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The author: Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who

The author: Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data; it means channeling it wisely and justly to serve societal ends and values and the individuals who are its subjects, particularly the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. You are wrong, privacy mean stopping the flow of the data completely. No one should spy on your life.

theaeolist 7y ago
"Should". But they do nevertheless. It's a fact.
onion2k 7y ago
No one should spy on your life. Absolute statements are always wrong. ;) The problem with this way of thinking is that it's very hard to define what 'spying' is, and what 'your life' is. This is best illustrated with an example - when you read this comment you'll have loaded a page on HN. That means HN's server probably has a log of your IP address, browser agent string, etc. There's a complete history of every article you've ever read, upvoted, commented on there for you (and the public at large for some things) to see; Your profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Altheasy https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Altheasy Your comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Altheasy https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Altheasy Your favourited articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=Altheasy https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=Altheasy Taking the first page of your comments and that favourite I can reasonably assume that you're a developer, you don't like testing much, you have a cat, you have a judgemental attitude about how other people spend money, you have a smart phone, etc. Not great insights but you're pretty new here. If I trawled through the comments of someone who has 20,000 comments I could learn a lot. So... is HN spying on you? Am I spying on you when I read those pages? I don't think so. You put that data out there in the open. The same is technically true for most data that people say is spying - eg Google Analytics isn't spying on you when it tracks everything you do on 50% of the websites you visit. You're giving that data away. That's fine. It's useful. It makes the internet better. The flow of data in itself is OK. It only really becomes spying when the data is misused. That's what people want to control.
- cousin_it 7y ago
  Grandparent's statement is pretty absolute, but I find myself in agreement with it. Data collection is the right place to intervene, because once collected, data can be copied and misused at any time in the future. > when you read this comment you'll have loaded a page on HN. That means HN's server probably has a log of your IP address, browser agent string, etc. Such logging isn't technically necessary to serve web pages, and ideally shouldn't be done without consent. > Am I spying on you when I read those pages? That's not spying, because the user consented to making their comments public. (Not sure about favorites though, there's a small note on the profile page but maybe the favoriting action should make it more explicit.) > Google Analytics isn't spying on you when it tracks everything you do on 50% of the websites you visit. It's spying if you didn't consent to it.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    It's spying if you didn't consent to it. There's no explicit consent but the fact you've told your computer to download some code and run it looks a lot like implied consent.
    - cousin_it 7y ago
      I think that argument proves too much. To a user browsing the web, clicking a link that says "check out this nice article" signifies intention/consent to read that article, not to suffer the effects of all possible JS tripwires including pwning their computer and such.
      - eadmund 7y ago
        Sure, but all this tracking isn't a product of JS tripwires pwning computers: it's a natural result of downloading an article from a server.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        No, it's a result of the article telling the browser to also download and execute analytics scripts. It's abusing the good faith HTTP protocol was built upon. That's why I consider ad/content blockers OK and desirable. They're a way for users to express that they don't consent to loading and execution of some resources.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
matz1 7y ago
Disagree. Information wants to be free. Good luck trying to stop the flow of data. The solution of privacy should be embrace the flow of data or even increase it by increasing transparency. Sure, there are going to be issue in regards data being public and thats what should be fixed instead.

theaeolist 7y ago

"Should". But they do nevertheless. It's a fact.

onion2k 7y ago

No one should spy on your life. Absolute statements are always wrong. ;) The problem with this way of thinking is that it's very hard to define what 'spying' is, and what 'your life' is. This is best illustrated with an example - when you read this comment you'll have loaded a page on HN. That means HN's server probably has a log of your IP address, browser agent string, etc. There's a complete history of every article you've ever read, upvoted, commented on there for you (and the public at large for some things) to see; Your profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Altheasy https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Altheasy Your comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Altheasy https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Altheasy Your favourited articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=Altheasy https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=Altheasy Taking the first page of your comments and that favourite I can reasonably assume that you're a developer, you don't like testing much, you have a cat, you have a judgemental attitude about how other people spend money, you have a smart phone, etc. Not great insights but you're pretty new here. If I trawled through the comments of someone who has 20,000 comments I could learn a lot. So... is HN spying on you? Am I spying on you when I read those pages? I don't think so. You put that data out there in the open. The same is technically true for most data that people say is spying - eg Google Analytics isn't spying on you when it tracks everything you do on 50% of the websites you visit. You're giving that data away. That's fine. It's useful. It makes the internet better. The flow of data in itself is OK. It only really becomes spying when the data is misused. That's what people want to control.

cousin_it 7y ago
Grandparent's statement is pretty absolute, but I find myself in agreement with it. Data collection is the right place to intervene, because once collected, data can be copied and misused at any time in the future. > when you read this comment you'll have loaded a page on HN. That means HN's server probably has a log of your IP address, browser agent string, etc. Such logging isn't technically necessary to serve web pages, and ideally shouldn't be done without consent. > Am I spying on you when I read those pages? That's not spying, because the user consented to making their comments public. (Not sure about favorites though, there's a small note on the profile page but maybe the favoriting action should make it more explicit.) > Google Analytics isn't spying on you when it tracks everything you do on 50% of the websites you visit. It's spying if you didn't consent to it.
- onion2k 7y ago
  It's spying if you didn't consent to it. There's no explicit consent but the fact you've told your computer to download some code and run it looks a lot like implied consent.
  - cousin_it 7y ago
    I think that argument proves too much. To a user browsing the web, clicking a link that says "check out this nice article" signifies intention/consent to read that article, not to suffer the effects of all possible JS tripwires including pwning their computer and such.
    - eadmund 7y ago
      Sure, but all this tracking isn't a product of JS tripwires pwning computers: it's a natural result of downloading an article from a server.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        No, it's a result of the article telling the browser to also download and execute analytics scripts. It's abusing the good faith HTTP protocol was built upon. That's why I consider ad/content blockers OK and desirable. They're a way for users to express that they don't consent to loading and execution of some resources.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

matz1 7y ago

Disagree. Information wants to be free. Good luck trying to stop the flow of data. The solution of privacy should be embrace the flow of data or even increase it by increasing transparency. Sure, there are going to be issue in regards data being public and thats what should be fixed instead.