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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | I don't actually think that's true. The hypothetical I raised would make nearly all premeditated crimes impossible; clearly, many governments think that a crime-free society would be a desirable outcome. The two barriers at the moment (apart from the ongoing, if slightly unfashionable notion among parts of the populace that some privacy is necessary) are 1) the lack of a technological means and financial resources to set up such a full surveillance state; and 2) the ability to make such an enormous load of information meaningful. Sufficiently sophisticated AI could easily solve that second problem in the future.
| stui magpie wrote: | You can start with the extreme at either end, and neither of them are workable as is usual with the extremes.
The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. Where is the sticking point. |
The point is that if you start with a hypothetical zero-privacy society, you can immediately see the fundamental issues at stake. Or not – perhaps such a system does not bother you. Either way, once you work from the ground up like this, you can begin to establish basic principles and carry them into the real world of negotiation and compromise.
We could start from the other end, but the key difference is that no-one, not even the most extreme libertarian, is arguing that everything should be concealed. There are on the other hand an increasing number of people who do think that privacy is unnecessary, or at least show little interest in its reduction. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" comes to mind. |
That is comparable, in spirit, to starting by imagining a society raddled with terrorism and fraud, killing thousands and threatening the viability of the financial and payments system every day. I don't think it is a sensible way to construct a solution at all. Of course privacy matters. Equally, of course we sacrifice it under well-understood and governed conditions where it is justified by the public interest. I used the ATO's wide database of financial information as a case in point. Data needs careful safeguarding and those safeguards need proper oversight, but it is not sacred now when there are prima facie grounds of unlawful conduct. It's not an easy issue, and oversimplifying it through a reductio ad absurdum seems unlikely to make it any clearer.
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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That still leaves the question unanswered, though: why does privacy matter?
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Does that make sense? |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| David wrote: | | That still leaves the question unanswered, though: why does privacy matter? |
One of the main contributions of liberal thought is the conclusion that we're really bad and/or mischievous judges of others. This conclusion was pretty obvious when people were at the mercy of vulgar kings and lords.
Mercifully, we now have broader-based rights and a working class with modest power. However, that means many people identify with a strong majority group, secure from the whims of mob and millionaire, but at risk of downplaying privacy protections from a perceived safe middle.
This is why it's crucial to ponder this question from the perspective of someone with something at stake. No one gives a rats about the private lives of most of us; but, we're not being made an example of by a populist mob, or conversely treading on the toes of power.
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | | That still leaves the question unanswered, though: why does privacy matter? |
OK, let's start with your almost orwellian extreme, forget the change that would mean to everyone and assume you grew up in that world.
Lets also assume that we have the same democratic system of government as we have now, not a totalitarian government like in 1984.
What is society like?
Everyone grows up knowing that every action is recorded somewhere, each online activity is public knowledge as is each financial transaction. You know that when you have sex, take a dump, have a shower, it's being recorded and someone could be watching it.
People who protest things they don't like, or who take to social media to bully people who's opinion they don't like would not have the benefit of anonymity.
If someone doesn't like you, and compiles a bunch of your available data to try to prove what an arse you are had better be a total cleanskin themself. "let he who is without sin......"
It's an interesting thought experiment.
Would society be a worse place if there was no shame? No pretence?
Forget the carefully edited and photoshopped pics of celebrity lives that make people aspire to be like them, if you could see them waking up in the morning looking like a bag of shite, there goes that fascination. Would a woman bother putting on all that make up and a padded bra for a date if she knew that her prospective date could be watching her getting dressed?
You cheat on your partner, you know it's on record somewhere. How much would behaviour change?
What would be the consequences of having all that information public, because it's consequences that drive behaviour.
I'm not sure if it would be a better or worse world, but it would be different.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| David wrote: | | That still leaves the question unanswered, though: why does privacy matter? |
im sure there is a thread with that title somewhere!!
for me, i dont post anything on facebook that i may want to retract someday. because regardless of the delete button, its too easy for someone to copy it before you change your mind. (and i watch too many movies - is anything ever really deleted!!) Plus although My account is set to private, if a friend shares, your shit is out there anyway. with so many users facebook is definitely an unstable platform.
Im more concerned with privacy when it comes to banking and business related stuff. i have plenty of spyware, anti phiysing and virus protection, but i still dont trust it. i
i dont have a problem with CCTV cameras even in a public bathroom as long as they stay out of the stalls. We have working CCTV cameras, bloody crazy not to these days, i never answer the door without checking who is there.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | | That still leaves the question unanswered, though: why does privacy matter? |
It might be an interesting philosophical question, but I don't think it is very relevant to policy. Why does love matter, or family, or friendship ? Because humans feel in their being that it does. With enough totalitarianism, you might be able to bleed this out of humanity, but we build societies around human nature.
As a matter of philosophy, I think it is do with the fact that we must own ourselves if we are to have free will, and to be autonomous and psychologically unique. As owners of ourselves,we must be allowed to freely do with ourselves what we wish, without the appraisal of those who do not need to be involved. The law, of course, sets limits on that freedom to protect others, and sometimes ourselves.
The alternative explanation is that we are all sinners, and we still (just) have a sense of shame about the inner corruption of body and mind. But our more secular citizens may have problems with that view. Certainly as we grow more secular, our sense of shame seems to be diminishing.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: | | That still leaves the question unanswered, though: why does privacy matter? |
OK, let's start with your almost orwellian extreme, forget the change that would mean to everyone and assume you grew up in that world.
Lets also assume that we have the same democratic system of government as we have now, not a totalitarian government like in 1984.
What is society like?
Everyone grows up knowing that every action is recorded somewhere, each online activity is public knowledge as is each financial transaction. You know that when you have sex, take a dump, have a shower, it's being recorded and someone could be watching it.
People who protest things they don't like, or who take to social media to bully people who's opinion they don't like would not have the benefit of anonymity.
If someone doesn't like you, and compiles a bunch of your available data to try to prove what an arse you are had better be a total cleanskin themself. "let he who is without sin......"
It's an interesting thought experiment.
Would society be a worse place if there was no shame? No pretence?
Forget the carefully edited and photoshopped pics of celebrity lives that make people aspire to be like them, if you could see them waking up in the morning looking like a bag of shite, there goes that fascination. Would a woman bother putting on all that make up and a padded bra for a date if she knew that her prospective date could be watching her getting dressed?
You cheat on your partner, you know it's on record somewhere. How much would behaviour change?
What would be the consequences of having all that information public, because it's consequences that drive behaviour.
I'm not sure if it would be a better or worse world, but it would be different. |
That's more the kind of answer I was looking for, thanks! I actually agree with a lot of that, which is why at times I've wondered if privacy is even necessary to maintain a good society. But there's a catch, and it's a big one:
| pietillidie wrote: |
One of the main contributions of liberal thought is the conclusion that we're really bad and/or mischievous judges of others. This conclusion was pretty obvious when people were at the mercy of vulgar kings and lords.
Mercifully, we now have broader-based rights and a working class with modest power. However, that means many people identify with a strong majority group, secure from the whims of mob and millionaire, but at risk of downplaying privacy protections from a perceived safe middle.
This is why it's crucial to ponder this question from the perspective of someone with something at stake. No one gives a rats about the private lives of most of us; but, we're not being made an example of by a populist mob, or conversely treading on the toes of power. |
I think this nails it, basically. In a society with power imbalance, our vulnerabilities can be exploited. And the less privacy we have, the more vulnerable we become. And the more control it gives to those who would want to regulate our lives. There has to be a good Black Mirror episode in this scenario... 
The trouble with internet surveillance is that we get those kinds of drawbacks without any of the benefits of a zero-privacy society. People with the wit and means to do so are still easily able to hide their weaknesses and negative character traits, which means that we still cling on to fictions about 'good' and 'bad' people; but everyone else remains vulnerable to having that thing they wrote to a friend ten years ago or that joke they made about assassinating the PM or that gonzo porn site they visited once, etc., being used against them. As opposed to casting a spotlight on everyone all the time, as my hypothetical does, the slow erosion of privacy in our society instead sends us into deeper and smaller caves where we hide our true selves, terrified of what might happen if others found out about how vulnerable or imperfect we are – and the social value of being seen to always say and do the right thing increases. We become split between self-promotion and self-concealment, and those who aren't good enough at concealing – like the scientist who made a sexist remark during a conference, or the young woman who made a politically incorrect joke about AIDS on Twitter, or the married politician who had an affair – get thrown to the wolves. That's what strikes me as dystopian about all this.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Ok, but spin that another way.
In a society where there is no privacy, when someone seeks to hide things it sticks out like dogs balls.
You can argue the wealthy could get around being on camera 24/7, but how do they do that without people noticing? What's that line about the absence of something formerly there?
If the laws applied equally across the board, the wealthy have no get out clause and therefore there's no power imbalance.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: | | That still leaves the question unanswered, though: why does privacy matter? |
OK, let's start with your almost orwellian extreme, forget the change that would mean to everyone and assume you grew up in that world.
Lets also assume that we have the same democratic system of government as we have now, not a totalitarian government like in 1984.
What is society like?
Everyone grows up knowing that every action is recorded somewhere, each online activity is public knowledge as is each financial transaction. You know that when you have sex, take a dump, have a shower, it's being recorded and someone could be watching it.
People who protest things they don't like, or who take to social media to bully people who's opinion they don't like would not have the benefit of anonymity.
If someone doesn't like you, and compiles a bunch of your available data to try to prove what an arse you are had better be a total cleanskin themself. "let he who is without sin......"
It's an interesting thought experiment.
Would society be a worse place if there was no shame? No pretence?
Forget the carefully edited and photoshopped pics of celebrity lives that make people aspire to be like them, if you could see them waking up in the morning looking like a bag of shite, there goes that fascination. Would a woman bother putting on all that make up and a padded bra for a date if she knew that her prospective date could be watching her getting dressed?
You cheat on your partner, you know it's on record somewhere. How much would behaviour change?
What would be the consequences of having all that information public, because it's consequences that drive behaviour.
I'm not sure if it would be a better or worse world, but it would be different. |
That's more the kind of answer I was looking for, thanks! I actually agree with a lot of that, which is why at times I've wondered if privacy is even necessary to maintain a good society. But there's a catch, and it's a big one:
| pietillidie wrote: |
One of the main contributions of liberal thought is the conclusion that we're really bad and/or mischievous judges of others. This conclusion was pretty obvious when people were at the mercy of vulgar kings and lords.
Mercifully, we now have broader-based rights and a working class with modest power. However, that means many people identify with a strong majority group, secure from the whims of mob and millionaire, but at risk of downplaying privacy protections from a perceived safe middle.
This is why it's crucial to ponder this question from the perspective of someone with something at stake. No one gives a rats about the private lives of most of us; but, we're not being made an example of by a populist mob, or conversely treading on the toes of power. |
I think this nails it, basically. In a society with power imbalance, our vulnerabilities can be exploited. And the less privacy we have, the more vulnerable we become. And the more control it gives to those who would want to regulate our lives. There has to be a good Black Mirror episode in this scenario...
The trouble with internet surveillance is that we get those kinds of drawbacks without any of the benefits of a zero-privacy society. People with the wit and means to do so are still easily able to hide their weaknesses and negative character traits, which means that we still cling on to fictions about 'good' and 'bad' people; but everyone else remains vulnerable to having that thing they wrote to a friend ten years ago or that joke they made about assassinating the PM or that gonzo porn site they visited once, etc., being used against them. As opposed to casting a spotlight on everyone all the time, as my hypothetical does, the slow erosion of privacy in our society instead sends us into deeper and smaller caves where we hide our true selves, terrified of what might happen if others found out about how vulnerable or imperfect we are – and the social value of being seen to always say and do the right thing increases. We become split between self-promotion and self-concealment, and those who aren't good enough at concealing – like the scientist who made a sexist remark during a conference, or the young woman who made a politically incorrect joke about AIDS on Twitter, or the married politician who had an affair – get thrown to the wolves. That's what strikes me as dystopian about all this. |
All fine, but at that level it looks like a restatement of the problem we already knew, i.e. the risk of information being misused without due cause or process. we seem to have circumlocuted right back to the starting point. If you are happy with the manifest costs of internet abuse because you do not believe that it is possible for a democratic society to set limits and exercise accountability, then so be it. But recognise that your view already has tragic costs, often borne by the most vulnerable.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^Yes, we come back full circle, which is precisely the point: if people want to extend special authority, the onus is on them to quantify the problem through some sort of cost-benefit analysis.
Even worse, May only clutched for this unquantifiable dark net fear card when Corbyn rightly connected the inability to deal with terrorist suspects already known to authorities with austerity fetish budget cuts.
| The FT wrote: | Theresa May has come under fire for cutting police numbers while she was home secretary, with her critics contending in the wake of three recent attacks that the UK’s ability to fight terrorism has been compromised by a lack of resources.
Did police numbers fall while Theresa May was home secretary?
Yes. The number of police officers in England and Wales fell by 18,991, or 13 per cent, between September 2010 and September 2016, according to the Home Office.
Separate statistics show the number of authorised firearms officers fell 19 per cent to 5,639 between March 2010 and March 2016.
Karen Bradley, culture secretary and a former Home Office minister, explained on Monday: “We’ve seen reductions in police officers across the board, we had to take difficult decisions in 2010 when we came into office when, as you remember, there was no money.” |
https://www.ft.com/content/abb483ae-49e5-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43
The cruel irony is that the problem looks a lot more like a lack of resources to deal with already known information, not a lack of information.
Alas, the austerity ideology which helped turbocharge the costly Brexit farce has also helped cripple the ability to deal with terrorism.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| pietillidie wrote: | | David wrote: | | That still leaves the question unanswered, though: why does privacy matter? |
One of the main contributions of liberal thought is the conclusion that we're really bad and/or mischievous judges of others. This conclusion was pretty obvious when people were at the mercy of vulgar kings and lords.
Mercifully, we now have broader-based rights and a working class with modest power. However, that means many people identify with a strong majority group, secure from the whims of mob and millionaire, but at risk of downplaying privacy protections from a perceived safe middle.
This is why it's crucial to ponder this question from the perspective of someone with something at stake. No one gives a rats about the private lives of most of us; but, we're not being made an example of by a populist mob, or conversely treading on the toes of power. |
Great post.
David why does privacy matter to you?
Is anyone else thinking hunger games or some other sci fi series right now? Stui there is a movie in the vein your describing, can't think of it?
It's spooky
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| pietillidie wrote: | ^Yes, we come back full circle, which is precisely the point: if people want to extend special authority, the onus is on them to quantify the problem through some sort of cost-benefit analysis.
Even worse, May only clutched for this unquantifiable dark net fear card when Corbyn rightly connected the inability to deal with terrorist suspects already known to authorities with austerity fetish budget cuts.
| The FT wrote: | Theresa May has come under fire for cutting police numbers while she was home secretary, with her critics contending in the wake of three recent attacks that the UK’s ability to fight terrorism has been compromised by a lack of resources.
Did police numbers fall while Theresa May was home secretary?
Yes. The number of police officers in England and Wales fell by 18,991, or 13 per cent, between September 2010 and September 2016, according to the Home Office.
Separate statistics show the number of authorised firearms officers fell 19 per cent to 5,639 between March 2010 and March 2016.
Karen Bradley, culture secretary and a former Home Office minister, explained on Monday: “We’ve seen reductions in police officers across the board, we had to take difficult decisions in 2010 when we came into office when, as you remember, there was no money.” |
https://www.ft.com/content/abb483ae-49e5-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43
The cruel irony is that the problem looks a lot more like a lack of resources to deal with already known information, not a lack of information.
Alas, the austerity ideology which helped turbocharge the costly Brexit farce has also helped cripple the ability to deal with terrorism. |
thats damning stuff, just crazy. Surely they could have allocated some funds differently?
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| think positive wrote: |
Is anyone else thinking hunger games or some other sci fi series right now? Stui there is a movie in the vein your describing, can't think of it?
It's spooky |
Not really. 1984 y george orwell covers the principles of the constant surveillance, but that was a totalitarian government that brainwashed everyone. Think North Korea with constant video surveillance.
I was trying to paint a picture of having everything public but in a democracy where everyone could access everything, not just the government, thus ensuring no one could hide anything and empowering the people.
it would make a shit movie, unless you found a twist where someone could crack the system and steal stuff and someone else had to figure out how to do the same to stop them.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| David wrote: | | David why does privacy matter to you? |
Basically, I think it comes down to power and its misuse. I'm not totally opposed to Stui's hypothetical in theory – it might even be a kind of utopia. What concerns me is that we don't have the mechanisms right now to guard against privacy being exploited and being used as a means of exerting further control over our lives.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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