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> The question then becomes: why would anyone do them, and (somewhat linked) what are the chances that anyone will do them to you? Let me rephrase the items fr

by clord 11y ago

> The question then becomes: why would anyone do them, and (somewhat linked) what are the chances that anyone will do them to you? Let me rephrase the items from the GP comment: 1. A company that your boss hires will tell him when you lie about being sick. 2. Your insurance company pays to find out how often you do risky things when not driving 3. where-is-she.com charges 29.99 per month to report on someone's location at any time, using open drone surveillance data. The point is, all of this can be turned into businesses and government services. In my opinion it's damned scary. I like Snowden's remarks on the topic: > Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

davnicwil 11y ago
It's completely true that these things can (and, to be honest, probably will) be turned into services by companies, that's just one more way in which access to such information will become easier. It doesn't change the point about motivation and the underlying reasons such information would be used not changing as a result of it being easier. Let's further deconstruct those three examples: 1. If your boss pays for such a service, it probably points to a wider issue with them, or you. Either your boss is happy with you and your performance, or they aren't. If the former, what incentive do they have to catch you red-handed lying about sick days? Do they even care, ultimately, if you're getting the job done? If not, why would they pay for and/or use such a service? However, if in their opinion you're not getting the job done, and they're actively looking for evidence presumably to support firing you, and you're actually guilty of lying about sick days - well... that sounds like an extremely unhealthy situation that would probably come to a bad end anyway, with or without them using such a service. 2. (Disclaimer, this may be wildly wrong or pure fantasy, IANAEconomist) How do they feed this data into their risk models exactly? This won't increase everyones' premiums - rather it would result in some premiums going up, others down. If, due to poor models, it results in some premiums going up unfairly, then presumably some other insurance company will figure this out so those actually-not-that-risky clients will switch to them for lower premiums. There will be disruption, and temporarily some people will be treated unfairly, but the market will adjust and actually may become fairer all round eventually. Transparency in this case should actually be a good thing, right? Or are we saying that people who are actually riskier should be subsidised by the less risky? 3. The type of person to use such a service would not just do so because it's easy. This is a fundamental matter of morals. The type of person to use this service would be incredibly likely to do bad things anyway, regardless of the tools available to them to do bad - technology will not take otherwise moral people and suddenly make them immoral just because it's easier now than it was yesterday. In rather simplistic terms, don't blame the weapon for violence, blame the person making the decision to use the weapon.

by clord 11y ago

davnicwil 11y ago

It's completely true that these things can (and, to be honest, probably will) be turned into services by companies, that's just one more way in which access to such information will become easier. It doesn't change the point about motivation and the underlying reasons such information would be used not changing as a result of it being easier. Let's further deconstruct those three examples: 1. If your boss pays for such a service, it probably points to a wider issue with them, or you. Either your boss is happy with you and your performance, or they aren't. If the former, what incentive do they have to catch you red-handed lying about sick days? Do they even care, ultimately, if you're getting the job done? If not, why would they pay for and/or use such a service? However, if in their opinion you're not getting the job done, and they're actively looking for evidence presumably to support firing you, and you're actually guilty of lying about sick days - well... that sounds like an extremely unhealthy situation that would probably come to a bad end anyway, with or without them using such a service. 2. (Disclaimer, this may be wildly wrong or pure fantasy, IANAEconomist) How do they feed this data into their risk models exactly? This won't increase everyones' premiums - rather it would result in some premiums going up, others down. If, due to poor models, it results in some premiums going up unfairly, then presumably some other insurance company will figure this out so those actually-not-that-risky clients will switch to them for lower premiums. There will be disruption, and temporarily some people will be treated unfairly, but the market will adjust and actually may become fairer all round eventually. Transparency in this case should actually be a good thing, right? Or are we saying that people who are actually riskier should be subsidised by the less risky? 3. The type of person to use such a service would not just do so because it's easy. This is a fundamental matter of morals. The type of person to use this service would be incredibly likely to do bad things anyway, regardless of the tools available to them to do bad - technology will not take otherwise moral people and suddenly make them immoral just because it's easier now than it was yesterday. In rather simplistic terms, don't blame the weapon for violence, blame the person making the decision to use the weapon.