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> That's because you're an average Joe. And I think this article is written targeting the average Joe. Everyone is getting off on tangents about how the gov't

> That's because you're an average Joe. And I think this article is written targeting the average Joe. Everyone is getting off on tangents about how the gov't is going to go fascist and that privacy is the best thing in the world. He isn't arguing that privacy is inherently bad, or you should never ever have secrets. Yeah, if your trying to overthrow an fascist regime, it makes sense to have secrets. But again, that's a contrived reason. If you're MLK, that's not really the norm. The point Mr.Sivers making is - generally people have more secrets than they really need and in the process they're making their lives more stressful. He's suggesting trying to re-evulate your need for privacy (I'm repeating myself). It's just a call for some self reflection. Everyone needs to chill out a bit.

foobarqux 13y ago
If you're a black person what happens to MLK-type figures matters to you, even if you're not them. You don't get it: You can't have democracy in a surveillance state.
- gnaffle 13y ago
  It's not even about the surveillance state. You never know what will happen in the future and who will use the information. Maybe you're happy with the code you write now, but in 5 years you may regret publishing it for everyone to laugh about. I'm old enough that there are some pretty embarassing usenet posts from me archived forever. Luckily they take quite a while to find nowadays, but I've certainly learnt my lesson.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  You definitely can have democracy in a transparent state - what happens to MLK type figures is not related to what potential oppressors know about MLK (they already knew all they needed to) but instead what they're allowed to do to restrict MLK.
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    I assume you meant surveillance state. It's nonsensical: In what way do you propose to not make the subject of surveillance disempowered?
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      In what way was MLK disempowered by the fact that FBI knew all about his personal life, travel plans, who he communicated with and so on? The key is that government should be unable to prevent you from excercising your rights to action despite knowing that you want to change things. If you really need to conspire in secrecy, then it's probably already too late for anything other than an armed revolution to fix that.
      - foobarqux 13y ago
        They blackmailed him using the fact that he was having an affair for example. The rule obviously can't be "you can't tell anyone person X is having an affair". >The key is that government should be unable to prevent you from exercising your rights to action No that's not the key. Severely impairing your ability to act or discouraging action by causing pain is essentially as effective as outright prohibition as is lowering someone's public esteem.
dreamfactory 13y ago
That's a variant on 'nothing to hide nothing to fear'. Plenty of average Joes in East Germany under the Stasi may disagree with that notion being even potentially benign in its outcome. I'd imagine you have doors and curtains/blinds in your house - most people do and it's not out of neurosis and paranoia.
- spagina09 13y ago
  Or further, Good fences make good neighbors. It's not because I dislike my neighbors, I just like being able to not look at them and enjoy my home in privacy.
gnaffle 13y ago
But I think that's completely untrue. I'd rather argue that most people are too oblivious about what they should and shouldn't keep secret. What in general would you say people keep secret that adds to their stress? Maybe some people here on HN might be over the top paranoid, but Joe Average? Sure, maybe they shouldn't have that secret affair and hide it from their spouse, but they probably already know that's a bad thing.
hrkristian 13y ago
Invasion vs invitation. I'd happily share 99% (maybe even all) of my life with the whole world, every step taken and every breath taken, but that would be on my terms. (I kinda am, by agreeing to everything Google asks of me) Would James Buchanan have a chance at becoming the President of the Unites States in today's society? Assuming he actually was gay: would a 2013 version of James Buchanan be able to keep that a secret if the right person in the right chain of command happened to be ill-willed?
job-dilemma 13y ago
Well said, there may be legitimate reasons to keep secrets but secrets for their own sake are bullshit and make the world worse.
coldtea 13y ago
>He isn't arguing that privacy is inherently bad, or you should never ever have secrets. Yeah, if your trying to overthrow an fascist regime, it makes sense to have secrets. But again, that's a contrived reason. If you're MLK, that's not really the norm. That's a contrived reason too. For one, it SHOULD be the norm. "Be the change you want to see in the world" and everything. It's not just something to pay lip service to. Second, it doesn't matter if it "only" affects only 1 in 100,000, because what those 1 in 100,000 do affects millions of lives themselves. Heck, MLK was 1 in 250,000,000 and he affected the whole of the US. >The point Mr.Sivers making is - generally people have more secrets than they really need and in the process they're making their lives more stressful. He's suggesting trying to re-evulate your need for privacy (I'm repeating myself). Given the widespread violations of privacy, such an attitude is harmful even on the personal level. It can be seen as essentially a "giving up" to pressure from the goverment/spying corporations like Google. But it gets worse, because it's also quite trivial, and the example he gives is bad. His friend might not mind showing him her "private notebook", because he is just a friend (probably not even a close one at that, since all of the stuff she wrote, he said it was irrelevant to him). How about showing that same notebook to her husband, her children, her parents, her boss, close friends, some person she writes negatively about etc? Despite her giving lip service to openess, there's a reason she reffered to it as "ultra secret". There are lots of secrets people want to have. And not just some MLK types: hundrends of millions of people. How about trying to smoke a joint in the privacy of your own home? According to some stats, tens of millions have done it, including in states that it's illegal. Should they all go to jail? Or have an affair without your partner knowing? Or what if sometime you visited a prostitute? Or tell your friend that your boss is a jerk? Or watch porn? Perhaps even kinky Japanese tentacle stuff. Or write a comment against GOP / Obama in an internet forum. Or discover you're gay at puberty and not announce your friends/parents until you decide the time is right? Are you allowed to all these "secrets" (and tons more)? Why the fuck should anybody else, and especially the government, have this information on you? Only a puritan society, that thinks all such stuff as "immoral" would see as OK to not be able to have secrects on such matters ("cheating on your partner? That's bad, and they should now it"). As for, "how the gov't is going to go fascist" -- who said it isn't already in certain aspects? Fascism is not a "take it all or leave it affair", you can pick and choose from it's practices. A basic characteristic of fascism was spying on their own citizens. And there are lots of others (e.g the ratio of incarceration and the militarization of police force is unprecedented in a regular Western democracy like France, Britain and co).
spagina09 13y ago
I really don't understand the statement of more secrets than someone needs. I bet your own mind isn't an open book, you have desires and wants, knowledge, aspirations, and things that belong solely to you. This isn't to be looked down upon, everything shouldn't be an open book for the world to read and judge upon and they should belong to you. That isn't unhealthy, it doesn't mark a lack of moral character, it's your own internal conversation, and frankly, more people need to learn how to work within themselves instead of making everything an open book for everyone else to judge and comment on like they are the Kardashians.

foobarqux 13y ago

If you're a black person what happens to MLK-type figures matters to you, even if you're not them. You don't get it: You can't have democracy in a surveillance state.

gnaffle 13y ago
It's not even about the surveillance state. You never know what will happen in the future and who will use the information. Maybe you're happy with the code you write now, but in 5 years you may regret publishing it for everyone to laugh about. I'm old enough that there are some pretty embarassing usenet posts from me archived forever. Luckily they take quite a while to find nowadays, but I've certainly learnt my lesson.
PeterisP 13y ago
You definitely can have democracy in a transparent state - what happens to MLK type figures is not related to what potential oppressors know about MLK (they already knew all they needed to) but instead what they're allowed to do to restrict MLK.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  I assume you meant surveillance state. It's nonsensical: In what way do you propose to not make the subject of surveillance disempowered?
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    In what way was MLK disempowered by the fact that FBI knew all about his personal life, travel plans, who he communicated with and so on? The key is that government should be unable to prevent you from excercising your rights to action despite knowing that you want to change things. If you really need to conspire in secrecy, then it's probably already too late for anything other than an armed revolution to fix that.
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      They blackmailed him using the fact that he was having an affair for example. The rule obviously can't be "you can't tell anyone person X is having an affair". >The key is that government should be unable to prevent you from exercising your rights to action No that's not the key. Severely impairing your ability to act or discouraging action by causing pain is essentially as effective as outright prohibition as is lowering someone's public esteem.

dreamfactory 13y ago

That's a variant on 'nothing to hide nothing to fear'. Plenty of average Joes in East Germany under the Stasi may disagree with that notion being even potentially benign in its outcome. I'd imagine you have doors and curtains/blinds in your house - most people do and it's not out of neurosis and paranoia.

spagina09 13y ago
Or further, Good fences make good neighbors. It's not because I dislike my neighbors, I just like being able to not look at them and enjoy my home in privacy.

gnaffle 13y ago

But I think that's completely untrue. I'd rather argue that most people are too oblivious about what they should and shouldn't keep secret. What in general would you say people keep secret that adds to their stress? Maybe some people here on HN might be over the top paranoid, but Joe Average? Sure, maybe they shouldn't have that secret affair and hide it from their spouse, but they probably already know that's a bad thing.

hrkristian 13y ago

Invasion vs invitation. I'd happily share 99% (maybe even all) of my life with the whole world, every step taken and every breath taken, but that would be on my terms. (I kinda am, by agreeing to everything Google asks of me) Would James Buchanan have a chance at becoming the President of the Unites States in today's society? Assuming he actually was gay: would a 2013 version of James Buchanan be able to keep that a secret if the right person in the right chain of command happened to be ill-willed?

job-dilemma 13y ago

Well said, there may be legitimate reasons to keep secrets but secrets for their own sake are bullshit and make the world worse.

coldtea 13y ago

>He isn't arguing that privacy is inherently bad, or you should never ever have secrets. Yeah, if your trying to overthrow an fascist regime, it makes sense to have secrets. But again, that's a contrived reason. If you're MLK, that's not really the norm. That's a contrived reason too. For one, it SHOULD be the norm. "Be the change you want to see in the world" and everything. It's not just something to pay lip service to. Second, it doesn't matter if it "only" affects only 1 in 100,000, because what those 1 in 100,000 do affects millions of lives themselves. Heck, MLK was 1 in 250,000,000 and he affected the whole of the US. >The point Mr.Sivers making is - generally people have more secrets than they really need and in the process they're making their lives more stressful. He's suggesting trying to re-evulate your need for privacy (I'm repeating myself). Given the widespread violations of privacy, such an attitude is harmful even on the personal level. It can be seen as essentially a "giving up" to pressure from the goverment/spying corporations like Google. But it gets worse, because it's also quite trivial, and the example he gives is bad. His friend might not mind showing him her "private notebook", because he is just a friend (probably not even a close one at that, since all of the stuff she wrote, he said it was irrelevant to him). How about showing that same notebook to her husband, her children, her parents, her boss, close friends, some person she writes negatively about etc? Despite her giving lip service to openess, there's a reason she reffered to it as "ultra secret". There are lots of secrets people want to have. And not just some MLK types: hundrends of millions of people. How about trying to smoke a joint in the privacy of your own home? According to some stats, tens of millions have done it, including in states that it's illegal. Should they all go to jail? Or have an affair without your partner knowing? Or what if sometime you visited a prostitute? Or tell your friend that your boss is a jerk? Or watch porn? Perhaps even kinky Japanese tentacle stuff. Or write a comment against GOP / Obama in an internet forum. Or discover you're gay at puberty and not announce your friends/parents until you decide the time is right? Are you allowed to all these "secrets" (and tons more)? Why the fuck should anybody else, and especially the government, have this information on you? Only a puritan society, that thinks all such stuff as "immoral" would see as OK to not be able to have secrects on such matters ("cheating on your partner? That's bad, and they should now it"). As for, "how the gov't is going to go fascist" -- who said it isn't already in certain aspects? Fascism is not a "take it all or leave it affair", you can pick and choose from it's practices. A basic characteristic of fascism was spying on their own citizens. And there are lots of others (e.g the ratio of incarceration and the militarization of police force is unprecedented in a regular Western democracy like France, Britain and co).

spagina09 13y ago

I really don't understand the statement of more secrets than someone needs. I bet your own mind isn't an open book, you have desires and wants, knowledge, aspirations, and things that belong solely to you. This isn't to be looked down upon, everything shouldn't be an open book for the world to read and judge upon and they should belong to you. That isn't unhealthy, it doesn't mark a lack of moral character, it's your own internal conversation, and frankly, more people need to learn how to work within themselves instead of making everything an open book for everyone else to judge and comment on like they are the Kardashians.