> The distinction between ‘legitimately’ public information and private information is less important than often thought. The most obvious examples here are related to the internet- if I posted raunchy photos of myself on Facebook publicly ten years ago, it’s still a privacy breach if someone goes out of their way to find that and use it against me. We have the right to use the internet freely without being transformed into public figures.
This is the weakest part of the article, IMO. Phrases like ‘less important’, ‘use against me’ and ‘use the internet’ are doing a lot of the heavy lifting while being too abstract. Important for what purpose? Use against me how? Use the internet how?
The last one is what doesn’t sit right with me. I find something wrong about the idea of demanding all of the benefits and none of the consequences of an action. If by ‘use the internet’ we mean to wilfully make some private information public and not bother to take steps securing it back, the burden of the consequences of said publicity cannot be simply shrugged off. To say nothing about how something like this would even be enforced justifiably. If I choose to colour my house bright pink, others are allowed to use that information to build my character in their minds.
But then again, Google Maps allows you to blur your house front in Street View, so maybe there’s something there. Certainly a discussion to be had.
> “Permission”, even if given in the light of full understanding, means very little when it is extracted from you through unequal bargaining power- e.g., employer-employee relations.
This part seems wrong to me. There's a huge difference between "choosing to work an unpleasant job for money" and "being forced into slavery where they also give me some money". Requiring consent creates a lower bound on how bad the thing can be for the person, since if it's worse than their other options, they'll choose to do something else.
Society of course should work to provide people with more alternative options to raise the overall "quality of life" bar, but the key is that we should be providing people with *more* choices, not fewer. Trying to fix exploitative jobs by banning exploitative jobs is like trying to fix expensive housing by banning expensive housing.
Unfortunately, we are not able to hold true privacy. To live in a society one has to give away their total freedom and settle for civilian freedom. The same applies to privacy.
I think this is poorly thought out and lives only off your recent experience. If you post on facebook about your bad breakup, and a prospective partner reads it, concludes youre too much drama, and doesnt give you a chance - is that a privacy issue? If not, you have to guard who youre friends with on facebook. And if the people who read it talk about it with someone else who then judges you, is that a problem? Is it bad to ask a mutual aquaintance about you? Absent an extremely clear line of who is supposed to know something - like there can easily appear to be when thinking about only a single context - its not clear how to enact your demands.
While at the topic of employer snooping though... I do wonder if some will reject people for being too guarded in their online presentation? That seems like the next logical step. Ultimately, expecting people to trust you if you might have "remade yourself" 3 months ago just isnt realistic.
>As Graukroger argues, part of the purpose of privacy is to protect people who engage in wrongdoing. This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Life is very long, how many of us could stand the scrutiny of all our deeds? Even if you have something to hide, you shouldn’t necessarily have something to fear.
Are you familiar with the Rationalist blackmail discourse? Attached a leftists "pro" take. Im very much "anti", but the argument of this bullet point doesnt seem straightforwardly true.
I don't buy the argument that because X is a matter of degree we cannot culturally and legally regulate. We can't, and shouldn't stop X's prospective partner from reading their status updates, we can and should stop X's prospective employer hiring a private detective. True, there is a smoothish gradient between these things, but this is fine. The law regulates stalking, but doesn't regulate going to a friend's favourite spot in the hope of running into them, between these things there is a smooth gradient and that can sometimes make law difficult, but it doesn't make law impossible. Careful regulations can provide defence in depth for privacy.
Some strategies that have been developed in this regard: 1. Right to be forgotten laws re: search engines etc. 2. Making content past a certain age unsearchable by default on Social media sites. We're not just limited to acting on the supply side either, we can also 3. Regulate the ways in which prospective employers can seek information about potential hires. Stopping hiring managers from putting someone's name into Google is obviously never going to happen, nor should it, but there's plenty of more intrusive things that can and should be banned. The fact that unreasonable sleuthing fades into reasonable information seeking is a problem for regulation, but not a fatal one.
>I don't buy the argument that because X is a matter of degree we cannot culturally and legally regulate.
Its not about the degree. Youve said that what makes privacy violations bad is your data being used against you - the power imbalance stuff makes no sense isolated from that. And you havent articulated what makes it ok to use your data against you in village-like contexts, or even really said that it is.
>The fact that unreasonable sleuthing fades into reasonable information seeking is a problem for regulation, but not a fatal one.
Unreasonable in a factual sense, where the worry is that the seeker overvalues the information, or in a normative sense where your interests conflict and you ought to win?
Invading people's privacy and using the information against them when you have power over them is what is bad **for the individual** about privacy breaches yes. In some cases, of course, it will be justified at the level of social welfare rather than individual welfare, but setting up a balance test for that is beyond this article, the purpose of which is to, among other things, challenge people's sense of what the harms of privacy are to the individual, and move from looking at them in the context of abstract privacy rights, to the way bad things happen to individuals in concrete terms. I'm not claiming that all uses of information gained through privacy invasion against you by someone who holds power over you are *bad*, although they very often are, I'm claiming that this is the primary mechanism by which privacy invasion harms the subject of the invasion- and that the focus on abstract 'rights' against privacy invasion often subtract from considering concrete implications.
Regulating or not regulating will absolutely be a matter of degree. If I did outline a balancing test, roughly it would look like:
Regulate if:
[(Losses of privacy invasion for the individual)-(costs of regulation)]>(net gains or losses of privacy invasion for society)
I don't think it is okay a lot of the time to use data against people, gained through privacy invasion, in village like context. But again It's not my purpose in this essay to outline when privacy breaches are permissible.
>Invading people's privacy and using the information against them when you have power over them is what is bad **for the individual** about privacy breaches yes.
You have an account for gradualism about the harm justifies banning, but what is an "invasion of privacy"? For example, if you prospective employer called your old boss about you, I guess you would object to that - but then, is asking people about you an invasion of privacy *qua method of gaining information*, even in normal social contexts (even if it good on net or not worth regulating)?
I interpreted your post as saying that these sorts of questions are a distraction and we should just focus on the harm - but now, you do seem to need it back.
>Regulate if:
>[(Losses of privacy invasion for the individual)-(costs of regulation)]>(net gains or losses of privacy invasion for society)
>I don't think it is okay a lot of the time to use data against people, gained through privacy invasion, in village like context.
These utilitarian standards are always a bit slippery in discussion, so I cant really prove this, but it seems to me that your standard would consider a lot of ordinary village-style things a violation of privacy, where most people would not, and therefore is not a good account of what the concerns with privacy are about.
> The distinction between ‘legitimately’ public information and private information is less important than often thought. The most obvious examples here are related to the internet- if I posted raunchy photos of myself on Facebook publicly ten years ago, it’s still a privacy breach if someone goes out of their way to find that and use it against me. We have the right to use the internet freely without being transformed into public figures.
This is the weakest part of the article, IMO. Phrases like ‘less important’, ‘use against me’ and ‘use the internet’ are doing a lot of the heavy lifting while being too abstract. Important for what purpose? Use against me how? Use the internet how?
The last one is what doesn’t sit right with me. I find something wrong about the idea of demanding all of the benefits and none of the consequences of an action. If by ‘use the internet’ we mean to wilfully make some private information public and not bother to take steps securing it back, the burden of the consequences of said publicity cannot be simply shrugged off. To say nothing about how something like this would even be enforced justifiably. If I choose to colour my house bright pink, others are allowed to use that information to build my character in their minds.
But then again, Google Maps allows you to blur your house front in Street View, so maybe there’s something there. Certainly a discussion to be had.
> “Permission”, even if given in the light of full understanding, means very little when it is extracted from you through unequal bargaining power- e.g., employer-employee relations.
This part seems wrong to me. There's a huge difference between "choosing to work an unpleasant job for money" and "being forced into slavery where they also give me some money". Requiring consent creates a lower bound on how bad the thing can be for the person, since if it's worse than their other options, they'll choose to do something else.
Society of course should work to provide people with more alternative options to raise the overall "quality of life" bar, but the key is that we should be providing people with *more* choices, not fewer. Trying to fix exploitative jobs by banning exploitative jobs is like trying to fix expensive housing by banning expensive housing.
Unfortunately, we are not able to hold true privacy. To live in a society one has to give away their total freedom and settle for civilian freedom. The same applies to privacy.
And now Ferdinand Waldo Demara can never again exist.
I think this is poorly thought out and lives only off your recent experience. If you post on facebook about your bad breakup, and a prospective partner reads it, concludes youre too much drama, and doesnt give you a chance - is that a privacy issue? If not, you have to guard who youre friends with on facebook. And if the people who read it talk about it with someone else who then judges you, is that a problem? Is it bad to ask a mutual aquaintance about you? Absent an extremely clear line of who is supposed to know something - like there can easily appear to be when thinking about only a single context - its not clear how to enact your demands.
While at the topic of employer snooping though... I do wonder if some will reject people for being too guarded in their online presentation? That seems like the next logical step. Ultimately, expecting people to trust you if you might have "remade yourself" 3 months ago just isnt realistic.
>As Graukroger argues, part of the purpose of privacy is to protect people who engage in wrongdoing. This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Life is very long, how many of us could stand the scrutiny of all our deeds? Even if you have something to hide, you shouldn’t necessarily have something to fear.
Are you familiar with the Rationalist blackmail discourse? Attached a leftists "pro" take. Im very much "anti", but the argument of this bullet point doesnt seem straightforwardly true.
http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/blackmailers-are-privateers-in-the-war-on-hypocrisy/
I don't buy the argument that because X is a matter of degree we cannot culturally and legally regulate. We can't, and shouldn't stop X's prospective partner from reading their status updates, we can and should stop X's prospective employer hiring a private detective. True, there is a smoothish gradient between these things, but this is fine. The law regulates stalking, but doesn't regulate going to a friend's favourite spot in the hope of running into them, between these things there is a smooth gradient and that can sometimes make law difficult, but it doesn't make law impossible. Careful regulations can provide defence in depth for privacy.
Some strategies that have been developed in this regard: 1. Right to be forgotten laws re: search engines etc. 2. Making content past a certain age unsearchable by default on Social media sites. We're not just limited to acting on the supply side either, we can also 3. Regulate the ways in which prospective employers can seek information about potential hires. Stopping hiring managers from putting someone's name into Google is obviously never going to happen, nor should it, but there's plenty of more intrusive things that can and should be banned. The fact that unreasonable sleuthing fades into reasonable information seeking is a problem for regulation, but not a fatal one.
>I don't buy the argument that because X is a matter of degree we cannot culturally and legally regulate.
Its not about the degree. Youve said that what makes privacy violations bad is your data being used against you - the power imbalance stuff makes no sense isolated from that. And you havent articulated what makes it ok to use your data against you in village-like contexts, or even really said that it is.
>The fact that unreasonable sleuthing fades into reasonable information seeking is a problem for regulation, but not a fatal one.
Unreasonable in a factual sense, where the worry is that the seeker overvalues the information, or in a normative sense where your interests conflict and you ought to win?
Invading people's privacy and using the information against them when you have power over them is what is bad **for the individual** about privacy breaches yes. In some cases, of course, it will be justified at the level of social welfare rather than individual welfare, but setting up a balance test for that is beyond this article, the purpose of which is to, among other things, challenge people's sense of what the harms of privacy are to the individual, and move from looking at them in the context of abstract privacy rights, to the way bad things happen to individuals in concrete terms. I'm not claiming that all uses of information gained through privacy invasion against you by someone who holds power over you are *bad*, although they very often are, I'm claiming that this is the primary mechanism by which privacy invasion harms the subject of the invasion- and that the focus on abstract 'rights' against privacy invasion often subtract from considering concrete implications.
Regulating or not regulating will absolutely be a matter of degree. If I did outline a balancing test, roughly it would look like:
Regulate if:
[(Losses of privacy invasion for the individual)-(costs of regulation)]>(net gains or losses of privacy invasion for society)
I don't think it is okay a lot of the time to use data against people, gained through privacy invasion, in village like context. But again It's not my purpose in this essay to outline when privacy breaches are permissible.
In answer to your second question, normative.
>Invading people's privacy and using the information against them when you have power over them is what is bad **for the individual** about privacy breaches yes.
You have an account for gradualism about the harm justifies banning, but what is an "invasion of privacy"? For example, if you prospective employer called your old boss about you, I guess you would object to that - but then, is asking people about you an invasion of privacy *qua method of gaining information*, even in normal social contexts (even if it good on net or not worth regulating)?
I interpreted your post as saying that these sorts of questions are a distraction and we should just focus on the harm - but now, you do seem to need it back.
>Regulate if:
>[(Losses of privacy invasion for the individual)-(costs of regulation)]>(net gains or losses of privacy invasion for society)
>I don't think it is okay a lot of the time to use data against people, gained through privacy invasion, in village like context.
These utilitarian standards are always a bit slippery in discussion, so I cant really prove this, but it seems to me that your standard would consider a lot of ordinary village-style things a violation of privacy, where most people would not, and therefore is not a good account of what the concerns with privacy are about.
Robustness isn't an on-off lever, so what _level_ of robustness is sufficient?