversation you have etc. And maybe you really don't give a fuck about that. I guess some people could stand naked in front of a crowd and shit themselves an not think twice about it. But then on the other hand, there is one more thing to consider. What if the current government, or another one elected in the next 5 to 20 years is really evil? And let's say they are against the things you believe in, and they believe anyone who believes what you believe should suffer unimaginably? Or what if you like to complain about things? You post negative restaurant reviews Write angry letters in the newspaper, stuff like that. And this new government doesn't like complainers, because they don't want to be challenged. They could just look at all the stuff you have complained about in the past and decide you are too dangerous. So they arrest you (and your family, because why not?) and then they put you in a concentration camp. Where you and your family are worked to death. Starved to death. Beaten to death. Raped. Experimented on. Burned alive. I know it's an extreme example, but things like this have happened before. Except now it's easier than ever for governments to round up the people they don't like, and to find out who the people they don't like are. And the less you care about privacy, the easier you make it for them. Would you still say you don't care about privacy? Or do you just believe something like that would never happen, and so it's not important that we take steps to prevent a future government to do such things?
hyperion2010 11y ago
Let us imagine that someone out there doesn't like the fact that you don't care about privacy and thinks that you should. In a world without privacy where everything is under surveillance that someone can simply recreate reality so that you are now a criminal. Hell, they might just smear you on twitter as a racist rapist and post a bunch of fake data. It won't matter what the truth is any more. Allowing the state to trample all over privacy will only make such activity easier and more prevalent. Worse it can create the illusion of 'authoritative' truth which is even easier to manipulate.
kbart 11y ago
So if police came to your home and installed surveillance cameras (you know, just to check if you didn't beat your wife or smoke pot on your couch) you are OK with that? Everyone has something to hide and needs some privacy, digital or not.
mrweasel 11y ago
>I personally do not care about privacy. You might think that, but it's just a matter of time really before someone asks you a question you don't want to answer. The users of Ashley Madison certainly had something to hide. They weren't doing anything illegal, so why should there have been any concern about privacy? It's somewhat humorous when politicians use the "nothing to hide" argument. The governments and politicians seems to have the most to hide. It should be any problem for any government to release all information about any decision ever made, at least not after the fact.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
miguelrochefort 11y ago
I agree with you completely. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. The value of data by far surpasses any risk involved with it. If people were more honest, transparent and straightforward, we would have a much more tolerant society. Everything would be much more efficient. Crowd sourcing of health data would be facilitated, and we probably would have greater understanding of health and be able to cure many diseases. All arguments in favor of privacy naturally lead to the conclusion that we should get rid of the internet. And probably communication in general. Heck, make people blind and deaf, that'll solve the privacy problem. People are deluded. Just one of the many instances where so-called progressive people blindly support an inherently conservative cause.
rrggrr 11y ago
Civic responsibility. You choose to be part of this society and you owe it a debt for the stability and opportunity it provides you. Its not an entitlement and your egocentric attitude toward privacy places you, and society, at risk. There must be boundaries set for government or it will expand power unchecked. History demonstrates this time and again.
- m1sta_ 11y ago
  Constrain government power by shining light on it.
EliRivers 11y ago
You don't care about your own privacy, but do you care about anyone else's privacy? If someone you care about deeply tells you that they value their privacy and they want to keep it, does that matter to you?
natch 11y ago
>I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. Maybe that's what you think. Let's see if you're willing to post the names, phone numbers, SSN or other ID numbers if you have them, and addresses of all your friends and loved ones. Got some weasel words about how that's not "personally"? Ok, start with your own info. Not going to do it? Didn't think so. If you think you don't care about privacy, you probably haven't thought things through as others have.
billmalarky 11y ago
Privacy is important because information is powerful. One should be able to defend oneself against information related attacks. Just because you are a good person that wouldn't use information to hurt others doesn't mean others wouldn't. A right to privacy is similar to a right to lock one's car doors when traveling through a bad neighborhood.

dsacco 11y ago

I think your opinion is valid and should be fairly represented, but consider that your reasons for not caring about privacy may be flawed or inconsistent. Assuming that you don't care about privacy because you're apathetic, do you also not care about free speech because you don't say anything controversial? Do you care about your right to assembly even if you don't protest anything? As an extreme example upon which to build a baseline, would you mind if a neighbor had unmitigated access to watching you lounge in your underwear, take a shower or have sex? Why do you not care about privacy? Do you feel that you don't need it because you have nothing to hide, or are you willing to sacrifice it for some greater good (e.g. terrorism etc.)? Are you merely indifferent or do you aggressively oppose the concept?

blitzprog 11y ago
First of all thank you for respecting my opinion. I appreciate it. 1.) Free speech is a completely different topic. Snowden's quote on this page makes no sense to me no matter how often I re-read it. If free speech didn't exist I wouldn't be able to express my opinion about privacy :) 2.) Privacy means hiding the truth. Hiding what really happened. Hiding who you really are. I believe it is a flaw of the human personality that makes us want to hide information and eventually lie about it. I don't care if Google or the government knows that I'm searching "[insert embarassing keywords for you here]" or if Facebook knows my location, or if Twitter knows what I like based on the people I follow. Who is the government? It's people. People like you and me. If people decide to make assumptions based on data they collected and the assumptions aren't correct it's their own fault for assuming something in the first place (because...you know...it's an assumption...it can be wrong). I am not aggressively opposing the concept of privacy. I respect other people's opinion.
- NhanH 11y ago
  > I believe it is a flaw of the human personality that makes us want to hide information and eventually lie about it. At the very basic, we want to hide things because other people do not like it (which leads to reaction from shaming to prosecuting and stoning). Fundamentally, the only way for it to not happen is to have a completely homogeneous society, or all human to turn into saints. I will just assert the former to be bad, and the latter to be impossible .
  - sdoering 11y ago
    I also feel, that some form of privacy is also needed to develop new ideas. To mull them, to test them out, before everybody with their own interpretations get's a say. How will we as a society develop further, if everybody will be more or less homogenized by means of ubiquitous surveillance and self censorship (or punishment for transgressions)? We need save (and private) spaces. At least in my view of the world, where I am on your side, not believing all people will turn into saints. Not even most of people. So killing privacy and upping surveillance of everybody, we as society will shoot ourselves in the foot and killing new ideas before they are even thought i fear.
- Swizec 11y ago
  This is all true and I agree wholeheartedly. And when The People incorrectly decide that based on data you raped a 15 year old, you will be in prison for the duration of the trial, you will be on the sex offender list forever, and you will be inconvenienced with anything requiring a background check. You, not The People. Ideologically, I agree, privacy is a lame side-effect of how groups of people work. Pragmatically, please don't take it away.
  - blitzprog 11y ago
    I see your point. If society ends up believing in the fact that assumptions based on collected data have suddenly turned into "facts" then we will be truly...let me say it frankly...we are done for. I believe when this happens Hacker News won't exist anymore because the intelligence of human beings will be comparable to that of a fly. Luckily...this didn't happen yet because I can still have intellectual discussions, even on the internet. I like your separation of "ideologically" and "pragmatically". I agree, it's not a pragmatical approach.

subatomic 11y ago

Do you have curtains in your house?

andersonvom 11y ago

I think you mean "I don't care about my privacy at this moment". These are very different ideas. Or would you not care about your privacy if you visited a country where reading HN content was illegal? Or would you not care about the privacy of someone denouncing some government wrong doing? Or if someone started harassing you because of the things they found out you're doing? There are plenty of cases where privacy are important, even if you think they don't currently apply to you.

grecy 11y ago

What about the impacts of all all-knowing government in the future? 10 years from now a new government is voted in, and they severely dislike people with your political views based on some online comments you made in 2016. They could do anything from just making it really hard for you to vote, all the way to getting you fired, pulling your mortgage out from under you, etc. etc. You really have no idea what a future government or corporation will do with so much data about you. Based on history, I think it's best to assume it won't be good for you.

CaptSpify 11y ago
And, I think it's important to point out: This isn't just a scary story to make people side with you. This actually happened, albeit before the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare

jfoutz 11y ago

The part i hate is the asymmetry. I don't really care if people know where i am. In the naive sense, there is a lot of value in knowing location. Restraining orders, for example, could become effective. "How did your cell phone get to the bank that was robbed if you weren't there?" stuff like that. Furthermore, politicians pander. being able to answer how many people showed up for that protest is valuable. what were their demographics? Perhaps this is an issue that matters. But the asymmetry is horrible. You want real time access to my location? ok, but make the location public for the police. and NSA employees. and senators. Having a record, that's made public after a few weeks or months seems pretty reasonable to me. Having a record that's secret and controlled by a handful of powerful people, which is what i think we have now, is much more frightening.

opo 11y ago

Mind posting your medical records and tax returns? Once we see them, we can let you know what else we would like to see.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

baddox 11y ago

From the perspective of political philosophy, I see no problem with you not caring about keeping your own personal information private. But that's very different than you proposing a government program that will forcefully prevent other people who do want to maintain control over their personal information from doing so. To phrase it differently, in a world where individuals have perfect control over their personal information, so can still post any of your own personal information to the Internet if you want it to be public. It's basically the difference between saying "I'm not personally a Muslim" and "I think practicing Islam should be illegal."

nahname 11y ago

Can I have access to your email account? I only want to read everything you don't care about protecting. Promise.

brandonmenc 11y ago

Can I have access to your Senator's philandering text messages so that I can bribe them to make a vote you don't support?

logicallee 11y ago
you don't mean bribe, you mean blackmail. It's a good example. When you get anonymous, credible, extortion/blackmail attempts a good reaction is to go to the FBI and say, look, some anonymous person is blackmailing/extorting me. (a crime). Now you can decide whether you want the courts to have any ability to connect that crime to the medium that you were communicated via, or whether that information should simply vanish in the ether, leaving anyone to blackmail or extort anyone else from the safety of their own home and behind an anonymous Internet connection. you've, in fact, made the opposite point to the one that you meant to :) when crimes start getting committed, sometimes society needs recourse.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  If you outlaw anonymity, only outlaws will be anonymous. But we were talking about privacy, not anonymity. My argument is that even if you don't have secrets, someone with power over you (politician, judge, general, CEO) may, and you should want their secrets kept.

enraged_camel 11y ago

>>I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. When late 19th century Germany started recording census data, a clerk made the suggestion that they should also record each person's religion. No one objected. What could be the harm, right? They were already collecting age, gender, occupation, etc. so they might as well collect one more thing. Half a century later, the Nazis were able to use those same historical census records to identify whose grandparents were Jewish, and therefore who must be Jewish, which greatly aided in rounding up those people. So imagine: a piece of information commonly believed to be harmless to reveal about oneself became the primary method that facilitated one of the greatest atrocities in human history. The lesson here is that tomorrow's government may turn out to be very different than today's. Information you willingly reveal about yourself today, or don't mind others (such as the government) finding out about you, may be used against you, your children or their children. That is why privacy is supremely important.

mixmastamyk 11y ago
This is the logical extreme. It may seem far fetched today, but it doesn't have to get nearly this bad to cause great harm.
vixen99 11y ago
Yes! Everybody should read https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_pr.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_... who quotes Cardinal Richelieu "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." As Schneier puts it: two proverbs sum it up: "Who watches the watchers?" and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

executesorder66 11y ago

> I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. I'd love to know why you don't care. 1) Do you really not care if people watch everything you do? Would you live in a Big Brother type house where everything you do is recorded and shown to the public? That includes you showing, shitting, picking your nose, having sex, watching porn, every conversation you have etc. And maybe you really don't give a fuck about that. I guess some people could stand naked in front of a crowd and shit themselves an not think twice about it. But then on the other hand, there is one more thing to consider. What if the current government, or another one elected in the next 5 to 20 years is really evil? And let's say they are against the things you believe in, and they believe anyone who believes what you believe should suffer unimaginably? Or what if you like to complain about things? You post negative restaurant reviews Write angry letters in the newspaper, stuff like that. And this new government doesn't like complainers, because they don't want to be challenged. They could just look at all the stuff you have complained about in the past and decide you are too dangerous. So they arrest you (and your family, because why not?) and then they put you in a concentration camp. Where you and your family are worked to death. Starved to death. Beaten to death. Raped. Experimented on. Burned alive. I know it's an extreme example, but things like this have happened before. Except now it's easier than ever for governments to round up the people they don't like, and to find out who the people they don't like are. And the less you care about privacy, the easier you make it for them. Would you still say you don't care about privacy? Or do you just believe something like that would never happen, and so it's not important that we take steps to prevent a future government to do such things?

hyperion2010 11y ago

Let us imagine that someone out there doesn't like the fact that you don't care about privacy and thinks that you should. In a world without privacy where everything is under surveillance that someone can simply recreate reality so that you are now a criminal. Hell, they might just smear you on twitter as a racist rapist and post a bunch of fake data. It won't matter what the truth is any more. Allowing the state to trample all over privacy will only make such activity easier and more prevalent. Worse it can create the illusion of 'authoritative' truth which is even easier to manipulate.

kbart 11y ago

So if police came to your home and installed surveillance cameras (you know, just to check if you didn't beat your wife or smoke pot on your couch) you are OK with that? Everyone has something to hide and needs some privacy, digital or not.

mrweasel 11y ago

>I personally do not care about privacy. You might think that, but it's just a matter of time really before someone asks you a question you don't want to answer. The users of Ashley Madison certainly had something to hide. They weren't doing anything illegal, so why should there have been any concern about privacy? It's somewhat humorous when politicians use the "nothing to hide" argument. The governments and politicians seems to have the most to hide. It should be any problem for any government to release all information about any decision ever made, at least not after the fact.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

miguelrochefort 11y ago

I agree with you completely. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. The value of data by far surpasses any risk involved with it. If people were more honest, transparent and straightforward, we would have a much more tolerant society. Everything would be much more efficient. Crowd sourcing of health data would be facilitated, and we probably would have greater understanding of health and be able to cure many diseases. All arguments in favor of privacy naturally lead to the conclusion that we should get rid of the internet. And probably communication in general. Heck, make people blind and deaf, that'll solve the privacy problem. People are deluded. Just one of the many instances where so-called progressive people blindly support an inherently conservative cause.

rrggrr 11y ago

Civic responsibility. You choose to be part of this society and you owe it a debt for the stability and opportunity it provides you. Its not an entitlement and your egocentric attitude toward privacy places you, and society, at risk. There must be boundaries set for government or it will expand power unchecked. History demonstrates this time and again.

m1sta_ 11y ago
Constrain government power by shining light on it.

EliRivers 11y ago

You don't care about your own privacy, but do you care about anyone else's privacy? If someone you care about deeply tells you that they value their privacy and they want to keep it, does that matter to you?

natch 11y ago

>I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should. Maybe that's what you think. Let's see if you're willing to post the names, phone numbers, SSN or other ID numbers if you have them, and addresses of all your friends and loved ones. Got some weasel words about how that's not "personally"? Ok, start with your own info. Not going to do it? Didn't think so. If you think you don't care about privacy, you probably haven't thought things through as others have.

billmalarky 11y ago

Privacy is important because information is powerful. One should be able to defend oneself against information related attacks. Just because you are a good person that wouldn't use information to hurt others doesn't mean others wouldn't. A right to privacy is similar to a right to lock one's car doors when traveling through a bad neighborhood.