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> Would you suggest that we not have public health departments engage in contact tracing at all to combat the pandemic? If so, I'm not sure what to tell you. I

> Would you suggest that we not have public health departments engage in contact tracing at all to combat the pandemic? If so, I'm not sure what to tell you. If the result is (another) permanent loss of privacy and freedom akin to the PATRIOT act, then yes. Technology has immense power to do good for people, but only if those who deploy it do so ethically. How many governments around the world can we honestly predict to do so?

throwanem 7y ago
I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying. I regret that - assuming my own ongoing case of COVID-19 resolves without fatal complication - I'm quite likely, I think, to have that curiosity satisfied. I regret it because this isn't a cause for change of perspective which I would wish on anyone. But everything I'm seeing suggests it's a cause for change of perspective that many millions of people are going to have.
- Proziam 7y ago
  My hope is that people don't lose sight of the long term in spite of the short term suffering we may experience. You can only surrender your rights once, the effects of losing those rights will last forever. How many movements would have been impossible if a local government could spy on everyone to break it up before it even begins? I'm thankful we didn't have the same technology we have now during the civil rights movement, for example. I sincerely hope for your swift recovery.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    Well, that's the thing, isn't it? You can only get sick and die once, but that lasts forever too.
    - Proziam 7y ago
      Put another way, would you want your children to live in a world where their government abused and spied on them? Borrowing from the future seems free at the time, but the true cost can be enormous. Everyone has to make their own value judgment, but I fall on the side of protecting the freedoms of people now and in the future. If people in the future choose differently for themselves, that will be their choice when their time comes. Of course, 'you can only surrender your rights once' and 'you can only die once' aren't equivalent either. Once a nation of people surrenders their rights, nobody ever has those rights again (even if the loss of those rights costs lives). A person, or a group of people, becoming ill or passing away doesn't take away the lives of the next generation. If you think back on the experiences of the last century, how much harm would be done if we couldn't freely assemble because a government decided to intervene? We'd have stayed in Vietnam longer, black folks may not have ever won their civil rights, and its possible women would be unable to vote. For the record, I don't downplay the suffering of illness. I've lost a parent to cancer, as well as many other family members. Everyone else alive is in the same boat. We're all mortal.
      - throwanem 7y ago
        It's not really about what I want or don't want; for one thing, I don't have children and never will. If I did, though, I suspect I would want them to live.
        Proziam 7y ago
        I honestly wonder if more people have been killed by dictators and authoritarian regimes or the black plague. I suspect it's relatively comparable. As technology has progressed, I believe it's become more reasonable to fear man more than nature.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Cancer isn't like a pandemic. Cancer multiply within a body; pathogens multiply within societies. I disagree with "you can only surrender your rights once"; unlike life, rights can be won back. There's plenty of places on the planet in which you couldn't freely speak or assemble just a couple decades ago, but now you can. Things aren't going monotonically from bad to worse (though I admit, there's a strong directional pressure here; maintaining rights feels like fighting entropy). I am a parent, I want my child to live in a world where the government doesn't abuse and spy on them, but where that government is also capable of containing an infectious pathogen (whether natural or purpose-made) pretty much as soon as it registers. There is a practical balance to be found there. (And if we're trading imaginary worlds: I want my child to live in a world where private entities don't spy on them and sell private information, a world where adtech doesn't exist.)
  - hrasyid 7y ago
    > You can only surrender your rights once, the effects of losing those rights will last forever With an app like tracetogether, you can just uninstall it after the pandemic, right? No need to surrender your rights forever.
    - Proziam 7y ago
      Until the government decides that it's in the public's best interest that such an application be installed on every phone, and non-removable. We already have NSA / Tech company "collaboration" so this is hardly a huge step in terms of tech or privacy invasion. It would just be the next step.
- seph-reed 7y ago
  > I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying. The weak ones we shouldn't be prioritizing over the strong. Harboring weakness is just asking to be taken advantage of. It may seem empathetic at first, but all you end up doing is undermining the individuals growth and selling out the security of future generations. If you're an adult, you need to come to terms with death, and recognize that extending your life isn't worth stealing from future generations. They deserve more freedom than we've had. Not less.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    It's a mercy you won't be held to this when you get sick, and find it's somewhat easier to talk in the abstract about coming to terms with death than to face the imminent possibility. edit: Well, you won't be held to it assuming we haven't reached a need for sufficiently severe triage, I suppose. Otherwise, you might get a chance to quite literally put your life on the line for the principle you've just espoused! I wish you joy of it.
    - Proziam 7y ago
      All the soldiers, firefighters, and doctors/nurses/EMTs (and many more) are putting their lives on the line for what they believe in. Some of them believe in the constitution and some of them simply desire to help their fellow man. Not everyone is so weak that they sell out others for their own benefit, and assuming the worst of others only serves to expose your values, or lack thereof. > I wish you joy of it. That was straight-up evil. Whatever empathy and respect you may have had just went out the window. I'm almost in disbelief that you would edit your post just to literally wish someone the "joy" of having a chance to die.
      - throwanem 7y ago
        "The weak should be winnowed from the strong, that the strong may prosper without being held back" is an idea that attracts your sympathy, though?
- buzzkillington 7y ago
  >I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying. Already had the virus, it was a bad cold. Liberty or death.
- teddyh 7y ago
  This is like saying “There are no atheists in foxholes.” People who say it might believe it, but it is demonstrably false.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    I'm sure there are a few!
shadowgovt 7y ago
Agree to disagree, because my liberty is useless without my life. Balance can be found. And increasingly, it looks like in the modern era, the balance is found in a situation where the PATRIOT act exists and we find a new normal around its existence. Which government of more than a few million people do you assume doesn't have a line into monitoring intra- and interstate digital communications in this era?

throwanem 7y ago

I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying. I regret that - assuming my own ongoing case of COVID-19 resolves without fatal complication - I'm quite likely, I think, to have that curiosity satisfied. I regret it because this isn't a cause for change of perspective which I would wish on anyone. But everything I'm seeing suggests it's a cause for change of perspective that many millions of people are going to have.

Proziam 7y ago
My hope is that people don't lose sight of the long term in spite of the short term suffering we may experience. You can only surrender your rights once, the effects of losing those rights will last forever. How many movements would have been impossible if a local government could spy on everyone to break it up before it even begins? I'm thankful we didn't have the same technology we have now during the civil rights movement, for example. I sincerely hope for your swift recovery.
- throwanem 7y ago
  Well, that's the thing, isn't it? You can only get sick and die once, but that lasts forever too.
  - Proziam 7y ago
    Put another way, would you want your children to live in a world where their government abused and spied on them? Borrowing from the future seems free at the time, but the true cost can be enormous. Everyone has to make their own value judgment, but I fall on the side of protecting the freedoms of people now and in the future. If people in the future choose differently for themselves, that will be their choice when their time comes. Of course, 'you can only surrender your rights once' and 'you can only die once' aren't equivalent either. Once a nation of people surrenders their rights, nobody ever has those rights again (even if the loss of those rights costs lives). A person, or a group of people, becoming ill or passing away doesn't take away the lives of the next generation. If you think back on the experiences of the last century, how much harm would be done if we couldn't freely assemble because a government decided to intervene? We'd have stayed in Vietnam longer, black folks may not have ever won their civil rights, and its possible women would be unable to vote. For the record, I don't downplay the suffering of illness. I've lost a parent to cancer, as well as many other family members. Everyone else alive is in the same boat. We're all mortal.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      It's not really about what I want or don't want; for one thing, I don't have children and never will. If I did, though, I suspect I would want them to live.
      - Proziam 7y ago
        I honestly wonder if more people have been killed by dictators and authoritarian regimes or the black plague. I suspect it's relatively comparable. As technology has progressed, I believe it's become more reasonable to fear man more than nature.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Cancer isn't like a pandemic. Cancer multiply within a body; pathogens multiply within societies. I disagree with "you can only surrender your rights once"; unlike life, rights can be won back. There's plenty of places on the planet in which you couldn't freely speak or assemble just a couple decades ago, but now you can. Things aren't going monotonically from bad to worse (though I admit, there's a strong directional pressure here; maintaining rights feels like fighting entropy). I am a parent, I want my child to live in a world where the government doesn't abuse and spy on them, but where that government is also capable of containing an infectious pathogen (whether natural or purpose-made) pretty much as soon as it registers. There is a practical balance to be found there. (And if we're trading imaginary worlds: I want my child to live in a world where private entities don't spy on them and sell private information, a world where adtech doesn't exist.)
- hrasyid 7y ago
  > You can only surrender your rights once, the effects of losing those rights will last forever With an app like tracetogether, you can just uninstall it after the pandemic, right? No need to surrender your rights forever.
  - Proziam 7y ago
    Until the government decides that it's in the public's best interest that such an application be installed on every phone, and non-removable. We already have NSA / Tech company "collaboration" so this is hardly a huge step in terms of tech or privacy invasion. It would just be the next step.
seph-reed 7y ago
> I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying. The weak ones we shouldn't be prioritizing over the strong. Harboring weakness is just asking to be taken advantage of. It may seem empathetic at first, but all you end up doing is undermining the individuals growth and selling out the security of future generations. If you're an adult, you need to come to terms with death, and recognize that extending your life isn't worth stealing from future generations. They deserve more freedom than we've had. Not less.
- throwanem 7y ago
  It's a mercy you won't be held to this when you get sick, and find it's somewhat easier to talk in the abstract about coming to terms with death than to face the imminent possibility. edit: Well, you won't be held to it assuming we haven't reached a need for sufficiently severe triage, I suppose. Otherwise, you might get a chance to quite literally put your life on the line for the principle you've just espoused! I wish you joy of it.
  - Proziam 7y ago
    All the soldiers, firefighters, and doctors/nurses/EMTs (and many more) are putting their lives on the line for what they believe in. Some of them believe in the constitution and some of them simply desire to help their fellow man. Not everyone is so weak that they sell out others for their own benefit, and assuming the worst of others only serves to expose your values, or lack thereof. > I wish you joy of it. That was straight-up evil. Whatever empathy and respect you may have had just went out the window. I'm almost in disbelief that you would edit your post just to literally wish someone the "joy" of having a chance to die.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      "The weak should be winnowed from the strong, that the strong may prosper without being held back" is an idea that attracts your sympathy, though?
buzzkillington 7y ago
>I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying. Already had the virus, it was a bad cold. Liberty or death.
teddyh 7y ago
This is like saying “There are no atheists in foxholes.” People who say it might believe it, but it is demonstrably false.
- throwanem 7y ago
  I'm sure there are a few!

shadowgovt 7y ago

Agree to disagree, because my liberty is useless without my life. Balance can be found. And increasingly, it looks like in the modern era, the balance is found in a situation where the PATRIOT act exists and we find a new normal around its existence. Which government of more than a few million people do you assume doesn't have a line into monitoring intra- and interstate digital communications in this era?