5 ms·

This might well be the dumbest thing i've ever said on the internet, but extrapolating from "data on 7% of americans just got hacked" to the premise nothing is

by Litost 11y ago

This might well be the dumbest thing i've ever said on the internet, but extrapolating from "data on 7% of americans just got hacked" to the premise nothing is actually secure a) What would happen if we embraced this and just made all information freely available? b) Is one of the likely/possible end or transitional states of the human race, all information being freely available and presumably along with it, a more enlightened approach to dealing with it? c) Are there any good sci-fi books where this is explored?

TrevorJ 11y ago
Interesting idea. I think in a hypothetical situation where everyone had total info awareness you could make it work. If somebody uses your info to steal your identity or something, you'd know who it was and they would open themselves up to reprisal. Some equilibrium would be reached. In the real world though, releasing 'everyone's' data wouldn't really do anything to protect any given person if somebody wanted to specifically target them and you also wouldn't know who perpetrated it so really you have a system in place that rewards the bad actors.
CamperBob2 11y ago
The 7% of Americans in question are a big, big deal. In an old-school Cold War context, this sort of thing would be considered nothing short of apocalyptic. To answer your question, check out David Brin's original writings on "The Transparent Society." If this material were to be leaked in public, it would almost constitute a field trial of his thesis. It would take a serious act of restraint on the Federal government's part not to pull the plug on the whole Internet, or at least every plug they can reach.
imaginenore 11y ago
Why don't you post your private bitcoin keys for your wallets, if you have any. Just to put your money where your mouth is.
- vehementi 11y ago
  You may need to reread the comment
- miguelrochefort 11y ago
  You do realize that private keys only make sense as a security mechanism when kept secret, right? This system was never meant to work in a transparent environment, and using that as an argument against that proposed environment is flawed. Should we not colonize Mars because airplanes don't work there?
zardo 11y ago
a) would be a terrific outcome for future historians.
miguelrochefort 11y ago
I've been a big supporter of total transparency for a while now. I probably have a hundred posts and comments about this very topic on HN and Reddit alone. My experience is that most people won't even consider the idea. Those who don't just assume it's trolling usually ask the same question: "Post your name, address, email address, phone number, social security number, credit card number, passwords here." and they believe it constitutes a valid argument. That's laughable. Privacy only rewards liers and cheaters, and generally unreliable people. It leads to a world where kids tell their teachers what they want to hear, where politicians tell the population what they want to hear, where job candidates tell the interviewer what he wants to hear. You can't cheat, lie, manipulate and generate bullshit? Sorry, but that's an handicap in today's society. We live in a world where it's expected of people to keep secrets and conceal the truth. It's your job to keep your house keys safe, keep your password safe. Wear clothes, makeup, wigs, get plastic surgeries if you need to. Never talk about your flaws, only share successes. You can't ask for help publicly, that would reveal you're imperfect. Keep it in, live in the closet. Oh, and be a white male. Don't forget, one picture of you being drunk or smoking a joint, and your political carrier is over. I mean, the absence of such a picture would convince anyone that such a thing never happened. The correlation between reality and what's publicly available is so ridiculously thin, that nobody really knows what truth is. And that's a bit scary. I see people avoid using smartphones because "NSA". I see people browsing behind 7 proxies. I see people wasting considerable amount of time setting up encryption on everything they touch. Better delete my Facebook account right? We will never win this race. It's unsustainable to try to keep that much information private. Technology favors entropy. It's time to embrace transparency.
- gruez 11y ago
  >We will never win this race. It's unsustainable to try to keep that much information private. Technology favors entropy. It's time to embrace transparency. How much transparency are you advocating for? Privacy isn't just about protecting secrets. For instance, it can be inferred that married couples have sex in their bedrooms. That's not a secret. But if you ask them if you can plant a camera in their bedroom for the purposes of recording their sex lives, they would most certainly reject. Are you advocating for transparency for facts, or transparency on everything?
__john 11y ago
You might be interested in The Circle by Dave Eggers. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle
xq 11y ago
> Are there any good sci-fi books where this is explored? Marshall Brain's Manna[0]. It goes into the recursive effects of "anytime anyone accesses information, that access is publicly logged" as well. Though in my view the story hasn't held up very well over the past 12 years, compared to great scifi with similar tropes, such as Egan's Permutation City[1] or older Stephenson. In some ways that's due to a less intense writing style; in other ways it's due to parts that have essentially come true, making them seem retrospectively like "bad scifi". Egan's description of mind-merging in Closer[2] might also be of some interest, as it explores the conceptual overlap between intimacy and real-time mutual information access. [0] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City [2] http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&section=fiction http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&section=fi...
bootload 11y ago
" What would happen if we embraced this and just made all information freely available?" Included in that 7% of the OPM data theft: Intelligence applications, their private data (names, DOB, medical & psych evaluations), interviews of referees, personal information and possibly assessments. This is a serious breach.

by Litost 11y ago

TrevorJ 11y ago

Interesting idea. I think in a hypothetical situation where everyone had total info awareness you could make it work. If somebody uses your info to steal your identity or something, you'd know who it was and they would open themselves up to reprisal. Some equilibrium would be reached. In the real world though, releasing 'everyone's' data wouldn't really do anything to protect any given person if somebody wanted to specifically target them and you also wouldn't know who perpetrated it so really you have a system in place that rewards the bad actors.

CamperBob2 11y ago

The 7% of Americans in question are a big, big deal. In an old-school Cold War context, this sort of thing would be considered nothing short of apocalyptic. To answer your question, check out David Brin's original writings on "The Transparent Society." If this material were to be leaked in public, it would almost constitute a field trial of his thesis. It would take a serious act of restraint on the Federal government's part not to pull the plug on the whole Internet, or at least every plug they can reach.

imaginenore 11y ago

Why don't you post your private bitcoin keys for your wallets, if you have any. Just to put your money where your mouth is.

vehementi 11y ago
You may need to reread the comment
miguelrochefort 11y ago
You do realize that private keys only make sense as a security mechanism when kept secret, right? This system was never meant to work in a transparent environment, and using that as an argument against that proposed environment is flawed. Should we not colonize Mars because airplanes don't work there?

zardo 11y ago

a) would be a terrific outcome for future historians.

miguelrochefort 11y ago

I've been a big supporter of total transparency for a while now. I probably have a hundred posts and comments about this very topic on HN and Reddit alone. My experience is that most people won't even consider the idea. Those who don't just assume it's trolling usually ask the same question: "Post your name, address, email address, phone number, social security number, credit card number, passwords here." and they believe it constitutes a valid argument. That's laughable. Privacy only rewards liers and cheaters, and generally unreliable people. It leads to a world where kids tell their teachers what they want to hear, where politicians tell the population what they want to hear, where job candidates tell the interviewer what he wants to hear. You can't cheat, lie, manipulate and generate bullshit? Sorry, but that's an handicap in today's society. We live in a world where it's expected of people to keep secrets and conceal the truth. It's your job to keep your house keys safe, keep your password safe. Wear clothes, makeup, wigs, get plastic surgeries if you need to. Never talk about your flaws, only share successes. You can't ask for help publicly, that would reveal you're imperfect. Keep it in, live in the closet. Oh, and be a white male. Don't forget, one picture of you being drunk or smoking a joint, and your political carrier is over. I mean, the absence of such a picture would convince anyone that such a thing never happened. The correlation between reality and what's publicly available is so ridiculously thin, that nobody really knows what truth is. And that's a bit scary. I see people avoid using smartphones because "NSA". I see people browsing behind 7 proxies. I see people wasting considerable amount of time setting up encryption on everything they touch. Better delete my Facebook account right? We will never win this race. It's unsustainable to try to keep that much information private. Technology favors entropy. It's time to embrace transparency.

gruez 11y ago
>We will never win this race. It's unsustainable to try to keep that much information private. Technology favors entropy. It's time to embrace transparency. How much transparency are you advocating for? Privacy isn't just about protecting secrets. For instance, it can be inferred that married couples have sex in their bedrooms. That's not a secret. But if you ask them if you can plant a camera in their bedroom for the purposes of recording their sex lives, they would most certainly reject. Are you advocating for transparency for facts, or transparency on everything?

__john 11y ago

You might be interested in The Circle by Dave Eggers. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle

xq 11y ago

> Are there any good sci-fi books where this is explored? Marshall Brain's Manna[0]. It goes into the recursive effects of "anytime anyone accesses information, that access is publicly logged" as well. Though in my view the story hasn't held up very well over the past 12 years, compared to great scifi with similar tropes, such as Egan's Permutation City[1] or older Stephenson. In some ways that's due to a less intense writing style; in other ways it's due to parts that have essentially come true, making them seem retrospectively like "bad scifi". Egan's description of mind-merging in Closer[2] might also be of some interest, as it explores the conceptual overlap between intimacy and real-time mutual information access. [0] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City [2] http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&section=fiction http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&section=fi...

bootload 11y ago

" What would happen if we embraced this and just made all information freely available?" Included in that 7% of the OPM data theft: Intelligence applications, their private data (names, DOB, medical & psych evaluations), interviews of referees, personal information and possibly assessments. This is a serious breach.