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This could only have been naively said 12 years ago. To me, this is cowardice. Edward Snowden summarized it well. "Arguing that you don't care about the right

This could only have been naively said 12 years ago. To me, this is cowardice. Edward Snowden summarized it well. "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."

waboremo 4y ago
Jeff Kaufman has also repeated this, as of very recently. [1] Stating, he would like to see more people take this approach to their privacy. What's interesting is he generally is aware of groups of people that should not do so, like those who are abused, but does not consider the possibility that everyone can become a target (through regime change for instance). I suppose the most frustrating part is his example of employers turning down people for sharing too much on social media, which should be normalized, but someone not sharing on social media should be penalized for hiding. It's a tad concerning, especially as we're coming to terms with the real damaging effects of social media mentally. [1]: https://www.jefftk.com/p/privacy-tradeoffs https://www.jefftk.com/p/privacy-tradeoffs
- tharne 4y ago
  > What's interesting is he generally is aware of groups of people that should not do so, like those who are abused, but does not consider the possibility that everyone can become a target (through regime change for instance). This is exactly right. You can hold a view that is perfectly acceptable within mainstream society right now, and find that 10 years from now that view is considered extreme or dangerous. If you have a public and searchable history espousing that view, you could suffer very really consequences as a result, even if you no longer hold that particular view.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    > You can hold a view that is perfectly acceptable within mainstream society right now, and find that 10 years from now that view is considered extreme or dangerous. If you have a public and searchable history espousing that view, you could suffer very really consequences as a result, even if you no longer hold that particular view. I think you would have a pretty hard time finding examples of this in somewhere like the US: * Few things go from 'mainstream' to 'extreme' anywhere near that quickly. * If something does make that transition, there would be hundreds of millions of people who previously held the view and millions of people who previously endorsed it publicly. * People care about your current views, especially on topics where lots of people have changed their minds. In cases where I wrote about something and then later retracted it, I've never had anyone treat that as if I still hold my previous view.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      > I think you would have a pretty hard time finding examples of this in somewhere like the US On the contrary, you can have a live example in the US today, and you could have found another one six years ago.
      - jefftk 4y ago
        Sorry, it's not obvious to me what two views you're talking about.
masterof0 4y ago
Another pattern I hear people use to justify their laziness is "Why should I hide every detail of my life from Google when the government already knows everything? They must also make money, right? so that they can continue to provide their services for free." I don't mind if someone wants to give up their privacy; what I find ridiculous is people arguing for others to do the same.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  And worse still: giving up the privacy of other people. Every time some idiot family member uploads a bunch of photos and tags them they're doing just that.
  - cronix 4y ago
    Sure, you can have access to my phone's contact list with all of my friends and family members numbers and names, some with addresses and birthdays, etc., to check if they are also on the service I just signed up for! How convenient!
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      And to spam them if they're not.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  If someone does something themselves and believe it benefits them, they often want to share that benefit with others. My time and safety are more valuable to me than my privacy, and I think everyone should consider their priorities. If you want to use Tor and degoogle, I have no problem with that, I'm glad someone is studying that stuff in case it ever becomes truly necessary for people. But not every person can join every protest. In terms of good done for the world compared to inconvenience to myself, I'm not convinced staying private is the most effective thing.
  - feanaro 4y ago
eternityforest 4y ago
The right to privacy is different from privacy itself. I believe there should be due process and warrants before they can use data against you, and that people have a right to know how secure something is or isn't. That doesn't mean I personally need to keep Google from knowing when I go to the store.
- yikesonbikes 4y ago
  I turned on location services on Twitter just so Elon knew where I was at all times. I'm working on a bot that will upload all of my search queries and every bedroom conversation from my Alexa, then share it with him directly (since Twitter STILL lacks this feature) Not that he cares, of course, but if it helps his bottom line, I figured "why not?" He and Google (who are Good) will notice me any day now!
  - yikesonbikes 4y ago
    elon plz hurry and notice me, they're downvoting this idea now (posted from iPhone 6.9.3+d4e2a0b3ef at 37.986776, -76.187412 while drinking a refreshing Coke Zero and having my morning cigarette like you know i do everyday)
    - eternityforest 4y ago
      You fool! You've revealed your secret base in Chesapeake Bay! I'm sending my cigarette extinguishing no fun drones, which now include a prerecorded lecture on the health effects of Coke, as per regulations, before they explode and kill you.
      - yikesonbikes 4y ago
        [flagged]
        eternityforest 4y ago
        Never mind, I got reassign for special energetics and processing duty and I'm no longer running SWAT. I don't know what that means because we aren't allowed to ask but I'm sure it's not being used as a living CPU and battery.
Existenceblinks 4y ago
It's either people love free stuff or it's poverty. The business model of selling your data is exactly a supply to demands of poor and free-aholic people.
tharne 4y ago
> This could only have been naively said 12 years ago. To me, this is cowardice. Exactly. This is 100% cowardice. It's the mentally of a broken man who's too beaten to fight anymore. Very depressing.
- Dawnyhf2 4y ago
  [dead]
- brookst 4y ago
  I don’t know if it’s a trend I’ve just noticed over the past 20 years, or a fundamental part of human psychology I was oblivious to when young, but I am really disturbed by those who think everyone is secretly just like them, and anyone who fails to act identically is “broken” or “mentally ill” or only “pretending” to be different.
  - skibidibipiti 4y ago
    Humans seek connection, we want to see ourselves in everyone else
  - tharne 4y ago
    That's fair. Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully. What I was trying to say is that I've noticed that when dealing with very large and complex problems like privacy, climate change, terrorism, etc., people who claim, "I don't care about X, or I don't worry about Y anymore...", are often motivated first and foremost by fear. The problems get to feel so overwhelming that it becomes easier to either pretend the problem doesn't exist or convince yourself that you don't care. To your broader point, you are correct. We do, and I'm guilty of it here, tend to use the specter of mental illness to silence or discredit people we disagree with.
- jefftk 4y ago
  I fight on many things, but a huge part of fighting effectively is choosing your battles: putting your effort where it is likely to have results. Some things I've done that I think have a much better cost benefit trade off than fighting for increased privacy: * Switching careers to work on pandemic mitigation: https://www.jefftk.com/p/leaving-google-joining-the-nucleic-acid-observatory https://www.jefftk.com/p/leaving-google-joining-the-nucleic-... * Donating half my income for the last 10 years: https://www.jefftk.com/donations https://www.jefftk.com/donations * Advocating for cheaper housing: https://www.jefftk.com/news/housing https://www.jefftk.com/news/housing
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
seti0Cha 4y ago
I can understand calling it foolish, I can understand calling it naive, but why are you calling it cowardice? What fear is he giving in to? He doesn't seem to be avoiding engaging in things he would like to for fear he will be discovered. One might even consider him guilty of foolish bravery in not fearing that he will be condemned for what seems to him as non-controversial.
- eternalban 4y ago
  A primary purpose of propaganda is to undermine one's own independent judgment regarding transpersonal (society at large) issues. [A pyschological phenomena: the individual subconsciously associates the megaphone of 1-n broadcasting with 'social consensus'. It works.] It takes social courage, and more importantly courage of one's own convictions, to face the tide of conditioned and packaged social truths. "Truths" that will be repeated from friends, family, coworkers, such as "if you have nothing to hide .." It is so much easier to go with the flow and takes not even a tiny bit of courage to do so.
  - seti0Cha 4y ago
    It sounds like you are saying the courageous path is privately defying the consensus. It seems to me that courage is only involved when you are willing to do so publicly. I'm not saying that one should, but I don't think the cowardice/courage dichotomy is an apt description of keeping controversial opinions private.
    - eternalban 4y ago
      I said nothing about "privately". All our actions, private or public, are engendered by the content of our minds.
      - seti0Cha 4y ago
        Ah, so you are saying the mere act of disagreement is an act of courage. I think maybe you mean this in the sense that we fear to be different, that it is our internal condemnation of self we are facing down...a Nietzschian will to power kind of thing?
jefftk 4y ago
Looking at a problem and saying "for the effort I could put in here, the benefit would not be worth it" is prudence, not cowardice. There are huge numbers of things that are wrong in the world: should I call someone a coward for not working on malaria prevention or pandemic mitigation? For living well while others suffer?
- noman-land 4y ago
  No, I don't think this analogy is apt. It would be like someone thinking that preventing themselves from getting malaria isn't worth the effort so they go out and get infected on purpose. Maybe that's not cowardice but it's still incredibly stupid. To reference the Snowden quote again, it would be like giving up your freedom of speech because it's too annoying to defend. That is cowardice.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    Extending your analogy, I think it's more like if someone decides it's not worth sleeping under a bednet. Or my deciding not to wear an N95 at the supermarket. I might agree or disagree with them on whether the risk they're taking is a smart choice, but "cowardly" is a bizarre angle to criticize it from. My argument is not that I have nothing to hide. Instead, it's that hiding has enough chance of not working that none of us should rely on it.

waboremo 4y ago

Jeff Kaufman has also repeated this, as of very recently. [1] Stating, he would like to see more people take this approach to their privacy. What's interesting is he generally is aware of groups of people that should not do so, like those who are abused, but does not consider the possibility that everyone can become a target (through regime change for instance). I suppose the most frustrating part is his example of employers turning down people for sharing too much on social media, which should be normalized, but someone not sharing on social media should be penalized for hiding. It's a tad concerning, especially as we're coming to terms with the real damaging effects of social media mentally. [1]: https://www.jefftk.com/p/privacy-tradeoffs https://www.jefftk.com/p/privacy-tradeoffs

tharne 4y ago
> What's interesting is he generally is aware of groups of people that should not do so, like those who are abused, but does not consider the possibility that everyone can become a target (through regime change for instance). This is exactly right. You can hold a view that is perfectly acceptable within mainstream society right now, and find that 10 years from now that view is considered extreme or dangerous. If you have a public and searchable history espousing that view, you could suffer very really consequences as a result, even if you no longer hold that particular view.
- jefftk 4y ago
  > You can hold a view that is perfectly acceptable within mainstream society right now, and find that 10 years from now that view is considered extreme or dangerous. If you have a public and searchable history espousing that view, you could suffer very really consequences as a result, even if you no longer hold that particular view. I think you would have a pretty hard time finding examples of this in somewhere like the US: * Few things go from 'mainstream' to 'extreme' anywhere near that quickly. * If something does make that transition, there would be hundreds of millions of people who previously held the view and millions of people who previously endorsed it publicly. * People care about your current views, especially on topics where lots of people have changed their minds. In cases where I wrote about something and then later retracted it, I've never had anyone treat that as if I still hold my previous view.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    > I think you would have a pretty hard time finding examples of this in somewhere like the US On the contrary, you can have a live example in the US today, and you could have found another one six years ago.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      Sorry, it's not obvious to me what two views you're talking about.

masterof0 4y ago

Another pattern I hear people use to justify their laziness is "Why should I hide every detail of my life from Google when the government already knows everything? They must also make money, right? so that they can continue to provide their services for free." I don't mind if someone wants to give up their privacy; what I find ridiculous is people arguing for others to do the same.

jacquesm 4y ago
And worse still: giving up the privacy of other people. Every time some idiot family member uploads a bunch of photos and tags them they're doing just that.
- cronix 4y ago
  Sure, you can have access to my phone's contact list with all of my friends and family members numbers and names, some with addresses and birthdays, etc., to check if they are also on the service I just signed up for! How convenient!
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    And to spam them if they're not.
eternityforest 4y ago
If someone does something themselves and believe it benefits them, they often want to share that benefit with others. My time and safety are more valuable to me than my privacy, and I think everyone should consider their priorities. If you want to use Tor and degoogle, I have no problem with that, I'm glad someone is studying that stuff in case it ever becomes truly necessary for people. But not every person can join every protest. In terms of good done for the world compared to inconvenience to myself, I'm not convinced staying private is the most effective thing.
- feanaro 4y ago

eternityforest 4y ago

The right to privacy is different from privacy itself. I believe there should be due process and warrants before they can use data against you, and that people have a right to know how secure something is or isn't. That doesn't mean I personally need to keep Google from knowing when I go to the store.

yikesonbikes 4y ago
I turned on location services on Twitter just so Elon knew where I was at all times. I'm working on a bot that will upload all of my search queries and every bedroom conversation from my Alexa, then share it with him directly (since Twitter STILL lacks this feature) Not that he cares, of course, but if it helps his bottom line, I figured "why not?" He and Google (who are Good) will notice me any day now!
- yikesonbikes 4y ago
  elon plz hurry and notice me, they're downvoting this idea now (posted from iPhone 6.9.3+d4e2a0b3ef at 37.986776, -76.187412 while drinking a refreshing Coke Zero and having my morning cigarette like you know i do everyday)
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    You fool! You've revealed your secret base in Chesapeake Bay! I'm sending my cigarette extinguishing no fun drones, which now include a prerecorded lecture on the health effects of Coke, as per regulations, before they explode and kill you.
    - yikesonbikes 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - eternityforest 4y ago
        Never mind, I got reassign for special energetics and processing duty and I'm no longer running SWAT. I don't know what that means because we aren't allowed to ask but I'm sure it's not being used as a living CPU and battery.

Existenceblinks 4y ago

It's either people love free stuff or it's poverty. The business model of selling your data is exactly a supply to demands of poor and free-aholic people.

tharne 4y ago

> This could only have been naively said 12 years ago. To me, this is cowardice. Exactly. This is 100% cowardice. It's the mentally of a broken man who's too beaten to fight anymore. Very depressing.

Dawnyhf2 4y ago
[dead]
brookst 4y ago
I don’t know if it’s a trend I’ve just noticed over the past 20 years, or a fundamental part of human psychology I was oblivious to when young, but I am really disturbed by those who think everyone is secretly just like them, and anyone who fails to act identically is “broken” or “mentally ill” or only “pretending” to be different.
- skibidibipiti 4y ago
  Humans seek connection, we want to see ourselves in everyone else
- tharne 4y ago
  That's fair. Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully. What I was trying to say is that I've noticed that when dealing with very large and complex problems like privacy, climate change, terrorism, etc., people who claim, "I don't care about X, or I don't worry about Y anymore...", are often motivated first and foremost by fear. The problems get to feel so overwhelming that it becomes easier to either pretend the problem doesn't exist or convince yourself that you don't care. To your broader point, you are correct. We do, and I'm guilty of it here, tend to use the specter of mental illness to silence or discredit people we disagree with.
jefftk 4y ago
I fight on many things, but a huge part of fighting effectively is choosing your battles: putting your effort where it is likely to have results. Some things I've done that I think have a much better cost benefit trade off than fighting for increased privacy: * Switching careers to work on pandemic mitigation: https://www.jefftk.com/p/leaving-google-joining-the-nucleic-acid-observatory https://www.jefftk.com/p/leaving-google-joining-the-nucleic-... * Donating half my income for the last 10 years: https://www.jefftk.com/donations https://www.jefftk.com/donations * Advocating for cheaper housing: https://www.jefftk.com/news/housing https://www.jefftk.com/news/housing

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

seti0Cha 4y ago

I can understand calling it foolish, I can understand calling it naive, but why are you calling it cowardice? What fear is he giving in to? He doesn't seem to be avoiding engaging in things he would like to for fear he will be discovered. One might even consider him guilty of foolish bravery in not fearing that he will be condemned for what seems to him as non-controversial.

eternalban 4y ago
A primary purpose of propaganda is to undermine one's own independent judgment regarding transpersonal (society at large) issues. [A pyschological phenomena: the individual subconsciously associates the megaphone of 1-n broadcasting with 'social consensus'. It works.] It takes social courage, and more importantly courage of one's own convictions, to face the tide of conditioned and packaged social truths. "Truths" that will be repeated from friends, family, coworkers, such as "if you have nothing to hide .." It is so much easier to go with the flow and takes not even a tiny bit of courage to do so.
- seti0Cha 4y ago
  It sounds like you are saying the courageous path is privately defying the consensus. It seems to me that courage is only involved when you are willing to do so publicly. I'm not saying that one should, but I don't think the cowardice/courage dichotomy is an apt description of keeping controversial opinions private.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    I said nothing about "privately". All our actions, private or public, are engendered by the content of our minds.
    - seti0Cha 4y ago
      Ah, so you are saying the mere act of disagreement is an act of courage. I think maybe you mean this in the sense that we fear to be different, that it is our internal condemnation of self we are facing down...a Nietzschian will to power kind of thing?

jefftk 4y ago

Looking at a problem and saying "for the effort I could put in here, the benefit would not be worth it" is prudence, not cowardice. There are huge numbers of things that are wrong in the world: should I call someone a coward for not working on malaria prevention or pandemic mitigation? For living well while others suffer?

noman-land 4y ago
No, I don't think this analogy is apt. It would be like someone thinking that preventing themselves from getting malaria isn't worth the effort so they go out and get infected on purpose. Maybe that's not cowardice but it's still incredibly stupid. To reference the Snowden quote again, it would be like giving up your freedom of speech because it's too annoying to defend. That is cowardice.
- jefftk 4y ago
  Extending your analogy, I think it's more like if someone decides it's not worth sleeping under a bednet. Or my deciding not to wear an N95 at the supermarket. I might agree or disagree with them on whether the risk they're taking is a smart choice, but "cowardly" is a bizarre angle to criticize it from. My argument is not that I have nothing to hide. Instead, it's that hiding has enough chance of not working that none of us should rely on it.