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So i read your response and everything you say reinforces my feeling that it is better to publish this than not to. At least this was done not for profit. If t
by meshko 10y ago
So i read your response and everything you say reinforces my feeling that it is better to publish this than not to. At least this was done not for profit.
If the data is collected and the data is for sale (and it is, because i understand it was purchased legally), there _will_ be someone who builds the service for aggregation and searching like you describe. And it might be very expensive, but that crazy ex will pay that $1000 to find the person she is after. In other words, saying "it's unethical to make access to public info easy" is useless; if information is public, someone will access it and someone will make it easy to access. It's better if this is done in a public way and for free, than if someone sells it quietly.
- ubernostrum 10y agoThe problem still comes down to your "lessons should be painful" approach, and how disproportionate it is relative to the perceived error here. To take an analogy: if a child plays with matches, you teach the child not to do that, explain how fire is dangerous, etc. You don't light a fire and hold the child's face down on it to burn them and make the lesson "painful". Yet when it comes to deliberately making sensitive/intimate data about people public that basically is what you're advocating for: the potential emotional harm that can be done to the people involved is off the charts.
- meshko 10y agoFrankly I don't understand what are these terrible secrets that people are comfortable sharing on a public web site for everyone to see, but not comfortable with everyone seeing them. I just fail to see the pain. Discomfort, sure, but pain and suffering?