Besides, doomsaying that “anything could be illegal!” isn’t backed by anything real or lasting.
how on earth can you earnestly suggest things won't be made illegal that will harm people
And that usually happens quickly and with zero casualties? I'm sure that Alan Touring would be thrilled to learn that years later his nation has stopped castrating gay people.
Progress also isn't linear, backlash over transgender identity has gotten worse recently. People are being prosecuted over abortions that would have been legal a year ago. None of the people who are in those positions are going to be comforted by knowing that eventually someday other people won't be attacked for the same reasons.
Self correction protects the future; privacy protects the present. They're not interchangeable.
And no, privacy advocates claim privacy protects against the future, not the present. Their whole argument is, “what if stuff you like is made illegal in the future?!?!” with absolutely no tether to realit
Fair enough. What is the acceptable number of casualties then? Do you have a number of people in mind that you think would need to be killed or harmed before you would agree that privacy is worthwhile?
> And no, privacy advocates claim privacy protects against the future, not the present.
This is a pretty big misunderstanding of what we're saying. Privacy protects against future threats, yes. At the point when you are experiencing those threats, they will be in the present. And at that point, privacy will protect you. Whether you want to call that the future or the present, whatever. I don't care, it doesn't matter.
In contrast, self correction does not protect you. Self correction is about the overall direction of society -- at the point where you are threatened, whether that's a threat in the present or in the future, the tendency of society to eventually stop doing awful things is of no protection at all to you.
Privacy is not a substitute for social change, but social change is also not a substitute for privacy. Social change is the thing that happens after people die. If you want to protect the people who are actually dying (see above, maybe you don't think that's worthwhile) then you need privacy.
> with absolutely no tether to reality
Just as a quick sidenote, there are people being charged for previously legal abortions right now. Maybe you don't think those people are worth protecting in the short term and we should accept the downsides and rely on eventually society changing and say "oh well."
But that's very different than saying that the risk isn't real. The only way that you could say that "what if a thing you like is made illegal" doesn't have a basis in reality is if you really aren't paying attention to reality in the US right now. None of this is theoretical, people are very literally getting prosecuted for abortions right now because Facebook doesn't E2EE its messages.
How many people need to die because their medical information wasn't available quickly enough to deliver life saving treatment in time?
Pedophiles are walking free right now because the criminal justice system can't gain access to their computers to prove what it otherwise painfully obvious; they're hurting children.
I can make exactly the same arguments you're making here, just in the opposite direction. That doesn't mean I'm right or you are; the argument that anyone being harmed means an idea is not worth doing is pointless and doesn’t provide anything remotely resembling a reasonable view into the issue, but pretending like any loss at all is unacceptable, such as you're doing here, is a farce.
There's a weird transformation that this conversation has gone through. As a reminder it started out with you saying "besides, doomsaying that 'anything could be illegal!' isn’t backed by anything real or lasting."
Which is just false. And I'm not sure where I or frankly anyone else in this thread has suggested that even just a single person being hurt means that privacy is an existential problem. Quite the opposite, I accepted the premise that there's a threshold, asked you what your opinion of that threshold was, and responded to you saying:
> Every time in modern history western society has started down the path of outlawing some form of existence, we self correct.
and
> Their whole argument is, “what if stuff you like is made illegal in the future?!?!” with absolutely no tether to realit[y]
by pretty objectively correctly pointing out that this doesn't change anything for anyone caught out in the current situation and that, yeah, things being made illegal in the future is a completely realistic concern with countless historical examples backing it up.
Of course we balance concerns about safety. I still use a phone and participate in society, I'm using my real name online right now. Ironically, I'm being less pseudonymous than you are right now. Very clearly I am not saying that a single person dying means we all need to go live in the woods.
But "what is an acceptable level of sacrifice for convenience" really doesn't have anything to do with the argument "I have nothing to hide." If someone dismisses concerns about car safety or medical accessibility or criminal activity by saying that those dangers aren't real, then they'd be very much in the wrong. And it's equally wrong to dismiss privacy concerns by saying that concerns about future erosion of rights "aren't tethered to reality." They are a thing that happens. They're real, just as real as car accidents. So no you don't have to stop driving, but you should wear a seatbelt, look both ways before you cross the street, and use an encrypted messenger on your phone.
I can and I will dismiss the kinds of privacy concerns that rely on me being unable to understand how risk works, that rely on me falsely believing a solution to any problem exists with zero downside, that rejects any decision that has even one casualty.
I tried to show you how futile a game of, “your idea hurts people” is, but you seem incapable of moving past it. What a shame.
I don't know I feel like you're probably 3 messages away from telling me that I should remove my smoke alarms from my house because house fires are uncommon and then calling me deluded because I wear a helmet when I go biking. I didn't realize that me taking 30 seconds to install Signal and then using it to chat with my friends was a futile rebellion against the natural order ;)
Okay apologies, I really don't mean to be snarky. But you've taken this conversation in a very strange direction that I don't think is representative of what anyone who rejects the "I have nothing hide" narrative actually believes. I would just point out once again, I am less pseudonymous than you are right now. I'm using my real name, I have more contact information listed on my profile. Very obviously I am willing to publish information about myself. So the context of this conversation really just does not align with this view you've gotten that the people disagreeing with you are just privacy absolutists who think any privacy risk at all is too large to take.
If you're saying that someone is rejecting all risk and refusing to accept a privacy system with any downside, and at the same time you notice that they're actively and deliberately publishing their real name and email address, then that should give you pause and it should make you step back and think, "maybe I don't understand what their argument is." Maybe when that person points out that risks exist they're saying something more than "any risk is too much risk".
You're failing to understand that the conversation does not end just because someone is harmed by something. You, and society generally, do not consider "one single negative outcome" to be enough of a reason to not do anything.
We can't get past this. You must either accept this as an observation about reality, or you will not understand whatever other direction this conversation may go.
Like I said, this is a completely incorrect reading of my position, and it should be obvious to you that it's incorrect because I'm taking privacy risks right now. If I believed that "a single negative outcome" was enough privacy risk to justify not doing something, I wouldn't be talking to you right now, I'd be living in the woods and shooting drones out of the sky. But I'm not, so very clearly you are missing something about my views.
> whatever abstract value me using Whatsapp will provide you, a complete stranger.
Collective usage of E2EE makes it easier for other people to blend into the crowd and makes usage of E2EE messaging less suspicious. This is not exactly hard to understand and it's not abstract. It's the same reason why many cisgender people list pronouns when filling out profiles on new services -- it's a very low-cost way to make it so that transgender users aren't singling themselves out.
Collective normalization of E2EE also encourages people who aren't technically inclined and who are just following network effects to switch over to better messengers, which makes them safer without forcing them to become privacy experts.
And of course, when we talk about the "nothing to hide" fallacy, we mean more than "your actions as a stranger benefit me" -- we're pointing out that the risk analysis most people do about privacy risks is flawed and over-optimistic and advising you that you might want to redo that risk analysis. For comparison, you wearing a helmet when you ride your bicycle won't keep me safe, but the safety benefits to you outweigh the downsides and you should still probably wear one anyway. Because people feel invincible about accidents even though they're very much not.
I'm not missing anything, you're just failing to resolve your internal inconsistency.
Pretty much the entirety of recorded human history backs up the idea that privacy matters, including the present where state governments are currently campaigning hospitals and social platforms to identify transgender people and to prosecute abortions.
Your risk analysis is wrong. That's what people are pointing out to you. We're not privacy absolutists, obviously we are not privacy absolutists. We are not suddenly having a realization about incongruity, it's honestly just really silly to suggest that this entire disagreement boils down to me seeing one trans person die and suddenly thinking "never again, no cost is too great." Take a step back out of the weeds and think about whether it's actually likely that anyone believes that :) That is not and has never been the argument, I haven't seen anyone in this entire thread even in sibling comments make that argument.
What we've all been pointing out is that the eventual arc of justice in the universe is unhelpful to people who are suffering right now, and that your risk analysis about the likelihood of people being put into that position is wrong. But go on, tell me again that this is actually a deep philosophical disagreement and I haven't internalized that safety measures involve tradeoffs.
Stop trying to explain how your current argument isn’t what it clearly is, and make a better one!
What you think is a minor risk is a much larger risk than you suppose. And your analysis of the downsides of privacy improvements are wrong as well:
It takes 30 seconds to install Signal. There is no substantive benefit to Facebook's messenger not being E2EE. Privacy is not the reason why it's hard for you to get a copy of your medical records or migrate accounts across services. There is no massive substantive social benefit to advertisers tracking you across the web, and your life is not going to suddenly get worse if you install an adblocker.
This is the equivalent of putting on a bicycle helmet, getting a vaccine, wearing a seatbelt. It's not hard and it doesn't hurt you and the risks of ignoring clearly established safeguards are greater than you think. Your math is wrong.
> Stop trying to explain how your current argument isn’t what it clearly is
:D That is one way to approach a discussion, but it's not one I feel particularly obligated to take seriously or treat respectfully. I'm not really interested in having an argument about whether or not I'm lying to you when I tell you what exactly I believe. That would be a pointlessly inane, obviously unproductive waste of time.
I didn't know we were allowed to just say what the other person believes and then double down when they explain otherwise. If that kind of nonsense is allowed, then I've got to say that I think it's really weird that you've been secretly objecting to privacy on purely religious grounds the whole time :)