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”.
Yep, security enables privacy, this is why the two are often referenced together.
As a gay man, there are some frightening trends even right here in the US. The more I see and experience, the more thankful I am for the people who value and preserve our privacy, and the more I value it myself. Even if things were 100% safe now, I think it’s a mistake when we take that for granted.
Society can go sideways quite rapidly.
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.
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.
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.
There is no planet where you will convince me I need to present my state ID in order to browse the internet.
I am very familiar with rumble. We have seen its type over and over again. The same thing happens every single time. Because of their “commitment to free-speech,“ law enforcement just hangs out and either pressures the admins, who are facing financial pressures from nobody wanting to fund a website that has that kind of content, reasonable people feel repulsed, or eventually the feds get involved because something criminal is happening or threatened. Ask Voat. Ask Gab. Ask Truth Social.
Alex Jones did a lot more damage with YouTube and Twitter than he ever will on Rumble. These platforms will always pop up, but they are ineffectual in the long run. Ultimately, it’s about commandeering existing, massive channels. It’s about access to new people.
We need to target the hate problem at the root. Hateful speech comes from a hateful heart. How can we heal a heart problem if we can’t even ID the patient?
And on the topic of healthcare how do we accomplish contact tracing without complete records? Do you want to risk bumping into unvaccinated RFK?
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Deplatforming is not a stable long-term solution. It’s already a game of whack-a-mole. Cut one head off the hydra, two grow back. And the platforms themselves evolve or get bought by the next zillionaire. We need a more grass roots level of accountability, and that starts with authentication verification. Unique device identifiers are a big step in the right direction. And law enforcement has to follow the law. Just make it illegal for police to use the secure databases. Only federal agencies like CISA and the FBI/DoJ can access.
The red scare is a pretty good example for the US
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.
What was it? Kansas? That literally opened an anonymous report page for people who were trans or supported trans rights? What will they do with that data, is the question. Because they’re definitely not pushing HRT, therapy or counselling via ads.
Well…
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Target once used small amounts of shopping data to accurately predict women were pregnant before they themselves knew.
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A Nebraska PD got data from Facebook to prove a woman had an abortion recently and prosecuted her.
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you don’t know what will become illegal
So, even small amounts of data can predict lots of things about your life. The government has a track record of using that data to prosecute you. And you cannot trust the Government will always align with your morals (assuming it even does right now).
And that doesn’t even consider other entities & organizations in the world.
What if an insurance company wants uses public data about you to deny you coverage? What if someone is searching for people in the area with ideal houses to rob and you’re on vacation? What if they use a deepfake of a loved one to scam you? Steal your identity and ruin your credit? What if they make and sell deepfake porn made of you or a loved one? What if they create meticulously engineered political psyop campaigns hand-tailored to exploit your psychology? What if this list of “what ifs” could go on nearly forever, and some “what ifs” aren’t even things we’re capable of knowing about?
Because that last one is absolutely true, all the rest of those are true for someone, and at least one of them is probably true for you already.
Ok, but what if you don’t care?..well someone else in your life does. And even if they have impeccable data privacy habits, if enough of their friends and family don’t, then they’re just a single missing puzzle piece, and everyone can still see their shape.
Not to mention, you contribute to a pool of data that’s used to perform these kinds of analyses on society at large, meaning you contribute in some part to each and every instance of malicious data use towards anyone, anywhere.
Is that a good enough reason to care?
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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
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.
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.
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
The shift from “You have nothing to hide if you aren’t doing anything illegal” to “It is illegal to criticize us. We will keep an eye on you to make sure you don’t.” can happen a lot faster than people want to realize.
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