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Of course they can, the paper just did. Security (which privacy is one subset of) is not binary. Just because it can never be perfect does not mean that it's a

Of course they can, the paper just did. Security (which privacy is one subset of) is not binary. Just because it can never be perfect does not mean that it's all equal.

rasengan 5y ago
Privacy is absolutely binary and taking a hardline approach is absolutely the proper way to protect your privacy. You either actively choose to share information (1) or you don’t (0). The article compares who is sharing what to who — sharing info is sharing, period. A smartphone with all the bells and whistles in 2021 is not private. I stand by my statement, hardline.
- nom 5y ago
  I respect your hardline approach but for most people it's a rather soft thing. I want to be able to choose WHO i share my information with and under what conditions. You can argue that once information is shared it's up for grabs by anyone but i argue that this is simply not true, it just feels like that it is. We could do so much better and we should never forget that.
  - rasengan 5y ago
    Because security is non-binary - once you share your information, it is up for grabs.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    > You can argue that once information is shared it's up for grabs by anyone but i argue that this is simply not true I think it is true. The old saying is that once you tell someone a secret, it's no longer a secret. The ecosystem around mobile devices is just such that real privacy is impossible. That's not unlike many other things; pretty much any form of communication has this feature to one degree or another. There are just so many third parties and intermediaries involved in mobile platforms that's it's particularly bad.
- zsmi 5y ago
  You really need to give context in these types of arguments or people start arguing past each other. Important details include: who are we trying to hide information from? and what are we trying to avoid sharing? "Information" is just way too generic. It's possible to draw some conclusions from even the absence of a signal.
- kadoban 5y ago
  Alright, lets probe this absolutism then. Is there a privacy difference between telling your oldest, closest friend a secret and telling the office gossip? Is there a difference between writing a secret in your encrypted electronic journal and posting it to facebook? The issue with privacy absolutism is that it's essentially impossible to do it perfectly, so any tiny theoretical breech means you should pretty much just give up and tell the world, right? Or maybe there's more shades of gray than that and we can go ahead and evaluate the privacy implications of different activities with some more nuance.

Of course they can, the paper just did. Security (which privacy is one subset of) is not binary. Just because it can never be perfect does not mean that it's all equal.

rasengan 5y ago

Privacy is absolutely binary and taking a hardline approach is absolutely the proper way to protect your privacy. You either actively choose to share information (1) or you don’t (0). The article compares who is sharing what to who — sharing info is sharing, period. A smartphone with all the bells and whistles in 2021 is not private. I stand by my statement, hardline.

nom 5y ago
I respect your hardline approach but for most people it's a rather soft thing. I want to be able to choose WHO i share my information with and under what conditions. You can argue that once information is shared it's up for grabs by anyone but i argue that this is simply not true, it just feels like that it is. We could do so much better and we should never forget that.
- rasengan 5y ago
  Because security is non-binary - once you share your information, it is up for grabs.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  > You can argue that once information is shared it's up for grabs by anyone but i argue that this is simply not true I think it is true. The old saying is that once you tell someone a secret, it's no longer a secret. The ecosystem around mobile devices is just such that real privacy is impossible. That's not unlike many other things; pretty much any form of communication has this feature to one degree or another. There are just so many third parties and intermediaries involved in mobile platforms that's it's particularly bad.
zsmi 5y ago
You really need to give context in these types of arguments or people start arguing past each other. Important details include: who are we trying to hide information from? and what are we trying to avoid sharing? "Information" is just way too generic. It's possible to draw some conclusions from even the absence of a signal.
kadoban 5y ago
Alright, lets probe this absolutism then. Is there a privacy difference between telling your oldest, closest friend a secret and telling the office gossip? Is there a difference between writing a secret in your encrypted electronic journal and posting it to facebook? The issue with privacy absolutism is that it's essentially impossible to do it perfectly, so any tiny theoretical breech means you should pretty much just give up and tell the world, right? Or maybe there's more shades of gray than that and we can go ahead and evaluate the privacy implications of different activities with some more nuance.