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> get 'privacy' and 'anonymity' confused When it isn't possible to avoid being observed, privacy depends upon the anonymity gained from misrepresentation. Dan
by pdkl95 10y ago
> get 'privacy' and 'anonymity' confused
When it isn't possible to avoid being observed, privacy depends upon the anonymity gained from misrepresentation.
Dan Geer's recommended[1] definition for 'privacy' in the age of ubiquitous surveillance:
> Privacy used to be proportional to that which it is impossible to observe or that which can be observed but not identified. No more -- what is today observable and identifiable kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and privacy as impossible-to-identify, so what might be an alternative? If you are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward rules of data procedure administered by a government you trust or control. If you are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the operational, and your definition of a state of privacy will be my definition: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself.
[1] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
- dimino 10y agoI hate how "hacker" has always been synonymous with anti-establishment.
- krapp 10y agoI hate how "hacker" has been co-opted by the establishment.
- dimino 10y agoI hate how a hobby/profession must be a lifestyle or worldview. I'm interested in breaking things, so now I have to hate my dad? He's the one who got me interested in breaking things!
- krapp 10y agoBut "breaking things" is kind of an anti-establishment act by definition. You may not agree with it, but anarchist ideology was a fundamental part of hacker culture long before computer literacy became mainstream. The modern usage is a corruption of an ideal.
- dimino 10y agoI get that, but I hate it.
- krapp 10y agofair enough.
- contravariant 10y agoNow I'm not sure if that is anti-establishment or not.
- krapp 10y agoYuppies were the children of hippies who rebelled against their parents by embracing conservatism, so it wouldn't be without precedent. How do you counter the counterculture when it wins and just becomes culture?