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It seems absurd to me to consider data about a person to belong to that person. If I learn that Chloe is a reporter for The Inquirer, what law restricts me from
by mikedilger 7y ago
It seems absurd to me to consider data about a person to belong to that person. If I learn that Chloe is a reporter for The Inquirer, what law restricts me from telling somebody else? And if there is one, what else can I not say about her? Can I mention she is a brunette? Can I tell the story about going out for coffee, or am I violating her privacy by leaking the fact that she prefers coffee to tea? To get really ridiculous for a moment (brace yourself) does she have a property right on the region of my brain which holds any of this information about her? Clearly there is a fundamental incongruity with other basic social notions.
As a society we have most definitely moved in the direction that data about a person is somehow under their right to control: the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, etc. We've subsequently run into numerous difficulties with this notion, such as the inability to warn our friends about bad actors, leading to different rules for "public people" versus "private people," arbitrary dividing lines, different rules for minors, different rules for individuals vs companies vs really really big companies, and a number of other abstruse rules about when or where you might be violating somebody's privacy, which seem to change significantly over the years and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction with no hope of ever settling down (because IMHO there is no rational obvious place for this to settle into).
Even if the laws were clear, universal and watertight, privacy is still fundamentally your problem. Laws will not control everybody else, and depending on everybody else to behave doesn't seem like a sane strategy for anybody. So you'd best keep your secrets to yourself and those you trust.
- sosborn 7y agoDoes there have to be a law for something to be distasteful and ethically dubious?
- AlexCoventry 7y agoThere probably does if it's sufficiently profitable and you want it to stop.
- tty2300 7y agoNew technology has opened up new possibilities far beyond what your word of mouth example has. Megacorps are sucking up data on a mass scale and using it for evil such as manipulating elections, tricking you in to buying stuff and reporting your every action to the government. For this reason we need to think beyond the old ways of dealing with data.
- oytis 7y agoYes, the reality has changed. We have to either adapt our notions of privacy etc. to the new reality or pretend that nothing really changed. The latter seems to work, but one day you go to Africa (or India, or China, or just have to deal with someone who can ignore/circumvent the regulation), and - surprise! - the reality is still there.
- tty2300 7y agoCould say the same about anything. Should we ignore the reality that people like to steal things and make it illegal even though some still will?
- atoav 7y agoPrivacy laws IMO have multiple purposes, only one of which is protecting the citizen’ right to their own data. Another big one is balance of power. If a entity — be it a state, company, individual or a group of indivdiuals — knows everything about you, they thereby create a asymmetry of powers they can leverage for their own interest. In addition to protecting the individual, privacy laws are also meant to reduce or limit that kind of asymmetry to avoid the social consequences that might be linked to it. Not without a reason it is Germany which has one of the strongest privacy movements in the world, because many of them know first hand, what data in the hand of fascist and communist governments can do to the life of individuals. When the Nazis marched into the Netherlands, the having the religious orientation in a central database was was made the difference to many lifes. And that is, what makes data different than somebody’s knowledge in their heads: if the Nazis march into your nation you could take the decision whether to tell on your jewish neighbour or not, while in the case of real data you can’t.