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It's a lesson people haven't learned in 80 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943

It's a lesson people haven't learned in 80 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_... For any dataset you collect, think about how it can be miss-used. Because in all likelihood it will. Maybe not by you. But maybe by your successor. Or the hacker.

yieldcrv 1y ago
Its noteworthy to me that it took till 1943 for the reality of the threat to be taken seriously for this outcome People making parallels I feel have been inaccurate, as the parallels right now are much closer to Europe's 1933 happenings, and people act like 1945's happenings is what will happen the very next day Not sure what to make of that, just noticing that these particular "resistances" didn't have a prior allegory to watch, and made these choices eventually, and still how late into the story we know that these things occurred
- chaps 1y ago
  A lot of that is because of the advent of computer systems built by IBM to maintain records. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    IBM also built a calculator for the IRS in the late 1800s. They have been working with the government before nearly anyone still alive. Edit: it was for the 1890 US census, not the IRS. I apologize for my prior error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine
    - chaps 1y ago
      Friend, are you really conflating a calculator with a system of records knowingly used to enact the Holocaust? I recognize your point, but the valley between the two things is so large that I'm going to assume you're trolling.
      - aspenmayer 1y ago
        Not at all. I’m saying that IBM has been getting government contracts for a while, and they worked with Nazis in Germany to tabulate undesirables.
        chaps 1y ago
        Okay, but what's your point? The OP question was about what shifted.
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        If you believe that IBM carries water for fascists, the history seems to support that. What’s your point?
        yieldcrv 1y ago
        Alternate take, since social consequences only arise after your client gets invaded by 2 superpowers at once, and you don't really know what a party or government is going to do, the downside is very improbable and its rational to continue contracting with them all
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        I’m not making a legal or moral argument, merely an observation. I think it’s silly to assume that corporations have values beyond line go up. People have values. Deciding who you work with is a legitimate concern. No one alive today at IBM is likely to be a Nazi collaborator, but the company benefitted from Nazi money. I’m not sure if IBM ever paid any reparations or was ever asked to. I think any company as old and as involved with government contracts as IBM is going to have some conflicts of interest, which says more about the world than it does about IBM. My original point was that I believe the reason the math was so complicated for the Census and indirectly for the IRS regarding taxation in that period, was due to the Census Bureau also being responsible for tracking the frontier line. The release of the 1890 census marked the official closure of the frontier in the American West. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_United_States_census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_United_States_census
- davrosthedalek 1y ago
  What can I say, it's hard to give up data. So I guess the situation must escalate until the bad outcome was undeniable. And I don't want to make a point here about current political affairs. My point is that data collection has serious dangers, independent how good you think the current collectors are, how good the intentions of the data collection are, and how good the benefits of the data collection are. We should not pretend that at least some data collection has benefits. But we should also not pretend that any given data collection doesn't have the risk of misuse. It's up to politics (in the end, us), to make sure that these risks are valued correctly, for example by making sure that data collectors take over some of the risk in a serious way. "The data was protected according to industry standards" is not enough.
- macNchz 1y ago
  I think the whole timeline of WWII is broadly misunderstood in the US. I imagine it’s related to the fact the US entered quite late, and that much of what’s taught in school is fairly US centric. It’d be very interesting to survey people and see how people’s mental models reflect reality. I imagine very few Americans would identify what was going on in 1933 at all, never mind that Hitler’s first attempt at a coup took place nearly 20 years before the US entered the war.
  - davrosthedalek 1y ago
    To be fair, I never heard about the Canadian-US war before I moved to the States. But we went over the Nazi regime multiple times in school [I am German].
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      The War of 1812? It might get a brief mention in American schools, but not much. On the other hand, we get several years of holocaust class spread across social studies or history class and english class. Hardly any WW2 discussion, except for the holocoast and a smaller amount about the atomic bombings.
  - yieldcrv 1y ago
    fwiw we do make a lot of jokes about getting rejected from art school
marricks 1y ago
Before the Nazi's invaded the main guy who advocated for the civil registry which allowed the Nazi's to easily find jewish people went to his grave believing he did nothing wrong in advocating for such a database. Clearly we all need to be thinking much more deeply on these issues.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  What can we even change? It's likely HN will also go to the grave demanding deregulation amidst a maelstrom of consumer protection malfunctions. We're already there in many respects; the DOJ's case against Google and Apple both seem to have stalled-out while the EU, Japan and South Korea all push forward with their investigations. In many respects, the attitude of "we'll fix this one day" is exactly why we don't think deeply about these issues. Client-side scanning was proposed only a short while ago, and you can still read the insane amount of apologists on this site who think that unmitigated data collection can be a good thing if you trust the good Samaritan doing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28068741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28068741 It will take an utter catastrophe before the deregulation bloc sees what's at stake. This is far from over, despite the unanimous desire to put security in the rearview mirror.
  - davrosthedalek 1y ago
    Go out, tell your non-techie friends how data can be misused.
    - Geezus_42 1y ago
      "But I have nothing to hide"
      - davrosthedalek 1y ago
        And then tell them the story about the Jewish people in the Netherlands.... Alternatively, ask them how accurately an email need to describe their medical history before they believe it's real and fall for a scam.
slg 1y ago
Although it is interesting how inconsistently this principle of is applied to other areas. For example, if you come to HN and advocate against encryption or AI because they can amplify the dangers of bad actors, you are going to be met by fierce opposition. So why do these hypothetical bad actors only become valid concerns in certain conversations?
- prophesi 1y ago
  When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Regular citizens lose, oppressive governments & criminals win.
  - slg 1y ago
    >When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. So does the license plate data. It is used to find and bring justice to criminals. Does that not make us all safer? > If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Laws are pointless because the criminals will just break them is a silly argument that can be used against most laws. Why should we have any laws about gun control, money laundering, or drugs if the criminals will just do whatever they want anyway. And the flip side of this argument should also be considered. Do we think the Nazis would have given up on their genocide if they didn't find this data?
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      > Does that not make us all safer? Is there evidence in that direction?
      - slg 1y ago
        Thank you, this is a perfect example of the type of inconsistencies I’m talking about when discussing these issues. The prior comment says encryption saves lives and that is accepted without question, but the idea that empowering law enforcement saves lives is met with a request for evidence. Why did you not reply to both claims the same way? And if you truly believe that finding and arresting criminals does not make us safer, that is an indictment of our entire justice system. It would also make license plate cameras a rather silly place to draw the line.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
a_bonobo 1y ago
Interestingly, as a direct outcome of the Nazis misusing this data Germany did not have a census for the longest time. Here is an article from 1987 on the German protests against the new census, that was also the last Germany-led census: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/10/world/germans-stand-up-not-to-be-counted.html https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/10/world/germans-stand-up-no... (BUT Germany has fairly strict rules on registration of your place of living, so perhaps a census is now unnecessary)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

yieldcrv 1y ago

Its noteworthy to me that it took till 1943 for the reality of the threat to be taken seriously for this outcome People making parallels I feel have been inaccurate, as the parallels right now are much closer to Europe's 1933 happenings, and people act like 1945's happenings is what will happen the very next day Not sure what to make of that, just noticing that these particular "resistances" didn't have a prior allegory to watch, and made these choices eventually, and still how late into the story we know that these things occurred

chaps 1y ago
A lot of that is because of the advent of computer systems built by IBM to maintain records. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  IBM also built a calculator for the IRS in the late 1800s. They have been working with the government before nearly anyone still alive. Edit: it was for the 1890 US census, not the IRS. I apologize for my prior error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine
  - chaps 1y ago
    Friend, are you really conflating a calculator with a system of records knowingly used to enact the Holocaust? I recognize your point, but the valley between the two things is so large that I'm going to assume you're trolling.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      Not at all. I’m saying that IBM has been getting government contracts for a while, and they worked with Nazis in Germany to tabulate undesirables.
      - chaps 1y ago
        Okay, but what's your point? The OP question was about what shifted.
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        If you believe that IBM carries water for fascists, the history seems to support that. What’s your point?
        yieldcrv 1y ago
        Alternate take, since social consequences only arise after your client gets invaded by 2 superpowers at once, and you don't really know what a party or government is going to do, the downside is very improbable and its rational to continue contracting with them all
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        I’m not making a legal or moral argument, merely an observation. I think it’s silly to assume that corporations have values beyond line go up. People have values. Deciding who you work with is a legitimate concern. No one alive today at IBM is likely to be a Nazi collaborator, but the company benefitted from Nazi money. I’m not sure if IBM ever paid any reparations or was ever asked to. I think any company as old and as involved with government contracts as IBM is going to have some conflicts of interest, which says more about the world than it does about IBM. My original point was that I believe the reason the math was so complicated for the Census and indirectly for the IRS regarding taxation in that period, was due to the Census Bureau also being responsible for tracking the frontier line. The release of the 1890 census marked the official closure of the frontier in the American West. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_United_States_census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_United_States_census
davrosthedalek 1y ago
What can I say, it's hard to give up data. So I guess the situation must escalate until the bad outcome was undeniable. And I don't want to make a point here about current political affairs. My point is that data collection has serious dangers, independent how good you think the current collectors are, how good the intentions of the data collection are, and how good the benefits of the data collection are. We should not pretend that at least some data collection has benefits. But we should also not pretend that any given data collection doesn't have the risk of misuse. It's up to politics (in the end, us), to make sure that these risks are valued correctly, for example by making sure that data collectors take over some of the risk in a serious way. "The data was protected according to industry standards" is not enough.
macNchz 1y ago
I think the whole timeline of WWII is broadly misunderstood in the US. I imagine it’s related to the fact the US entered quite late, and that much of what’s taught in school is fairly US centric. It’d be very interesting to survey people and see how people’s mental models reflect reality. I imagine very few Americans would identify what was going on in 1933 at all, never mind that Hitler’s first attempt at a coup took place nearly 20 years before the US entered the war.
- davrosthedalek 1y ago
  To be fair, I never heard about the Canadian-US war before I moved to the States. But we went over the Nazi regime multiple times in school [I am German].
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    The War of 1812? It might get a brief mention in American schools, but not much. On the other hand, we get several years of holocaust class spread across social studies or history class and english class. Hardly any WW2 discussion, except for the holocoast and a smaller amount about the atomic bombings.
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  fwiw we do make a lot of jokes about getting rejected from art school

marricks 1y ago

Before the Nazi's invaded the main guy who advocated for the civil registry which allowed the Nazi's to easily find jewish people went to his grave believing he did nothing wrong in advocating for such a database. Clearly we all need to be thinking much more deeply on these issues.

bigyabai 1y ago
What can we even change? It's likely HN will also go to the grave demanding deregulation amidst a maelstrom of consumer protection malfunctions. We're already there in many respects; the DOJ's case against Google and Apple both seem to have stalled-out while the EU, Japan and South Korea all push forward with their investigations. In many respects, the attitude of "we'll fix this one day" is exactly why we don't think deeply about these issues. Client-side scanning was proposed only a short while ago, and you can still read the insane amount of apologists on this site who think that unmitigated data collection can be a good thing if you trust the good Samaritan doing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28068741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28068741 It will take an utter catastrophe before the deregulation bloc sees what's at stake. This is far from over, despite the unanimous desire to put security in the rearview mirror.
- davrosthedalek 1y ago
  Go out, tell your non-techie friends how data can be misused.
  - Geezus_42 1y ago
    "But I have nothing to hide"
    - davrosthedalek 1y ago
      And then tell them the story about the Jewish people in the Netherlands.... Alternatively, ask them how accurately an email need to describe their medical history before they believe it's real and fall for a scam.

slg 1y ago

Although it is interesting how inconsistently this principle of is applied to other areas. For example, if you come to HN and advocate against encryption or AI because they can amplify the dangers of bad actors, you are going to be met by fierce opposition. So why do these hypothetical bad actors only become valid concerns in certain conversations?

prophesi 1y ago
When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Regular citizens lose, oppressive governments & criminals win.
- slg 1y ago
  >When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. So does the license plate data. It is used to find and bring justice to criminals. Does that not make us all safer? > If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Laws are pointless because the criminals will just break them is a silly argument that can be used against most laws. Why should we have any laws about gun control, money laundering, or drugs if the criminals will just do whatever they want anyway. And the flip side of this argument should also be considered. Do we think the Nazis would have given up on their genocide if they didn't find this data?
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    > Does that not make us all safer? Is there evidence in that direction?
    - slg 1y ago
      Thank you, this is a perfect example of the type of inconsistencies I’m talking about when discussing these issues. The prior comment says encryption saves lives and that is accepted without question, but the idea that empowering law enforcement saves lives is met with a request for evidence. Why did you not reply to both claims the same way? And if you truly believe that finding and arresting criminals does not make us safer, that is an indictment of our entire justice system. It would also make license plate cameras a rather silly place to draw the line.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

a_bonobo 1y ago

Interestingly, as a direct outcome of the Nazis misusing this data Germany did not have a census for the longest time. Here is an article from 1987 on the German protests against the new census, that was also the last Germany-led census: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/10/world/germans-stand-up-not-to-be-counted.html https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/10/world/germans-stand-up-no... (BUT Germany has fairly strict rules on registration of your place of living, so perhaps a census is now unnecessary)

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]