Another common refrain, especially since Snowden, is just glib defeatism ("they already have all my info anyway") which is also a poor way to think about policy (and to make personal choices, but I won't argue those with most people)
I really think the main reason people are complacent is more often that the spying is abstract to them. They wouldn't like it if someone were pointing a big camera through their window, but data being aggregated through their phone and smart home gadgets and computer and CCTVs in public places and leaks on distant websites doesn't register in their actual attention, so it doesn't emotionally feel like a big deal to them
I wonder how people would feel if there was a single site that aggregated all of the data that has been harvested about them. Potentially showing where/how the data was collected and setting aside protecting that data from prying eyes would be problematic. In the world of today where evidence is just fake news, how [in]effective would something like this be in changing minds?
The primary issue is that there is no means to correct the situation non-violently.
When you have people as a group lie for profit, and they corrupt your representatives and there is no one to hold them to account. They don't give you the choice, and you can't hold them accountable first because you find out about it later, but you still have no choice and you reach out to the people whose job it is to solely represent you in government and they do nothing, and the courts are inaccessible so you have no means.
At that point, despite declarations, there really isn't a rule of law then, it along with most of what people think of as their rights were taken by collusion gradually and quietly.
When that type of problem occurs, every citizen has a choice based upon the individual risk. Totalitarian governments kill people, or lock them up from kafka kangaroo courts (before they kill them) to give a semblance of legitimacy when that legitimacy has already passed. You show me the person, I'll show you the crime; is a famous saying.
When feedback systems fail, and can no longer respond, things will get worse until people will do something, and that will be destructive. The only choice they are given is when.
Totalitarian governments make no distinction between peaceful protests, they may not go after you initially, but collecting all the information upfront of everyone that does to black bag you later; or keep you under their thumb through enhanced coercion (given the systems) and harassment from every direction is not unheard of.
The moment you start surveilling peaceful protests is a known indicator that you are in fact in a totalitarian government.
Its not the people who are the problem. Its the fact that feedback mechanisms have been corrupted and are now broken.
Privacy is a necessary and requisite element for any insurgency in its beginnings, so by eliminating it no corrective action can take place and abuses will continually get worse.
You've had agency stripped from you without your consent and told all your life you live in a world that doesn't exist while misleading you at every step.
These situations historically always cascade, which is why we almost certainly will have a violent civil war in the near future. Its destructive, but that is the inevitable outcome when feedback systems are interfered with to the point where they can no longer function to keep people within reasonable bounds.
Are you a regulator voter? Do you have a dialogue with your electeds’ offices? If not, try starting there. Express, as unemotionally as you can, why you believe this is something you believe in. If possible, get your views seconded in writing.
If you’re in America or Europe, there are plenty of non-violent remedies at the ready. The problem is privacy is uniquely afflicted with the uselessly cynical, to the point that it’s considered electoral junk at the national level.
> What we are seeing today is the same thing East-germany saw under The Stasi
Please don’t do this. It’s one step below analogising petty complaints to Auschwitz. (Archer can do it. You can’t.)
I think that’s a rather absurd claim. The real problem is that most people couldn’t care less, they neither understand the issues and/or are in the “don’t have anything to hide” camp. Unfortunate I guess that’s just how democracy works..
I agree with your conclusion that most rich countries are totalitarian in character, and it feels so fundamentally absurd that a lot of how we got here was merely developing the capability and not doing enough to prevent it
However, I don't think any kind of uprising is actually inevitable. One of the most powerful uses of these panopticons is the pre-emption and disruption of coordinated resistance efforts. Is an effective uprising even feasible if not supported by some faction of the extant powerbrokers? Hard to say to be honest. A lot of these capabilities are unprecedented, if not in nature then certainly in responsiveness and scope
Support https://eff.org, https://edri.org etc.
It's so easy, it's like taking candy from babies.
Not just spying, but for many/most - the harm is also. Most people struggle on the day-to-day; getting worked up that a random boogieman is compiling a profile on them to serve ads leads to a big pile of 'so?'.
When Windows Recall was announced as an example; I started asking (non tech, mostly boomer) people their take on it. I almost universally got a 'neat!' response. The security implications simply didn't register or matter, even when I explained them. I felt like I should be wearing a tin foil hat.
I think the fundamental problem with the pro-privacy side of the debate is an inability to communicate why privacy matters in way that makes sense to people who think like this. The argument always seems to come down to some dystopian future in which this information is abused, but hypotheticals like that are just never very motivating when people have so many more pressing issues that are causing clear and immediate harm rather than some hypothetical future harm.
In my experience, their idea of the way the world works seems to have crystallized for them about the times of the 1970s.
They have significant blind spots which they likely won't ever recover from, they were blined and in many respects behave like children in a indoctrinated way.
They certainly didn't have to deal with arbitrary high costs because someone spied on them secretly and used that information as a false justification for increasing their auto rates since non-regenerative breaking is hard breaking and is therefore reckless driving (Lexis Nexus reports).
Heaven forbid that traffic conditions go from 65 to 15 in less than 200 feet. No, the fact tha you avoided getting into an accident is the same as reckless driving.
All parents want their kids to be better than them, some parents through circumstances largely in their control set the bar so low that it is a horrible feeling when their grown children exceed them at most levels.
Being more educated, rational, and mature at almost every level, then they were at a similar age, where there growth remained perpetually stalled in their 20s is a very damning situation. Especially since they blew their inheritance like a playboy at a party and will be leaving you almost nothing but debts except in rare circumstances.
Indoctrination and Menticide is real. Its subtle, and it blinds perception of issues.
John Meerloo, and Robert Lifton cover it well.
Tell them that persecutions have historically been more effective in places where institutionalized profiling was in place.
We should also be scared of cases where some investigator or agency goes: "We need to make an example of somebody and That Dude is close enough."
Or where regime changes and suddenly everything you didn't care about is dangerous and does need to be hidden, like where volunteering in a pro-democracy group or having an abortion retroactively becomes a sentence to the reeducation gulag.
> Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'.
-- Snuff by Terry Pratchett
They have almost no liability for improperly securing their own systems and they allocate their budget accordingly.
There is a general presumption of no liability for software flaws. The execs gamble at whether or not they'll be hit with a data breach, or hit the jackpot (before they move on with their shares vested).
Its a simple calculus of headcount affected by cost of identity protection services for x time vs. ongoing recurring costs.
I've always taken issues with this phrase as many people would be lead to believe the opposite as well: If you have something to hide, you have something to fear.
Which further suggests that as soon as there's anything you want to hide, that has to be something criminal.
Of course, this is utter garbage. People _do_ have things to hide, and it is rarely criminal / unlawful.
They won’t even let us see their “private” messages to other politicians let alone let us see them neglect their families.
Almost all politicians have something to hide, as part of their job. Even fairly low-level politicians get messages from voters which can contain sensitive (i.e. should not be shared) information.
The problems are:
1) those who don't recognise that almost everyone else has this going on, too.
2) those who think that it's OK because the intelligence agencies are the ones gathering it (never mind that the methods enable others to do likewise), and those working in the agencies are above reproach and won't misuse that data (which we know isn't the case).
Genuine question: who was the last one in America who did? (Article’s “some politicians” link is broken for me.)
Asking because it strikes me as a straw man we, who believe in privacy as a right, enjoying arguing against.
The reality is those in power must deal with additional threats both foreign and domestic.
Any one of them would say yes, but then claim it would open the country to greater threats if controlled independently (which it does given the sensitivity of the access they have to make decisions), and the mere suggestion continuing this would be unpatriotic since the person suggesting this is opening up the nation to even greater danger. It is not unreasonable.
The Nazi's were clever, and evil, for those who haven't heard this paraphrase, it follows what was said during the Nuremberg trials by Goebbels.
Many people alive today have learned from them. Whether it is to prevent it from happening again (by warning people to action of the subtle indicators), or to follow in their footsteps (to quietly seize power as a demagogue).
Who can know the mind and character of another who only has to lie to get in office then can't be removed for failing to perform. Especially in times where there is little if any credibility or trust left.
There's a huge number of things to be potentially embarrassed about, ranging from things that most other people would say there's no need for embarrassment all the way up to things that could be career- or relationship- ending even though fully legal.
Imagine situations where pregnancies and the mere fact that it happened is grounds for the family to throw you out, based on intolerance of their religious beliefs.
Anything that runs contrary to social moors which are no longer cohesive or consistent thanks in large part to marxism (woke/cancel culture) and an undue nihilistic influence, is fair game under critical theory.
There was a big article about 10 years ago (iirc), where as a result of Target's marketing department (data aggregation), the father knew before the daughter that she was pregnant based on her shopping habits (which they correlated to pregnancy).
The aim obviously being to have an easier time surveilling the populace whilst also denying them access to any information not spewed by the Party.
It can't be long now until Moscow has a big sign that reads 'War is Love' plastered on some nameless building.
edit:typo.
This was my 'go to' question for several years but it wasn't long until I met someone (we're actually now good friends) who gladly leaves the loo door open and do whatever in full view of anyone. From there I ended up with sturdier concepts, some listed below.
I don’t do anything illegal in my bathroom, but damned if I want a camera in there.
See what's happening in China. The surveillance and oppression are particularly severe in the Xinjiang region, where authorities have implemented a multi-layered system of monitoring and control. This includes facial recognition cameras, mobile police checkpoints, and the collection of biometric data. See also [1]
We must demand transparency and accountability from those in power, whilst supporting organizations that work to protect our privacy.
Similarly, private sector business will always seek more of our personal data in order to make more money, and the tech industry is enabling more intrusive government surveillance.
It requires activism to protect our freedom.
[1] https://theconversation.com/digital-surveillance-is-omnipres...
But I agree with your sentiment- we often surrender to the idea that ruthless evil has taken control without even trying to engage civically.
Plenty of governments have ceded powers, including surveillance. The Stasi was peacefully disassembled; Pinochet lost in a referendum.
We continue to have societies because the average person realizes that their life would be better on average if they outsourced their personal security to the strongest third party available. Until this third party becomes inconveniently corrupt.
Surveillance capitalism would disappear overnight the moment the Primary Dealers and Options Market (perpetuity) stop funding it with preferential treatment and funny money.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we already live in 1984. The system's described are turnkey, so its just a matter of time before they turn it on all at once.
The elites behind the decisions made in the backroom of the Fed are 'the party'.
Successful activism was always based on the inherent underlying threat of violence. Even with Ghandi, it was the British officials at the time being responsive which allowed change to occur. If they were unresponsive no change would have occurred until abuses became so abhorrent that violence forced them as a matter of rational self-preservation.
This threat is largely ignored today, leaders then are unresponsive to activism instead seeking to undermine through covert channels.
Of course, it also doesn't help the fact that many activist movements are funded by dubious origins (such as communism, and global elites [effectively the same cohort]), and often don't follow rational principles, and/or are sabotaged from the outset.
People have demanded these things for awhile, peacefully, nothing came of it. If nothing happens in a generation (20 years), it won't happen until someone forces it to.
A quarter of that time is generally sufficient to indicate a trend in the run-up.
Privacy is the right to sovereignty over one's personal/intimate sphere - whether it's insight to information about oneself or physical contact. The right to consent, for instance, would be a component of the right to privacy.
It's about power. And by extension it's about the power balance between the people and any intruder of their private sphere, whether it's a friend, a stranger, the public, the state, the law and so on.
In other words, the less privacy there is the less effective power both the individual as well as the entire people have.
That's why it's a basic human right.
A right to history and culture is also another dependency since people are functions of the culture they learn from their parents. The burning of books which destroys culture is universally accepted to be a bad thing, but its still done indirectly today (libraries budget is dependent on circulation metrics, classics may not be checked out often, books not circulated well get donated to third-parties who pulp, or resell and then pulp if not sold within a period of time.
Even Goodwill does this for content they deem is unsuitable, which is a value-based decision from some unstated individual.
This component of privacy reminds me of “Preference Falsification,” a phenomenon described by Taimur Kuran. Although Kuran’s examples are often of Eastern Europe, this essay puts it in terms of US politics of 50 years ago.
https://www.econlib.org/how-timur-kuran-changed-my-thinking/
Important paper to recommend as always, Soloave’s “ 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” written after the article but by a thinker who is cited in it.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
And also “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime”
- "I have nothing to hide"
- "they already have all my info anyway"
The problem is that people have not seen it directly. They have not seen that someone used their data against them especially. It is done mostly 'behind the scenes'.
However it is easy to dismantle these thoughts:
- With system of surveillance every politician can be 'under foreign surveillance', which is not a good thought
- There were some cases about somebody not receiving insurance due to surveillance. What if you will not receive social money, or benefits. You may even not know why you were treated by government in certain way
- You do not know if your data were sold, or trained for AI, or for robot dogs, or for war, or to China (Facebook sold data to china)
- Your data can be used against you potentially during your whole life. What if your DM comment might lead to problems with your employment in the future?
- Governments change with times. What if some nasty figure, nazi like, becomes a president of let's say for example America. How you can be sure your data will be treated with care, and that it will not be misused, or used against you?
1. Post all your personal information online is a public place on the internet. This should include all your personal records, your bank accounts, your drivers license, job history. Also include a list of all websites you have visited, the user names and passwords for all online accounts.
2. List the same information for your spouse or partner, children and parents.
3. Take your car keys, house keys, credit cards and such object and leave them in a public place with a note showing where someone can find the information you posted in item #1 and #2.
Congratulations! You have provided conclusive proof that those of us you who protect our privacy are completely silly people. You have won the argument and demonstrated that without a doubt you "have nothing to hide".
Please get back to us in a couple of months and let us know how it is going so we foolish people can join you. [edit: people and join you => people can join you.
The problem is the overlap between those who prioritise it and political nihilism. If you want to have fun, argue with a totem. If you want to be effective, find an argument that will motivate making voting and calling electeds a habit. Particularly those who think both are a farce.
> Because no one is trying to hurt you
From https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-exploding-messages (2018) (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17357992)
Tell that to Parsons, Winston Smith's loyal to the Party neighbour who's betrayed by his own child. If surveillance is allowed to become pervasive enough, nobody is safe.
"Ah yes, we can see that boring Johnny goes to Starbucks every Tuesday at 9am, nobody will believe the crime we're about to pin on them! Thanks to 1984 Incorporated for giving us all their data about him to make it look like the perfect crime."
The people who were massacred at Hue would likely attest to the falsity of that fact if they had somehow survived.
The general story is the VC (communists) took Hue during Vietnam and their leadership had information that had been collected by the Russians on who spoke with Americans as dossiers.
Once they took Hue, they went door to door clipboards in hand and killed every single family that had an American connection.
Even today, the death estimate is not solid as they burned a lot of bodies before a count could be determined after-the-fact.
That massacre largely wouldn't have been possible, or as targeted without information gathering done beforehand. Any covert information gathering is an openly hostile intention and act. Its a necessary pre-requisite for any successful attack on your person.
And by "convenience" it doesn't have to be something substantial. Sometimes, it's just that "I'm too busy with my life already so I choose to not think about the privacy implication and wish the odds are in my favor".
Oh and on that note the reason for a warrant is to show YOU that the government has invoked the law IN ADVANCE, it’s not for anyone else but YOU, “no-knock warrants” take a very important aspect of why we require a warrant out of the equation, it’s absurd
Similarly, I think most people don't have much to hide, but when they want their legitimate privacy, they should have all the tools and rights to it.
Ed Snowden
The only way to keep your privacy is to not let those companies have your data in the first place, so in that sense everyone should care about privacy even if they don't inherently do anything wrong in the moment.
Another related quote I like to share is "if you have nothing to hide, then pull down your pants and hand me your unlocked phone."
I think this sums it up perfectly.
The point I want to make is that even if you don't have something to hide today does not mean that you won't be convicted tomorrow.
Edit: Someone else gave an example with the abortions, and that they are now illegal in many places.
And all people have things to hide -especially those who say they have nothing to hide.
These people should be told this in no uncertain terms.
https://www.techlore.tech/goincognito
https://github.com/pluja/awesome-privacy
disclaimer: some of these groups hate each other, I have no affiliations and don't know the history of them, I'm just compiling resources in no particular order here.
The real issue, I would argue, is that of governments becoming repressive and using force or threats against those who assert their right to free speech and civil disobedience. The first issue does not imply the second and I found that they were often confounded in comments, making it sound like they both go hand in hand.
I don't believe that to be the case. I'd like to think we can have a healthy democracy while living with increasing surveillance.
Let's keep pushing back on governments when they actually infringe on free speech. Like when they start firing people or limiting their rights based on political affiliation or beliefs.
Do we still have curfews or vaccine passports? No, people pushed back. Does the government know who got the shot and who didn't and what their stance is around it? I imagine they do.
Anyway, rich people are failing more and more to hide their wealth and avoid taxes; their lives are private, their businesses are not, not when they are beholden to the laws, rights, and duties of the country they live or do business in. Secret government agencies are not secret in a democratic country - since if they were, you wouldn't know about them.
You're conflating privacy with secrecy and / or hiding shady things; those are different things. It took whistleblowers like Snowden and Assange to uncover these things. That said, that's an interesting case to look at; it uncovered immoral government activity on the one hand, but especially with the Assange cases, because they were not careful with people's privacy, it also uncovered the identity of agents (= violated their privacy), which cost them their life.
* lists gmail address in footer
Also, more mundanely, among the data that's collected by various unaccountable agencies, including nonconsensually, as in the case of things like Equifax, can be used to impersonate you and frame you for crimes, or just steal/use your money. This happens to millions of random people every year and is a direct consequence of a loss of privacy.
A loss of privacy has systemic consequences that change society for the worse. But even if you don't care about anyone but yourself, privacy erosion creates an ever-increasing chance of your life being ruined by overzealous governments making a mistake, or criminals targeting no one in particular but randomly getting you by happenstance
Are you happy to share your net worth, bank and credit account balance and activity with advertisers?
Are you ok with some AI determining (based on its opaque reasoning) that you are a potential terrorist threat, and should be imprisoned?
Even if you are okay with all the above, do you recognize that not all of society would agree and that some people could even be put into grave danger due to eg: political, religious, sexual etc views? In an extreme case, if "most" people are open and "have nothing to hide", it means that everyone who isn't open must "have something to hide" and should be persecuted. Normalizing this openness actually inches us toward this extreme.
Also you should recognize that your answer based on today's government and political parties may not resemble the parties that hold power in the future. Does an extreme group -- who is the farthest from your own views and in fact violently disagrees with your lifestyle choices -- taking power in the future not worry you at all?
Will your logged activities of today be acceptable to every regime in your nation’s future?
We should never confuse the two - people seem to think that a right to privacy means a right to secrecy. It does not and never can. People have behaved badly enough with so called online anonymity.
We will have our entire lives stripped bare and laid out on a digital plate - this will enable an incredible outpouring of new lessons, psychological, criminal, mental health and happiness - if we treat it right. If we give individuals control over who can use their information, if we ensure PII is treated like a lawyer treats their clients confessions, that epidemiology can get what advertisers never can, we shall find that it’s not “no-one can ever know” but “health researchers can know, but I would rather my employer does not and I hope my friends understand”
We spend 20 years training children as to what is and is not acceptable in polite society - and it’s going to take a generation to figure this new set of etiquette out - but I am betting the juice is worth the squeeze
Edit: in short, it’s not the data that’s collected, it’s who uses it and how. Focus on that.
any data that is being collected is at risk from being misused. only data that is not collected is safe. until we are able to fully protect data from misuse (which i believe is impossible), it is better to not collect data in the first place.
If we don’t believe in our society, if we need to carry guns all the time to protect us from the anarchy, it is of course really hard to believe we can build enough protections to prevent retargeted adverts.
I don't give a damn how wholesomely the reasons for stripping one's ability to be private and anonymous are couched, they should be no excuse for actually applying such a magnifying glass to human lives en masse.
The only sort of society where your view should be acceptable is a society where every individual accepts their every thought and action is observed equally by all other complicit individuals.
Counterpoint: taxes. By living in a country, you are subject to their laws. Said laws require you to pay taxes on things like income and property. I'm aware this is attempted to be kept secret at a large scale, but when it comes down to it, by living in a country you agree to submit or have collected that information to the responsible authority.
Cars are waaaay better than horses. So now we have systems of licensing, proving you are capable of driving safely, ways to track your car ensure it is driven safely - perhaps originally if a police officer saw you and now every minute of the day we can see if you are speeding or potentially dangerous
We did all this over time, but the current system woukd give Sherlock Holmes a heart attack.
But we had to find ways for millions and millions to live on top of each other - it is not perfect and can be improved - and should be done with care.
