What harm does public data have to you? Couldn’t one just ignore the ads? You can’t see anyone watching you, is public data good for public records? (I’m just curious). I know this sounds weird but is public data good for historical preservation and knowledge increasing the importance of the individual? And does public data lead to better products?
Privacy brings security under totalitarian regimes or in countries that shift in that direction. They might say if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, but there are unjust conditions under which you have to hide things, like that you belong to minority that is targeted by the authorities. Like the nazis did in the third reich, where privacy was reduced during their takeover. Or that you belong to a party that is suddenly framed as evil and enemies of the nation. Or if you have connections to “traitors” or other “scum”.
Wow, I had never heard about the lavender scare until now. Just did a little bit of reading on it. Can’t say I’m surprised, just extremely disappointed.
You don’t even have to go that far back. It’s literally happening right now as red states seek to punish women who seek abortions.
Yeah, it’s insane we still have to deal with this in 2023… and it’s even worse for trans people, “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely” and all that.
There are people who aren’t financially independent yet that are facing the very real possibility of getting disowned by their family and thrown out on the street if they come out as anything but cishet. It sucks, but keeping this kind of information private can be lifesaving.
These days, with “big data” analysis being possible on such a large scale, it’s possible to gauge the position of the general population, or of subgroup of such with ease. This makes it easy to divide and conquer, to manufacture consent, for whatever those who have access to said analysis desire.
I always tell people, it’s not about your data, it’s about our data.
What about neo nazis and white supremacists who use privacy tools to coordinate domestic terrorism like Charlottesville and January 6th? There’s two sides to the privacy coin.
You can also use a chair to bludgeon someone to death. Should we ban chairs? I believe the good side of privacy far overcomes the bad One can do with it
And those people sometimes shoot innocent people with guns, but that doesn’t mean that people like Malcolm X shouldn’t have one to protect themselves against that.
Just because something can be misused doesn’t mean it should be illegal to use it properly. Often the improper use itself is criminalized and making it illegal just tacks on an extra charge that people aren’t worried about by then, because they already have murder charges to fight.
To add: the FBI was asked by congress to justify project prism by telling just one example of something they stopped with warrantless mass surveillance. Turns out, they had none, the case they provided they’d have been able to get a warrant for the guys and they were put on the FBI’s radar by other means, not the mass surveillance. They don’t even stop anything with it.
I promise you that Google’s attempts to break AdGuard or the federal government’s begging Apple and co to create backdoors are not an attempt to stop domestic terrorism.
The most effective thing you can do to reduce domestic terrorism in the US, which is usually stochastic in nature, is to deplatform the people riling these people up.
Did you not notice how much quieter it was with Trump off of Twitter? When was the last time you heard anything about Alex Jones that wasn’t about his legal woes?
The right wing has built its own network called Rumble where they spread disinformation to their uneducated superstitious masses. These brainwashed zombies thrive behind a mask of anonymity. IRL these absolute loons are interspersed throughout the public, and our institutions are none the wiser. ID verification is needed to increase visibility and accountability.
Yes. But we still need it.
In the USA, the 4th amendment gives us the right to be secure … unless there is a warrant….
A big part of the privacy issue is first with government; we can’t have the erosion of those standards or we’ll never get them back.
Second is business, my existence is not a license for data collection of my activities. Like being with one person all the time, but never getting 5 minutes alone.
Because data brokers are obligating the need for a warrant when my info can just be purchased.
Yeah. Even though encryption protects bad guys, it protects my credit card when I buy something.
It has to cover both
The same things that protects vulnerable people’s privacy also gives shelter to terrorism.
Yes. We know. We went through this already 20 years ago, except the boogyman was the Taliban and not the local fascists.
It changes nothing. Sacrificing individual privacy is not an adequate trade-off for the illusion of safety.
Anonymity also emboldens hate speech, arguably an even bigger and more immediate threat. When hate is allowed to fester in the dark, it casts shadows into the light.
Ask that mother and daughter that got arrested for an abortion after facebook ratted them out.
That’s why privacy matters. Not because something bad can happen now, but because that information can be weaponized down the road
Well, also, bad things absolutely can happen right now, they just aren’t as obvious. People focus too much on how the government uses data to abuse people, not enough on how private companies can in opaque ways. Cambridge Analytica is an example of very bad things happening right now.
Also consider how the Supreme Court basically decided businesses discriminating against LGBT is acceptable. With how accessible user data is now, it would be trivial to put together a database of gay people, particularly same sex married couples, that businesses can check against. There’s also every reason to believe rulings like that will continue and new avenues of abuse will open up for private companies.
The more there is known about you, the easier you are to be manipulated.
If you read George Orwell‘s 1984 or watch the Cambridge Analytica documentary on Netflix you get an idea.
I started to read 1984 a couple years ago but it is so triggering I had to stop. It really sets your head straight. Might start again soon.
This was a reply I posted on “What should I say when someone says they “don’t have anything to hide”?” In ask Lemmy a week ago, and I think it’s still applicable here
They don’t choose what they need to hide, if their government outlaws woodworking tomorrow, then any carpenters today go from “having nothing to hide” to “I need to hide my entire career and hobby” overnight and in their sleep.
And then the government threatens Facebook to hand over messages from any user suspected of woodworking, and then they get persecuted and arrested
The government threatens Google to hand over all browser history from suspected woodworkers, Apple for all iCloud photos from suspected woodworkers, Amazon for all woodworking related purchases
It goes on
If the carpenter cared about privacy from the start, then the government just wouldn’t be able to find them and arrest them for simply woodworking
But the carpenter didn’t care about privacy, they “had nothing to hide” yesterday, so when that law goes into effect tomorrow the government will have a really easy time finding them
Then replace woodworking with abortion and you no longer need to imagine it happening, you can watch it live in 4K.
Honestly, sometimes my best answer is “none of your business”. Its none of Google’s business what my hobbies are. The fact that there’s no “harm” in it is irrelevant. I want to be left alone, I should be able to without an advanced knowledge of cyber security.
