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A few points. There isn't any coercion going on with any of the things we're talking about. Every technology product has at least the choice to not use it. It

A few points. There isn't any coercion going on with any of the things we're talking about. Every technology product has at least the choice to not use it. It's quite difficult to ask meaningful questions about what users are comfortable with, get meaningful answers, and then figure out how the answer they've already given applies to a grey area situation where the cost of getting it wrong is a lawsuit. It becomes no longer sufficient to treat the data with respect and only use it for beneficial and privacy respecting purposes. You now have to constrain it by another set of rules whose relationship to what's actually happening can be unclear and arbitrary. Some products work without storing any data. Most don't. For those that require user data to fulfill their basic function, the engineering cost of exempting certain data from certain systems can be much higher. One programmer screwing up becomes a lawsuit. This is essentially the situation with HIPAA. Everyone is too worried about liability to do anything innovative, so that sector doesn't improve. If someone is actually harmed by something a company does with user data, then it's entirely appropriate to stop patronizing that company, or to claim damages through all the normal routes. The presumption of not trusting anyone with data in advance of any actual harm is what I object to. Data can do real and permanent good in the world, and some companies are worth trusting (particularly since all of their incentives are to remain trustworthy if they want to continue to exist.)

Silhouette 13y ago
There isn't any coercion going on with any of the things we're talking about. Every technology product has at least the choice to not use it. But that's exactly the problem: many of the modern technologies that pose potential risks to privacy don't in practice provide an opt-out for the people whose privacy they might infringe. Sometimes, you do have a choice. However, if you don't know about it or understand the implications, you can't make an informed decision. Sometimes you don't get any meaningful choice, for example if governments decide it's OK to share sensitive healthcare information now. Strictly speaking you do have a choice, but that choice is never to visit a doctor or hospital. Try contrasting the dangers from a significant reduction in public trust in the integrity and ethics of the entire medical profession with the hypothetical future benefits of analysing aggregate healthcare data, and let me know which one really seems like the bigger risk. Sometimes you don't get any choice in practice because your data is collected incidentally. When you were in the background of someone's personal holiday snap, that didn't really matter. When you're in the background of a CCTV image, which is centrally recorded and subject to future data mining operations, it matters more. When you're in the background of numerous CCTV images just because you left your home, which are subject to geotagging, facial recognition, gait analysis, covert audio recording, correlation with other databases such as mobile phone history, ANPR scans and purchase history, permanent archival and any additional data mining techniques that anyone who gets hold of the data might find later... Well, now you're in the plot of a sci-fi short story that doesn't end well. Except that of course, it's not a story any more. Insurers already bump premiums based on profiling, but that profiling is notoriously inaccurate. Lenders already check credit records, which again are notoriously inaccurate. Employers already not only Google job applicants but in some cases also ask for personal log-in credentials to read through their social networking history. Governments already sell personal data held for legitimate public interest reasons to private parties, and even in seemingly simple cases like the government's vehicle licensing authority in the UK providing details of the registered owner of a car with given plates, this has been widely abused. Where these things have been curtailed -- which doesn't happen nearly as often as it should -- it has mostly been because primary legislation was passed or the rules for government's own departments were updated to cover specific cases, and only after so many people suffered from the intrusion that it became a politically significant issue. To be clear, I don't object to the idea that there are potentially great benefits to be had from data mining, including in sensitive cases like public health data. But I think you are almost completely ignoring the accompanying risks, despite a seemingly endless stream of failures resulting in serious adverse consequences for individuals whose privacy wasn't adequately protected. We need the rest of how society works to catch up with the capabilities of modern technology before we can reap the benefits without paying too high a price.
- moultano 13y ago
  >despite a seemingly endless stream of failures resulting in serious adverse consequences for individuals whose privacy wasn't adequately protected. Such as? Typically it seems that things become a scandal based on hypothetical harm rather than actual harm.
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    Please reread my penultimate paragraph. That is nothing hypothetical about any of those scenarios, and they have resulted in widespread complaints when discovered.
    - moultano 13y ago
      You described rules being violated or systems performing poorly. You didn't describe people being harmed.
      - Silhouette 13y ago
        You don't consider it harmful if someone is paying more for (or being effectively denied) insurance, being turned down for a mortgage, not getting a job, or being sent legal threats because they refused to pay a fine for a driving offence they never committed? You and I have very different ideas of what harm is, then. Of course, in reality it's often difficult to prove that a specific outcome was the result of a privacy invasion. It's not like insurers or employers are going to document that they discriminated unfairly, whether illegally or otherwise, in making their decisions. But we know all the things I mentioned can happen, partly because too many times there have been cases where real evidence was seen, and partly because in some cases incentives are aligned with poor behaviour and it's just plain naive to think it won't then happen if there's nothing to balance those incentives. Privacy is important because it removes the ability to make those unfair decisions in the first place.
        moultano 13y ago
        Wouldn't we rather remove the ability to make those unfair decisions? I don't see the data as being enabling here, because for most of the cases you are describing, it's the inaccuracy of the data that is causing the harm, not the data. Some of the classes of behavior you describe, we can outright make illegal, like health insurers discriminating among the people they insure. (Like the affordable care act just did.) Similarly, we could make it illegal for an employer to request access to any private information before hiring someone. That seems reasonable. Credit ratings are terrible and that whole industry needs reform, but I don't think the problem with it is that they have too much data. First off, let me clarify what I'm advocating for so we aren't talking past each other. I would like for the public to be less skeptical of organizations collecting large amounts of data, and storing it to analyze in aggregate for a variety of purposes. Particularly, if access to the data is controlled, and if it is only used in a sufficiently aggregated form. Society will reap tremendous benefits from enabling things like this. I don't think of most of the cases you are describing as being related to this.

Silhouette 13y ago

There isn't any coercion going on with any of the things we're talking about. Every technology product has at least the choice to not use it. But that's exactly the problem: many of the modern technologies that pose potential risks to privacy don't in practice provide an opt-out for the people whose privacy they might infringe. Sometimes, you do have a choice. However, if you don't know about it or understand the implications, you can't make an informed decision. Sometimes you don't get any meaningful choice, for example if governments decide it's OK to share sensitive healthcare information now. Strictly speaking you do have a choice, but that choice is never to visit a doctor or hospital. Try contrasting the dangers from a significant reduction in public trust in the integrity and ethics of the entire medical profession with the hypothetical future benefits of analysing aggregate healthcare data, and let me know which one really seems like the bigger risk. Sometimes you don't get any choice in practice because your data is collected incidentally. When you were in the background of someone's personal holiday snap, that didn't really matter. When you're in the background of a CCTV image, which is centrally recorded and subject to future data mining operations, it matters more. When you're in the background of numerous CCTV images just because you left your home, which are subject to geotagging, facial recognition, gait analysis, covert audio recording, correlation with other databases such as mobile phone history, ANPR scans and purchase history, permanent archival and any additional data mining techniques that anyone who gets hold of the data might find later... Well, now you're in the plot of a sci-fi short story that doesn't end well. Except that of course, it's not a story any more. Insurers already bump premiums based on profiling, but that profiling is notoriously inaccurate. Lenders already check credit records, which again are notoriously inaccurate. Employers already not only Google job applicants but in some cases also ask for personal log-in credentials to read through their social networking history. Governments already sell personal data held for legitimate public interest reasons to private parties, and even in seemingly simple cases like the government's vehicle licensing authority in the UK providing details of the registered owner of a car with given plates, this has been widely abused. Where these things have been curtailed -- which doesn't happen nearly as often as it should -- it has mostly been because primary legislation was passed or the rules for government's own departments were updated to cover specific cases, and only after so many people suffered from the intrusion that it became a politically significant issue. To be clear, I don't object to the idea that there are potentially great benefits to be had from data mining, including in sensitive cases like public health data. But I think you are almost completely ignoring the accompanying risks, despite a seemingly endless stream of failures resulting in serious adverse consequences for individuals whose privacy wasn't adequately protected. We need the rest of how society works to catch up with the capabilities of modern technology before we can reap the benefits without paying too high a price.

moultano 13y ago
>despite a seemingly endless stream of failures resulting in serious adverse consequences for individuals whose privacy wasn't adequately protected. Such as? Typically it seems that things become a scandal based on hypothetical harm rather than actual harm.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  Please reread my penultimate paragraph. That is nothing hypothetical about any of those scenarios, and they have resulted in widespread complaints when discovered.
  - moultano 13y ago
    You described rules being violated or systems performing poorly. You didn't describe people being harmed.
    - Silhouette 13y ago
      You don't consider it harmful if someone is paying more for (or being effectively denied) insurance, being turned down for a mortgage, not getting a job, or being sent legal threats because they refused to pay a fine for a driving offence they never committed? You and I have very different ideas of what harm is, then. Of course, in reality it's often difficult to prove that a specific outcome was the result of a privacy invasion. It's not like insurers or employers are going to document that they discriminated unfairly, whether illegally or otherwise, in making their decisions. But we know all the things I mentioned can happen, partly because too many times there have been cases where real evidence was seen, and partly because in some cases incentives are aligned with poor behaviour and it's just plain naive to think it won't then happen if there's nothing to balance those incentives. Privacy is important because it removes the ability to make those unfair decisions in the first place.
      - moultano 13y ago
        Wouldn't we rather remove the ability to make those unfair decisions? I don't see the data as being enabling here, because for most of the cases you are describing, it's the inaccuracy of the data that is causing the harm, not the data. Some of the classes of behavior you describe, we can outright make illegal, like health insurers discriminating among the people they insure. (Like the affordable care act just did.) Similarly, we could make it illegal for an employer to request access to any private information before hiring someone. That seems reasonable. Credit ratings are terrible and that whole industry needs reform, but I don't think the problem with it is that they have too much data. First off, let me clarify what I'm advocating for so we aren't talking past each other. I would like for the public to be less skeptical of organizations collecting large amounts of data, and storing it to analyze in aggregate for a variety of purposes. Particularly, if access to the data is controlled, and if it is only used in a sufficiently aggregated form. Society will reap tremendous benefits from enabling things like this. I don't think of most of the cases you are describing as being related to this.