Am I weird for not understanding privacy?

[Duronos]

I think it's time we develop better technology that can block that kind of accessing, amirite?

[Deleted]

I'm all for privacy, I don't think privacy should be violated unless there is just cause.

What I do find amusing is that the people who seem to be bitching the most about the various NSA data mining programs are the same people posting every 5 minutes of their life on facebook.

Not everyone is. But what does it matter anyway? There is a difference between choosing to share something with the world and being spied upon, a huge difference.

[Deleted]

Information is power ... and I don't care how cheesy that sounds.
If someone were to know ALL the things I've looked up and written on the internet, I would
be ... destroyed, simple as that.

[Balazaar]

This is why you should be concerned ...

Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. To think if people in power won't be tempted to use a vast storehouse of information about you for, shall we say, less than noble purposes is quite naive.

Then there's this little hypothetical gem, which can demonstrate why you should care...

Let's say in your past sometime you looked at a bunch of porn, or maybe you did some research on the subject of child pornography. Then one day you are falsely accused of being inappropriate with a minor. They then pull out what you have done in the past and use it to prove their case against you. Don't think it could happen? Think again.

You simply do not want to cede control of information to those in power. The chances it will end well aren't good. Yes, it might not affect you, but one never knows.

[Deleted]

Information is power ... and I don't care how cheesy that sounds.
If someone were to know ALL the things I've looked up and written on the internet, I would
be ... destroyed, simple as that.

Yea, that would be interesting.. but in my case I doubt it would do anyone any good as I basically just Google completely random stuff all the time. Ranging from funny lines from TV shows to "do muslim women have pink beards", "orcish ballerinas and their relation to allah" and basically whatever comes to mind:P So if anyone was spying, theyd just get a lot of random nonsense.

[Sunseeker]

The problem with any sort of monitoring is that it preents only a partial picture. The govnerment, like anyone else must use their wits to connect the dots to form a complete picture. Does a snapshot of you smacking your kid on the bum mean you're abusive, or a good parent? Does a visit to a child porn site mean you're into it, or that your browser got hijacked? Does making a joke about a school shooting mean you're a violent maniac, or just that you're a tasteless asshole?

The government must do (hopefully) its best to connect the dots between those instances and the other information they've gathered. Common sense would suggest that many repeated events indicates a certain pattern, but even so there are just as often the "quiet ones" where there are few to no indications of danger. How does the government discern between them and the people with repeated patterns of potentially dangerous behaviour?

My issue with the whole thing is that there's too much data to reasonably handle, its too easy for a suspicous pattern to be little more than a red herring. Massive monitoring is best for detecting general trends, but is worthless in comparison to "on the ground" detective work. Which is still going to be required anyway to ascertain if patterns represent practice or real potential.

Privacy is useful and necessary for a number of reasons. That doesn't mean a society can't function without it, but those societies are founded on the idea that everything, from everyone is out in the open, from leader to lackey. Part of the problem is that the govnernment wants to be able to know your private data, but in turn prevents its own data from being public. You can't have a system where information is a one way street.

[chocobo606]

Just because something doesn't effect you or you think it doesn't, doesn't exactly mean that it shouldn't matter or that you shouldn't care. The majority of regular people in the world have nothing to hide, so does that mean your right to choose whether or not you want that information to be browsed should not matter?

And as crazy as it might seem, this is where this type of thing starts. The governments have wanted nothing more than to police the internet, and now they can police your privacy. If you live in the US, there's secret courts for secret laws, because that's what democracy is. Secrets, lies and corruption. All for the greater good of the people. you're more than welcome to not care, shake it off and call it all no big deal, most people's lives probably feel comfortable and they don't want to think things like this actually have any meaning, and believe me they know that. But like I said, this is where it starts and you have no idea how these things can be abused in the future.

[Simca]

Privacy is important while you're in private. If you're out in public and and you do ridiculous things, somebody will get a picture on their cell phone or something, and that is and should be fine. If you post something stupid about yourself on Facebook, it is and should be fine for people to pick up on that too.

Metadata collection is legal and should remain legal. If you put all your information on Facebook, it should be perfectly legal for the government and anyone else running a database to put that information in said database and file it away for socio-economic statistics, criminal matching, or scientific/medical analysis.

The biggest issue I have is the privacy nuts who take it to ridiculous levels and believe that things like metadata collection is going too far. It's fine. I can't really remotely sympathize with people who don't think it is fine because it doesn't make any sense.

- - - Updated - - -

Way to miss the point completely. How about you start showing the whole forum your texts then?

Humans are not reading your data as it comes in. The amount of employees needed to do that would be literally mind-boggling.

I don't have a problem with computers analyzing my text messages and looking for the phrase 'bomb' or whatever, but I can understand why some people do. However, the "AMGRWD THEY'RE READING MY STUFFS" argument is not an argument I would consider valid - it's just paranoia.

The best argument about higher forms of data collection (collecting text messages, email contents, phone call transcripts/recordings, and other things beyond metadata) is ironically the whole 'knowledge is power' thing. The problem isn't that the knowledge/power they get will be directly abused in any of the fashions most people are mentioning here (contacting friends/employers, political scandals, false trials, etc.), at least not at first; the problem is that the data the government collects could be used to gain a very high level of sociological/psychological understanding of the citizens of the country.

Humans are very predictable, but sociologists and psychologists still have a massive amount of work to do purely because they don't have the level of information required to test and advance their theories. A high-level data collection system run by the federal government has the opportunity to gain an unprecedented level of access to raw statistical data that is mostly unbiased, and that is the true danger in my opinion. The government has no obligation to share this data with the public scientific community (and in fact, probably would receive a massive amount of hate from privacy nuts if they did, which is ironic because they'd be screwing themselves over so badly), which means that the knowledge of human behavior that they gain can be used to manipulate the population far more effectively than ever before.

I think the mass media today is bad for their campaigns of misinformation and misdirection (mostly through their ignorance or for ratings, but still), but if the government had 30-40 sociologists and psychologists with access to the high-level NSA data for a couple of decades while the public remained ignorant and was not allowed to use it, that could be a true nightmare scenario.

[OzoAndIndi]

I guess it's a little like this.. imagine you're around the age of 16 and your parent is hanging over your shoulder nosing into everything you're doing.

Personally I don't really care all that much if they looked at stupid stuff, I don't really have much of anything to hide so they won't find much of interest. Now personal stuff like financial info, health and insurance info, shopping habits, personal phone calls that I wouldn't even have in a room with family present, etc., that would be another matter.

[Seme]

The thing about rights and privacy is that they are very easy to lose but near impossible to get back. In many cases they can be gone before we know it. It's all well and good claiming that you have nothing to hide or you trust the current government to do the right thing, but can you honestly say that you trust the governments in 10, 20, 50 years times to still be doing the right thing (bearing in mind that the 'right' thing is always a matter of perspective). We've no idea whats being collected, what it's being used for and what it can potential be used for in years to come.

Put it this way. It's not about what you personally do now and what kind of porn you watch. It's about who could do what terrible things once the technological possibility is there and society is numb and oblivious enough?

The problem is that a lot of you guys are saying "I don't have anything to hide" or "I'm not doing anything wrong". But can you really guarantee that? And can you guarantee that it's never gonna change? Having some awareness and critical responsibility is just part of being an educated adult, and being able to dial into the greater scope of things every once in a while - beyond your usual everyday routine with your entertainment, porn and hanging out with your friends - is what's supposed to be one of the benefits in living in a developed western world.

The thing with surveillance is that you don't know who uses it for what. And that should be enough to make you vigilant, honestly. Once a system is in place, it can and will be misused. Maybe not by your current goverment, but perhaps by the next one. Perhaps by the one you didn't vote for or don't approve of. And you just can't know what's gonna be right and wrong in future goverments and societies. Never had history lessons?

Fact is, we're living in times where social climates are freezing up right now, while political conflicts are heating up. It's perfect breeding ground for all kinds of restrictive and questionable mindsets and legislative ideas. Look around - America has definitely taken some highly dubious turns with their home affairs in the last 15 years, and Europe is no different. You'd have to be completely ignorant to not be aware of that. Things develop slowly, creepingly, but there is a trend.

There's a whole lot of ground between the unsuspecting village idiot and the tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.

Also, on a more personal note: the seemingly complete loss of sense for personal privacy and intimacy some people display is rather disturbing.

+1 for you, this is all spot on.

[Citizen T]

See I can understand this but I don't see how it would wind up in the hands of any future employer that seems fairly illegal.

You mean sort of like the recent IRS screwup where they posted thousands of peoples personal information including social security number online? Nah, no one else could ever access any of the data that the government collected on you.

[phenix]

Ive never really understood why ppl think that any modern communication device are private. Just because a 'terminal' (pc, phone, etc) is in your house, doesnt mean it doesnt leave your private property to connect to another person private property...ie. it passes through a 'public domain' (virtual or not).


For whatever reason i always remember a story where some peeping tom was looking through someone's window and they got arrested but the court overthrew the arrest because he was watching from the street...a public domain. Same thing with taking a picture of a private property from a public property is perfectly legal.

[Batix]

It goes WAY beyond monitoring internet activity.

Do you have a webcam? Cover it up or unplug it when you aren't using it. They can tap into it and WATCH you. Without the indicator light coming on.
Do you have a smartphone? Guess what? Same thing goes. The camera can be accessed. Your bank apps can be accessed. Your insurance apps can be accessed. And of course, your phone calls can be listened to.

I can go on and on here. There are many, many reasons why it is wrong.

[pocky_rin]

I'm not American but the way I see it is:

One -employers, you don't want them to be able to see and judge your entire life history, they really don't need to know you got pissed drunk in college and got tied to a lamp-post. It doesn't matter, as long as you have moved on and are a different person that won't get drunk at work. As long as you are currently a professional person in search of a job, it shouldn't be an issue what you got up to in your crazy days.

Two - information being stolen for marketing purposes. I really dislike when companies steal your information and then try to tailor the spam mail and emails to sell you products you might be interested in. I'm sure at some point someone has discovered something cool suggested by this but usually all it amounts to is unsolicited unwanted spam.

Three - The ability to get a second chance and reinvent yourself. Now that everyone has a webcam and children are on the internet making youtube videos, it would be better if they could get a chance to reinvent themselves as adults and not be forever known as the kid that made edgy vampire poetry or an eye of the spider minecraft song. Think back to some of the cringeworthy things you did as a young teenager, would you really want everyone to be able to find them in under a minute?

You can also apply three to anyone that has ever made a hateful comment towards minority groups as a person with no knowledge of said groups. Then when they grow up a little they might realize the error of their ways and feel ashamed about their past behavior. Like the members of the christian group at the gay pride parade who held up signs saying, " I judged and hated you before but I know now I was wrong, I'm sorry."

Four - Intimacy. There are some things that you have the right to say to one person and not have anyone else find out about. Like sexts or body pics for example, it would be nice to be able to do something naughty to make your loved one feel special without feeling that other people would find out about it.

[Deffry]

The fact, that you are using Internet and telephone just for entertainment does not mean, that every one does so. I am using it for my job. If someone is able to compromise the act of spying, there is also possibility of gathered data being compromised. If someone in private sector would be able to buy my data or comunication, he would be able to destroy lot of my bussiness . And this is not only one problem people can have.