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There is a fundamental, irreconcilable tension between the need for people to be able to protect themselves against abusive governments and the need for governm

There is a fundamental, irreconcilable tension between the need for people to be able to protect themselves against abusive governments and the need for governments to be able to catch criminals. While it seems good to consider the full impact of anonymity, it's not going to generate any meaningful discussion. You can either be anonymous online or you can't. There isn't much middle ground there. There is no balance that can exist.

SkyBelow 7y ago
>There is a fundamental, irreconcilable tension between the need for people to be able to protect themselves against abusive governments and the need for governments to be able to catch criminals. Aren't these the same thing to the technology? To someone labeled a criminal, the government doing so is an abusive government. To a government that considers itself right, those who don't follow the rules are criminals. We each have our own personal views on what should and should not be allowed which we judge individual cases with, but technology does not have a sense of morality to make such judgment as to when the criminal is in the right and when the government is in the right. I think people far too often try to humanize computer algorithms with notions of right and wrong. The technology to avoid and oppressive regime is the exact same technology that protects the horrible person from justice.
wpietri 7y ago
If that's truly the case, I'd like to see the developer grapple with that. However, I don't think that's the case at all. We can see in the real world there are many ways to strike a balance between safety and privacy.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > We can see in the real world there are many ways to strike a balance between safety and privacy. So how would this work online? "We have private chats, but the government can look into any of them at any time"? I suppose it depends on your definition of privacy ... are your chats still private if I'm unable to see them but your friendly neighborhood police department reads them?
  - wpietri 7y ago
    As I said, this gets handled a variety of ways in the real world. If this is your first time encountering the topic, maybe a good place to start is a talk: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/06/dataedge-2019-alex-stamos-keynote-the-platform-challenge-balancing-safety-privacy-and-freedom/ https://securityboulevard.com/2019/06/dataedge-2019-alex-sta...

SkyBelow 7y ago

>There is a fundamental, irreconcilable tension between the need for people to be able to protect themselves against abusive governments and the need for governments to be able to catch criminals. Aren't these the same thing to the technology? To someone labeled a criminal, the government doing so is an abusive government. To a government that considers itself right, those who don't follow the rules are criminals. We each have our own personal views on what should and should not be allowed which we judge individual cases with, but technology does not have a sense of morality to make such judgment as to when the criminal is in the right and when the government is in the right. I think people far too often try to humanize computer algorithms with notions of right and wrong. The technology to avoid and oppressive regime is the exact same technology that protects the horrible person from justice.

wpietri 7y ago

If that's truly the case, I'd like to see the developer grapple with that. However, I don't think that's the case at all. We can see in the real world there are many ways to strike a balance between safety and privacy.

luckylion 7y ago
> We can see in the real world there are many ways to strike a balance between safety and privacy. So how would this work online? "We have private chats, but the government can look into any of them at any time"? I suppose it depends on your definition of privacy ... are your chats still private if I'm unable to see them but your friendly neighborhood police department reads them?
- wpietri 7y ago
  As I said, this gets handled a variety of ways in the real world. If this is your first time encountering the topic, maybe a good place to start is a talk: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/06/dataedge-2019-alex-stamos-keynote-the-platform-challenge-balancing-safety-privacy-and-freedom/ https://securityboulevard.com/2019/06/dataedge-2019-alex-sta...