Re: [PLUG] Webroot

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 2:39 PM, Thomas Delrue <delrue.thomas@gmail.com> wrote:
> On April 27, 2017 7:38:09 PM GMT+02:00, "Keith C. Perry" <kperry@daotechnologies.com> wrote:
>>LOL, I think I'm going to have to start doing that too Tom :D
>
> When you put the problem in that phrasing,  people seem a little more 'receptive' for the idea of privacy
> because now they have to defend why they don't (and they really don't) want to give you the passwords
> to their accounts  (include social media for better effect) without using any argument in favor of privacy.
> As you can tell, they don't succeed very often...
>
> It's super effective!
>

About as effective as climate change denial, IMO.

At no point did I say that I didn't need privacy.  At no point did I
say that we shouldn't have privacy.

My argument was that as time goes on we simply won't have privacy, and
there is nothing we can do to change it.

I'm not under the impression that I have nothing to hide.  I have
plenty to hide.  However, as time goes on I doubt I'll be able to hide
much of anything.

Again, this is like debating the morality of trading mp3 files in a
world where any 7-year-old can trade mp3 files with near-impunity.  It
is a purely academic argument that has no bearing on what happens in
the real world.

And I closed by saying that society is going to need to adapt.  Right
now if any of us divulged everything we do in private it would
probably hurt our careers, and possibly some of our close
relationships.  At some point in the future we won't be given any
choice in the matter, which means that everybody either needs to live
like perfect saints, or they need to accept that we don't always
behave the way others might prefer that we behave.

Sure, in the short term we can pass laws to try to put the genie back
in the bottle, and in the short term they'll work.  RIght now it is
only really big companies that have the ability to aggregate all this
information.  Once upon a time it was thought that shutting down
Napster would stop mp3 trading.

However, privacy is about controlling the flow of information, just as
copyright is about controlling the flow of information.  Right now
your personal info is in a limited number of very large databases.  As
the cost of data storage goes down it will become easier and easier to
distribute.  When anybody with a camera and a Pi can point a camera
out the window and log every face and car that drives by and upload
the info to a distributed database, and there is such a logger on
every street corner, we'll have the same situation but with no big
company to regulate.  They might also wear such a device and just
continuously log everything they see all day.  The technology isn't
quite there for this to happen, but there is no reason to think that
this day won't come.

Why would people want to do that?  This is like asking why do people
have hard drives full of 3TB of mp3 files when they only listen to
<0.01% of them?  They'll do it because they can, and because it costs
them next to nothing.

I don't think it will be an entirely negative thing either.  Sure, bad
things happen when you give up your privacy today, but this is because
most people are hypocrites who are happy to collectively punish
somebody for something they themselves do.  That simply won't be
sustainable in a world where everybody needs to be punished.  However,
I don't doubt that the change will not come easily.

So, by all means demand privacy today.  You might get a little of it.
However, I think the very nature of technology makes this a losing
battle.  Maybe it shouldn't be, but it will be so all the same.

--
Rich
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