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The problems with privacy on the internet are so large and entrenched it's hard to know where to start. Strong end-to-end encryption is good. Challenging govern
by Joeboy 13y ago
The problems with privacy on the internet are so large and entrenched it's hard to know where to start. Strong end-to-end encryption is good. Challenging government policy is good. A diversity of services is good. Donating to the EFF is good. There is more than one battle, and people who are fighting the same war should be wary of undermining people who have chosen different battles.
- jeremysmyth 13y agoThe problem isn't privacy on the internet. It's "privacy". What do you mean by privacy? If you can define it, then we can talk about solving "privacy on the internet". Example: I don't want people seeing me when I go to the bathroom. Or when I'm having an intimate conversation (or other intimacy) with my wife. Or listen in on a conversation I'm having on the train or in a cafe or in my kitchen. Or over email or IM, or in a personal letter. Some of those things I have a right to in law, and some I don't. Some of them are things that not everyone agree should be private (in public, where there is no legal expectation of privacy). Privacy sounds like a nice neat concept, but it's actually quite hard to pin down. Should employers have a right to ask your ex girlfriends if you're a worthy employee? or to pay CCTV owners in town for the right to footage of you in public so that they can give that footage to psychologists who can analyse your facial micromovements as you walk down the street? Should you have the right to use binoculars to look into the apartment of the cute girl across the street if she doesn't close the curtains? Define privacy, then you know what the problem is. Only then can you solve the problems of "privacy on the internet".