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Internet privacy becomes essential in the moment that people put their entire lives on the Internet. All mail is email, all financial transactions are electroni

by opinali 13y ago

Internet privacy becomes essential in the moment that people put their entire lives on the Internet. All mail is email, all financial transactions are electronic, medical records are in computers, credit scores are in data centers--- you name anything important to your privacy/freedom, and it's in the cloud these days. No tradeoff is possible anymore.

nested 13y ago
I came to share the same thought. We need to preserve freedom for the future and set the damn standard for the rest of the world. I don't want my children or theirs to think surveillance like this is acceptable. It's absolutely not.
anigbrowl 13y ago
I keep saying it, the US Constitution needs amending to create an explicit right to privacy. government surveillance is a problem, but so is the unilateral exploitation of personal data for commercial purposes. I'm Irish and living in the States, I really miss the EU Data Protection Act.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I think a new FISA would be a good start. As flawed as the current state of affairs is, its a big improvement over what existed prior to FISA. That law was a constraint on the NSA, probably the most restrictive that was possible during the cold war. Alternatively, the Supreme Court could invent a right,of privacy out of thin air. That might very well happen in time, but the tech community is undermining attempts to lay the groundwork for that. There must be a consensus that privacy is the rule online, rather than the exception. No such consensus will emerge if the tech community continues to condition people to accept invasions of their privacy in the name of advertising. Ordinary people do not have a particular distrust of government. To get to "its not okay for the government to read my email" you have to get rid of the notion that "its okay for Google to read my email."
  - seehafer 13y ago
    "To get to "its not okay for the government to read my email" you have to get rid of the notion that "its okay for Google to read my email." No, you don't. You opt-in to Google reading your mail by using their free service. You can't (easily) opt-out of the government reading everything you do. You have a choice with Google and any other private firm.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      That's a viable argument, certainly. But for the Supreme Court to read into the Constitution a right that isn't plainly in the text (as it did with the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade),[1] it's not enough to just present a viable argument. You need the weight of social and academic consensus. You need the majority of people to firmly believe that something should be a new social norm. In this context, the social norm you're trying to establish is that internet communications are to be kept private, even sacrosanct. The idea of someone reading their e-mail should give people the same feeling as the idea of someone looking into their bathroom window. You can't rest such a social norm on fine distinctions between the government and private companies. Ordinary people do not hold the government in a unique position of mistrust, and so are not likely to find compelling a norm that only the government must observe. As soon as you say: "well, Google can read my e-mail because I can always choose to use a different provider," you open yourself up to the counter that "well, unlike Google the government has a unique obligation to protect us from terrorists, so it needs to be able to read our e-mail too!" When it comes to the establishment of a new social norm, it's irrelevant that people are theoretically free to choose a provider that does not violate their privacy. As long as the vast majority of the popular services leverage private data, the social norm that will emerge is that online communications are not something that should be held sacrosanct. As long as people are conditioned to accept Googles' reading their e-mails to target advertising, they will not think of e-mail as a deeply private thing that must be protected, even from the government. [1] Whether you think Roe v. Wade was correctly decided or not, it's hard to argue that the result was plainly in the text of the Constitution. In Griswold, Justice Douglas didn't rely on "penumbras" and "emanations" despite having clear Constitutional text to hang his hat on!
- ds9 13y ago
  anigbrowl "the US Constitution needs amending to create an explicit right to privacy" Actually it shouldn't. U.S. Constitution, Amendment 9: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." [1] If this had had a good-faith interpretation in US constitutional law, many decisions would have been more favorable to individual citizens. It's not the words that are decisive, it's the cultural willingness to honor them. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
  - rayiner 13y ago
    The 9th amendment just says the Constitutions enumeration of rights isn't exhaustive. That doesn't mean that anything you want to call a "right" exists just because it isn't mentioned in the Constitution. You still have to show its existence some other way. Typically, this is by showing that the right existed historically. No general right to privacy has existed historically, at least not in America or England.

by opinali 13y ago

nested 13y ago

I came to share the same thought. We need to preserve freedom for the future and set the damn standard for the rest of the world. I don't want my children or theirs to think surveillance like this is acceptable. It's absolutely not.

anigbrowl 13y ago

I keep saying it, the US Constitution needs amending to create an explicit right to privacy. government surveillance is a problem, but so is the unilateral exploitation of personal data for commercial purposes. I'm Irish and living in the States, I really miss the EU Data Protection Act.

rayiner 13y ago
I think a new FISA would be a good start. As flawed as the current state of affairs is, its a big improvement over what existed prior to FISA. That law was a constraint on the NSA, probably the most restrictive that was possible during the cold war. Alternatively, the Supreme Court could invent a right,of privacy out of thin air. That might very well happen in time, but the tech community is undermining attempts to lay the groundwork for that. There must be a consensus that privacy is the rule online, rather than the exception. No such consensus will emerge if the tech community continues to condition people to accept invasions of their privacy in the name of advertising. Ordinary people do not have a particular distrust of government. To get to "its not okay for the government to read my email" you have to get rid of the notion that "its okay for Google to read my email."
- seehafer 13y ago
  "To get to "its not okay for the government to read my email" you have to get rid of the notion that "its okay for Google to read my email." No, you don't. You opt-in to Google reading your mail by using their free service. You can't (easily) opt-out of the government reading everything you do. You have a choice with Google and any other private firm.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    That's a viable argument, certainly. But for the Supreme Court to read into the Constitution a right that isn't plainly in the text (as it did with the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade),[1] it's not enough to just present a viable argument. You need the weight of social and academic consensus. You need the majority of people to firmly believe that something should be a new social norm. In this context, the social norm you're trying to establish is that internet communications are to be kept private, even sacrosanct. The idea of someone reading their e-mail should give people the same feeling as the idea of someone looking into their bathroom window. You can't rest such a social norm on fine distinctions between the government and private companies. Ordinary people do not hold the government in a unique position of mistrust, and so are not likely to find compelling a norm that only the government must observe. As soon as you say: "well, Google can read my e-mail because I can always choose to use a different provider," you open yourself up to the counter that "well, unlike Google the government has a unique obligation to protect us from terrorists, so it needs to be able to read our e-mail too!" When it comes to the establishment of a new social norm, it's irrelevant that people are theoretically free to choose a provider that does not violate their privacy. As long as the vast majority of the popular services leverage private data, the social norm that will emerge is that online communications are not something that should be held sacrosanct. As long as people are conditioned to accept Googles' reading their e-mails to target advertising, they will not think of e-mail as a deeply private thing that must be protected, even from the government. [1] Whether you think Roe v. Wade was correctly decided or not, it's hard to argue that the result was plainly in the text of the Constitution. In Griswold, Justice Douglas didn't rely on "penumbras" and "emanations" despite having clear Constitutional text to hang his hat on!
ds9 13y ago
anigbrowl "the US Constitution needs amending to create an explicit right to privacy" Actually it shouldn't. U.S. Constitution, Amendment 9: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." [1] If this had had a good-faith interpretation in US constitutional law, many decisions would have been more favorable to individual citizens. It's not the words that are decisive, it's the cultural willingness to honor them. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
- rayiner 13y ago
  The 9th amendment just says the Constitutions enumeration of rights isn't exhaustive. That doesn't mean that anything you want to call a "right" exists just because it isn't mentioned in the Constitution. You still have to show its existence some other way. Typically, this is by showing that the right existed historically. No general right to privacy has existed historically, at least not in America or England.