
Privacy Protects Bothersome People (2013) - happyscrappy
http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html
======
PythonicAlpha
To make it short: Privacy is about protecting Democracy!

As the newest information, we see that we are not only spied on, but there are
also stealth techniques to mute bothersome people. It can go thus far, that
you will become jailed for something you did not do.

This way, anybody that becomes bothersome to mighty people (and I don't speak
about any president here) can become a target. People that are against atomic
plants or against chemical fertilizers, or against ... you name it.

This thing can become worse to the democratic nations than killing random
people by drones.

~~~
return0
Fact: the worlds biggest and most spectacular privacy-breaching operation is
being run by veritably democratic states, the "west". It's not some evil
dictator who dictates this, it's the majority of citizens who demands spying
on the rest. Another fact is that there are no _major_ (think, ukraine-size)
protests about this anywhere.

My conclusion is that even democracy demands some privacy breach. Privacy may
be protecting individual rights but it's not a prerequisite for democracy.

~~~
pavel_lishin
One could counter-argue by claiming that these are not true democracies.

~~~
return0
The west has the best functioning democracies, unless you can provide better
examples. No true Scotsman.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'm not disagreeing with that, nor am I packing up my bags to move out of the
United States at the moment.

However, "the best we've got right now" is just a local maxima.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
That's something, that makes me shiver, too!

------
onion2k
_privacy is a fundamental right_

The problem here is that there's no such thing as a "fundamental right". All
we have is government and our legal framework; nothing about what we can or
can't do exists outside of that[1]. Philosophers have looked at this many
times[2], and none have managed to come up with a satisfactory definition of
'rights' that works. Consequently all we have to work with when it comes to
saying what we can do, what we have the 'right' to do, and perhaps more
importantly what the government can do, is the law. Really, the problem is
that governments are tasked with limiting their own power over us;
surrendering power is something that very few people are good at.

[1] There's morals and ethics, but that's what you _should_ do rather than
what you _can_ do.

[2] If you're interested, I highly recommend reading about Jeremy Bentham who
wrote about the topic more than 200 years ago:
[http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/#SH5b](http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/#SH5b)

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I am not interested in, what philosophers say or what the government says, or
even what the law books say.

It is just obvious to me, that living together (and that is basically what
laws, governments etc. are all about) is only possible and can last, when some
fundamentals are respected. One of them is privacy (this becomes more and more
obvious in the digital age).

~~~
onion2k
I absolutely agree with you - that's the same society that I want to live in.
The notion of 'rights' won't get us that society though. The only way to get
there is to elect governments that understand what we want, respect what we
want, pass laws to make what we want happen, and ultimately realise that those
laws also apply to what the government itself does.

While people believe that they have privacy by virtue of something outside of
the law and government, they're never actually going to have privacy.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I think, we think similar.

The problem is, that from time to time, people have to stand up for their
rights -- either by voting or by other means -- to change the behavior of
governments.

What did Benjamin Franklin write: "Those who would give up essential Liberty
to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

That is not only an inheritance for governments but also for all societies
that want to be free. Freedom is not something to be inherited or some
"virtue" you have by be born in the right country, but something that must be
fought for in daily practice ... by everybody. Else, we will loose it. And we
in the western countries are at the verge.

------
higherpurpose
Privacy in this case can be replaced with "anonymity", too. The less free
speech a country has, the more important anonymity is. But even in super free
speech-friendly countries anonymity can be important to hide from the
judgement of the masses who might "not get it" because of the status quo
culture or whatever.

Sometimes ideas can take years to develop and make their way into a culture.
If a person is attacked the moment he wants to plant the seed of an idea,
either by the status quo-loving crowd or his or her own government, then
progress will happen much more slowly.

~~~
breakall
The article says that "privacy is a fundamental right".

Are you saying that anonymity is also a fundamental right?

~~~
john_b
Anonymity is a special case of privacy. Privacy is the ability to control how
much you reveal about yourself to others and the circumstances of how you
reveal that information. Anonymity is simply the choice to reveal no
information about your identity.

------
j2kun
Privacy laws also protect the people who don't think about privacy. Those are
the ones most susceptible to being manipulated by people tracking their
activities.

See [http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/26/what-privacy-advocates-get-
wr...](http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/26/what-privacy-advocates-get-wrong/)

------
stillsut
Three letters: IRS.

Based on their whim, your privacy can be completely invaded, and you can be
thrown in jail. This happens ALL the time.

What is the NSA going to do? Bring you ("meddlesome kids") into court based
non-admissable evidence from PRISM? Never heard of it happening once. Please
cite a case if you disagree.

And bothersome people working way outside the law like Deepthroat, LulzSec,
etc. already do take enormous steps to preserve their anonymity in
communications. NSA changes nothing for me.

~~~
codelap
Here is how it can go down, the cops are chasing Bill, because Bill is able to
demonstrate that fracking is causing cancer, and all the politicians knew
about it and were bribed. PRISIM intercepts bill talking to his dealer, and
knows that he will have a small amount of weed on his person for sciatica
because his state doesn't have medical marijuana. Send the cops an "anonymous"
tip, and are instructed to make an example of this guy, and throw the book at
him. Any hard documents are now confiscated as part of the arrest, and the
state simply declares the documents to have been tampered with, but include
sensitive data, so the public will never see it.

~~~
diminoten
Why so convoluted? If we're going to make up completely unsubstantiated
stories, let's go with a simple one.

Bill gets shot in the head because the cop doesn't like him.

The end.

You greatly overestimate how complicated corruption has to be.

~~~
lotsofmangos
Life is often convoluted as much as it is simple, also that story details an
example of parallel construction which is a technique that has been shown to
be in current use, while yours seems more of a description of a movie you saw
while too drunk to be really paying attention.

~~~
diminoten
Do you really need me to link to all the times cops shot people they didn't
like, for no reason other than the cop didn't like that person?

Bad cops shoot people for no reason all the time, relatively speaking, so
_this_ story has plenty of precedence, unlike the above story, which is _pure_
conjecture.

~~~
lotsofmangos
Both stories have plenty of precedence, I just thought the first was perhaps
slightly more illuminating considering the context.

Someone killing someone they don't like, purely because they do not like them,
and then getting away with it because they hold a position of influence or
power of course happens, and is nothing to do really with whether or not
anyone involved is a cop. That situation has been playing out a lot longer
than there have been cops in existence and also has very little to do with the
current discussion.

edit -

also, in the simple version of your story, where 'a cop shoots someone they
don't like, the end', the story is actually too simple to be about corruption.

You need the rest of the story to know if that particular cop is corrupt. As
it stands it is just plain murder.

Now if the cop doesn't then hand themselves in and starts planning on how to
get away with the killing, then you are into corruption, but also the story
gets more convoluted.

~~~
diminoten
Both stories do _not_ have plenty of precedence. The original story is
conjecture - as told, it's never happened. My story (we can add, "and was not
punished in any way", for clarity's sake - I thought that was implied),
however, has happened many, many times.

~~~
lotsofmangos
Both stories as told never happened, the first invents a character who is then
killed to make a point in the second.

Both stories are about things that occur in the real world, however one is
about the subject of privacy and surveillance and one isn't, so given the
thread I think the one on topic is possibly more constructive.

~~~
diminoten
My story actually has happened, multiple times. Happens fairly often, in fact.
During the civil rights movement, all sorts of injustices were _actually_
happening to blacks (not just non-consequential murder), for example.

Yet there are _no_ examples of the story being told in the above comments.
It's literally fiction, and it hurts the conversation.

~~~
codelap
The beauty of the example I provided is it would be almost almost impossible
to prove. Shooting a guy in the head, as opposed to arresting him raises more
questions, and investigations. Your solution is a product of an unskilled
mind. Though the competency of government is weak, the competency of the TLA's
is anything but.

~~~
diminoten
Isn't that convenient for you, then?

~~~
lotsofmangos
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-
idUSBRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-
idUSBRE97409R20130805)

------
basicallydan
This article has been posted before, but I'm glad it's come up again.
Personally, it puts into words something I struggle to put into words myself,
especially when I am trying to argue against massive breaches of privacy by
governments. Thanks for the reminder.

------
Zigurd
This is a good argument, but, by now, the practical good of privacy is stone
cold obvious. The same agencies that rob us of privacy engage in dirty tricks
campaigns against dissidents. As if to prove this point in one neat package.

------
at-fates-hands
I find it interesting people are all for protecting their privacy and against
NSA intrusions, yet the US just handed over millions of people's health
records to a government who clearly doesn't care about their privacy.

I don't understand this logic at all.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I am not so current in US politics. What do you mean?

~~~
at-fates-hands
[http://www.trunews.com/obamacare-law-creates-data-
services-h...](http://www.trunews.com/obamacare-law-creates-data-services-hub-
tracks-social-behavioral-data/)

The federally-run exchanges, euphemistically called “new health insurance
marketplaces,” are accompanied by collection of a wide variety of personal
data, which can now be legally shared numerous faceless government agencies —
agencies which previously had to snoop, steal, or spy to get it. No longer
will any of our intimate medical details be reasonably considered either
private or protected.

To facilitate this forfeiture of individual privacy, the Department of Health
and Human Services has created a massive, comprehensive database to record and
store Americans’ personal information called the Federal Data Services Hub.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the purpose of the
Data Hub is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to federal data” and
“access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-
eligibility information.” No longer will any of our intimate medical details
be reasonably considered either private or protected.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
OK, now I better understand. As I am not an US citizen, I am not affected by
it, but you are right, that this seems to be a scandal of its own. But you
also can see it complementary to all the surveillance stuff. It just seems,
that the Obama gov. does not care to much about the privacy of US people.

I think, this road taken, by the country, that once was the big model for many
countries like the one I live in, is a really bad omen for freedom in the
whole world.

~~~
happyscrappy
>I am not an US citizen, I am not affected by it

Being in Germany, you are already in fully socialized medicine, so any battle
for privacy of health records is already lost.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I don't currently know. The socialized medicine is not the problem. We once
had a system, that the full records where hidden from the health funds. But I
think, recently this principle was weakened -- but not because of "socialized
medicine" but just because of the infamous "electronic health card" \--
governments like to play with new technical gadgets (that bring more costs and
bureaucracy and no gain).

------
analyst74
This sounds less like a complaint about breach of privacy, but more of
complaint about information asymmetry -- where the powerful have access to the
data, while the commoners have not.

An obvious way to level the field is privacy, so that nobody has access to
anybody else's information; another way would be transparency, so it's
difficult for the power to hide their abuse of power.

~~~
nilved
No, that isn't a viable strategy. This Hacker News thread is evidence that
transparency of some kind exists, and that public scrutiny is completely, 100%
inconsequential for the elite.

~~~
cinquemb
Information asymmetry exists as a continuum and less as definitive states.
Say, what if the avg person could boot up an NSA terminal to be able to search
(and everyone know that they are logged in and searching) the database? That,
to me, would seem to be on the other side of the spectrum than it is now, and
I highly doubt that would be 100% inconsequential for the _current_ elite.
Would something like this possibly enable a future elite, possibly (as all
systems seem be good at doing eventually), but at least it will be a change of
the status quo where the few can leverage an information advantage against the
masses.

And if the startup I've founded with a friend and been working on for two
years is any proof of concept of something like that working (yes we are
revenue generating as of a month ago, and growing with plenty of things in the
pipeline), I beg to differ. We have managed to get people who never would have
heard of/or read Hacker News to care (because we made it relevant to their
everyday lives in ways they can see the manifestation of their collective
behaviors these past decades) about mass surveillance/data collection and
acknowledge that as a society if we have collectively let things get to this
point, to think that a roll back of the technical capabilities of
governments/corporations/other organizations through political pandering will
placate, is naive at best. Here's a post I made before the Snowden leaks[0]. I
think about these things everyday, and work on ways to show that the emperor
of mass surveillance is naked for everyone to see if they remove their hands
from their eyes and plugs from their ears because perhaps at the end of the
day, we will only see ourselves in front of the mirror reflecting upon our
individual and collective actions we make everyday.

[0]: [http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-
silent](http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent)

------
dsugarman
if you think about this like an inductive proof, you will see that giving up
privacy to catch 'bad guys' will lead to a very scary Orwellian life for all
of us. I would say most everyone I know does something illegal every day,
certainly all of my friends in NYC jaywalking as a way of life and it is scary
to think of the ways that computer systems can be used to enforce all of the
shitty laws that serve no real purpose. Red light cameras for example are
proven to cause more accidents than they prevent but they pay the bills.

------
falconfunction
a box filled with rocks does not need locks

~~~
jmnicolas
You might reconsider your statement if said rocks are diamonds ...

------
tribe2012
I agree that privacy is a fundamental right. However, has anyone thought about
how we haven't seen any real terrorist attacks in the past decade? There are
people out there wanting to hurt the US. And it's not difficult to do. It
really isn't. Clearly the NSA is doing something right.

Like I said, I wholeheartedly agree that privacy is a fundamental right. But,
I would like to see more people acknowledging the flip side of the argument.

~~~
amirmc
> _" Clearly the NSA is doing something right."_

Unfortunately, there's no way to independently verify this statement. Only
those inside the security apparatus have any data to examine this but they
have a clear incentive to make themselves look indispensable (and indeed, get
more funding).

~~~
tribe2012
Poor choice of words. What I'm saying is that there have undoubtedly been
thwarted terrorist attacks. I would like more transparency from the government
on what led to those. That way, we can at least have an intelligent debate.

~~~
bediger4000
I don't think anyone has cited specific cases of thwarting terrorist attacks.
There's been quotes about some number (52?) of terrorist attacks thwarted, but
so what? Which ones?

I agree that more transparency is necessary, and that we must have an
intelligent debate, leading, ultimately to dismantling the current mass-
surveillance apparatus. But I disagree about the "undoubtedly" part. If you'd
said "maybe" I might have agreed, but there's just no evidence. There is
evidence of abuses, but no evidence of successes.

~~~
insuffi
It was later dropped to 13, and then to 0. SIGINT does not work.

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140111/22360125843/nsa-
go...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140111/22360125843/nsa-goes-saying-
bulk-metadata-collection-saves-lives-to-prevented-54-attacks-to-well-its-nice-
insurance-policy.shtml)

