this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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I don't care about data privacy. I care about consent and freedom of choice, so I care if someone else cares about privacy for whatever reason and cannot get it, but me personally, I care very little if at all. I personally do not feel a sense of "creepiness" or whatever from knowing that companies or the state know stuff about me. So I don't see much value in my personal privacy. On the other hand, we're barring ourselves from great technical advancements. I'm saying this because it feels like Germany is 10y behind other countries in digitization solely because regulators think I'm too stupid to give me the agency to opt in to sell my soul to our digital overlords.
I'm big into privacy and its not so much about an entity knowing stuff about me personally, but rather the entity knows stuff about everyone and weaponizes it against me.
Political efforts to get citizens to vote against their own self interests or suppressing votes of those who don't fall in line.
Fueling hate machines to distract citizens with infighting so they don't focus on those hoarding wealth and power.
Controlling access to content that those in power see as "harmful" (to them).
I'll try to make a case for why you should care about privacy aswell:
First of all there are some aspects where privacy is simply a requirement for things to work. For example there is a lot of talk about banning end-to-end encryption, but things like banking or remote work rely on this. Even if you wouldn't care about someone else having the opportunity to read your personal messages, if those aren't encrypted you are opening the gates for malicious actors.
For me in a lot of aspects you simply can't have "freedom of choice" or "consent" without the default being privacy.
Take for example medical records: those aren't just relevant for you, but also anyone you are related to. At somepoint insurance might factor in medical history in their rates. You might not care about your record being public, but if you e.g. carry some genetic predisposition for a disease that will also have consequences for your child or sibling.
If the default for privacy is "opt-in", then in many cases this will have a negative affect on people who do want it. Want to rent an appartment and the finances of most people are public? Well tough luck. Guess you have to decide, if you give up that privacy or keep searching. Because surely you have something terrible to hide otherwise you wouldn't want privacy. Not much of a fair choice.
For a lot of things once the genie is out of the bottle you can't reverse it. Extreme case: a far right party like the AfD comes into power. Suddenly you might get targeted for certain information that is available about you. And you can't also easily hide it for future things, because that sudden shift might make you suspicious.
I think there are a lot of cases where most people might not care about their privacy. But those that do need it are reliant on the default being privacy and most people having it. Because otherwise it does not work. Then you just have "those that have nothing to hide" and "those that clearly have that particular thing to hide, because otherwise they wouldn't chose privacy".
Another aspect is targeted advertisement. Despite whatever you think, even if you know how it works, it'll have an affect on you. Whether you like it or not. Human beings can't be perfectly rational and psychology will have an affect.
Besides that a lot of efforts to dismantle privacy will just lead to average people losing it, while e.g. criminals will still use it. Privacy is also highly important for things like journalism or whistleblowers, something you are also profiting from.
This i disagree with, we certainly aren't SOLELY behind in digitalization because of privacy concerns. Most of the time it's just incompetence or bad implementations (often time coupled with some corruption and lobbying).
These are just some random thoughts and far from exhaustive (probably also not perfect arguments)
Thanks for writing all this. I really like that you named actual tangible negative effects of loss of privacy. Most of the usual reasons I hear are too abstract/paranoid to me and this wasn't. Suffice it to say, this is not a direction I have given much thought to so far, so feel free to tear me apart here.
The insurance and apartment scenarios are both discrimination. Why is people's first instinct here to hide instead of work to fight discrimination? We already have openly visible "attack vectors" for discrimination, like being a foreigner, disabled, or simply a woman. And while I wouldn't say the systems work perfectly, I believe we've come a long way, and only because people's weaknesses were laid out in the open and they fought to be able to live the way they are. For the insurance thing, couldn't it simply be forbidden that rates are adjusted to people's medical records? As for financial stuff, isn't it already as you said? For renting and for loans, you need to prove your credibility. And unlike with the insurance, people on both sides realize that it makes sense in this case because it is in both parties' interest that nobody commits to a financial commitment they cannot afford. And for those who cannot afford essentials, and who would be getting nothing under the harsh conditions of capitalism, there is social help. And I do believe in more/better social help systems.
As for the AfD scenario: what good does having privacy now have, if their first move can be to just forbid privacy?
In short, I think a lack of privacy is only bad in combination with the evil intent of people wanting to abuse others' weaknesses. We should try to fight the evil instead of clinging to privacy in the digital era (which I believe will be impossible within the next decade or so anyway) so we can have the advantages of more data-driven tech advancements while minimizing the negative consequences of a loss of privacy. I think we can have our cake and eat it too.
Glad it was at least somewhat helpful. This is such a vast topic that it simply can't all fit into a discussion like this and there'll always be inaccuracies or mistakes. So there are certainly plenty of those in my reasoning. You are also making a good point about discrimination being a root issue in some of my examples.
I see advocating for privacy not as "hiding", but in fact as one way to fight. And in many ways as one of the most effective. How can you discriminate against something you have no information about? To me it seems unrealistic to eliminate biases as a whole. Especially because many (arguably most) decisions are so complex that filtering out individual aspects is more or less impossible, and we can't know a persons thoughts (some they might not even be conscious about themself).
And i would argue that to do so privacy was needed. A whistleblower or journalist needs privacy as a form of protection. And those movements fighting for a good cause most of the time will not have started in the open. Instead there will likely have been a phase where people met in private to organize, discuss and share. A lack of privacy here would have probably benefited the stronger oppresive side.
The benefit is that they can (at least partially) only have access moving forward, privacy now is a shield against change in circumstances. And as mentioned once privacy on certain things is lost it can not be restored. Right now it might not be an issue to be associated with a certain person or ideology, but things can change (and we might not know how in advance).
I think this is a very idealisitc view and i disagree with your view that keeping at least some form of privacy is impossible. I do think there is an inherent value to privacy, but at least it is a valid tool to fight those malicious actors. And while it certainly cuts both ways and can also be abused, i wouldn't want to give it up because of that.
That i agree with, but in the exact opposite way. I believe that we can have digitalisation AND keep privacy as a default.
Yes in some areas we might weigh up the pros and cons, and decide that something else takes priority. But the important part for me here is the direction and the hieracy of those arguments. Because there are many benefits privacy provides (some of which i've tried to explain), i want that there to be good arguments if we decide to remove it. So convenience for example should not trump privacy.
As a side note and another example:
Anonymity (such as we have here in on this forum) can help with freedom of thought and growth. If everything i do can be directly tied to me, i might be much more conservative and careful about what i write. This ofc is something that cuts both ways and leads to harrassment, but it can also lead to safely exploring new things and growth. I don't know about you, but for me there is value in having such a space as this to discuss things. If we were e.g. on Facebook it would definitely influence me.