
The Future of Privacy - wrongc0ntinent
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/opinion/the-future-of-privacy.html?_r=0
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PeterWhittaker
As a security consultant who does a lot of privacy work, I found this article
quite interesting (not enough depth for my liking, but interesting
nonetheless).

That it has been flagged due to the one-week political hiatus is exactly the
sort of thing I feared would happen when the hiatus was announced. I don't
wish to debate the reasons for the hiatus itself, there are arguments on all
sides to which I am sympathetic, both intellectually and viscerally.

What should be open to debate, however, is a matter of definition: What is
(what are) politics? What constitutes a political topic?

The hiatus was announced without a sufficiently clear operational definition,
IMHO. (It's a bit like the old arguments against pornography/obscenity: _I
cannot define it but I know it when I see it_.)

I come to HN for interesting articles of appeal both intellectual and
professional. Even with its echo chamber and nuclear downvoting, HN is still
has the best signal-to-noise and highest value of any news aggregator I've
checked. Since my work involves the intersection of security, policy, privacy,
and governance, articles such as these are welcome in my feed.

Without a clearer definition politics, all we need is for someone who works
outside a particular field deemed largely non-technical to assert that a post
is political, and BAM! it's gone.

Like this one might end up being, despite the fact that fundamentally privacy
is major unsolved issue of our technical era, an issue that has exacerbated by
the very technology embraced by the bulk of us here on HN: This technology
makes it possible to expose and share private information, whether as a direct
and desirable effect (photo sharing) or as an indirect and undesirable effect
(vulnerabilities and the like).

There are business opportunities here (privacy-protective services and
systems) and there are stones to throw and derision to cast, for companies
that services that fail to take privacy and security seriously.

That such a topic can run afoul of a loosely-defined hiatus is to me very
unfortunate, a sad if not terrible side-effect of a well-intentioned but
ultimately poorly defined decision.

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idlewords
This political story does not belong on HN.

~~~
pclstyle
out of curiosity, since you seem to be a veteran to HN – what makes this a
"political story"?

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DanBC
idlewords is trolling.

~~~
idlewords
That's a personal attack.

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futureproofd
This reminds me of a piece he wrote titled "A dead man sings", also about
memory and how it is recorded.

~~~
wrongc0ntinent
Thanks, that was great. Found on his blog
[http://williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com/2003_01_01_archive.htm...](http://williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com/2003_01_01_archive.html#90255352)

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zzzzzzzzzman
I'm literally shaking. We can't let this keep happening on HN.

~~~
dang
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments here.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13118430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13118430)
and marked it off-topic.

