3 ms·

I'd wager that there's vanishingly few people who don't have some thing they do, some demographic they belong to, some association with something, that some voc

I'd wager that there's vanishingly few people who don't have some thing they do, some demographic they belong to, some association with something, that some vocal minority would crucify them over while the apathetic majority stand idly by. The government can't always protect you from this kind of threat. Being a subject of controversy is not a protected class, your employer can fire you (in most states), people can refuse to do business with you, etc. etc for no reason other than because they don't want to be involved. As we've seen with online witch hunts, people's lives can be ruined, or at least set back years or decades by controversy that stems from private information getting into the wrong hands. Urban areas have privacy by blending into the crowd. Rural areas have privacy by density, there simply aren't enough people to observe everything. Technology is making both those obsolete.

zynkb0a 7y ago
>people's lives can be ruined, or at least set back years or decades by controversy that stems from private information getting into the wrong hands Private information "getting into the wrong hands" often seems to be an issue of misplaced confidence in the confidentiality of that information. In an era where "surveillance is democratized," how we think about the existence of "private information" might radically change. In your example, the words, actions, and ideas that would have generated controversy might not have ever been spoken or acted upon in the first place, or there would be such an apparent abundance that the "controversy" wouldn't hold ground. More of a fringe position here, but maybe certain ideas and actions wouldn't even be conceived of in a post-privacy world, as the result of the loss of an expectation that those ideas or actions could be kept confidential. It certainly feels like the cat's out of the bag when it comes to mass surveillance. Facial recognition, for example, isn't going away, and there doesn't seem to be enough political / institutional momentum to counter the value that is provided to organizations by the data that one might view as an invasion of privacy. There doesn't seem to be a meaningful debate about maintaining personal privacy, so maybe the discussion should be who has access to these tools, systems, and institutions moving forward.

zynkb0a 7y ago

>people's lives can be ruined, or at least set back years or decades by controversy that stems from private information getting into the wrong hands Private information "getting into the wrong hands" often seems to be an issue of misplaced confidence in the confidentiality of that information. In an era where "surveillance is democratized," how we think about the existence of "private information" might radically change. In your example, the words, actions, and ideas that would have generated controversy might not have ever been spoken or acted upon in the first place, or there would be such an apparent abundance that the "controversy" wouldn't hold ground. More of a fringe position here, but maybe certain ideas and actions wouldn't even be conceived of in a post-privacy world, as the result of the loss of an expectation that those ideas or actions could be kept confidential. It certainly feels like the cat's out of the bag when it comes to mass surveillance. Facial recognition, for example, isn't going away, and there doesn't seem to be enough political / institutional momentum to counter the value that is provided to organizations by the data that one might view as an invasion of privacy. There doesn't seem to be a meaningful debate about maintaining personal privacy, so maybe the discussion should be who has access to these tools, systems, and institutions moving forward.