Who cares though? I ask this elsewhere here too, so apologies if I am being redundant.
Everything tracks me. My phone, every neighbors camera pointing out toward the street, the eyes in the sky, office buildings, grocery stores.
I don’t care though, because I am no one. It’s such a non problem or issue for my day to day, and I couldn’t imagine choosing my car over something like this.
However, on HN, I constantly see this privacy obsession in comments. What are you all up to that you care so much? Where’s the paranoia coming from?
That’s not what I am saying, actually. I think tracking should be illegal. But I don’t live in a fantasy world. My point was that in our real world, where everything already tracks me, who cares?
>That’s not what I am saying, actually. I think tracking should be illegal. But I don’t live in a fantasy world. My point was that in our real world, where everything already tracks me, who cares?
I do. I'm not a secretive person (in fact, should we meet down the pub, I'll probably tell you way more about me than you want to know), but I am a private person. That is to say that I don't hide who I am or what I do/say/think, but I want it to be my choice as to whom I share such information.
Or, to be more concise: My business is my business, not anyone else's.
Pervasive tracking is incredibly annoying. And while I do some things to protect my privacy (custom android roms, ad/tracker blockers, both local and network-based, disable GPS/location services on my phone, aggressively manage cookies and a raft of other things I either do or don't do to minimize leakage of my life), I have to put up with some tracking (my cellular provider needs to track my phone or they can't connect calls, deliver data, etc.) because I'm not interested in squatting in a lean-to out in the woods somewhere.
But that doesn't mean I have to like it or, more to your point, not care about it.
Also even if tracking you is of no special interest to anyone and you personally do not mind there will still be people who affect you where those things will certainly not be true. You have elected representatives with the power to make laws that can profoundly affect you. There are professionals like doctors and engineers and law enforcement officers whose professional conduct and judgement are matters of public safety. There are investigative journalists who provide important checks on the power of others in our society. There are whistleblowers who might become vital sources for any of the above to do their work based on good information. None of these people should be subject to inappropriate influence and any intrusion into their privacy compromises that.
Do you close the door in public restrooms? I mean, we’re all human, we know what you’re doing in there, but you might just prefer to have some privacy anyhow.
Some of us feel the same way about our digital interactions.
For me, it’s partially about being uncomfortable with faceless individuals and companies profiting off information about me in an extremely opaque way.
It’s also about feeling that there’s no chain-of-custody regarding that sort of data. It gets dispersed and could seemingly end up anywhere, and at any point in the future in perpetuity.
I think it’s natural for people who are inclined to visit this site to have a greater interest in tech-related privacy than people who don’t visit. Particularly when you have a greater level of awareness when it comes to just how invasive many tech companies are, and how willing they are to sell your data.
You'll care when the political winds shift in your country and your leaders don't like people of your race, religion, or sexual orientation, or perhaps one of your leisure activities, like the kinds of books you read or email newsletters you subscribe to. Meanwhile, there's all this data floating around that "proves" you the kind of person they don't like.
And everyone seems to think this could never happen to them, until it does.
Even if you are squeaky clean, the data on you could have errors, and your government -- with the best of intentions, even -- could misinterpret the data in ways that could cause you a lot of trouble. This isn't even a "what if?" type scenario; this sort of thing already happens to people.
Edit: your top-level comment got flagged and killed, but I vouched it back to life. I completely disagree with your views here, but I think it's valuable and important that we talk about things like this.
When you run for office and realize the party in power knows literally everything about you, and is using it to find dirt on you (and they're free to take all they find out of context), and target you for legal investigations, play six degrees of Kevin Bacon to link you to child molesters, and countless other dirty tricky you didn't even know existed, while you and your upstart new party know next to nothing about your opponents in power.
To understand why some people care, I think it's useful to separate immediate real-life concerns, and more abstract, larger picture concerns. As an individual with limited energy, empathy, and frankly a finite lifespan, caring about this constantly is probably not productive, or healthy. This changes when we're talking about where the world is going, how different societies compare, in time or in different places. Then suddenly larger concerns like the general erosion of privacy, the global change in climate, and the rise and acceptance of extremist ideologies make sense.
Everything tracks me. My phone, every neighbors camera pointing out toward the street, the eyes in the sky, office buildings, grocery stores.
I don’t care though, because I am no one. It’s such a non problem or issue for my day to day, and I couldn’t imagine choosing my car over something like this.
However, on HN, I constantly see this privacy obsession in comments. What are you all up to that you care so much? Where’s the paranoia coming from?