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I don't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't believe in privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt. Privacy touches all kinds of subjects from

by kodah 5y ago

I don't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't believe in privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt. Privacy touches all kinds of subjects from centralization, to corporate power, advertising revenue, government control, etc... and therefore becomes frivolous to discuss. To me the problem is that most people think they're living a "normal" well-to-do life until a group gets power that thinks you don't or didn't and wants to arrange a circus for attention. Some popular responses I've seen to pro-privacy concern: - caring about privacy is "narcissistic" because nobody would possibly care about Tom or John's internet search history. - privacy is just an excuse for people to avoid "consequences". - privacy people are just criminals disguised as advocates. There's commonality in these responses, but I'm not sure what it is.

fsflover 5y ago
> I don't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't believe in privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt. If the person understands why the freedom of speech is important, you can explain that privacy is needed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists. Only when everyone has pivacy, it becomes hard for the government to target them.
- kodah 5y ago
  Yeah, I've tried that explanation as well. I think the problem is that privacy as a problem is fairly abstract and multi-branched in both issues and logic.
  - not_zxc 5y ago
    Ask them to give you 100 bucks from their wallet. Then keep it. Cheapest privacy lesson they'll ever get. (The point: privacy about who is allowed to acquire the valuables. The owner is in control, not someone else. Once they decide to give that away: fine, now it's no longer under their control.)
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      And their messages, their photos, and so forth. After all, they have got nothing to hide! Sometimes I think the issue is not being personalized enough, as in, because they do not know the person doing it, it is not an issue. It is an issue if it is you, standing next to them, but it is not an issue if you would be out of sight. It is silly.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > If the person understands why the freedom of speech is important You can also try Edward Snowden's analogy: “Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” Sadly I worry that many people don't care about freedom of speech either. I wonder if such people would also be unmoved by this analogy: “Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about the right to vote because the party you support is currently in power.”
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    That's a terrible analogy. You could just as well say that you don't care about the right to bear arms because you have nothing to shoot. Besides, I have never heard anybody say they have nothing to hide, so it is a strawman. There are hundreds of good arguments for a right to privacy. This isn't one of them.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      Assuming you're saying that my analogy is terrible (and not Snowden's), I agree that it doesn't directly argue for the right to privacy. My intention was rather to show (as a proof by contradiction) that the "logic" of devaluing privacy and freedom of speech would also suggest that voting is unnecessary. There is a real temptation for people to think "Society is generally fine the way it is, so I don't want things to change", which makes them react negatively to things like protests or even whistleblowing (because it causes them cognitive dissonance). Such people might feel confident that even if the government did abuse its power, it would only spy on, or silence, or hurt people who aren't like them. They therefore may not feel that these fundamental rights are doing them much good, and they don't consciously exercise them. However, many of them would exercise their right to vote, and could imagine the government turning against them if there were no more elections.
      - lern_too_spel 5y ago
        I was saying that Snowden's analogy is terrible.
tqi 5y ago
I don't think the majority of people are against privacy. I think the majority of people don't think that the level of privacy they give up is too high a price to pay for the services they receive. That seems reasonable to me? It often feels like privacy advocates start from a position that anyone who doesn't hold the same view as them must be missing some key piece of information, and are unwilling to accept that a person might decide that the tradeoff is actually worth it to them?
- kodah 5y ago
  > It often feels like privacy advocates start from a position that anyone who doesn't hold the same view as them must be missing some key piece of information, and are unwilling to accept that a person might decide that the tradeoff is actually worth it to them? That could be the case, albeit that's fairly uncharitable. Usually when I talk to anti-privacy people they have a strong bond to a particular thing that makes them anti-privacy. That could be a bond with corporations that benefit from a lack of privacy or it could be some moral community that tells them a lack of privacy let's them find all the "bad guys". Of course, that's anecdotal. Personally speaking, I don't mind decreased privacy as long as I have a way to opt out and data stays very anonymized. Providing that kind of choice, and minimal negative effects that negate the ability of a person to opt out, is the optimal choice for me.
  - 636rydy 5y ago
    This is a position I could support if most privacy advocates didn't also expect accommodation to access services that would normally be funded by their information. I like that my information has value and I'm happy to spend it in place of currency to support a service. Why should someone get the same access I do if they're not willing to pay the toll? It's like listening to a bittorrent leech try to justify themselves.
    - kodah 5y ago
      The bottom line I have is choice and a bit of transparency. If I don't want to give you my data, I should be able to pay a reasonable, uninflated price. If I do, I should get the service based on the value of the data I provide. The second thing is that services need to be transparent with who they're brokering or selling data to, they need to be upfront about how that data will be used, and if they violate any of these conditions you should be able to flush your data.
RIMR 5y ago
I think that the core issue here is what "privacy" means to people. Data about you can be hard to quantify, and in the digital age there are plenty of reasons to collect certain kind of data. For example, I wouldn't care much about my aggregate step data from my phone or watch being used to observe walking habits or popular walking routes in my city, nor would I mind much about my aggregate location data being used to observe store patronage in my city. I prefer to opt-in to these things, and have an understanding of the data I am sharing, and who I am sharing it with, but as long as it's aggregate, non-identifiable data, I am willing to part with it and still feel that my privacy has remained intact. But as you say, people don't value privacy until they're hurt, and I think that's a really good place to draw the line. If the data collected about me can be used to hurt me specifically - to target me or expose sensitive information about me as an individual - then my privacy has been violated. The recent Grindr controversy is a good example. If people opt-in to data sharing in the app, and the app provides clean, anonymized data to their partners that only reveals aggregate trends, then the privacy of individual users is still maintained. But since the data that Grindr sold was enough to out a clergyman and expose the specific gay businesses he was a patron of, then they clearly failed to preserve their users' privacy. The data they sold was enough to target and hurt someone individually. The big issue I see is that most corporate data-sharing agreement put some of the burden of privacy of the recipient of the data, with the expectation that the data be handled in good faith and NOT be used to target people or mine information about specific people. The burden should lie entirely with the seller of the data to ensure that no privacy-violating data could be inferred from the data (including if combined with other publicly/commercially available datasets), and if they cannot ensure that then they should have no legal right to sell it, because there's no way they can ensure that it will be handled in good faith.
bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
The commonality is “I don’t think that I have anything to hide” or more specifically, “I don’t fully understand what exactly I am hiding from or why I need to hide.” Last I checked, most people understand privacy from other people at some level. I only say that because I still see people wearing clothes and closing the door when using the restroom. What they don’t understand is why they need privacy from centralized points of failure/exploitation.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > I still see people wearing clothes This SMBC comic about government-mandated backdoors also uses intuitions about clothing to make its point, and it applies equally well to the issue of surveillance: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1460904126-20160417.png https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1460904126-20160417.png
not_zxc 5y ago
> I don't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't believe in privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt. But that fundamentally doesn't matter in the least. I don't care what they do; but they cannot get access to my data without my approval. And they're definitely not getting my approval without some really good justification. It's my data; I have no obligation to anyone else(*) to disclose anything about it. (*) legal restrictions aside -- which is vastly different from someone who wants your data claiming they're legally entitled to it.
- 4637337 5y ago
  And then people wonder why there aren't enough motivated voters to get anything done...

by kodah 5y ago

fsflover 5y ago

> I don't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't believe in privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt. If the person understands why the freedom of speech is important, you can explain that privacy is needed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists. Only when everyone has pivacy, it becomes hard for the government to target them.

kodah 5y ago
Yeah, I've tried that explanation as well. I think the problem is that privacy as a problem is fairly abstract and multi-branched in both issues and logic.
- not_zxc 5y ago
  Ask them to give you 100 bucks from their wallet. Then keep it. Cheapest privacy lesson they'll ever get. (The point: privacy about who is allowed to acquire the valuables. The owner is in control, not someone else. Once they decide to give that away: fine, now it's no longer under their control.)
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    And their messages, their photos, and so forth. After all, they have got nothing to hide! Sometimes I think the issue is not being personalized enough, as in, because they do not know the person doing it, it is not an issue. It is an issue if it is you, standing next to them, but it is not an issue if you would be out of sight. It is silly.
dane-pgp 5y ago
> If the person understands why the freedom of speech is important You can also try Edward Snowden's analogy: “Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” Sadly I worry that many people don't care about freedom of speech either. I wonder if such people would also be unmoved by this analogy: “Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about the right to vote because the party you support is currently in power.”
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  That's a terrible analogy. You could just as well say that you don't care about the right to bear arms because you have nothing to shoot. Besides, I have never heard anybody say they have nothing to hide, so it is a strawman. There are hundreds of good arguments for a right to privacy. This isn't one of them.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    Assuming you're saying that my analogy is terrible (and not Snowden's), I agree that it doesn't directly argue for the right to privacy. My intention was rather to show (as a proof by contradiction) that the "logic" of devaluing privacy and freedom of speech would also suggest that voting is unnecessary. There is a real temptation for people to think "Society is generally fine the way it is, so I don't want things to change", which makes them react negatively to things like protests or even whistleblowing (because it causes them cognitive dissonance). Such people might feel confident that even if the government did abuse its power, it would only spy on, or silence, or hurt people who aren't like them. They therefore may not feel that these fundamental rights are doing them much good, and they don't consciously exercise them. However, many of them would exercise their right to vote, and could imagine the government turning against them if there were no more elections.
    - lern_too_spel 5y ago
      I was saying that Snowden's analogy is terrible.

tqi 5y ago

I don't think the majority of people are against privacy. I think the majority of people don't think that the level of privacy they give up is too high a price to pay for the services they receive. That seems reasonable to me? It often feels like privacy advocates start from a position that anyone who doesn't hold the same view as them must be missing some key piece of information, and are unwilling to accept that a person might decide that the tradeoff is actually worth it to them?

kodah 5y ago
> It often feels like privacy advocates start from a position that anyone who doesn't hold the same view as them must be missing some key piece of information, and are unwilling to accept that a person might decide that the tradeoff is actually worth it to them? That could be the case, albeit that's fairly uncharitable. Usually when I talk to anti-privacy people they have a strong bond to a particular thing that makes them anti-privacy. That could be a bond with corporations that benefit from a lack of privacy or it could be some moral community that tells them a lack of privacy let's them find all the "bad guys". Of course, that's anecdotal. Personally speaking, I don't mind decreased privacy as long as I have a way to opt out and data stays very anonymized. Providing that kind of choice, and minimal negative effects that negate the ability of a person to opt out, is the optimal choice for me.
- 636rydy 5y ago
  This is a position I could support if most privacy advocates didn't also expect accommodation to access services that would normally be funded by their information. I like that my information has value and I'm happy to spend it in place of currency to support a service. Why should someone get the same access I do if they're not willing to pay the toll? It's like listening to a bittorrent leech try to justify themselves.
  - kodah 5y ago
    The bottom line I have is choice and a bit of transparency. If I don't want to give you my data, I should be able to pay a reasonable, uninflated price. If I do, I should get the service based on the value of the data I provide. The second thing is that services need to be transparent with who they're brokering or selling data to, they need to be upfront about how that data will be used, and if they violate any of these conditions you should be able to flush your data.

RIMR 5y ago

I think that the core issue here is what "privacy" means to people. Data about you can be hard to quantify, and in the digital age there are plenty of reasons to collect certain kind of data. For example, I wouldn't care much about my aggregate step data from my phone or watch being used to observe walking habits or popular walking routes in my city, nor would I mind much about my aggregate location data being used to observe store patronage in my city. I prefer to opt-in to these things, and have an understanding of the data I am sharing, and who I am sharing it with, but as long as it's aggregate, non-identifiable data, I am willing to part with it and still feel that my privacy has remained intact. But as you say, people don't value privacy until they're hurt, and I think that's a really good place to draw the line. If the data collected about me can be used to hurt me specifically - to target me or expose sensitive information about me as an individual - then my privacy has been violated. The recent Grindr controversy is a good example. If people opt-in to data sharing in the app, and the app provides clean, anonymized data to their partners that only reveals aggregate trends, then the privacy of individual users is still maintained. But since the data that Grindr sold was enough to out a clergyman and expose the specific gay businesses he was a patron of, then they clearly failed to preserve their users' privacy. The data they sold was enough to target and hurt someone individually. The big issue I see is that most corporate data-sharing agreement put some of the burden of privacy of the recipient of the data, with the expectation that the data be handled in good faith and NOT be used to target people or mine information about specific people. The burden should lie entirely with the seller of the data to ensure that no privacy-violating data could be inferred from the data (including if combined with other publicly/commercially available datasets), and if they cannot ensure that then they should have no legal right to sell it, because there's no way they can ensure that it will be handled in good faith.

bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago

The commonality is “I don’t think that I have anything to hide” or more specifically, “I don’t fully understand what exactly I am hiding from or why I need to hide.” Last I checked, most people understand privacy from other people at some level. I only say that because I still see people wearing clothes and closing the door when using the restroom. What they don’t understand is why they need privacy from centralized points of failure/exploitation.

dane-pgp 5y ago
> I still see people wearing clothes This SMBC comic about government-mandated backdoors also uses intuitions about clothing to make its point, and it applies equally well to the issue of surveillance: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1460904126-20160417.png https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1460904126-20160417.png

not_zxc 5y ago

> I don't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't believe in privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt. But that fundamentally doesn't matter in the least. I don't care what they do; but they cannot get access to my data without my approval. And they're definitely not getting my approval without some really good justification. It's my data; I have no obligation to anyone else(*) to disclose anything about it. (*) legal restrictions aside -- which is vastly different from someone who wants your data claiming they're legally entitled to it.

4637337 5y ago
And then people wonder why there aren't enough motivated voters to get anything done...