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I'm going to make a very controversial point for the sake of argument, not one I am even sure I agree with. In my line of work, I don't see an increase in priv

I'm going to make a very controversial point for the sake of argument, not one I am even sure I agree with. In my line of work, I don't see an increase in privacy happening, I see exactly the opposite despite increasing privacy measures. In fact, I see observation (video, audio, etc.) devices are literally going to be everywhere. They are in our devices, homes, cars, transportation vehicles (aircraft, public transit), cities, streets - there is nearly nowhere to hide - for any of us. Whether this is right or wrong may not matter any more unless it can be controlled. Can it be controlled? If it cannot be controlled, I see only one other option - and this is the sticky point... ..we have to be ready to face ourselves and each other publicly at all times. There will be little to no way to hide, to maintain privacy, etc. Our cultures will have to adapt, perhaps, at first, by trying to hide, enacting laws, etc. However, if it is inevitable that privacy cannot be maintained, then I argue, our culture will have to evolve. Perhaps the culture of the future will protect your child from sexual predators in a different way. Perhaps we will have equal potential to be seen naked publicly whether on the Internet, a nude beach, regardless of age, gender or ethnicity. To ensure the safety and security of society, people will have to change, even if our accepted norms of nudity, sexuality, etc. change. I can only hope that we as humans will be able to evolve to handle the changed paradigm and still ensure reasonable safety and security of society. I will say, I believe people today globally already have to be extremely more open-minded than ever before, on average, just to mentally cope with how we have changed as humans. Feel free to debate me here.. as I said, I am not sure if even I believe what I'm writing, but.. I'm trying to be open-minded about it.

norswap 8y ago
It's difficult to debate because there is little evidence (we're talking about the future). But people value privacy a lot. People like to have time where they are safe and vulnerable. And you still control your own home. At worse, GAFAM might spy on you, but only to feed data to a machine learning algorithm. I think privacy will still exist, but maybe it will come at a premium outside of homes.
- sixdimensional 8y ago
  I agree, and your comment hints at a degree of optimism. There are individual cases of privacy breach and institutional ones. The primary processual means of protection we've come up with appears to be policy and regulation. Cultures differ so different policy and regulation in different places. However, I'm seeing a trend of justifying privacy intrusion through the argument that "only the machine learning algorithm sees it". For any purpose, governmental or not, algorithmic or human, the breach of privacy is a breach. I guess naturally we will likely find some kind of balance... or maybe not... but I do still believe we will be forced to confront the fact that we will see and know more of each other. I'm not sure, that might be a good thing in one light, having to face each other, and the end of the concept of natural privacy on the other. Perhaps only those with the means to enforce their privacy will be able to in the future. I think that agrees with your point that outside of certain situations it might come at a premium. Or maybe it will come at a premium regardless of environment. I'm reminded of the physics concept "the observer effect", by observing something you change it. That change is what we must face when we are almost always being observed.
  - norswap 8y ago
    Michel Foucault has some interesting thing to say on this, in the context of his study of the carceral system ("Discipline & Punish").
Fnoord 8y ago
Yes, the elephant in the room is that the trend is inevitable. However the severity of it is the arms race. For myself, I'm cool with a lot of that. My partner will have to decide for herself. Though it might affect me since we live together and have a child. We're adults though. Our child, however, is our responsibility and if I can protect her privacy in cases which are likely to backfire later on, I should, IMO. Don't get me wrong: I don't have the illusion I'll be able to protect her in every case in this regard but I believe this to be one of those examples. Another one is where your child did something stupid (such as breaking the law) and you documented it. Don't shame your child in public! What's going to happen is that there will be documented cases of what children did in their youth which were not acceptable. But because roughly all children have that, its kinda OK. "We all were young" will have public sources to back it up, if they're searched for. However not doing anything is a defeatist approach to the problem IMO. In that light, I find your post defeatist itself; instead of being open minded about this I suggest being pragmatic; a slightly different angle, also less extreme one way or the other. We still have some privacy left. You can, for example, wilfully leave your smartphone home as Bruce Schneier wrote in his latest book Data and Goliath. We have that choice. His essay Data Is a Toxic Asset, So Why Not Throw It Out? [1] also covers this very topic. Because that also covers how others should treat your private data, something the EU is far ahead on with privacy laws, right to be forgotten, GDPR, accountability on losing private data, etc compared to the USA. [1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic_asse.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_t...
- sixdimensional 8y ago
  I agree that I did sound defeatist a bit. My reasoning for that is I am directly working in an area where I'm literally watching the technology be employed, and workarounds being created to "protect" privacy, for example, employing machine learning on a device to do image processing so the raw input data never leaves the device. However, the ultimate goal of this technology is to uniquely identify you for the sake of personalization, tracking, etc. There's an implicit grant being invoked that if anonymized properly or if certain measures are taken, then the privacy breach is ok. I'm reminded of some culture I heard of once that refused to have photographs taken of themselves out of fear that it would steal their souls. Any case where data is harvested via observations of you in which that data that represents you is not controlled by you or you are not aware of, seems like a breach of privacy. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm not defeatist, I believe we have the power to change things. But, I'm also saying, I'm not sure, for a variety of reasons, we'll ever be able to rollback the concept of pervasive survellaince because, it is starting to become part of technological advancement - for our technology to recognize and work with us better, it must observe us. So long as that is the case, that ability can be abused unless it is protected, and, as security experts like Bruce Schneier have said, there is no such thing as absolute security, only security that lasts for a certain period of time [1]. [1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychology_of_se.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychol...

norswap 8y ago

It's difficult to debate because there is little evidence (we're talking about the future). But people value privacy a lot. People like to have time where they are safe and vulnerable. And you still control your own home. At worse, GAFAM might spy on you, but only to feed data to a machine learning algorithm. I think privacy will still exist, but maybe it will come at a premium outside of homes.

sixdimensional 8y ago
I agree, and your comment hints at a degree of optimism. There are individual cases of privacy breach and institutional ones. The primary processual means of protection we've come up with appears to be policy and regulation. Cultures differ so different policy and regulation in different places. However, I'm seeing a trend of justifying privacy intrusion through the argument that "only the machine learning algorithm sees it". For any purpose, governmental or not, algorithmic or human, the breach of privacy is a breach. I guess naturally we will likely find some kind of balance... or maybe not... but I do still believe we will be forced to confront the fact that we will see and know more of each other. I'm not sure, that might be a good thing in one light, having to face each other, and the end of the concept of natural privacy on the other. Perhaps only those with the means to enforce their privacy will be able to in the future. I think that agrees with your point that outside of certain situations it might come at a premium. Or maybe it will come at a premium regardless of environment. I'm reminded of the physics concept "the observer effect", by observing something you change it. That change is what we must face when we are almost always being observed.
- norswap 8y ago
  Michel Foucault has some interesting thing to say on this, in the context of his study of the carceral system ("Discipline & Punish").

Fnoord 8y ago

Yes, the elephant in the room is that the trend is inevitable. However the severity of it is the arms race. For myself, I'm cool with a lot of that. My partner will have to decide for herself. Though it might affect me since we live together and have a child. We're adults though. Our child, however, is our responsibility and if I can protect her privacy in cases which are likely to backfire later on, I should, IMO. Don't get me wrong: I don't have the illusion I'll be able to protect her in every case in this regard but I believe this to be one of those examples. Another one is where your child did something stupid (such as breaking the law) and you documented it. Don't shame your child in public! What's going to happen is that there will be documented cases of what children did in their youth which were not acceptable. But because roughly all children have that, its kinda OK. "We all were young" will have public sources to back it up, if they're searched for. However not doing anything is a defeatist approach to the problem IMO. In that light, I find your post defeatist itself; instead of being open minded about this I suggest being pragmatic; a slightly different angle, also less extreme one way or the other. We still have some privacy left. You can, for example, wilfully leave your smartphone home as Bruce Schneier wrote in his latest book Data and Goliath. We have that choice. His essay Data Is a Toxic Asset, So Why Not Throw It Out? [1] also covers this very topic. Because that also covers how others should treat your private data, something the EU is far ahead on with privacy laws, right to be forgotten, GDPR, accountability on losing private data, etc compared to the USA. [1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic_asse.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_t...

sixdimensional 8y ago
I agree that I did sound defeatist a bit. My reasoning for that is I am directly working in an area where I'm literally watching the technology be employed, and workarounds being created to "protect" privacy, for example, employing machine learning on a device to do image processing so the raw input data never leaves the device. However, the ultimate goal of this technology is to uniquely identify you for the sake of personalization, tracking, etc. There's an implicit grant being invoked that if anonymized properly or if certain measures are taken, then the privacy breach is ok. I'm reminded of some culture I heard of once that refused to have photographs taken of themselves out of fear that it would steal their souls. Any case where data is harvested via observations of you in which that data that represents you is not controlled by you or you are not aware of, seems like a breach of privacy. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm not defeatist, I believe we have the power to change things. But, I'm also saying, I'm not sure, for a variety of reasons, we'll ever be able to rollback the concept of pervasive survellaince because, it is starting to become part of technological advancement - for our technology to recognize and work with us better, it must observe us. So long as that is the case, that ability can be abused unless it is protected, and, as security experts like Bruce Schneier have said, there is no such thing as absolute security, only security that lasts for a certain period of time [1]. [1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychology_of_se.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychol...