What harm does public data have to you? Couldn’t one just ignore the ads? You can’t see anyone watching you, is public data good for public records? (I’m just curious). I know this sounds weird but is public data good for historical preservation and knowledge increasing the importance of the individual? And does public data lead to better products?
The more there is known about you, the easier you are to be manipulated.
If you read George Orwell‘s 1984 or watch the Cambridge Analytica documentary on Netflix you get an idea.
I started to read 1984 a couple years ago but it is so triggering I had to stop. It really sets your head straight. Might start again soon.
Well…
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Target once used small amounts of shopping data to accurately predict women were pregnant before they themselves knew.
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A Nebraska PD got data from Facebook to prove a woman had an abortion recently and prosecuted her.
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you don’t know what will become illegal
So, even small amounts of data can predict lots of things about your life. The government has a track record of using that data to prosecute you. And you cannot trust the Government will always align with your morals (assuming it even does right now).
And that doesn’t even consider other entities & organizations in the world.
What if an insurance company wants uses public data about you to deny you coverage? What if someone is searching for people in the area with ideal houses to rob and you’re on vacation? What if they use a deepfake of a loved one to scam you? Steal your identity and ruin your credit? What if they make and sell deepfake porn made of you or a loved one? What if they create meticulously engineered political psyop campaigns hand-tailored to exploit your psychology? What if this list of “what ifs” could go on nearly forever, and some “what ifs” aren’t even things we’re capable of knowing about?
Because that last one is absolutely true, all the rest of those are true for someone, and at least one of them is probably true for you already.
Ok, but what if you don’t care?..well someone else in your life does. And even if they have impeccable data privacy habits, if enough of their friends and family don’t, then they’re just a single missing puzzle piece, and everyone can still see their shape.
Not to mention, you contribute to a pool of data that’s used to perform these kinds of analyses on society at large, meaning you contribute in some part to each and every instance of malicious data use towards anyone, anywhere.
Is that a good enough reason to care?
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Privacy brings security under totalitarian regimes or in countries that shift in that direction. They might say if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, but there are unjust conditions under which you have to hide things, like that you belong to minority that is targeted by the authorities. Like the nazis did in the third reich, where privacy was reduced during their takeover. Or that you belong to a party that is suddenly framed as evil and enemies of the nation. Or if you have connections to “traitors” or other “scum”.
Yep, security enables privacy, this is why the two are often referenced together.
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Yeah, it’s insane we still have to deal with this in 2023… and it’s even worse for trans people, “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely” and all that.
There are people who aren’t financially independent yet that are facing the very real possibility of getting disowned by their family and thrown out on the street if they come out as anything but cishet. It sucks, but keeping this kind of information private can be lifesaving.
The red scare is a pretty good example for the US
You don’t even have to go that far back. It’s literally happening right now as red states seek to punish women who seek abortions.
What was it? Kansas? That literally opened an anonymous report page for people who were trans or supported trans rights? What will they do with that data, is the question. Because they’re definitely not pushing HRT, therapy or counselling via ads.
Hell go with the lavender scare too while we’re at it
Wow, I had never heard about the lavender scare until now. Just did a little bit of reading on it. Can’t say I’m surprised, just extremely disappointed.
What about neo nazis and white supremacists who use privacy tools to coordinate domestic terrorism like Charlottesville and January 6th? There’s two sides to the privacy coin.
And those people sometimes shoot innocent people with guns, but that doesn’t mean that people like Malcolm X shouldn’t have one to protect themselves against that.
Just because something can be misused doesn’t mean it should be illegal to use it properly. Often the improper use itself is criminalized and making it illegal just tacks on an extra charge that people aren’t worried about by then, because they already have murder charges to fight.
To add: the FBI was asked by congress to justify project prism by telling just one example of something they stopped with warrantless mass surveillance. Turns out, they had none, the case they provided they’d have been able to get a warrant for the guys and they were put on the FBI’s radar by other means, not the mass surveillance. They don’t even stop anything with it.
You can also use a chair to bludgeon someone to death. Should we ban chairs? I believe the good side of privacy far overcomes the bad One can do with it
It comes down to a balance between cost and social benefit.
And privacy has a far greater value.
Thing is people who have bad things in mind are always more likely to use their own codes. You dont need an encrypted messenger to send encrypted messages. It’s a boy.
But normal people who think that they have nothing to fear and therefore nothing to hide won’t take that efforts upon them. They will live their lifes and one day they could be targeted by a government that wants to eradicate them. Using the data their predecessors gathered.
I promise you that Google’s attempts to break AdGuard or the federal government’s begging Apple and co to create backdoors are not an attempt to stop domestic terrorism.
The most effective thing you can do to reduce domestic terrorism in the US, which is usually stochastic in nature, is to deplatform the people riling these people up.
Did you not notice how much quieter it was with Trump off of Twitter? When was the last time you heard anything about Alex Jones that wasn’t about his legal woes?
The right wing has built its own network called Rumble where they spread disinformation to their uneducated superstitious masses. These brainwashed zombies thrive behind a mask of anonymity. IRL these absolute loons are interspersed throughout the public, and our institutions are none the wiser. ID verification is needed to increase visibility and accountability.
There is no planet where you will convince me I need to present my state ID in order to browse the internet.
I am very familiar with rumble. We have seen its type over and over again. The same thing happens every single time. Because of their “commitment to free-speech,“ law enforcement just hangs out and either pressures the admins, who are facing financial pressures from nobody wanting to fund a website that has that kind of content, reasonable people feel repulsed, or eventually the feds get involved because something criminal is happening or threatened. Ask Voat. Ask Gab. Ask Truth Social.
Alex Jones did a lot more damage with YouTube and Twitter than he ever will on Rumble. These platforms will always pop up, but they are ineffectual in the long run. Ultimately, it’s about commandeering existing, massive channels. It’s about access to new people.
We need to target the hate problem at the root. Hateful speech comes from a hateful heart. How can we heal a heart problem if we can’t even ID the patient?
And on the topic of healthcare how do we accomplish contact tracing without complete records? Do you want to risk bumping into unvaccinated RFK?
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Deplatforming is not a stable long-term solution. It’s already a game of whack-a-mole. Cut one head off the hydra, two grow back. And the platforms themselves evolve or get bought by the next zillionaire. We need a more grass roots level of accountability, and that starts with authentication verification. Unique device identifiers are a big step in the right direction. And law enforcement has to follow the law. Just make it illegal for police to use the secure databases. Only federal agencies like CISA and the FBI/DoJ can access.
Ask that mother and daughter that got arrested for an abortion after facebook ratted them out.
That’s why privacy matters. Not because something bad can happen now, but because that information can be weaponized down the road
This was a reply I posted on “What should I say when someone says they “don’t have anything to hide”?” In ask Lemmy a week ago, and I think it’s still applicable here
They don’t choose what they need to hide, if their government outlaws woodworking tomorrow, then any carpenters today go from “having nothing to hide” to “I need to hide my entire career and hobby” overnight and in their sleep.
And then the government threatens Facebook to hand over messages from any user suspected of woodworking, and then they get persecuted and arrested
The government threatens Google to hand over all browser history from suspected woodworkers, Apple for all iCloud photos from suspected woodworkers, Amazon for all woodworking related purchases
It goes on
If the carpenter cared about privacy from the start, then the government just wouldn’t be able to find them and arrest them for simply woodworking
But the carpenter didn’t care about privacy, they “had nothing to hide” yesterday, so when that law goes into effect tomorrow the government will have a really easy time finding them
Then replace woodworking with abortion and you no longer need to imagine it happening, you can watch it live in 4K.
Honestly, sometimes my best answer is “none of your business”. Its none of Google’s business what my hobbies are. The fact that there’s no “harm” in it is irrelevant. I want to be left alone, I should be able to without an advanced knowledge of cyber security.
The same reason I close my doors.
For me, it’s identity theft.
I would add that privacy and security are related. If there is less data on you, it is harder to commit fraud against you.
“Can’t you just ignore the ads?” No. No you can’t. Ads aren’t tucked away in the corner of a page, waiting for your focus. They are invasive and built solely to attract attention; even compete for it. So no, you can’t ignore them anymore than you can ignore a 3y old wailing 3 ft from your ear.
Information is power. And someone will exploit it. That’s human nature. Create an innocuous database of how high people can jump and that data will be exploited. Somehow. Someone will use it for their own gains. Does that fundamentally hurt you? Maybe. Maybe not. But there is always a risk of having information put to nefarious use.
Best to just never get there as a society.
“Can’t you just ignore the ads?” Not if they specifically, psychologically, using the most advanced technology, tailored and made specifically so you personally can’t ignore them, using the data they gathered. And then you just have to hope that it’s an ad making you buy shit you don’t need, and not a psyop compaign made for you to change religion, worldview, voting decisions.
Couldn’t you just ignore the ads?
That’s not how ads work, they are extremely manipulative and leave lasting impressions on your psyche, even if you conciously reject their message.
Advertising shits in your head
Companies fill the space now with their hideous brands, waging the same frenzied battle as the jungle species in order to appropriate the public space and attention with images and words, like animals with their screams and piss’
– Michel Serres
How confident are you that this stolen private data won’t become a tool against you at some point ? I’m not talking about hackers and impersonators (which are huge problems on their own), but anything you do could be used against you in a fascist regime.
If the records of Jewish people didn’t exist prior to WW2, the Jew extermination wouldn’t have been so easy. To consider that what you do or who you are won’t be something you or your descendants would be oppressed for in the future is a very dangerous bet.
By protecting my privacy I’m not taking any chances, and it’s actually making my life better through not being targeted by ads. Why would I do things differently?
Here in the States your data can not only be used to trace where you live, and who your loved ones are, but also how to assure you will be convicted of an imprisonable offense, given the average American commits three felonies a day (mostly violations of the CFAA. If you’re not a pro-authority fascist, espionage and conspiracy can often be tossed in to extend your sentence.)
For most of us American shlubs, it’s not a big deal. If you’re a ten year old girl and make your own Facebook page (that’s a felony) no one is going to care much…
…unless you have significant liquidatable assets known to law enforcement.
…unless you cross the police on an unlucky day and one of them holds a grudge.
…unless you have enemies in high places, say, a state senator.
…or unless an official wants your real property / intellectual property / spouse and you’re in the way.
Then, yeah, it’s a matter of finding something that will convince a judge or jury that you need to be locked away. And if you are as privacy-conscious as a typical US citizen, they will find something. Maybe something even worth sending a SWAT team to serve your warrant over.
lying to facebook about your age is not a felony. a felony is a serious crime.
As written, the CFAA really does make violating terms of service become unauthorized access and thus a felony. Some courts have pushed back on this, but I don’t think it has been clearly decided.
There’s now precedent that no one reads Terms of Service anyway but yeah, it’s still a toss up whether or not you get a hanging judge.
Part of the problem is CFAA violation felony charges for mild violations is the means by which our federal government punishes many whistleblowers who alert the public of embarrassing activities by our officials. And rather than part with this means to
drive Aaron Swartz to suicideprosecute enemies of the state they just use the laws sparingly. The US has a lot of laws which are disregarded except when VIPs want to hurt someone or assure nonwhites stay in their place.
Every comment here is missing a crucial point. The data is used to identify what kind of person you are and then manipulate you based on that. It’s not just to target specific ads to you. It is to control how you behave in any way that will profit them. An example of what has been done is to identify democrats that were unlikely to be convinced to switch to republican, so instead they targeted them with content that would get them to not vote at all.
No offence, but I don’t know how people are still asking this question with the amount of large scale data breaches that are happening these days. People are having all their money, maybe even their entire identity, stolen by criminals who have access to their data via these breaches. Just recently an Australian woman was ordered by US courts to pay Adidas and the NBA $1.2 million because criminals gained access to her PayPal account through a data breach and used it to commit fraud.
Privacy isn’t just some abstract idea - there can be real world consequences for those who trust governments and companies with large amounts of their personal data. That’s why so many of us look to limit our digital attack surface by opting out of data collection and/or choosing privacy respecting alternatives where possible.
But to be clear, it isn’t solely about direct harm right now. Personally I believe everyone should have the right to privacy both online and offline, so I choose not to assist governments and corporations that seek to erode that right. This point doesn’t get made much, because normies don’t understand why something is important unless you can directly show it impacting their life, but it is arguably more important than any of the direct harm stuff. Even if the realistic threat to me is minimal, I will still continue to advocate for privacy because I believe it is the right thing to do.
Wow, that story is pretty insane.
