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QQ's preconceptions, assumptions, and arguments for/against Privacy

Discussion in 'General' started by Aaron Fox, Feb 5, 2019.

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View on Privacy

  1. Completely Outdated, Throw it away!

    14.3%
  2. The Idea needs an Overhaul

    7.1%
  3. The Idea might need an Update

    7.1%
  4. The Idea only needs Adjustment

    7.1%
  5. The idea doesn't need anything changed about it

    64.3%
  1. Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    A good six years ago at SB, I posted a thread asking about about privacy and it's future that started with this video:


    Summary: At dConstruct 2014, I spin a tale of the future: not to make a prediction, but to put our current world in perspective. (shamelessly taken from the summary box of said video on YouTube)
    To quote my OP:
    Now days? I'm of the camp that has our technological context literally rewriting what we assumed is rights and freedoms. That freedoms and rights are fluid both in definition and application.

    To quote a rather knowledgeable forum insect:
    Between 1990 and today we went from digital cameras costing thousands of dollars and being the size of your head; too costing about 1 cent, are smaller than a fingernail, and everyone having at least one in their pocket at all times directly linked too a global information network upon which many people voluntarily post dozens of pictures every day that are analyzed by hundreds of information analysis programs.

    Cameras are getting smaller and cheaper at a geometric rate, facial recognition software has gone from being computer intensive and unreliable, too highly reliable and processing efficient. Internet companies track your identity, interests and purchases simply too advertise too you better.

    Human population is plateauing and we are congregating in dense cities while computers are increasing in power, efficiency and number all the time. We will reach a point in the first half of this century where the amount of sensors in a city is so great that the data floating around the net is sufficient too build a full picture of someones life in real time.


    In a few decades you will reach the point where sensors are basically smart dust, incorporated into virtually everything; not leaving an easily identifiable trace of your life with such sensor density will be impossible.


    The panopticon is a technological inevitability, it is basically the most sure thing we can predict about the coming century.

    The fear mongering in this thread
    :rolleyes:

    Dictatorships rely on secrets, denial of information and concentration of force; when the government is as exposed as the people it becomes very difficult for them too amass the power needed too become a dictatorship without being overthrown before they reach critical mass. A dictatorship always relies on a force of loyal enforcers smaller than the populace they try too oppress, when the movements and organization of this force are impossible too mask it becomes much easier too avoid and out maneuver them. With equal degree of omni-surveillance available too both sides it becomes a numbers game which the populace inevitably wins.

    Secret organizations coming in the dark of night too drag away dissenters and throw them into a dark hole only works if the organizations are secret and they can't be tracked

    Look it's a technological inevitability that a Panopticon will arise, so we should have a rational discussion (not FEAR FEAR FEAR DOOM) about how society and government should adapt too having a fair and free society in a post-privacy world

    There are certainly an enormous number of benefits too a society that can see and record everything. Disasters, crime and accidents become far easier too control and reduce; emergency services can be dispatched the second someone is in trouble; corruption, blackmail and bribery become impossibly hard too pull off without reprisal. Constant monitoring of infrastructure, energy use, transportation, ect allows for vast increase in efficiency of all systems. Diseases and toxins can be tracked in real time, outbreaks that would cause great epidemics isolated quickly and all potential vectors shutoff and tested/cleaned.

    The knowledge in the back of your mind that you are potentially being watched and judged will cause people too act more civil too each other, or understand why someone is so upset if you can trawl back through their recent past (family abuse is annihilated in this post-privacy world, bullying, harassment you ain't getting away with that shit)

    There is a fuckload of positives too an omnisurveilance society, yet you people seem to be obsessed with it being a terrifying dystopia

    Ahh yes the "Your argument falls apart entirely at this one nitpick and thus I don't have to address any of the other points you made"

    Classic lazy debating and lack of in depth consideration

    Governments already have to dedicate silly huge budgets too information security in crucially sensitive departments like intelligence, and already it is shown too be quite permeable relying more on employee compliance than an airtight information security system.

    The vast majority of the government apparatus cannot afford such information security measures, it relies on thousands upon thousands of ordinary citizens working office jobs; how do you get anyone too work for you at a cost effective wage if you have too demand they are completely stripped of all electronic devices (which already are practically a part of people, in coming decades they will be basically an indispensable part of a persons being) just too work in a government department?

    Governments are made up of people, unless you reduce everyone too mindless automatons or have a gun too their head at all times you aren't going too have a productive and cost effective workforce that is information tight. The only government departments that have scary effective info security are the ones like the CIA and NSA which have enormously drawn out vetting processes and pay their people HUGE salaries with bonuses and pensions too keep them happy and quiet, there is no way that the government can afford too pay everyone in the bureaucracy that handles information the wages of intelligence department workers, and certainly cannot have such complex hiring processes.

    In the modern world government policy is already leaked as fast as it is created and the minutes of meetings end up available too people who are interested. The increasing pervasiveness of digital data recording and processing will make it much easier and faster for leaked tidbits of information too be collated together into a coherent picture and built into a story of government scandal

    The government can certainly keep some things secret from the people in a surveillance society, with great effort and expense. But what is infeasible is the government keeping secrets on a large enough scale that it can have a secretive government apparatus large and effective enough too openly oppress the people for the evilz. The larger the government group the more difficult it is too keep information from leaking, and the rest of government that cannot afford too hide in super secret evil plotting bunkers will have adapted too operating in open non-secretive politics, their political advantage of full openness makes them very hard too nail down with blackmail and they will gain political support by crusading against the secretive totally not plotting evilz part of government sucking up so much public funds in its effort too hide from the public.

    When the parts of government actually busy doing the governing and public relations shit have accepted full openness, they are not going too tolerate secret little government cartels, they become a brilliant target for demonstrating how open and trustworthy you are too the voting public. A poltician that has accepted openness and embraced it will be a terrifying force too fight as another politician/government entity with secrets, especially if secret plotting department relies on the open no-secrets politicians are in charge of dividing up the budget.
    ____________
    Being a monster is entirely relative, we are deep in the dark world of moral relativity in this discussion; black and white morality in decision making becomes impossible

    If technology advances too the point where rogue individuals or small groups can be an existential threat too orders of magnitude more people than belong too the group; via weapons of mass destruction, bio plagues, ecosystem crashers, climate sabotage, ect... then the moral calculus balances out too determine that preventing the destruction or grievous harm of vast numbers of people justifies certain actions that seen abhorrently immoral in their own right

    It's basically the Trolley Problem but on a Nation State -> Civilization -> Species level depending on how dangerous the threat is.

    If technology has developed too the point that small groups can cause vast destruction, then either civilization and the species is doomed; or civilization will adapt too contain and control such threats... by whatever means necessary

    Omnipresent surveillance is at least the most morally neutral of countermeasures, it is passive and can detect such problem groups before they can become a major threat and authorities intervene in the most morally just way possible (arrests and psychological treatment) Groups that actually manage too build a threatening weapon will likely be spotted before they can deploy it in an effective manner and the Panopticon system can help authorities manage the emergency response causing the least harm possible too the innocent and the guilty alike.
    _____________
    The thing is that technology is shifting the balance of risk; biological weapons formerly took years of work and enormously expensive facilities, trial and error, and as a result only States could implement them. With genetics now programmable on computers, the developing field of digitally simulated biology, genetic strings being written in a computer, printed and inserted into cells too create new species... this is only the beginning. The technology and resources required too create a super-plague has gone from state level down too merely company level, and it is inevitably going too fall further too the point that very small groups of individuals can create highly dangerous engineered organisms with equipment and knowledge available too civilians.

    There are plenty of omnicidal nuts out there, the people who advocate culling humanity as a cure too environmental exploitation of 'Mother Nature' Would you trust these sorts with the ability too cook up plagues?

    So you are confidently asserting that threats too civilization can never come from anything less than full nation states ​
    [​IMG]
    How could you possibly justify this claim, history is rife with small groups or individuals that caused great catastrophes through their own selfish philosophically driven actions; even if the ultimate destructive force was the war machines of nation states it was non-state-aligned individuals who tipped the balance from rational diplomatic confrontation too armed conflict


    Please note that I've asked the mods to create this thread and they said that they'll be watching...​
     
  2. tehelgee

    tehelgee The stern gaze of justice. Administrator

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    Surveillance should stay out of private homes, and out of private digital conversations including email exchanges. It's unrealistic to have an expectation of privacy beyond that, imo.

    And yes, we will be watching closely. Consider it a litmus test of our user's maturity and restraint in handling a topic only somewhat related to political matters.
     
  3. Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Personally, we don't have a real choice in the matter, as the aforementioned forum insect stated rather clearly... our technological context is basically saying 'nope' to privacy in general, particularly when it comes to biotech becoming akin to bomb making as the experience and equipment needed keep dropping to rock bottom (or close to it). That is why many of my personal settings have 'privacy is dead, because either you practically abolish it and survive or get nose deep in megadeaths and whatever the crazies of the month cook up'.
    Understood sir. [salutes]
     
  4. Legume

    Legume Gone for Good

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    Personally, I think it’s pretty ass backwards to take a massive shit on personal liberties in order maintain ideological purity so that we can avoid historical ideologies that were bad because they took a massive shit on the idea of personal liberties in order to maintain ideological purity.
     
  5. wasprider

    wasprider Experienced.

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    Privacy is not symmetric. Zuck's statements as well those of the Google leaders doesn't mean they're giving up their "privacy". It means you are.

    Saying no more privacy doesn't put you on a level playing field, it puts you further behind. The elite are going to afford better insulation from their actions than you are.

    For a hopefully non-political example, see R. Kelly. He's been doing his exploitative shit for over a decade, and only now is he even possibly facing a few, long delayed consequences. Let's say you do catch some low level pedophiles by giving up your privacy (and mine), i.e. you put everyone who's liked a picture of a cartoon loli behind bars, or have made them lose their jobs.

    How would your measures stop R. Kelly? It wasn't his "privacy" protecting him, the details of some of his court cases have been out for a long time.

    There was a singular lack of widespread outrage, people simply didn't care. The ones facing the brunt of consequences won't be the rich and powerful.

    I definitely include governments in the category of rich and powerful, see what the Sudanese government has been doing to the southern Sudanese with very little consequence. Likewise Boko Haram has faced little consequence except for some trending tags on Twitter (#FreeOurGirls). Everyone knows some of that they are doing, and they haven't been stopped by the world, or their neighbors, or their constituents.

    Given these examples, removing privacy probably won't do what Wetapunga says it will do, and removing the (legal) illusion of it will not help the less powerful.
     
  6. Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Problem is that we now live in a world where on one side you've got a deadly cocktail of people settling ethnic scores real or imagined, abhorrent ideologies in general (like Nazism), think that [insert ethnic group(s) here] being exterminated would bring utopia, and people who want to cull/exterminate humanity for being a blight on mother earth with scary amounts of biotech that is rapidly approaching rock bottom in terms of equipment requirements and expertise to use it effectively. Given that historically that small groups and/or individuals have pushed nation-states to wars that they don't want or need, I'm not sharing in your sentiment that rights are 'static'.

    As technology evolves, what we consider rights and freedoms evolves with it while smashing preconceptions and assumptions that we puny little humans have made.
    Problem is your assumptions on the matter. You assume that the rich and powerful can skirt away from justice in a no-privacy electronic panopticon society when they rely on secrets and privacy to get away with shit as long as they did.
     
  7. wasprider

    wasprider Experienced.

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    My specific examples did not involve privacy or secrecy. R. Kelly went to court quite a while ago and some of his tapes/evidence have been around for a while.

    Here is what appears to be a SFW article and timeline of what he did and when it came out (I did a quick skim):
    https://www.spin.com/2017/07/r-kelly-sexual-misconduct-allegations-timeline/

    There was a link to pornhub which apparently shows R. Kelly pissing on the face of an underage girl (I didn't follow the link, but I'm fairly sure you can find it in various places if you go looking).

    Please tell me again why he has not faced serious consequences before 2017-2018, despite his privacy not being an issue given that some of this stuff came out in 2001, and even back before then to 1994?

    The legal system and society failed in the face of wealth, power, and social position despite the lack of "privacy". You have not shown that your panopticon would work better because I think I've demonstrated that despite public knowledge, the legal system and social system of the USA failed to prevent further harm from R. Kelly for almost 20 years. Let's not even get into consideration of restitution or punishment.

    This is just one case that has come up recently. There have been tons of cases that might touch on Rule 8, and I'm not so invested in this argument to put in extra effort until you address at least this specific example instead of dismissing it as a non-sequitur.
     
  8. Legume

    Legume Gone for Good

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    Okay? So scary extremists are becoming more common and it is relatively easy for them to influence large organizations like governments. I’m not really seeing the reason we should use 1984 as a guidebook and give more power and control to the large organizations and less rights to the individuals. If anything, the fact that rights will erode as technology evolves is a good reason to reaffirm those rights rather than the opposite.
     
  9. Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    wasprider, from what I can tell, the entire R Kelly affair was partially due to having other things taking the headlines in the earlier years listed (9/11 happened in 2001, 1994 appears that it might have been buried under several major deaths/accidents like Green Ramp, the suicide Cessna hitting the White House front lawn, the death of Ronald Reagan, the Iraq Disarmament Crisis...) with other tactics at the very least. I'll have to look further but that is what it looks like.
     
  10. wasprider

    wasprider Experienced.

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    What this means is that the theory of many eyes doesn't work in all cases.

    There have been specific cases where a man has gone to jail for possessing cartoon porn. It appears he may have been accessing real child porn and pleaded guilty to possession of cartoon porn as a plea bargain, but it remains case law (in Canada) that possession of cartoon (underage) porn can put you in jail.
    https://www.comicsbeat.com/man-sentenced-in-cartoon-obscenity-case/
    https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/...ealing-with-anime-child-pornography-in-canada

    Personally, I find what R. Kelly did more disturbing than viewing cartoon porn. That may not be the case for you, and I'm sure there are many people who argue that R. Kelly is a good man who did nothing wrong.

    But I find it illustrative that he did not go to jail for a documented incidence of producing child (teenage, 14?) porn, whereas consumers of cartoon porn (and possibly real child porn) can go to jail. This sounds like tu quoque, but I don't think it is, I think it is an illustration of social power overriding the law with full connivance of the legal system, without bringing privacy into question.

    My contention is therefore, that even without privacy, the rich and powerful will get away with things that lesser people will not.

    Furthermore, to stretch my point, I think the loss of privacy will result in greater consequences coming down on the relatively powerless, but not an increase in enforcement at the top end of the hierarchy. The barriers preventing justice from applying to the rich and powerful are not exclusively (or even primarily) those of privacy and secrecy. Similarly, many governments have done terrible things with the knowledge and support of their subjects.
     
  11. seeing_octarine

    seeing_octarine Unverified Colour

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    The poll options are wonky. The ordering suggests a sliding scale from "no privacy" to "keep current notion of privacy as is". Where's the option for strengthening privacy?
     
  12. Legume

    Legume Gone for Good

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    This is also something I noticed. In the original thread there was a pro-privacy option which was extremely popular despite there being multiple, more nuanced, anti-privacy options. I wonder why you would remove the pro-privacy option.
     
  13. magic9mushroom

    magic9mushroom BEST END.

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    There are really two options.

    1) Institute really heavy privacy protections. As in, Google goes bankrupt sort of thing.
    2) Abolish privacy entirely, Geodesica Bedlam style. Everyone can see what everyone else is doing. Build police AIs that detect when people are committing crimes.

    #2 obviously needs to be accompanied by a huge pruning of crimes, because otherwise everyone goes to jail or selective enforcement leads to the police holding ultimate power. One benefit of having absolutely everything out in the open is that most of the stuff needing to be pruned will stick out like a sore thumb.

    Anything between these two leads to Big Data holding ultimate power; in #2 data still holds power, but with everyone having access to the data anyone with the sifting tech can play.
     
  14. seeing_octarine

    seeing_octarine Unverified Colour

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    Where do I sign up to make this happen? I am so very on board with that. Advertising and mass surveillance companies are scum.
     
  15. wichajster

    wichajster Away

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    Stop using Google products and switch to alternatives (DuckDuckGo for googling)? Education?

    GDPR in Europe may be one of steps toward civilising this. Google just got 50 million euro fine (tiny, but that is just the first step).

    Unfortunately many people are completely unaware how GDPR works, I would recommend reading something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation
     
    TanaNari likes this.