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This is easy to say when you live in a situation where you're part of the majority and all your behavior is within strict limits of the current culture. Take h
by Strom 10y ago
This is easy to say when you live in a situation where you're part of the majority and all your behavior is within strict limits of the current culture.
Take homosexuality for example. Having that information in the open means death in plenty of places. In addition, even in places like the USA it has become accepted only fairly recently but would have gotten you in serious trouble a while back. Culture change can't happen if any event towards this change is immediately punished. The change needs to start small in closed private social circles. Only when a lot of private battles have been won is there hope for a more mainstream acceptance of a new norm.
Take being Jewish for example. In 1920s Germany it wasn't that big of a deal if people knew you were Jewish. However things changed, different people got in power and started to abuse it. What was previously a simple case of "I got nothing to hide" suddenly turned into a question of life & death. It's naive to think that these kind of events will never happen again in any place in the world.
Losing privacy would greatly hurt any cultural change that needs private law breaking, and this includes any future laws.
As for technological progress stopping, of course it isn't going to stop. However this goes both ways. Privacy protecting technology also has progress. Any technology that reduces privacy has a counter-technology that protects privacy. What's more, we can use the same political system that could hurt us with a lack of privacy to instead protect our privacy by prohibiting/limiting privacy breaking activities.
Of course no progress just inherently happens. There are actual driven & talented people working on both sides every day. There is no inevitable victor here, there isn't even a clearly leading side yet, it's very close with strong trends in both privacy-reducing & privacy-increasing directions. Every contribution matters and it's definitely not too late to decisively lead us to a far more private world.
- Spooky23 10y ago> Take homosexuality for example. Having that information in the open means death in plenty of places The fancy cyber word for this is "Opsec". If you're living somewhere where your homosexuality will get you killed, STFU. Don't email people about it. That's really tragic and wrong, but it's reality. In an era where military supremacy has made decisive military action impossible, the reality is that ISIS type people duping the simpleminded to commit horrific acts is a thing. That's makes a vision of privacy that most people Instinctively want a threat in many people's eyes.
- Strom 10y agoISIS et al are an excuse in anti-privacy moves. More people die to bee stings etc than to terrorist attacks. What's more, the terrorists that get caught are caught thanks to classical investigative work not dragnet spying. It's a classic case of exploiting the fear of the masses to shift even more power to those in power. Yes, lots of people will need convincing to make political progress towards more privacy. The same holds for less privacy.
- bigbugbag 10y agoIt is worse that not emailing people about it or even mentioning it. Facebook will know your sexual orientation without you ever saying a word about it. This is what's increasingly worrying, they don't even need you to tell it like it this, they can find about it by analyzing your everyday behavior.
- Spooky23 10y agoI don't disagree. The only thing to do as an individual is to seek refuge, either by hiding or moving. It's a tragic state of affairs.