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> Who is talking about secrets? We both are. > What I have been saying all along is that none of this information is particularly secret or sensitive. What i

> Who is talking about secrets? We both are. > What I have been saying all along is that none of this information is particularly secret or sensitive. What is the point of forcing this binary distinction that doesn't exist in reality? There is no binary distinction between "secret" and "public" in reality. There is only information, and effort required to obtain it. "Secret" is the label we commonly use for the end of the spectrum where it's close to impossible to obtain information, "public" was traditionally something along the lines of "can be obtained with medium to no effort". Just because some information isn't impossible to obtain, doesn't mean that the distinction between "can be obtained with medium effort on a single person" and "can be trivially obtained on everyone" is of no consequence to how information can be used and abused. > Your address is not a secret. Your employer or the fact that you have children is not a secret. Your religion is not a secret. Except they all are, to a degree. That is, they are all not necessarily known to you exclusively, but that doesn't mean that there is no difference between everyone knowing their neighbour's religion and a company having a database of the religion of every single person on the planet. This binary distinction that you are insisting on is what is preventing you from seeing the actual structure of the world, and the actual consequences of aggregation of information in the wrong hands. > Even Jews, who have more cause to be concerned than anyone, do not go to great lengths to hide their religion, nor should they. If anything, many outwardly wear markers of their religion in public, and why should they live in fear and hide as you would have them do? I would not have them do anything, that's just a problem with your authoritarian attitude. You are only seeing the options of forcing people to do A or forcing people to do B. But the non-authoritarian solution to this problem is to give people the individual choice between A and B. Noone wants to force anyone to hide their religion. But everyone should have the option to do so if they wish, and not be forced to reveal it because that is what you want. > As you go about interacting with people in the public sphere, you will necessarily expose certain pieces of information about yourself. That is unavoidable. You want to live in a place where the government collects taxes and pays for roads and police and such? Well, then the government is going to need to know your address. You want to have public school for your kids? Well guess what, there's going to have to be a record somewhere that you have kids. So? How is that relevant to the unnecessary collection of information? > You want to go to church in an easily accessible building in a public space and not in a secret underground bunker? Well, people are going to be able to see that you go to that church. See what I wrote above about that useless binary distinction. There is no logical argument connecting "I want to go to church in an easily accessible building in a public space" to "therefore, we must accept that someone is going to archive high-resolution footage and use it to build a detailed profile of me and everyone else visiting that church" or whatever other abuses would be possible with that information that you insist to categorize as "public". > Unless you want to live alone in the forest as a hermit, a certain amount of information-sharing is necessary to participate in society. OK. Again: How is that relevant to the unnecessary data collection that happens in addition to that? > The fact that that information can be collected and aggregated is also unavoidable. ... because? I mean, it sounds like you are saying that it is in principle impossible to ever prevent people from collecting information? As far as I can tell this is a completely unsubstantiated claim, that's also obviously contradicted by reality, where we all the time prevent people from collecting information just fine. > What happens next, the actions that particular people or groups take with that information, THAT is what is avoidable, and where our efforts should be concentrated. ... because? You are just making those claims, but what is your justification for that? > The fact that there is a database of people's addresses is not a problem. If there is a goon squad rounding up people at those address, the goon squad is the problem. Yeah, I got that that is your claim. But just making unsubstantiated claims is not convincing. I assume that you would agree that a goon squad that wants to round people up but doesn't know where to find them would not be particularly successful with their goal, right? And a goon squad that does know where to find the people and thus does indeed round them up ... would have worse real-world consequences, wouldn't it? And the difference between the two is that one knows the addresses, the other doesn't, right? So, how do you justify then that the difference that decides whether people end up rounded up or not is not a problem? Mind you, I agree that the existence of a goon squad that wants to round up people is a problem. I am only addressing your claim that the availability of data is not a problem, even though it obviously makes a difference in the consequences.

imgabe 8y ago
> I would not have them do anything, that's just a problem with your authoritarian attitude. You are only seeing the options of forcing people to do A or forcing people to do B. But the non-authoritarian solution to this problem is to give people the individual choice between A and B. Noone wants to force anyone to hide their religion. But everyone should have the option to do so if they wish, and not be forced to reveal it because that is what you want. > See what I wrote above about that useless binary distinction. There is no logical argument connecting "I want to go to church in an easily accessible building in a public space" to "therefore, we must accept that someone is going to archive high-resolution footage and use it to build a detailed profile of me and everyone else visiting that church" or whatever other abuses would be possible with that information that you insist to categorize as "public". You seem very eager to ascribe powers to me that I do not possess. I am not forcing anyone to do anything. My will is completely irrelevant. I'm saying something like "It's cold outside. If you go out there you will be cold". I'm not forcing people to be cold. I am telling them that it is cold. Do you see that? If you would like to have a completely private religion that exists only in your head that you never tell anyone about, go ahead. Knock yourself out. I don't see how I could stop that even if I wanted to, which I don't. It makes no difference to me. Acting in the public sphere reveals information about you. That is a fact. It is not a matter of a creepy guy with a thin mustache sitting in a van outside your church with a high resolution camera. That is not even necessary. Plenty of legitimate interactions will expose your information. Let's say you want to subscribe to your church's newsletter. A perfectly normal thing that anyone would want to do. Well, now you, your church, your church's email provider, your email provider, your church's ISP, your ISP, all have access to the information that you go to that church. If they use some third party software like Mailchimp, then Mailchimp has that information as well. If they outsource the management of that newsletter to their web design firm, then they also have that information. If they want to fund it by having the local auto repair shop or funeral home place an ad in the newsletter, then maybe they have that information as well. They did not illegally collect it. They did not unnecessarily collect it. It was absolutely necessary for them to have that information for them to be able to do the thing that you asked them to do. But now the information exists. This applies to most information that's collected. If I want Google to give me directions somewhere, they necessarily need to know where I am and where I'm going. If I want to be able to make calls from my cell phone, that cell phone needs to ping a tower that is in a place that gives information about where I am at that time. If I visit a website, the website is going to have access to the fact that a certain IP address with a certain browser configuration visited it. Yes, some nefarious actor like a fascist government could force them to hand over that information, or a fascist terrorist group could hack into their database and steal it and commit acts of terror, but if you want the information to not exist at all, then things like your church newsletter are also not going to be able to exist. Most people want to be able to do things like receive a newsletter from their church, so making that not exist isn't really an option. Hence we need to focus more on controlling our government by making sure that fascists do not come to power, and prosecuting people who would harm others moreso than we need to worry about the fact that information exists in a database somewhere because we put it there to serve some purpose that we wanted.

imgabe 8y ago

> I would not have them do anything, that's just a problem with your authoritarian attitude. You are only seeing the options of forcing people to do A or forcing people to do B. But the non-authoritarian solution to this problem is to give people the individual choice between A and B. Noone wants to force anyone to hide their religion. But everyone should have the option to do so if they wish, and not be forced to reveal it because that is what you want. > See what I wrote above about that useless binary distinction. There is no logical argument connecting "I want to go to church in an easily accessible building in a public space" to "therefore, we must accept that someone is going to archive high-resolution footage and use it to build a detailed profile of me and everyone else visiting that church" or whatever other abuses would be possible with that information that you insist to categorize as "public". You seem very eager to ascribe powers to me that I do not possess. I am not forcing anyone to do anything. My will is completely irrelevant. I'm saying something like "It's cold outside. If you go out there you will be cold". I'm not forcing people to be cold. I am telling them that it is cold. Do you see that? If you would like to have a completely private religion that exists only in your head that you never tell anyone about, go ahead. Knock yourself out. I don't see how I could stop that even if I wanted to, which I don't. It makes no difference to me. Acting in the public sphere reveals information about you. That is a fact. It is not a matter of a creepy guy with a thin mustache sitting in a van outside your church with a high resolution camera. That is not even necessary. Plenty of legitimate interactions will expose your information. Let's say you want to subscribe to your church's newsletter. A perfectly normal thing that anyone would want to do. Well, now you, your church, your church's email provider, your email provider, your church's ISP, your ISP, all have access to the information that you go to that church. If they use some third party software like Mailchimp, then Mailchimp has that information as well. If they outsource the management of that newsletter to their web design firm, then they also have that information. If they want to fund it by having the local auto repair shop or funeral home place an ad in the newsletter, then maybe they have that information as well. They did not illegally collect it. They did not unnecessarily collect it. It was absolutely necessary for them to have that information for them to be able to do the thing that you asked them to do. But now the information exists. This applies to most information that's collected. If I want Google to give me directions somewhere, they necessarily need to know where I am and where I'm going. If I want to be able to make calls from my cell phone, that cell phone needs to ping a tower that is in a place that gives information about where I am at that time. If I visit a website, the website is going to have access to the fact that a certain IP address with a certain browser configuration visited it. Yes, some nefarious actor like a fascist government could force them to hand over that information, or a fascist terrorist group could hack into their database and steal it and commit acts of terror, but if you want the information to not exist at all, then things like your church newsletter are also not going to be able to exist. Most people want to be able to do things like receive a newsletter from their church, so making that not exist isn't really an option. Hence we need to focus more on controlling our government by making sure that fascists do not come to power, and prosecuting people who would harm others moreso than we need to worry about the fact that information exists in a database somewhere because we put it there to serve some purpose that we wanted.