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That attitude makes sense if you come from a low-trust society where the state apparatus thinks it's running an empire. Especially if the country is large and a

That attitude makes sense if you come from a low-trust society where the state apparatus thinks it's running an empire. Especially if the country is large and actively trying to reshape the world. Things look different in a small high-trust country with multiple political parties. Because the country is too weak and insignificant to change the world, the government tends to focus on administering the country. Because there is a lot of trust in the society, the people who want to serve in the government are usually ideologically motivated to serve the best interests of the public. It's not a particularly lucrative or high-status career, so people with other motivations tend to go elsewhere. And while people may disagree on what exactly are the best interests of the public, there are many viable political parties to choose from. Private firms are allowed to be evil in the sense that they can put their private interests ahead of public interests. Most of them are. And because they are private, the public has only limited means to regulate them when they misbehave blatantly. They can't, for example, vote the directors and shareholders out and replace them with people who promise to serve public interests.

pjlegato 4y ago
Even if one happens to approve of the conditions under which personal data is being managed _right now_, even if one happens to approve of the current administrators and thinks they're entirely benevolent, there is no way to know who will be in charge of that data in the future, or what ends it will be used for. Once it's out there, it's out there forever.
- salt-thrower 4y ago
  I think the argument is that it's already out there. Companies, with no directive to even pretend to serve the public interest, already have all that data. The government does too, because security agencies mandate that they get backdoor access. "Once it's out there, it's out there forever" - that already happened. Given that it's already out there, there's not much more to fear in terms of a slippery slope. All that's left is to at least force the public sector to disclose more of what's going on and regulate how private interests are allowed to use it. Otherwise, we already have the dystopia you're imagining, we just don't see it as well.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  That's why this is a matter of trust. Either you trust the government and allow it to collect the data, or you don't trust the government and don't allow anyone to collect it. The government has the monopoly on violence. It always has access to the data held by private parties. The government and the people serving it may choose to respect laws and other promises. They may choose to avoid accessing private data without a valid reason. But if the government chooses otherwise and requires private businesses to hand over their data, the businesses will most likely comply. If you don't want to give a government-turned-bad access to some data, that data must not be allowed to exist in the first place.
Ansil849 4y ago
> Things look different in a small high-trust country with multiple political parties. Which country are you talking about? Surely not Norway, which is a monarchy.
- karencarits 4y ago
  What do you mean? It is small in terms of population size, it is a high-trust country (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-governmen...), it has had the highest democracy index in the world every year since 2010 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index), it has many political parties and there have been coalition governments for many years? Yes, it is a constitutional monarchy which was introduced by vote, and given its support in the population, removing the monarchy would be quite undemocratic. One of the more radical parties in parliament has raised the issue many times; in 2019 their suggestion to abolish the monarchy got a record of 36 votes in parliament (against 130)
wiz21c 4y ago
That's really weird, you just described what I think in terms that are very accurate. Are you me ?

pjlegato 4y ago

Even if one happens to approve of the conditions under which personal data is being managed _right now_, even if one happens to approve of the current administrators and thinks they're entirely benevolent, there is no way to know who will be in charge of that data in the future, or what ends it will be used for. Once it's out there, it's out there forever.

salt-thrower 4y ago
I think the argument is that it's already out there. Companies, with no directive to even pretend to serve the public interest, already have all that data. The government does too, because security agencies mandate that they get backdoor access. "Once it's out there, it's out there forever" - that already happened. Given that it's already out there, there's not much more to fear in terms of a slippery slope. All that's left is to at least force the public sector to disclose more of what's going on and regulate how private interests are allowed to use it. Otherwise, we already have the dystopia you're imagining, we just don't see it as well.
jltsiren 4y ago
That's why this is a matter of trust. Either you trust the government and allow it to collect the data, or you don't trust the government and don't allow anyone to collect it. The government has the monopoly on violence. It always has access to the data held by private parties. The government and the people serving it may choose to respect laws and other promises. They may choose to avoid accessing private data without a valid reason. But if the government chooses otherwise and requires private businesses to hand over their data, the businesses will most likely comply. If you don't want to give a government-turned-bad access to some data, that data must not be allowed to exist in the first place.

Ansil849 4y ago

> Things look different in a small high-trust country with multiple political parties. Which country are you talking about? Surely not Norway, which is a monarchy.

karencarits 4y ago
What do you mean? It is small in terms of population size, it is a high-trust country (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-governmen...), it has had the highest democracy index in the world every year since 2010 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index), it has many political parties and there have been coalition governments for many years? Yes, it is a constitutional monarchy which was introduced by vote, and given its support in the population, removing the monarchy would be quite undemocratic. One of the more radical parties in parliament has raised the issue many times; in 2019 their suggestion to abolish the monarchy got a record of 36 votes in parliament (against 130)

wiz21c 4y ago

That's really weird, you just described what I think in terms that are very accurate. Are you me ?