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The privacy Americans previously enjoyed came for free and so contemporary Americans don't value it. The government OTOH places tremendous value on it so the na

The privacy Americans previously enjoyed came for free and so contemporary Americans don't value it. The government OTOH places tremendous value on it so the natural result is what we see. It will continue to be eroded. Unfortunately from what I see in history it's not usually until people are having trouble feeding their families that the people seize power back from government and short of that nothing will change. Ideological movements not related to our Maslow's-hierarchy-of-needs do come up and cause change but they're the exception and I'm not holding my breath. HN crowd is more enlightened than most and I still see widespread hook-line-and-sinker consumption of 100% corrupt corporate media narratives on here.

redmand 3y ago
I have to sadly agree. An earlier article talking about the erosion of privacy was met with more "what's the big deal" commenting than I am comfortable with in an environment such as HN. For me, it illustrated a direction in technology workers' attitudes that is frightening. I expected better. People -- and I will call out my fellow Americans in this -- don't seem to really care until it directly affects them and in significantly adverse ways. Up until that point, the attitude seems to be "I can still get by" and by the time that's not true, it's generations too late. But, hey, as long as you got yours, why should you care about your neighbor, right?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ilyt 3y ago
  I've seen too many people complaining how annoying dealing with GDPR is and how it is not government's business to regulate that. Well, if you don't exactly this happens. But somehow when there is minuscule effort required to keep your freedoms there are always a plenty of people wanting to throw it away instead.
- ROTMetro 3y ago
  TLDR: "Others have a different opinion than me so I'm going to decide their motivations for them and attack them instead of defending my opinion".
  - anonporridge 3y ago
    They don't have a different opinion. They have the null position of "who cares?". The people being referred to in the above comment aren't people who have thought in any depth about the issue of privacy and the boundaries that should be put in place to prevent abuse of violation of individual privacy and come to a contrary opinion. It's about people who are so completely heads down in their tiny vision of work and life that they've never really thought about the issue and only see things like "individual right to privacy" as annoying roadblocks they have to deal with to do what they're paid to do. The annoyance and frustration is with the apathy towards and issue, not with contradictory opinions. People don't study history and so we're doomed to repeat it. The reason why the Nazi holocaust of jews was most effective in the Netherlands is because of how incredible that country's record keeping was. You could argue that the violation of privacy might not be terribly abused today, but the people in charge today won't be in charge forever.
    - lost_tourist 3y ago
      Choosing to do nothing is also a choice.
HWR_14 3y ago
> The privacy Americans previously enjoyed came for free Which privacy are you talking about. I feel like you have some idea in mind, but that statement can be read numerous ways.
- user3939382 3y ago
  For starters not having all our communications scraped into a data center in Utah
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    Hasn't the government been collecting telecommunications metadata since at least the origin of the phone?
    - user3939382 3y ago
      No. Is this a defense of the NSA’s illegal dragnet surveillance of American communications? That data center isn’t there because they ran out of space for CDRs.
      - HWR_14 3y ago
        I'm not defending anything that is currently happening. I'm asking what privacy in the past do you think existed?
kilroy123 3y ago
I believe it is due to Social cycle theory or "anacyclosis". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=Polybius's%20concept%20of%20the%20cycle,monarchy%2C%20aristocracy%2C%20and%20democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=Po....
xenadu02 3y ago
Its not like private companies and foreign governments aren't doing the exact same thing. See the recent eBay security case, the Khashoggi journalist case, etc. Plenty of examples of things like Saudi's sovereign fund being a primary investor and demanding user data on dissidents. The idea that this data can be collected and kept safe at all is fiction. Even if the legal framework is in place to prohibit selling or misusing it there will always be bad actors and compromised employees willing to subvert any controls you care to implement. Even something as simple as hijacking phone numbers happens at massive scale because both call center and retail cellular employees are so easy to fool or buy off. FWIW I agree with you on corrupt corporate media. Consolidation has put a vast amount of media in just a few people's hands. Those extremely rich people don't want anyone telling them what to do and have bought a lot of deregulation especially of campaign finance so they can use the purse strings to control policy. In the US the political parties used to have a tighter reign on things because they were the money funnel and party leaders were at least subject to party elections so at some level politicians who didn't do something to advance the party platform approved by the party's members would lose funding. That whole system has more or less been smashed to pieces. Politicians need to make the supposedly "arm's length" PACs and other groups happy. Groups directly funded by a handful of very rich people. Voters at large and within the party are less and less relevant.
majormajor 3y ago
> Unfortunately from what I see in history it's not usually until people are having trouble feeding their families that the people seize power back from government and short of that nothing will change. If you want to be more cynical, how many of those "seizures of power" result in positive change vs neutral or negative? Even setting aside whoever dies in the revolution itself? I don't trust anyone pushing for revolution vs organized campaigning within the system because of how often it just doesn't work for the better.

redmand 3y ago

I have to sadly agree. An earlier article talking about the erosion of privacy was met with more "what's the big deal" commenting than I am comfortable with in an environment such as HN. For me, it illustrated a direction in technology workers' attitudes that is frightening. I expected better. People -- and I will call out my fellow Americans in this -- don't seem to really care until it directly affects them and in significantly adverse ways. Up until that point, the attitude seems to be "I can still get by" and by the time that's not true, it's generations too late. But, hey, as long as you got yours, why should you care about your neighbor, right?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ilyt 3y ago
I've seen too many people complaining how annoying dealing with GDPR is and how it is not government's business to regulate that. Well, if you don't exactly this happens. But somehow when there is minuscule effort required to keep your freedoms there are always a plenty of people wanting to throw it away instead.
ROTMetro 3y ago
TLDR: "Others have a different opinion than me so I'm going to decide their motivations for them and attack them instead of defending my opinion".
- anonporridge 3y ago
  They don't have a different opinion. They have the null position of "who cares?". The people being referred to in the above comment aren't people who have thought in any depth about the issue of privacy and the boundaries that should be put in place to prevent abuse of violation of individual privacy and come to a contrary opinion. It's about people who are so completely heads down in their tiny vision of work and life that they've never really thought about the issue and only see things like "individual right to privacy" as annoying roadblocks they have to deal with to do what they're paid to do. The annoyance and frustration is with the apathy towards and issue, not with contradictory opinions. People don't study history and so we're doomed to repeat it. The reason why the Nazi holocaust of jews was most effective in the Netherlands is because of how incredible that country's record keeping was. You could argue that the violation of privacy might not be terribly abused today, but the people in charge today won't be in charge forever.
  - lost_tourist 3y ago
    Choosing to do nothing is also a choice.

HWR_14 3y ago

> The privacy Americans previously enjoyed came for free Which privacy are you talking about. I feel like you have some idea in mind, but that statement can be read numerous ways.

user3939382 3y ago
For starters not having all our communications scraped into a data center in Utah
- HWR_14 3y ago
  Hasn't the government been collecting telecommunications metadata since at least the origin of the phone?
  - user3939382 3y ago
    No. Is this a defense of the NSA’s illegal dragnet surveillance of American communications? That data center isn’t there because they ran out of space for CDRs.
    - HWR_14 3y ago
      I'm not defending anything that is currently happening. I'm asking what privacy in the past do you think existed?

kilroy123 3y ago

I believe it is due to Social cycle theory or "anacyclosis". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=Polybius's%20concept%20of%20the%20cycle,monarchy%2C%20aristocracy%2C%20and%20democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=Po....

xenadu02 3y ago

Its not like private companies and foreign governments aren't doing the exact same thing. See the recent eBay security case, the Khashoggi journalist case, etc. Plenty of examples of things like Saudi's sovereign fund being a primary investor and demanding user data on dissidents. The idea that this data can be collected and kept safe at all is fiction. Even if the legal framework is in place to prohibit selling or misusing it there will always be bad actors and compromised employees willing to subvert any controls you care to implement. Even something as simple as hijacking phone numbers happens at massive scale because both call center and retail cellular employees are so easy to fool or buy off. FWIW I agree with you on corrupt corporate media. Consolidation has put a vast amount of media in just a few people's hands. Those extremely rich people don't want anyone telling them what to do and have bought a lot of deregulation especially of campaign finance so they can use the purse strings to control policy. In the US the political parties used to have a tighter reign on things because they were the money funnel and party leaders were at least subject to party elections so at some level politicians who didn't do something to advance the party platform approved by the party's members would lose funding. That whole system has more or less been smashed to pieces. Politicians need to make the supposedly "arm's length" PACs and other groups happy. Groups directly funded by a handful of very rich people. Voters at large and within the party are less and less relevant.

majormajor 3y ago

> Unfortunately from what I see in history it's not usually until people are having trouble feeding their families that the people seize power back from government and short of that nothing will change. If you want to be more cynical, how many of those "seizures of power" result in positive change vs neutral or negative? Even setting aside whoever dies in the revolution itself? I don't trust anyone pushing for revolution vs organized campaigning within the system because of how often it just doesn't work for the better.