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Unpopular opinion, but: I think too much privacy is bad for society. Consider the world where privacy is the absolute king: - Much harder to solve crimes as p

• kardos 7y ago
  The role of the purists might be to counteract the "privacy is dead and buried" crowd
  • kelnos 7y ago
    You're being downvoted, but to a certain extent, I agree. I personally find people like Richard Stallman extremist to the point of considering their positions to be cult-ish or religious. But I think people like that serve as a valuable counterbalance to the people at the other end of the spectrum who don't care about software freedom and are purely pragmatists (or who actively try to thwart FOSS). At the very least, when bad things happen, and the people on the other side say "we never could have foreseen this", we can point to RMS and say, "yes, you could have".
  • ineedasername 7y ago
    Yes, but I've always disliked the idea that one extreme will balance out another. Like advocates of Fox News or CNN saying their bias is justified because is balances the bias of their counterpart on the left/right. In theory if people watched both, digested the arguments of both sides, there might be some balance. In practice, it tends to simply entrench people with confirmation bias.
    • ahartmetz 7y ago
      I think you should consider the differences between types of extremism. The difference between Stallman and Fox News is that Stallman's extremism is well reasoned and consistent while Fox News is only consistent in serving the interests of "the man behind the curtain". Stallman offers a base for logical reasoning while Fox News offers a bunch of positions only good for uncritical acceptance.
• module0000 7y ago
  I'm 100% behind all of your points. That's the world I want to live in, for the exact same reasons you do not... The only one I would even want to bend is the "can't setup cameras/audio recording on your own property" bit. I'm not sure how that would work, in a privacy-centric world, wouldn't the person you are recording avoid the entire area - to protect their privacy?
  • delusional 7y ago
    What about when those cameras start sending data to some central 3rd party in who then tracks people. What if everybody installs those cameras? Do you now have to avoid everywhere? This is exactly what has happened with the tracking scripts from facebook and google. They provide some service, but the tradeoff is that you have to let them spy on your users. So the counter question is: "Can you not just avoid google - to protect your privacy?"
    • jonnydubowsky 7y ago
      And with Nest's new neighborhood watch feature, my dad just took me on a cctv tour around the neighborhood as all the neighbors had opted into sharing their doorbell feeds. It was cool. And creepy.
      • JohnFen 7y ago
        Damn. That's a neighborhood I'd be moving out of.
• pvg 7y ago
  No privacy advocates are arguing for a world where 'privacy is absolute king'. Most of the things you bring up are covered by existing, established law, much of it centuries old. The debates tend to revolve around this: companies that deal with data Here the problem is the opposite - it's now not only possible but typical for private entities to accumulate massive amounts of previously private information about individuals, far beyond what the most powerful totalitarian governments ever could. We got there very quickly and our societal and legal norms and frameworks have not caught up. What's to be done about this?
• sailfast 7y ago
  I think you may be conflating right to privacy with certain individual rights, but I'll start with a relatively trite observation by Benjamin Franklin that you should not give up liberty for security, and if you do, you deserve neither. Nobody said society was or should be perfectly "safe" and it's not something we should optimize for. We should optimize for individual liberty and the rule of law. (I'm an American, for what it's worth). As for rebuttals, here's what I would consider for each of your points as a potential balancing counterpoint: > "much harder to solve crimes as police work is thwarted at every turn" - there are reasons police require warrants to obtain information. This should continue to be the case. Warrants make their job harder, of course, but it also preserves individual freedom. This balancing act is at the crux of our society and always will be. I lean towards making it harder for the state if I have to choose. > "much easier to plot terrorist attacks / etc" - see above point about security and liberty. We are not optimizing for complete safety, and any open society will run into these issues. The alternative is not something I would like to consider, personally. The tools that might solve these issues are also readily used to suppress dissent and empower the state. Best to make it difficult to employ them. > "can't set up cameras on your property" - this is an individual rights issue not a privacy issue. You have the right to do this on your property. > "hard to create companies that deal with data" - I don't think this is particularly hard right now, and we could use a few more laws about this to prevent third parties from wielding more power than the state without any recourse to the individual. In the end, it's not as much about privacy but rather about rights of the individual to appeal their being "on a list" or discriminated against as a result of being arbitrarily added to the list. If you want a concrete example of this, I'd say let's talk about Credit Ratings agencies and the power they wield in the United States. > "much easier to hide your past mistakes" making things like "background checks" less useful. - I'm pretty sure it'll still be damned near impossible to really bury this kind of stuff without significant means. Furthermore, as a hypothesis, I'd argue the general benefit to society of not having a giant database is a net positive and the outliers / background check avoiders are probably very very few statistically. Leave blacklisting to the legal system where a felon, sex-offender, etc are tagged for life but at least it's done via laws. (see the previous HN post about a company tracking which bars you've been kicked out of) I don't feel that my views here are extreme. Mostly I'm left feeling quite powerless to do anything without being tracked and monetized by somebody (at a minimum), and worse - potentially having my real-world life altered because of some random algorithmic detection that I have not opted into, did not realize, and cannot control or appeal. That feels weird, and I think there's a middle ground between the two that we can continue to investigate. A combination of views on optimization as well as trust in government to uphold law in the way one expects likely determines a lot about where one falls in the continuum of individual privacy vs. access to information on this. I would argue for checks and balances.
• throwaway713 7y ago
  > Unpopular opinion, but: I think too much privacy is bad for society. Not unpopular in general, just unpopular among specific groups (including HN). I agree with you, generally. We give up certain freedoms in order to live in a civilized society as opposed to living in the woods as hermits, and I would rather err on the side of more safety / less privacy than vice versa. But there’s no right or wrong; it’s just your personal philosophy. Some people believe that without absolute privacy, the government will start imposing surveillance on everything and we will live in a dystopian, Minority Report, social credit score future. It’s the same reason a lot of people want the right to bear arms; they want the (perceived) ability to balance against a slippery slope scenario with the government or other large organizations exerting too much control.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• deiznof 7y ago
  I think people are more concerned with the invasive data collection that happens during day to day, casual internet/cell phone use. They are wondering why Company X would need to know your blood type, prescription history and your political preferences to make a smart phone that opens snapchat .3 seconds faster.
• JohnFen 7y ago
  I honestly don't see many people arguing for the sort of absolute privacy you're positing here. People are arguing against the continued reduction of privacy.