3w ago

Privacy is Power

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The first part is true. Why would you want corporations knowing about you. But the government part doesn't make sense. Why should your data be kept from the government? The government is the one organization I trust with my data because they hold records on every single citizen and have no monetary incentive to sell or misuse it.
My data in this case being stuff like Name, Address, workplace, family, medical history, employment history, friends.
Stuff I wouldn't want the government knowing would be my hobbies, my chatlogs, my search history. If they want that they should get a warrant.
I'm OK with the government buying/collecting and using stuff like location data if it's anonymized. I understand this stuff is needed to see general trends in the population and plan accordingly.
- What she is talking about is the data the Chinese government collects about its people like where you go when, who you meet, what you buy, what you talk about, who you're friends with, if you are pregnant or not, etc.
  
  Or what the NSA collects about Americans... like where you go when, who you meet, what you buy, what you talk about, who you're friends with, if you are pregnant or not, etc.
  
  It's what decisions are made with that data that's the concern. A lot of "privacy advocates" believe that society can exist with the government not knowing anything about their population. I can't think how:
  a transport service can operate without knowing where people go and when
  consumer advocacy can work without knowing what people will buy
  what needs to be addressed in society without knowing what the issues are
  what to educate people on unless you find out what they don't know
  a health service can adapt to the needs of aging populations without good fertility data
  You're right, all this data can be used against someone for malicious reasons and like in the China example it's easier to locate dissonance by listening. But evil can be done without data collection, it's impossible to do good without it.
  
  You don't need personalized data to do those things. You can just count how many people use the bus instead of checking for every person where they are going when and why.
  
  I agree that aggregate data is the best way to improve things for the most number of people, you can't help every single person, but also knowing the edge cases helps you find out things you don't know.
  
  Thanks for providing context I probably should have checked to see what she was referring to.
  
  The duch have a specific data set they hoped not to have collected. They collected everyone's religion.
  So when the Nazis came it was especially easy to find all the Jews in the Netherlands. In other countries they had to collect that data first.
  
  Yea but I don't blame the Dutch for collecting that data since it was the Germans going door to door looking for jews. They did that because they wanted to not because they had the data to do it.
- What about when a government decides that you must wear a special armband for being Jewish or Roma or gay?
  
  How is that relevant?
  
  That's typically the argument regarding being apprehensive about the government knowing your medical & family history; there's historical precedent of governments making very not good laws based on those.
  Before WW2, the nazis basically outlawed being Jewish or Roma. A more recent example would be outlawing being gay or trans in some countries
  
  I'd argue there's a much bigger historical precedent or governments not abusing that information and instead using that info to make informed policy decisions.
  If your government does that you have bigger problems than personal privacy and data collection.
  
  I do agree with you on that. I think it's worth considering but it's not inherently decisive
- The government is the one organization I trust with my data because they hold records on every single citizen and have no monetary incentive to sell or misuse it.
  My government buys my raw fucking web traffic from my service provider.

48 comments