That's a strong statement when in some countries because they don't have access to clean water children are dying of cholera a few meters from tourist resorts with swimming pools.
That's a strong statement when in some countries because they don't have access to clean water children are dying of cholera a few meters from tourist resorts with swimming pools.
Yup. No way you're getting privacy with a free VPN. Hell, there's not even a way to be 100% sure you're getting privacy with a paid VPN. Unless you're renting a VPS and setting up your own...
Yup. No way you're getting privacy with a free VPN. Hell, there's not even a way to be 100% sure you're getting privacy with a paid VPN. Unless you're renting a VPS and setting up your own personal VPN, you're essentially shifting trust from your ISP to a different company.
I believe the assumption is, that there will arise a market for privacy, so services that are ad-based right now will introduce a second access option where you pay for the service and are left...
I believe the assumption is, that there will arise a market for privacy, so services that are ad-based right now will introduce a second access option where you pay for the service and are left alone. I.e. use Facebook for free and give them all your data, or use it for 10$ a month and you're not spied on.
I'm not sure if that will ever happen, it would require a major rethinking in a lot of people to actually value their data at 10$ per month.
It's hard to determine what exactly the user wrote without a "see source" but it seems like that's normal behaviour of the lists. If you want to go on a new line in a list, just type 2 times...
It's hard to determine what exactly the user wrote without a "see source" but it seems like that's normal behaviour of the lists.
If you want to go on a new line in a list, just type 2 times spacebar and press enter, like this:
Yada yada
yada yada
Hey new line of point 2
yada yada
We seriously should add a format bar (like most wyswyg editors).
I'm very interested in privacy myself, and I always struggle with arguing why it is actually important. You mention: What's that even supposed to mean? I can have a free mind even without privacy,...
I'm very interested in privacy myself, and I always struggle with arguing why it is actually important. You mention:
Privacy is a human right. It is the right to own your own value as a person. As Edward Snowden said, “Privacy is the right to a free mind. Without privacy, you can’t have anything for yourself.”
What's that even supposed to mean? I can have a free mind even without privacy, there's no way anybody can read my thoughts (yet). And I don't see the connection between my value as a person and privacy.
I like: "Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world." (Cypherpunk Manifesto)
I think that is very understandable, only through privacy can I choose what to reveal to other people. Privacy is not secrecy, it very much requires other people and the desire to reveal certain things to others; if I never reveal anything that's just secrecy.
In a great sense we are what we read, watch and talk about. Think about all of the things you've ever read. If one were to look at that, it would be pretty easy I think know a bit of what you...
What's that even supposed to mean? I can have a free mind even without privacy
In a great sense we are what we read, watch and talk about. Think about all of the things you've ever read. If one were to look at that, it would be pretty easy I think know a bit of what you think about the world.
Predicting one's behavior is what surveillance capitalism is all about. And behavior is the direct consequence of what you think.
Therefore, knowing what you do is a "window into the soul" (stealing Gary T. Marx's book title).
Super interesting. I hadn't heard for a while about those experiments. The experiment I new best was the Libet experiment, where participants were looking at a clock and they would remember when...
Super interesting. I hadn't heard for a while about those experiments. The experiment I new best was the Libet experiment, where participants were looking at a clock and they would remember when they chose to move their arm. And an electrode would be measuring the activity in the brain part related to those muscles. And the found out the brain started preparing the muscles before the person decided to move. wiki page on the subject.
I'll take a look at Moran Cerf. Thank you!
I've read an re-read the cypherpunk's manifesto. Definitely something everyone who cares about privacy should read (1 page long)
Interesting premise, but if someone can't afford food, I'm guessing their data isn't worth much. Though you do mention it's not all about money, but I have to disagree. Everyone needs to be...
Interesting premise, but if someone can't afford food, I'm guessing their data isn't worth much. Though you do mention it's not all about money, but I have to disagree. Everyone needs to be motivated and ultimately it's power (perhaps in the form of money). If you already have none, I'm not sure anyone would care.
However, let's not go right down to the "most brutal" and scale up a little to the middle class.
I think it's more important to focus on the why than the what. You mention "Our value as human beings" but didn't really get into how, why and who. Personally, I would be interested in the following:
How are people defined by privacy (shared and lacked of)?
Why privacy should be regarded as a human right? And can it be, considering we are by nature social creatures?
Who should have access to our info and to what extent? Should parents have access to their underage children's medical and/or social info? Should governments, workplaces, social programs (private or otherwise) have access to certain information? For example, should your medical records be required to be included for stats, and how disconnected do they need to be in the research phase verses the publication phase or altogether.
I guess what I'm getting at is to what extent.
That’s so powerful. When you get tons of data from a person and put the right algorithms to work, you can start getting interesting (or scary) results.
You're on a pretty techy site, so I don't think anyone's going to disagree with you here, however, examples are always useful. You briefly mention monetary value (though you sort of glossed over it earlier). You do mention things like overpriced insurance, bank loans, unaffordable health care, and such, but don't really go into it. A lot of health data is used to justify affordable healthcare and where specifically to spend the money. Again, not disagreeing necessarily, but I'll would love to see these points expanded.
Over all, this was really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I am not the OP, but I think I can provide an answer to this question: Privacy should be the right to have control over your own information, or, as another person commented, the right to...
I am not the OP, but I think I can provide an answer to this question:
Why privacy should be regarded as a human right? And can it be, considering we are by nature social creatures?
Privacy should be the right to have control over your own information, or, as another person commented, the right to selectively reveal yourself. So if we accept this definition it does become possible for it to be a human right despite humans being social by nature. Consider that in our offline world, we have the power to say what we want to about ourselves, but that power is stripped away when we go online.
I should have clarified a bit more. My question is more of to what extent privacy should be regarded as a human right. For example, when I step out of my home, I am entering a public space and...
I should have clarified a bit more. My question is more of to what extent privacy should be regarded as a human right. For example, when I step out of my home, I am entering a public space and expect a certain level of privacy, such as, people can see what I'm wearing, can overhear what I say. That information is there, and of course, we can extend it to can it be collected (recorded and kept)?
So I guess the question becomes where's the divide between a public and private space online? It obviously isn't and can't be one-to-one with real life. But how far do they differ? For example, if I show a photo of myself to my friend on the bus, and someone else oversees it, that's acceptable, generally. If I share it online, and others see it, how is that defined? Is losing your control on the photo itself okay, not the meta data?
For the record, I definitely support digital privacy. I strongly believe in the right to be deleted (and think that should include at death).
Honestly, I don't have an answer for you. Where private and public space intersect online will have to be found when issues arise. Until then, we have to address the obvious issues. The photo you...
Honestly, I don't have an answer for you. Where private and public space intersect online will have to be found when issues arise. Until then, we have to address the obvious issues. The photo you want to show to your friend probably shouldn't be kept in a site's record forever, nor should it be used for monetary if you don't want it to. That is a more clear example. In summary, we have to find the line when we get there. But given the permanent nature of having privacy violated, it is better to be overly cautious than to be lax. We can always reveal more data, but we can't take it back.
Definitely! And there's already lots of obvious places that need more protection and regulation. Lots of low-hanging fruit already.
But given the permanent nature of having privacy violated, it is better to be overly cautious than to be lax. We can always reveal more data, but we can't take it back.
Definitely! And there's already lots of obvious places that need more protection and regulation. Lots of low-hanging fruit already.
Not disagreeing that this is a good step forward. However, I believe a clear definition of privacy needs to be established to truly cover edge cases. This is really well put, and it's for this...
...the only way to move things forward is to address the obvious issues.
Not disagreeing that this is a good step forward. However, I believe a clear definition of privacy needs to be established to truly cover edge cases.
My point here is that we easily adopt behaviors that go against our own interest and don't even notice.
This is really well put, and it's for this reason, that we really need to establish to what extent we should expect privacy. I'm fully with you on the pictures of kids online, and remember being shocked when it first started happening, and now don't even think twice about it. But we still have to answer the question of why it's an issue? People want to be connected, and trade offs can be acceptable. Of course, we do have companies looking after their own interests that obscure the trade offs.
I don't know if having the right to delete all of your personal data, and having the right to digital privacy can be equated. Growing up, it was mentioned a few times that the internet never...
I don't know if having the right to delete all of your personal data, and having the right to digital privacy can be equated. Growing up, it was mentioned a few times that the internet never forgets, and this is probably going to always be true. Someone who is sufficiently motivated and educated will be able to find nearly anything that has existed on the internet, or be able to find someone who can.
But that's a different problem than limiting the amount of data that corporations have access to. With the advent of IoT (Alexa, Google Home, Siri), general internet tracking, and a blending between ISPs and corporations trading information, the right to privacy is distinct from being able to delete information after it's been captured, as the right to privacy is an issue of being able to prevent the data from being captured at all.
Not equated, but definitely related. There's a difference between "the Internet never forgets" to third parties having legal access to your data. The right to delete is for a person to be able to...
Not equated, but definitely related. There's a difference between "the Internet never forgets" to third parties having legal access to your data. The right to delete is for a person to be able to be removed themselves completely from say a company's database. For example, if I did a consultation for some legal issue with an estate lawyer, but then decided to go with another. I should have the right to transfer my file completely. The original consultation should not be able to keep my info.
I think that's a slightly different thing from the main topic though. The article OP linked was a essay on the potential of mass data collection as a tool to manipulate and control people who...
I think that's a slightly different thing from the main topic though. The article OP linked was a essay on the potential of mass data collection as a tool to manipulate and control people who can't afford to escape those systems of control.
Your example isn't quite the same thing, since I'm assuming that in a consultation, the only information they would have is what you give to them explicitly. Lawyer-client confidentiality would prevent that lawyer from allowing any third-parties to access that.
What I was trying to distinguish was that there isn't any data to delete if it isn't collected to begin with. OP's article paints a dystopic imagining of a future where everything is known about you, to the point where you can be manipulated freely without you even being aware of the manipulation. Rather than be concerned about being able to delete the data after the fact, wouldn't it be better to prevent that collection at all?
My points were that the main article lacked scope. I think sometimes people forget that privacy was an issue before the Internet (now that pretty much everyone has access too). It's easy to say we...
My points were that the main article lacked scope. I think sometimes people forget that privacy was an issue before the Internet (now that pretty much everyone has access too). It's easy to say we should have absolute control over our own data and that no one should be collecting and/or storing anything. However, the issue isn't fully defined until we talk about trade offs.
I admit the lawyer example wasn't the best mostly because there isn't a good analog comparison. Maybe faxing is better. I am trying to use an example that shows the exchange, copy or storage of info is part of the solution to another problem. Hence, you can't remove the ability without trading off something. As a digital example, sharing a photo online, so that all your family and friends can view it and that you have a backed up copy, by definition requires the storage or your photo. Being able to search for it by definition requires meta data to be generated and stored alongside.
Choosing absolute privacy generally means stepping away from society.
Deleting is important to talk about because it's about controlling the entire life cycle of your data, which since realistically is currently being collected, also needs it be address.
Framing it a bit differently, there's a point when we are breaking the problem down into too many parts, and we end up loosing sight of a workable solution. I believe the article is that. Low hanging fruit is great, but if we're talking distopias, we need to move beyond that.
So what do you think the problem is as a whole? If data collection is inherently problematic, then what is the solution? It's a necessary tool for many industries such as politics, modern internet...
So what do you think the problem is as a whole?
If data collection is inherently problematic, then what is the solution? It's a necessary tool for many industries such as politics, modern internet corporations, and scientific research. So the original article states that the actual symptoms of data collection could manifest in the following:
Overpriced insurance
Bank loans denials (or high interests)
Unaffordable healthcare
Highly targeted advertising
Political manipulation
Simple opportunity cost of opportunity.
And it continues to ask very fearful questions about the future, as technology and social manipulation initiatives continue to improve.
It seems like a larger overarching problem is that of who would be the people to run the systems that collect and manipulate. The article paints a very grim picture of the future, where everyone is intimately known by a system that encompasses the entirety of the modern world, but it doesn't ask how a single government or corporation would reach that point. We have organizations that approach that (Super-corporations like Alphabet and Microsoft, and the Chinese and American Governments), but do you think that the optimal solution would be to prevent those entities from reaching that level of unmitigated control, or to destroy the technologies that would allow them to do it at all?
I was honestly hoping the article would explore it. It original article stated a lot of stuff. This is going to be a little unorganized, because it's complicated and I'm sleepy. I am also...
I was honestly hoping the article would explore it. It original article stated a lot of stuff.
This is going to be a little unorganized, because it's complicated and I'm sleepy. I am also definitely only going to scratch the surface.
I am going to start with nothing is inherently problematic. Data collection is necessary and natural, even for evil marketing. So I would say, prevention in general is not a solution. However, this has a caveat of who can be collecting this information, which expands to what they can do with it. For example, allowing any hospital within the country have access to any of your medical records can prove life saving. So should your random visit to a walk-in clinic for plan-b be sharable between clinics, and hospitals and basically all "medical" departments and professionals. Does that include universities for medical research?
For cases like that, we require 1) government regulation, 2) patient awareness and 3) ability to opt out, (or on the other side, consent, so actively opt only.
So for me, discussing privacy, this is step one. Defining why and how data is rightfully gathered.
Next we can get into how data is wrongly handled, maybe even when used directly for it's intended purposes.
Continuing the example. Hospital departments barely talk to each other and already sport incredible complexity. And it's pretty safe to say they are not experts in data collection and aggregation. So, it's logical that they hire a third party to handle this. So now, whatever regulation we may have, needs to be expanded. Simple regulations and policies often include things like:
Patients must sign a consent form to have data saved
Data cannot leave the premise
Only healthcare professionals directly dealing with the patient can access their records
Almost all of these will break down quite quickly during regular workflow and daily operations. The hindering of the sharing of information can comprise a patient's care. Seemingly harmless things like one doctor emailing a patient's records to a colleague at another clinc for a second opinion is no longer something casual. New processes must be put in place to cover that and any use case. Simple back up like the clinic owner taking a hard drive backed up with the week's work to store off site also needs a process.
I'm also not arguing against any of these, just that they need to be done. And they cannot be if the problem itself is not defined.
I think I'm starting to dig a bit too deep into this one scenario, so I'll just back to the article. Using the overpriced insurance, firstly, I need some proof. Insurance is pretty evil (if an industry can be), but isn't it literally their business to gather stats both as say all drivers as a whole and an individual driver and come up with the likelihood of payout? So, isn't the issue in this specific case more that we need to have protection for everyone outside of insurance? That everyone should be protected, not that we should somehow limit insurance specifically to make people seem more insurablable than they are? Also, this is a vote for universal health care.
Edit to add:
Few additional points
Data of children or others that require a guardian needs to be treated differently. Stricter rules need to be in place here.
Redefining public space. Previously having someone e simple show up at a mall and take a count of shoppers is very different from recording an hour's traffic and having someone review it back at the office.
Regulation should lean towards consent or opt-in system
Data should be always be encrypted or otherwise protected
So you are trying to distinguish between benevolent and malevolent systems and usages of data collection? I think the issue is that to people in general, data collection is uncomfortable, since...
So you are trying to distinguish between benevolent and malevolent systems and usages of data collection?
I think the issue is that to people in general, data collection is uncomfortable, since you're not in control of the systems that monitor you. As monitoring becomes more ubiquitous, the organizations that use the data will also grow and multiply. Even if a system is benevolent by nature, cracks can form for shadier enterprises to take advantage. After all, who's ever heard of massive breaches of confidential data? (haha).
And those breaches were collections of modern data. Imagine if a massive breach of futuristic, all-encompassing medical data was made available on the black-market for anyone to access anonymously? I can understand why people are so hesitant to endorse these systems, or to bunker down and completely reject them. It's a natural response to the fear of something as intimate as your personal privacy being stripped away from you, even if you benefit from positive systems like smarter services, and improved healthcare.
I'm not too sure what the reality of the situation will be, other than that it will certainly get worse before it gets better, if it ever does get better. No system or data vault can be absolutely secured and we don't have a guarantee that the systems will be benevolent to begin with. As well, the population at large seems to not mind issues of privacy, with the consequence free breach of equifax, the absolutely monolithic collection of data that is Facebook, and what may as well be wiretaps in Google Home and Alexa.
No, I'm saying that except for some obvious cases, there's no difference, just degrees. For example, credit card company building a detailed user profile is directly required for security. Of...
So you are trying to distinguish between benevolent and malevolent systems and usages of data collection?
No, I'm saying that except for some obvious cases, there's no difference, just degrees. For example, credit card company building a detailed user profile is directly required for security. Of course generally speaking, credit card companies are not where the average person worries about data breach. It's a very regulated industry.
I think the issue is that to people in general, data collection is uncomfortable, since you're not in control of the systems that monitor you.
I would say, most people don't care. And I would say the use of social media can easily be proof of that, and also the fact that we don't even do double takes of recording devices around us.
And those breaches were collections of modern data. Imagine if a massive breach of futuristic, ...
Preaching to the choir. However, most people are not rejecting these systems at all. If anything, they're embracing them in the name of security and convenience.
I'm not too sure what the reality of the situation will be, ...
This is the core of what I'm trying to say. Without a well defined problem, we can't provide a good solution.
This has been interesting, thanks for the discussion.
I value my online privacy and take all the steps I can, but sometimes it just gets hard. I do everything I can (Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, DDG instead of google ETC), but some things are so...
I value my online privacy and take all the steps I can, but sometimes it just gets hard. I do everything I can (Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, DDG instead of google ETC), but some things are so convenient without any real competition. Android phones, Google Maps, etc are great services and the competition often ends up overpriced (apple,) bought out (Waze), or just sucks.
Try Mapy.cz. It's from Seznam, biggest czech internet company (mail, search, maps, ...). It is focused on Europe, but it is really good even in USA. It definitelly beats Google Maps for me. You...
Google Maps
Try Mapy.cz. It's from Seznam, biggest czech internet company (mail, search, maps, ...). It is focused on Europe, but it is really good even in USA. It definitelly beats Google Maps for me. You can even download regions so you can use them offline. It's focused on tourists and walking (in nature, mountains) - not so much on driving, but it's pretty good either way.
I am not as pessimistic as yourself. Most of the privacy tools recommended in forums like reddit's r/privacy are free in software and in price. These organizations can function with the support of...
I am not as pessimistic as yourself. Most of the privacy tools recommended in forums like reddit's r/privacy are free in software and in price. These organizations can function with the support of a community and donations to their parent non-profit ( Tildes is doing it! )
And company that wants to do privacy right will have to
open source the software (although might not free it)
offer a free alternative (as in the freemium model).
The first point has to do with security: security through obscurity isn't a good practice in most cases. And the second one with privacy directly because online payments are completely tracked.
Companies like Protonmail or Wire are already doing this business model.
There will of course be people looking for an opportunity to capitalize on privacy (and there is certainly a market for it). But privacy is a human right and must be made available to everyone. And I am faithful that there will always be contributions to privacy-related free software as long as there are people who care about privacy and have the technical skill to make such software.
Eh. All of this is predicated on the status quo remaining in place. I'm near certain it's going up in smoke within the next ten years. The business model the entire internet runs on (mostly...
Eh. All of this is predicated on the status quo remaining in place. I'm near certain it's going up in smoke within the next ten years. The business model the entire internet runs on (mostly advertising and data gathering) is going to implode, without any help from regulation or even from people using these services. Facebook is going to disappear. Poof, just like Prodigy, and forgotten almost as quickly.
There's a sea change coming. If you want a glimpse of what that will look like, watch this entire presentation and pay attention. If you're concerned with privacy, point number four towards the end will interest you the most. It's only about 20 minutes.
That's a strong statement when in some countries because they don't have access to clean water children are dying of cholera a few meters from tourist resorts with swimming pools.
Don't free VPNs end up selling your data too? Plus, I think most encrypted privacy oriented email service providers are a paid service.
Yup. No way you're getting privacy with a free VPN. Hell, there's not even a way to be 100% sure you're getting privacy with a paid VPN. Unless you're renting a VPS and setting up your own personal VPN, you're essentially shifting trust from your ISP to a different company.
I believe the assumption is, that there will arise a market for privacy, so services that are ad-based right now will introduce a second access option where you pay for the service and are left alone. I.e. use Facebook for free and give them all your data, or use it for 10$ a month and you're not spied on.
I'm not sure if that will ever happen, it would require a major rethinking in a lot of people to actually value their data at 10$ per month.
It's hard to determine what exactly the user wrote without a "see source" but it seems like that's normal behaviour of the lists.
If you want to go on a new line in a list, just type 2 times
spacebarand pressenter, like this:Hey new line of point 2
We seriously should add a format bar (like most wyswyg editors).
I'm very interested in privacy myself, and I always struggle with arguing why it is actually important. You mention:
What's that even supposed to mean? I can have a free mind even without privacy, there's no way anybody can read my thoughts (yet). And I don't see the connection between my value as a person and privacy.
I like: "Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world." (Cypherpunk Manifesto)
I think that is very understandable, only through privacy can I choose what to reveal to other people. Privacy is not secrecy, it very much requires other people and the desire to reveal certain things to others; if I never reveal anything that's just secrecy.
In a great sense we are what we read, watch and talk about. Think about all of the things you've ever read. If one were to look at that, it would be pretty easy I think know a bit of what you think about the world.
Predicting one's behavior is what surveillance capitalism is all about. And behavior is the direct consequence of what you think.
Therefore, knowing what you do is a "window into the soul" (stealing Gary T. Marx's book title).
Good point thank you.
you're welcome :)
Super interesting. I hadn't heard for a while about those experiments. The experiment I new best was the Libet experiment, where participants were looking at a clock and they would remember when they chose to move their arm. And an electrode would be measuring the activity in the brain part related to those muscles. And the found out the brain started preparing the muscles before the person decided to move. wiki page on the subject.
I'll take a look at Moran Cerf. Thank you!
I've read an re-read the cypherpunk's manifesto. Definitely something everyone who cares about privacy should read (1 page long)
Interesting premise, but if someone can't afford food, I'm guessing their data isn't worth much. Though you do mention it's not all about money, but I have to disagree. Everyone needs to be motivated and ultimately it's power (perhaps in the form of money). If you already have none, I'm not sure anyone would care.
However, let's not go right down to the "most brutal" and scale up a little to the middle class.
I think it's more important to focus on the why than the what. You mention "Our value as human beings" but didn't really get into how, why and who. Personally, I would be interested in the following:
I guess what I'm getting at is to what extent.
You're on a pretty techy site, so I don't think anyone's going to disagree with you here, however, examples are always useful. You briefly mention monetary value (though you sort of glossed over it earlier). You do mention things like overpriced insurance, bank loans, unaffordable health care, and such, but don't really go into it. A lot of health data is used to justify affordable healthcare and where specifically to spend the money. Again, not disagreeing necessarily, but I'll would love to see these points expanded.
Over all, this was really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I am not the OP, but I think I can provide an answer to this question:
Privacy should be the right to have control over your own information, or, as another person commented, the right to selectively reveal yourself. So if we accept this definition it does become possible for it to be a human right despite humans being social by nature. Consider that in our offline world, we have the power to say what we want to about ourselves, but that power is stripped away when we go online.
I should have clarified a bit more. My question is more of to what extent privacy should be regarded as a human right. For example, when I step out of my home, I am entering a public space and expect a certain level of privacy, such as, people can see what I'm wearing, can overhear what I say. That information is there, and of course, we can extend it to can it be collected (recorded and kept)?
So I guess the question becomes where's the divide between a public and private space online? It obviously isn't and can't be one-to-one with real life. But how far do they differ? For example, if I show a photo of myself to my friend on the bus, and someone else oversees it, that's acceptable, generally. If I share it online, and others see it, how is that defined? Is losing your control on the photo itself okay, not the meta data?
For the record, I definitely support digital privacy. I strongly believe in the right to be deleted (and think that should include at death).
Honestly, I don't have an answer for you. Where private and public space intersect online will have to be found when issues arise. Until then, we have to address the obvious issues. The photo you want to show to your friend probably shouldn't be kept in a site's record forever, nor should it be used for monetary if you don't want it to. That is a more clear example. In summary, we have to find the line when we get there. But given the permanent nature of having privacy violated, it is better to be overly cautious than to be lax. We can always reveal more data, but we can't take it back.
Definitely! And there's already lots of obvious places that need more protection and regulation. Lots of low-hanging fruit already.
Exactly!
Not disagreeing that this is a good step forward. However, I believe a clear definition of privacy needs to be established to truly cover edge cases.
This is really well put, and it's for this reason, that we really need to establish to what extent we should expect privacy. I'm fully with you on the pictures of kids online, and remember being shocked when it first started happening, and now don't even think twice about it. But we still have to answer the question of why it's an issue? People want to be connected, and trade offs can be acceptable. Of course, we do have companies looking after their own interests that obscure the trade offs.
I don't know if having the right to delete all of your personal data, and having the right to digital privacy can be equated. Growing up, it was mentioned a few times that the internet never forgets, and this is probably going to always be true. Someone who is sufficiently motivated and educated will be able to find nearly anything that has existed on the internet, or be able to find someone who can.
But that's a different problem than limiting the amount of data that corporations have access to. With the advent of IoT (Alexa, Google Home, Siri), general internet tracking, and a blending between ISPs and corporations trading information, the right to privacy is distinct from being able to delete information after it's been captured, as the right to privacy is an issue of being able to prevent the data from being captured at all.
Not equated, but definitely related. There's a difference between "the Internet never forgets" to third parties having legal access to your data. The right to delete is for a person to be able to be removed themselves completely from say a company's database. For example, if I did a consultation for some legal issue with an estate lawyer, but then decided to go with another. I should have the right to transfer my file completely. The original consultation should not be able to keep my info.
I think that's a slightly different thing from the main topic though. The article OP linked was a essay on the potential of mass data collection as a tool to manipulate and control people who can't afford to escape those systems of control.
Your example isn't quite the same thing, since I'm assuming that in a consultation, the only information they would have is what you give to them explicitly. Lawyer-client confidentiality would prevent that lawyer from allowing any third-parties to access that.
What I was trying to distinguish was that there isn't any data to delete if it isn't collected to begin with. OP's article paints a dystopic imagining of a future where everything is known about you, to the point where you can be manipulated freely without you even being aware of the manipulation. Rather than be concerned about being able to delete the data after the fact, wouldn't it be better to prevent that collection at all?
My points were that the main article lacked scope. I think sometimes people forget that privacy was an issue before the Internet (now that pretty much everyone has access too). It's easy to say we should have absolute control over our own data and that no one should be collecting and/or storing anything. However, the issue isn't fully defined until we talk about trade offs.
I admit the lawyer example wasn't the best mostly because there isn't a good analog comparison. Maybe faxing is better. I am trying to use an example that shows the exchange, copy or storage of info is part of the solution to another problem. Hence, you can't remove the ability without trading off something. As a digital example, sharing a photo online, so that all your family and friends can view it and that you have a backed up copy, by definition requires the storage or your photo. Being able to search for it by definition requires meta data to be generated and stored alongside.
Choosing absolute privacy generally means stepping away from society.
Deleting is important to talk about because it's about controlling the entire life cycle of your data, which since realistically is currently being collected, also needs it be address.
Framing it a bit differently, there's a point when we are breaking the problem down into too many parts, and we end up loosing sight of a workable solution. I believe the article is that. Low hanging fruit is great, but if we're talking distopias, we need to move beyond that.
So what do you think the problem is as a whole?
If data collection is inherently problematic, then what is the solution? It's a necessary tool for many industries such as politics, modern internet corporations, and scientific research. So the original article states that the actual symptoms of data collection could manifest in the following:
And it continues to ask very fearful questions about the future, as technology and social manipulation initiatives continue to improve.
It seems like a larger overarching problem is that of who would be the people to run the systems that collect and manipulate. The article paints a very grim picture of the future, where everyone is intimately known by a system that encompasses the entirety of the modern world, but it doesn't ask how a single government or corporation would reach that point. We have organizations that approach that (Super-corporations like Alphabet and Microsoft, and the Chinese and American Governments), but do you think that the optimal solution would be to prevent those entities from reaching that level of unmitigated control, or to destroy the technologies that would allow them to do it at all?
I was honestly hoping the article would explore it. It original article stated a lot of stuff.
This is going to be a little unorganized, because it's complicated and I'm sleepy. I am also definitely only going to scratch the surface.
I am going to start with nothing is inherently problematic. Data collection is necessary and natural, even for evil marketing. So I would say, prevention in general is not a solution. However, this has a caveat of who can be collecting this information, which expands to what they can do with it. For example, allowing any hospital within the country have access to any of your medical records can prove life saving. So should your random visit to a walk-in clinic for plan-b be sharable between clinics, and hospitals and basically all "medical" departments and professionals. Does that include universities for medical research?
For cases like that, we require 1) government regulation, 2) patient awareness and 3) ability to opt out, (or on the other side, consent, so actively opt only.
So for me, discussing privacy, this is step one. Defining why and how data is rightfully gathered.
Next we can get into how data is wrongly handled, maybe even when used directly for it's intended purposes.
Continuing the example. Hospital departments barely talk to each other and already sport incredible complexity. And it's pretty safe to say they are not experts in data collection and aggregation. So, it's logical that they hire a third party to handle this. So now, whatever regulation we may have, needs to be expanded. Simple regulations and policies often include things like:
Almost all of these will break down quite quickly during regular workflow and daily operations. The hindering of the sharing of information can comprise a patient's care. Seemingly harmless things like one doctor emailing a patient's records to a colleague at another clinc for a second opinion is no longer something casual. New processes must be put in place to cover that and any use case. Simple back up like the clinic owner taking a hard drive backed up with the week's work to store off site also needs a process.
I'm also not arguing against any of these, just that they need to be done. And they cannot be if the problem itself is not defined.
I think I'm starting to dig a bit too deep into this one scenario, so I'll just back to the article. Using the overpriced insurance, firstly, I need some proof. Insurance is pretty evil (if an industry can be), but isn't it literally their business to gather stats both as say all drivers as a whole and an individual driver and come up with the likelihood of payout? So, isn't the issue in this specific case more that we need to have protection for everyone outside of insurance? That everyone should be protected, not that we should somehow limit insurance specifically to make people seem more insurablable than they are? Also, this is a vote for universal health care.
Edit to add:
Few additional points
So you are trying to distinguish between benevolent and malevolent systems and usages of data collection?
I think the issue is that to people in general, data collection is uncomfortable, since you're not in control of the systems that monitor you. As monitoring becomes more ubiquitous, the organizations that use the data will also grow and multiply. Even if a system is benevolent by nature, cracks can form for shadier enterprises to take advantage. After all, who's ever heard of massive breaches of confidential data? (haha).
And those breaches were collections of modern data. Imagine if a massive breach of futuristic, all-encompassing medical data was made available on the black-market for anyone to access anonymously? I can understand why people are so hesitant to endorse these systems, or to bunker down and completely reject them. It's a natural response to the fear of something as intimate as your personal privacy being stripped away from you, even if you benefit from positive systems like smarter services, and improved healthcare.
I'm not too sure what the reality of the situation will be, other than that it will certainly get worse before it gets better, if it ever does get better. No system or data vault can be absolutely secured and we don't have a guarantee that the systems will be benevolent to begin with. As well, the population at large seems to not mind issues of privacy, with the consequence free breach of equifax, the absolutely monolithic collection of data that is Facebook, and what may as well be wiretaps in Google Home and Alexa.
No, I'm saying that except for some obvious cases, there's no difference, just degrees. For example, credit card company building a detailed user profile is directly required for security. Of course generally speaking, credit card companies are not where the average person worries about data breach. It's a very regulated industry.
I would say, most people don't care. And I would say the use of social media can easily be proof of that, and also the fact that we don't even do double takes of recording devices around us.
Preaching to the choir. However, most people are not rejecting these systems at all. If anything, they're embracing them in the name of security and convenience.
This is the core of what I'm trying to say. Without a well defined problem, we can't provide a good solution.
This has been interesting, thanks for the discussion.
I value my online privacy and take all the steps I can, but sometimes it just gets hard. I do everything I can (Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, DDG instead of google ETC), but some things are so convenient without any real competition. Android phones, Google Maps, etc are great services and the competition often ends up overpriced (apple,) bought out (Waze), or just sucks.
Try
Mapy.cz. It's from Seznam, biggest czech internet company (mail, search, maps, ...). It is focused on Europe, but it is really good even in USA. It definitelly beats Google Maps for me. You can even download regions so you can use them offline. It's focused on tourists and walking (in nature, mountains) - not so much on driving, but it's pretty good either way.Give it a try
I am not as pessimistic as yourself. Most of the privacy tools recommended in forums like reddit's r/privacy are free in software and in price. These organizations can function with the support of a community and donations to their parent non-profit ( Tildes is doing it! )
And company that wants to do privacy right will have to
The first point has to do with security: security through obscurity isn't a good practice in most cases. And the second one with privacy directly because online payments are completely tracked.
Companies like Protonmail or Wire are already doing this business model.
There will of course be people looking for an opportunity to capitalize on privacy (and there is certainly a market for it). But privacy is a human right and must be made available to everyone. And I am faithful that there will always be contributions to privacy-related free software as long as there are people who care about privacy and have the technical skill to make such software.
Eh. All of this is predicated on the status quo remaining in place. I'm near certain it's going up in smoke within the next ten years. The business model the entire internet runs on (mostly advertising and data gathering) is going to implode, without any help from regulation or even from people using these services. Facebook is going to disappear. Poof, just like Prodigy, and forgotten almost as quickly.
There's a sea change coming. If you want a glimpse of what that will look like, watch this entire presentation and pay attention. If you're concerned with privacy, point number four towards the end will interest you the most. It's only about 20 minutes.