When in 1940 the German occupiers took over, those records turned out to be very useful for their genocide.
Besides, doomsaying that “anything could be illegal!” isn’t backed by anything real or lasting.
*religious affiliation
It makes sense that ethnicity would have been recorded as well, but FAFAIK the Germans mostly used the data on religious identity (i.e. which persons were a member of which church community).
I live in the UK and when I raise concerns about government surveillance here people often say, "I've got nothing to hide".
I learnt of a case just this week where a guy on Reddit left a slightly controversial comment and ended up being charged with hate speech, lost his job and received hate abuse online for his opinion.
It was kinda crazy because "all" he said was that didn't care about a teen who died in police custody, specifically that this teen was a, "good for nothing, spice smoking, Toxteth monkey" (Toxteth being a fairly rough inner-city area of Liverpool).
The teen he was insulting was dead and unable to take offence, but the police officer on Reddit at the time took offence and decided to prosecute the guy anyway.
I'm bringing this up because I don't think most people in the UK realise this. Insulting people online or just saying something mildly offensive will often lead to prosecution. I mean just this week an autistic child got arrested for calling a lesbian police officer a lesbian here in the UK.
We all have something to hide when what's right and wrong is this arbitrary.
Legal notes:
I do not agree with the views of the Redditor referenced in my comment. I understand how someone may be offended by what he said, but disagree specifically with it being an offence to state an offensive position online.
I also do not agree with the behaviour autistic child mentioned in my comment. I understand that being autistic is not an excuse for being offensive. Again, I am only bringing this up because I do not believe it should be an offence to offend.
The offensive language used in my comment were direct quotes used specifically to make a point.
"
Rowan O’Connell, 23, was hit with a fine by magistrates today over the sick outbust following the death of Mzee, 18.
The teenager, described by his mother as a “gentle giant”, died after becoming unwell while detained by police officers at Liverpool ONE in July.
O’Connell took to social media website Reddit, where he made baseless allegations, labelling Mzee a “good for nothing, spice smoking, Toxteth monkey”.
He added: “As I say, who gives a f**.”
"
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/watch-mo...
So, Not quite what you said.
> or just saying something mildly offensive will often lead to prosecution
That's not mild, and you either know it or should know it.
> I mean just this week an autistic child got arrested for calling a lesbian police officer a lesbian here in the UK.
No link eh? What a surprise.
---
edit: this isn't about the rights/wrongs of what was said in this case but your (deliberately?) incomplete description of them. I actually share your concern about freedom of speech but twisting facts doesn't build your case well.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/police-arrest-autistic...
I don't understand your point. You both said the exact same thing: "good for nothing, spice smoking, Toxteth monkey", except you also said the guy added "Who gives a fuck?" which basically means "who cares?". Does adding a "who cares?" make the originally phrase much different?
When a Cop in the 90s arrests a guy because the cop got annoyed at something the 'suspect' said, you had the option to blame it on the cop's thin-skinned personality. Now annoyed cops can use the law directly.
The UK police implicitly allowing retributive online abuse is subtly humorous.
"will often": no, not at all. Could occasionally. You're not helping your argument by overstating this. The courts are not stuffed with people being fined for saying things that are "mildly offensive".
And nothing of what you're talking about is government surveillance. The police aren't the government, and the police do not routinely surveil the populace.
They wouldn't have the staff, for one thing! The police actually wanted to close the police station in the town in which I live -- population over 100,000 in the wider borough -- and replace it with what amounted to a kiosk and service from police stations five miles away in each direction.
And yes, really: for those viewers who persist in believing that the surveillance system in Hot Fuzz exists in reality... nope
What business do they have with my life?
the guy publically posted a racist comment in the UK where there is not an unlimited right of free speech and anti-social behavior is regulated. I don't see the privacy concern. I prefer an unlimited right of free speech, but I don't call it privacy. This guy did have something to hide, shoulda kept it hidden.
I guess the saying should be "you may not have anything to hide until the moment you do"
Not in the ridiculous "party controlling parliament" sense, no. But they are absolutely the enforcement arm of the state, which is more on point.
how on earth can you earnestly suggest things won't be made illegal that will harm people
British police, significantly, police by consent, are operationally independent of HM government, and cannot (currently) prosecute without the aid of the (equally independent) CPS. In England there isn’t even one single police force, and unlike the FBI, no normal part of the police is a part of a government department. (MoD Police are, I guess, but their remit is military policing).
I was responding to the somewhat hysterical parent post to correct the conflation of: the police literally are not the government, do not spy for the government, and do not routinely surveil the population; their surveillance powers are limited and regulated.
Does any arm of the state surveil the populace in any sense? It falls within MI5’s remit to spot domestic threats. Their surveillance operation surely operates far less less broadly than that of the NSA, which has far less oversight.
The bar should be set high, and in general it is, but no, I don’t think hate speech is inherently free speech, for example.
The US way of doing things is not a) the only way of doing things, b) intrinsically the best way of doing things or c) trending in the right direction. Free speech is not something with a magical clear definition, and I think it goes without saying that we at least try to take incitement to actual race hate a little more seriously. We can set the bar differently; we have.
The problem in the UK is not a rash of prosecutions for offensive comments because despite what the parent comment says, they rarely come to trial. There is no enormous procession of these cases, and knobends are actually pretty free to be knobends here. Speech is free, newspapers don’t get raided when they happen to investigate the local police chief.
The problem at the moment is that the guidance is in flux, and too much time is wasted determining that something won’t be prosecuted. (Well, that’s the main problem. The secondary problem is the USA exporting its newest renewable resource, alt-right trolling, to every corner of the English speaking world, exhausting everyone’s patience.)
Ours is not the country where the police bring guns to seemingly every minor dispute and fairly often draw them. Ours is not the country where police kill you for resisting arrest, stand by while your kids are murdered in a school, or seize your money out on border roads without needing cause. Ours is not the country with a toxic plea bargaining system that throws the book routinely and a 90% conviction rate, or prosecutors who run for election on promises to be ever tougher. Ours is not the country with three strikes laws, death penalties, tent prisons run by fascist antiheroes, rampantly profiteering private prisons, corrupt local sheriffs, newspapers getting raided when they investigate the local police chief, Stand Your Ground and SWATting.
Yeah. We overpolice people being rude. It matters when you have the equivalent of one fifth of the population of the USA crammed into a country a bit smaller than Michigan.
Batshit crazy is clearly subjective, right? Try looking at things from a different perspective.
Do you really think the UK govt, or any govt, doesn't use the cloak of security and classification to do questionable things?
I am just observing that the scope of GCHQ’s abilities are obviously limited compared to the NSA (unless they have the most cost-efficient IT infrastructure in the world, and we don’t do cost-efficient government IT here even now). The budget just isn’t there for them to operate the way the NSA does.
If these sorts of speech laws were more consistently applied on everyone, maybe we could get rid of them.
In the same vein, it is easy to grant social gains when in easy times. But we are in the liminal space between the boom of the 20th century and the blow back from same century of reckless growth.
Nowadays a lot of nationalistic rhetoric that would not have flown far has had a lot of traction over the last decade or so. And it is slowly becoming obvious that the frameworks for oppression are being constructed.
The idea that we can only go forwards with minor trips along the way is a very narrow interpretation of history. That the example given before was of the Nazis is especially accurate considering it came after the Weinmar Republic that was known to be particularly ahead of the times in terms of social progress and cultural facets. It could be argued that wouldn't be for almost another 70-80 years that they gained back what was taken away in next to now time.
Unfortunately, the one thing I have taken away from those that work as war correspondents - do not under estimate how fragile society is and how quickly people will turn against others to try and ensure personal safety.
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.” ― Albert Camus"
The police is the dog of the government. What difference does it make to you if the dog or the master attacks you?
Seems like you have an arbitrary definition of what a police state should be.
If the police just needs to take interest in you to find something to jail you because you are breaking hundreds of laws everyday anyway, this is a police state.
Government and the police owns surprisingly little of the cameras in the UK. The vast majority are in private hands, and there is no “network” of them. Basically this perception of CCTV in the UK is unfounded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
> If the police just needs to take interest in you to find something to jail you because you are breaking hundreds of laws everyday anyway, this is a police state
Then the UK is not one, because this is your imagination. It bears no resemblance to the reality of life in the UK. It sounds like a closer fit for the plea bargain culture of the USA. Plea bargains are not a general part of our judicial process or culture.
So if the government wants to use the threat of a dozen other violations to make you talk, they will have to get the CPS to take them to trial, because as a general rule the system does not allow you to be pressured into pleading guilty on something else in return. Our system has a much lower conviction rate.
I do not, in fact, have an arbitrary definition of what a police state is. But this is the point. US commentators define “police state” to mean something narrow that does not overlap with the justice and incarceration culture of the USA, which has more police corruption than most of the developed world, and which is more unequally applied than most.
These statements are very easy to make, but when push comes to shove the individuals saying it won't put their money where their mouth is. So, will you?
But this is not how it works in principle or in practice in the UK. The police work on behalf of the people, not the government. When government manages to suborn the police in even a small way it is very much noticed.
It’s difficult for people outside the UK to see this, I suppose, but our experience with this is that state directed police overreach is now unusual, and there is a lot of pushback from the chief police officers and the public when they are asked to oppress. There are aberrations (no police force in the world gets protest management right, and ours is no exception) but in general you have to be consciously right up in their faces to cause such an aberration.
The UK is a country of realpolitik at every level. The police go about their business unarmed, with the consent of the population, and generally speaking, they know the public will not put up with overreach anymore. We may find them pompous and overbearing but they are pretty much the envy of the world still.
The result is that the police are still opening investigations they are asked to, and the CPS is still examining them; it’s a lot of energy spent on no outcome.
That is the actual problem, not the prosecutions, which remain unusual from what I can see.
There needs to be better guidance on the relevant legal standards. Separately we need to do something about (civil) libel laws, but that is a parallel and not criminal law issue.
Are you: Jewish? Trans? Gay? A woman? Pregnant? Black? Brown? A furry? Muslim? Christian? Rich? Poor?
Need I go on? All these groups have at one time or another (including now) needed to hide. This is a forum full of techies, and I'm sure lots of people don't want to tell everyone they are a techie right away (remember when you'd get punched if you wore Google Glasses?), or talk about their income.
If you aren't willing to openly publish your bank statements and browser history, you got something to hide. Friends, family, government, foreign governments, big tech, church, whatever. You probably got something to hide.
We just got to stop equating hiding things with doing something nefarious. I don't shut the door when I poop because I'm hiding illegal activities, I just want privacy.
So how do you codify this? Legislation can't have specific words and actions in it, it would be out of date before it became law!
So to target "offensive things", depends upon the opinion of the officers, the prosecutor, and so on! And can change at a moments notice!
Oh bewoe to thee, which does not watch twitter and be ware of new words this week!
Here's an example. Where I grew up, colloquially, women were called 'chicks' and men 'boys'. "What are you chicks/boys up to", one might say.
This was used by extreme feminists too, with zero objection.
Flash forward a few years, and in a city 1000km away, I started to describe how I was deeply impressed with the clarity of <female author>, she's a chick to watch.
Zero offense at home. None. New city? All the women, and some men in the room, went ballistic.
Note that:
* I was complementing the intellect of a person
* The tone and mannerism I used, was as if I said "woman to watch"
Point is, a word which was encouraged and approved by feminists I grew up with, used 1000km away in the same province of my country, meant I was an anti-feminist, woman hater.
And how do you legislate that?!
And... what you say in one place, can be dangerous in another, all with no ill intent!
There's a few commended civilian heroes whose contribution was that they burned or otherwise destroyed records like these, like Willem Arondeus who bombed the Amsterdam public records office (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Arondeus)
Tangentially related, it's why things like period trackers are dangerous too; the US has had a spate of anti-abortion laws, the data from those apps (if used) can be used to detect pregnancies and whether they have stopped prematurely. For example.
I find your example illustrates the point . The UK has insane libel laws
The sane solution would be to address these laws, not to create mechanisms for people to arbitrarily evade laws
A lot of pro privacy arguments seem to boil down to "well we should make it a bit easier for people to break the law, cus maybe the laws are just bad". This line of reasoning just feels really unsatisfying..
But every democratic country is operating on the principal that the police work on behalf of the people, and has mechanisms in place that are supposed to ensure that this is the case. The government works on behalf of and with the consent of the people too! When you get sent to prison for an insult on social media, it's all done in the name of (some of) your fellow citizens.
Much of this is about individual freedom vs the oppression of the collective. The operators who are tasked to enforce the collective's norms have personal decision making power, and power invariably corrupts.
> you have to be consciously right up in their faces to cause such an aberration.
What does this mean? That they are personally vindictive? That acting legally but in a way that is annoying to an officer should get me arrested?
Is it still a police state if you are breaking three laws every day?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/...
Just don't make laws apply retroactively. Sounds like a trivial problem with a trivial solution. A woman misgendered etc doesn't matter that it was ok 20 years ago. It's not ok now and she did it now.
They really do. Not just council cctv cameras, which are less problematic - any local Facebook group is full of pictures from ring doorbells of people who look like “trouble” who have the wrong skin colour, wrong clothing, wrong age etc.
This is the norm and is embraced by a nation of curtain twitchers.
It’s scalable surveillance that worries me. Suddenly cctv which is pulled in case of a crime becomes constantly monitored, with face, gait, clothing, and other types of automated recognition, gathering data on everyone, pumping that data into pattern matchers.
But the U.K. population love it.
Because once you start threatening politicians in the US see how far it gets you. Post a picture of yourself with an AR15 and a comment of “looking for Biden” and see how well that first amendment works.
It is somewhat strange since the tabloids are extremely toxic and spam gossip.
If we were to try walking around with batons, truncheons, handcuffs as they do, we'd be arrested for carrying offensive weapons.
[1] Some routinely carry Tasers, which are counted as "firearms" here.
"The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, however, ruled on 30 January 2023 that MI5 broke key legal safeguards by unlawfully retaining and using individuals’ private data gathered via covert bulk surveillance." - https://www.computerweekly.com/news/365529894/MI5-unlawfully....
"MI5 spy who fantasised about ‘eating children’s flesh’ escaped prosecution despite machete attack" - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/19/mi5-spy-fantasis...
"Americans pay GCHQ £100m to spy for them, leaked NSA papers from Edward Snowden claim" - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/americans-pa...
Even if you think that you have nothing specific to hide, identity fruad can be a signifiant risk factor.
"Police ‘warrior culture’ makes US-style police brutality a UK problem too" - https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2023/police-warrior-cultur...
If you have something to say, say it and stand by it, or get out of the way.
What offensive language? Monkey? Was the guy black? One does have to admit some darker skinned people do look a little similar to gorillas. So what. That’s not an incitement to violence.
And the lesbian cop, she is a lesbian right? Who cares! How is that relevant to anything. A simple “don’t be a bellend” response should have covered it.
Sheesh! Some people really just need some bigger problems if the only things they feel motivated to act against is some low level name calling.
Toughen up princesses.
It is in the context of taxes if you agree that regligious organizations would receive church tax from the government.
You might think your a woman, I might disagree.
Can we just agree to disagree? Does anyone need to be charged with a criminal offence over that?
If you feel motivated to take female hormones and chop ya dick off, you’ve got problems, but being called a man really isn’t one of the ones worth worry about.
The absurdity of trying to police language, is absolutely ridiculous. It stops nothing. For example, someone transitions from male to female. They want to be called a woman.
On twitter, I say 'Yes, you are a "woman"'. Note the quotes. What is the implication? Surely sarcasm, or an attempt to delegitimize the reference.
Are we going to send people to jail for quotes?
Are we going to be examining sentences for commas, quotes, and more?
And when is it an offense?
More so, who decides the rules? A committee of people from all walks of life? And who updates them?
After all, it was derogatory to call anyone "gay" 20 years ago, and you could be sued as a newspaper for saying so, and being wrong.
But now there is nothing wrong with being gay, so it is not hateful, and malicious to call someone gay.
Who manages the bad words?
And who informs everyone?
Most people in the US don't read twitter. Don't spend all day on Facebook. Many have no idea that "pronouns" are a thing.
If you look at twitter and Facebook, you'd think this stuff is all people talk about. If you talk to the average citizen, they rarely think about it, talk about it, or care.
So who updates them with this info, and, what words are ok this week?
And it worked very well, because precisely nothing happened.
> what words are ok this week?
This kind of language takes any presumption of good faith on your part. You cannot possibly believe that these kind of changes happen on a weekly basis, and yet you imply it in making your argument.
Quite untrue but it does fit the default HN pattern of assumption about the UK.
American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.
Not really. The specific culture of “policing by consent” that is foundational to policing (one of the Peel principles) is still really strongly defended as a matter of policing identity here (as it is in Canada and to a lesser but still noticeable extent Australia). The US police kits itself out with secondhand military equipment from the armed forces. I suspect in some situations this makes them a more effective law enforcement machine but tooling up with military equipment suggests a significant break from Peel principles.
> What does this mean? That they are personally vindictive? That acting legally but in a way that is annoying to an officer should get me arrested?
It means that the situations where our police overreact are the situations where they are outnumbered and in confrontation (riots etc.). It means the opposite of them being personally vindictive (though some are and they are depressingly hard to fire)
(The violence against women thing is serious but it’s not a question of law enforcement behaviour or brutality. That is about the international problem of police being hard to fire when they are awful individuals in private; it’s an ongoing problem that is being addressed here through campaigns, and I am afraid I do not remotely believe that domestic and sexual violence is less of a problem in the USA. Canada takes this more seriously)
Why assume a surveillance mechanism when police are individuals who also use the more popular sites?
I have been complimented.
I was politely asked a question, I politely gave an answer and set some context. You’re just being rude.
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.
The police have surprisingly little constantly available CCTV. Police and national government control a minuscule fraction of the CCTV in the UK. (Local government a bit more, but it’s town centre anti-nuisance stuff —- pickpockets —- and a few secure buildings, and the police do not have routine access to it). There isn’t the money, the intent or the legal framework to so what you’re suggesting, and nor, I would say, do we “love it”.
No. He pleaded guilty to "sending a communication of an indecent or offensive nature" and was fined accordingly.
At the end of the day what he said was indecent and therefore is illegal in the UK. Perhaps he could have fought it, but I believe he would have needed to argue that a reasonable person wouldn't find his comments indecent, and that would probably be difficult.
The larger point here is that anyone who gives an opinion online here in the UK is at risk of something similar happening. It depends less on the opinion and far more on the subjective nature of what is and isn't offensive. For example I could say some highly offensive things, but so long as I say them about Nigel Farage or Piers Morgan I'd be unlikely to be charged. I'd argue these laws are very subjectively policed and typically used to against people with political opinions that are not considered "acceptable". For example, it's often used against feminists who argue in favour of women-only spaces since this is considered transphobic and hateful by some.
Yes, sorry – you're right. It happens occasionally. If you're willing to take the risk generally speaking you can be offensive and get away with it.
These kind of restrictions are quite common re the holocaust and jew killing for fairly obvious reasons.
But either way he wasn't charged with being a racist. And outside of being a member of an extremist group I don't believe it's actually illegal to be a racist in the UK. It's illegal to be offensive. And that's what he was ultimately prosecuted for.
Also it's worth observing that a possible outcome is the majority of people wouldn't want their government overthrown, and the police should act to prevent it. Another is that the police wouldn't preserve a government that does not have the slightest mandate. There is no benefit to the police to do that. (Do you expect the FBI and state police forces to maintain an actually illegitimate US government? Because even from outside, I don't).
Again: Britain runs on realpolitik, not extremist absolutes. At no point would we on a cultural level feel it important celebrate "the peaceful transfer of power", for example. It's just not how our minds work. Our police are small and unarmed. It's just a very different place and the fact that HNers don't really understand it doesn't help with the oversimplifications.
(FWIW, nobody ever needs to overthrow a British government. The party in power usually manages this from within.)
We have a whole small news channel dedicated to it now! ;-)
Offensiveness on the whole is not policed, at all. (Except by Facebook, of course.)
Offensiveness that rises to the level of a crime can end up policed. The guidance around that is still poorly defined, so it's very unusual to see a charge or a conviction and it's for sure wasteful of resources.
I'm obviously not arguing that it's always a good idea to prosecute when people are just offended -- of course it's not remotely a good idea to have that standard. But I do think we in this country should be allowed to draw a slightly different line on racism or hate speech or trolling/griefing/abuse campaigns without being insulted for our lack of "principle", which is the routine HN argument.
It is, in my estimation, unprincipled to stand around and do nothing while people are harassed online, driven from their online activities, doxxed, abused with poster and letter writing campaigns, or incited against by conspiracy newspapers. Freedom of speech can have different limits than those chosen by the US constitution without being morally defective.
The larger question is, how is this even possibly a thing?
That there are legal liabilities that are wholly dependent on the internal emotional state of another person is absolutely insane. How is it possible to take a government that treats its adult citizens like kindergartners seriously?
That is "Little Brother" -- prurient neighbour-watching.
Yeah, Little Brother is everywhere. (It's the bigger threat to our culture, IMO).
But this isn't a UK-specific problem. The USA, for example, has Homeowner Associations, which tie neighbourhood-watch curtain-twitching and petty compliance to personal freedoms, property values, paint colour and lawnmowing. The average suburban person in the UK arguably has more freedom from curtain-twitching busybodies than in the USA (where 26% of the population live in an HOA or condo association)
The British police do not have warrantless power to just lazily aggregate Ring doorbell footage or any other such thing (they may have faster access to cloud content with a warrant, but I suspect it is probably still faster to just look at the doorbells in the immediate vicinity and ask permission).
Ever hear of how the IRS targeted certain political groups?
Because that isn't the standard. Why do you imagine it is? There you are assuming that Brits are mentally enfeebled. Standard HN position.
Look, just because the USA draws this nice simple extreme bright line doesn't mean it's magically the right line or that it works particularly well.
There is a coupling between your obsession with absolute freedom of speech and your obsession with absolute rights to bear arms that leads to you arming yourself in arguments that could be resolved better over a cup of tea.
Racist language isn't just offensive, for example -- it reinforces racist conduct and can be seen in that wider context. There's no reason to assume there's a freedom to be racist in actions in a country that still has racial divides; I'm not sure why "speech" is excluded from those actions. It can rise to the level of harassment. Trolling and griefing is a massive social problem; free speech shouldn't protect you if you make someone's life a misery even only online with entirely broadcast speech.
We (sometimes! actually unusually!) deal with this at the level of misdemeanour (magistrates courts).
The USA has been known to prosecute jaywalking and can't even deal with swatting -- a means of using overkeen armed police who can only perform conflict resolution if they are armed like soldiers to potentially accidentally murder someone at distance -- so I think perhaps it's a little churlish to come after us because we in our crowded little country think being rampantly offensive to large numbers of people sometimes rises to the level of misdemeanour.
It's a lovely idea, but Peelian principles are currently only paid lip-service. People are trying to drag it back to something approaching that, but it's not the current actual situation, particularly in London. (Kettling, etc.)
> are operationally independent of HM government,
> the police literally are not the government,
> do not spy for the government,
Again, in the sense of "political party currently in control of Parliament", yes. But they're literally the enforcers of the law -- and their meaning of the law. People not in Parliamentary systems have a broader, and far more useful meaning of "government" -- those governing, determining what is going to be punished and what won't. If you're actually stuck on term "government" in the partisan meaning, please give me some other term to refer to the coherent actions of the state. The bureaucracy and enforcement arms actually do govern, regardless of whether they're doing so at the behest of particular partisan guidance (though sure, that's worse in terms of being able to politically course correct). An arrest and detention whilst CPS sorts out taking to the next level is actually a punishment. Hence the quote "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."
> do not routinely surveil the population; their surveillance powers are limited and regulated.
Hah. Hah. Hah. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/business/london-police-fa... .
Well it's a take, I guess. Go with it.
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 :)
:shrug: Six million Jews would like a word with you.
If that's not enough, consider that there might be a reason why we literally have laws preventing the requirement of disclosure of sex/race in hiring today? Consider the countless studies about how anonymity benefits the ability of oppressed groups (particularly women) to participate in public spaces online, consider that the Supreme Court has very directly said that anonymity and privacy are an essential component of 1st Amendment rights. You also still really haven't grappled with the fact that multiple states today are pushing to get access to medical records and social media messages both to prosecute people and label minority groups. These are not issues that are affecting only one or two people.
And again, the "benefit" that we're giving up by being more private is negligible. There's very little downside to encrypting messages or blocking ad networks from tracking people. The entirety of recorded human history disagrees with your risk analysis, in addition to pretty much every single 1st Amendment expert and minority advocacy/anti-hate group today. Your math is wrong.
What you fail to realize is I said "modern history". WWII was nearly 80 years ago, and since then, society has improved in gigantic leaps and bounds.
What happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany is no longer possible in the western world, therefore absolute privacy is unnecessary.
As I said:
> Every time in modern history western society has started down the path of outlawing some form of existence, we self correct.
What, yeah, of course it is. What on earth are you talking about, which part of "your math is wrong" didn't you understand?
Lack of privacy hurts people. Not one or two people, it hurts a lot of people. It might hurt you one day. And that's worth caring about. It's worth caring about because it's a lot of people. If you didn't realize that I was talking about risk/harms then you really didn't understand a word I was saying.
Yes, I'm talking about risk. Your math about the risk is wrong. It's not a gotcha that it's apparently taken you to this point in the conversation to understand that "your math is wrong" means "your analysis of the number of people that are hurt by lack of privacy is incorrect."
> and since then, society has improved in gigantic leaps and bounds.
Society has improved slowly, via heavy investment from anonymous activists and advocates who put themselves in harms way to improve it. Every single one of those activist movements relied on privacy. Quite frankly, there really aren't many examples of social movements that have improved society that haven't heavily used privacy and anonymity to aid them. Certainly at the very least this displays a startling lack of knowledge about the history of race and gender in America.
> is no longer possible in the western world
:) Citation very, very much needed. We have a political party in America with members who are openly calling for the extermination of transgender identity, headed by a political ideologue who's currently being prosecuted for (essentially) attempting a coup. Despite that he's still favored to be the next presidential nominee of that party because the majority of that party doesn't view attempting a coup as disqualifying from office.
It is incredibly naive to believe that we are no longer capable of doing terrible things in America to oppressed identities or capable of building political and social apparatus to do those terrible things.
> Every time in modern history western society has started down the path of outlawing some form of existence, we self correct.
And as I said, that self correction is of no benefit whatsoever for the 6 million Jews that died. Self correction is not protection. Privacy is protection.
We don't have things like WW2 happen anymore, and living our life like the next Holocaust is just around the corner is paranoid and overly cynical.
We really did seem to learn that lesson. Your own example of trans rights is a great one; laws protecting trans people are enshrined in many US states already, and courts are annihilating many of the attempts made to the contrary.
We stumble, but we move forward, and without the loss of millions of people this time. Progress.
> Society has improved slowly, via heavy investment from anonymous activists and advocates who put themselves in harms way to improve it. Every single one of those activist movements relied on privacy. Quite frankly, there really aren't many examples of social movements that have improved society that haven't heavily used privacy and anonymity to aid them. Certainly at the very least this displays a startling lack of knowledge about the history of race and gender in America.
> If that's not enough, consider that there might be a reason why we literally have laws preventing the requirement of disclosure of sex/race in hiring today? Consider the countless studies about how anonymity benefits the ability of oppressed groups (particularly women) to participate in public spaces online, consider that the Supreme Court has very directly said that anonymity and privacy are an essential component of 1st Amendment rights. You also still really haven't grappled with the fact that multiple states today are pushing to get access to medical records and social media messages both to prosecute people and label minority groups. These are not issues that are affecting only one or two people.
I'm curious, do you have any examples at all of equal-rights movements that haven't used privacy and anonymity to help protect themselves as they accomplished their goals? Because I can't think of any. Social progress isn't magic, it happens because people make it happen, and they very often rely on privacy to protect themselves during those transitions.
Do you think we could get rid of laws banning employers from asking about race/identity on job applications and it would just be fine and there would be no downsides? We got those laws for a reason -- namely because without them there would be a huge increase in discrimination. And again, ask any anti-discrimination advocacy group whether or not anonymity matters today for protecting marginalized people.
If your opinion is that anything less than the genocide of 6 million people is no longer worth worrying about, then that is a wild perspective to have that I think the vast majority of Americans (and people in general) would disagree with. Privacy did not become irrelevant after WW2 ended.
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> and courts are annihilating many of the attempts made to the contrary.
Citation needed. Anti-trans legislation has accelerated in many states, not deaccelerated. It's by no means certain that that the situation won't get worse. A reminder that people said "the courts will shut it down" about abortion-rights challenges too.
In the meantime, doxing and violence against transgender people is at a nearly all-time high and people are stalking doctors.
Ask the transgender community sometime whether or not they think that privacy matters for them. I guarantee they will not agree with your assessment of the situation.
For example, should a trans-identifying male criminal have the right to be incarcerated in women's prisons? Some female prisoners have already suffered rapes and sexual assaults from such males, in states that granted this right to the them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/us/kentucky-tennessee-tra...
From https://19thnews.org/2023/07/anti-lgbtq-laws-blocked-federal...
> "Across the country, we’re seeing a clear and unanimous rejection of these laws as unconstitutional, openly discriminatory and a danger to the very youth they claim to protect,"
We learned the lesson.
> 2023 marks the fourth consecutive record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation in the U.S. In just one month, the U.S. doubled the number of anti-trans bills being considered across the country from the previous year. We've seen familiar themes: attacks on gender-affirming care, education, athletics, birth certificates, religious discrimination, and other categories documented in our 2022 anti-trans legislation overview.
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What makes this argument particularly ridiculous is -- ask every single one of these groups and advocacy fighters what they think of privacy and every single one of them will give you the same answer: it's an essential right that matters for protecting minorities. Has the ACLU stopped fighting for privacy because we've apparently defeated transphobia?
Your evidence that privacy no longer matters is an organization that spends an enormous amount of time advocating for privacy rights for exactly the reasons I mentioned above. If you're going to quote an ACLU article on the direction of transphobia, consider what they are actually saying about privacy, both in regards to transgender issues and to issues like abortion:
> As a school administrator, you have a legal obligation to maintain the privacy and safety of your students, including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning
- https://www.aclu.org/documents/open-letter-schools-about-lgb...
> The lack of strong digital privacy protections has profound implications in the face of expanded criminalization of reproductive health care. In light of these breathtaking and authoritarian attacks on bodily autonomy, we must fight with new urgency to ensure that people maintain control over their personal information. If we fail, the repressive surveillance techniques and powers that police and prosecutors have for decades used to wage the racist wars on drugs and terrorism will be marshaled to track, catalogue, and criminalize pregnant people and those seeking basic information about reproductive health issues, putting tens of millions of people at risk of police harassment and worse.
- https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/impending-threa...
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When you say that privacy no longer matters because we've beaten transgender discrimination, first consider checking if there are any transgender advocacy groups that agree with you. The people that you're arguing are on top of this and that will prevent us from ever doing anything horrible ever again -- they all think that privacy matters. It might be a good idea to research why they think that?
Also, the feminist activists who are advocating for women's sex-based rights are largely anonymous or pseudo-anonymous due to potential repercussions from vindictive men who oppose them. Online privacy in particular is vital for their activist movement to proceed without intimidation. It works both ways.
How you see the Holocaust as a parallel to what trans people are going through is a wild over-exaggeration of the situation, though it makes sense your argument needs such a thing as it can't stand on its own.
Trans people are not, in any way, shape or form, being oppressed to anything even remotely approaching the degree Jewish people experienced in the Holocaust, and the idea that "if only trans people could have more privacy this wouldn't be an issue" is so nonsensical it borders on delusion.
We don't really need to imagine a hypothetical around that because we can look at the history of antisemitism after WW1 and see the parallels directly. Nazi growth was largely dismissed by political opponents of the Nazi party (https://www.bl.uk/voices-of-the-holocaust/articles/antisemit...)
> In the audio clip above, Eli Fachler remembers that many Germans he knew saw antisemitism as a sign of ignorance or lack of culture. In fact, many Germans did not take Hitler seriously and saw the Nazis as a fringe movement that would be short-lived – even when the Nazi Party won 37% of the vote in the 1932 elections, a result which made it the largest party in the German Parliament. When Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933, many politicians still thought that they would be able to control him and form a functioning government.
"It would be impossible for these people to seize power, we have legal challenges in front of that happening" was the overwhelming sentiment before the Nazi party seized power. There are striking similarities between early responses to the Nazi party and the attitudes of people today towards modern fascist movements in America. Consider that many Jews in early Germany during Hitler's rise to power did not think that mass discrimination against them was feasible or likely.
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But at the same time, holy heck I'm sorry I even mentioned the holocaust if that's the only thing you're now able to think about. For the 3rd time at this point:
> Society has improved slowly, via heavy investment from anonymous activists and advocates who put themselves in harms way to improve it. Every single one of those activist movements relied on privacy. Quite frankly, there really aren't many examples of social movements that have improved society that haven't heavily used privacy and anonymity to aid them. Certainly at the very least this displays a startling lack of knowledge about the history of race and gender in America.
> If that's not enough, consider that there might be a reason why we literally have laws preventing the requirement of disclosure of sex/race in hiring today? Consider the countless studies about how anonymity benefits the ability of oppressed groups (particularly women) to participate in public spaces online, consider that the Supreme Court has very directly said that anonymity and privacy are an essential component of 1st Amendment rights. You also still really haven't grappled with the fact that multiple states today are pushing to get access to medical records and social media messages both to prosecute people and label minority groups. These are not issues that are affecting only one or two people.
Is your position somehow that none of these current events count because they haven't reached the basic threshold of 6 million deaths where privacy suddenly starts mattering? There is enough harm being done to enough people in modern America today to justify caring about this stuff.
> and the idea that "if only trans people could have more privacy this wouldn't be an issue" is so nonsensical it borders on delusion.
Nobody has said that, neither I nor the many anti-hate groups and advocacy groups whose privacy opinions you are ignoring.
Feels like you’re not getting the point there…
Western society learned the lesson from those awful events; they’re therefore not going to happen again.
"But it couldn't happen here" is so widely understood as a fallacy in thinking about how fascist movements operate and spread that it's become a meme at this point. There is no reason to believe that America would be incapable of mass-discrimination against a minority group.
But for the 4th time now, my more relevant response to your dismissal of the holocaust is:
> Society has improved slowly, via heavy investment from anonymous activists and advocates who put themselves in harms way to improve it. Every single one of those activist movements relied on privacy. Quite frankly, there really aren't many examples of social movements that have improved society that haven't heavily used privacy and anonymity to aid them. Certainly at the very least this displays a startling lack of knowledge about the history of race and gender in America.
> If that's not enough, consider that there might be a reason why we literally have laws preventing the requirement of disclosure of sex/race in hiring today? Consider the countless studies about how anonymity benefits the ability of oppressed groups (particularly women) to participate in public spaces online, consider that the Supreme Court has very directly said that anonymity and privacy are an essential component of 1st Amendment rights. You also still really haven't grappled with the fact that multiple states today are pushing to get access to medical records and social media messages both to prosecute people and label minority groups. These are not issues that are affecting only one or two people.
You keep repeating the same logical mistakes, so you shouldn’t be surprised when I repeat the same refutations
And to be clear, the only person dismissing the holocaust here is you, by equating it to something completely different.
Not a single one of the things I mentioned above only affects only a single person. The current harms in America today are sizable enough and severe enough to justify privacy. None of this is niche. If you think that current discrimination is something that only affects one or two people, you are burying your head in the sand.
Anti-discrimination privacy rulings did not get affirmed by the Supreme Court because it was a niche issue. The numerous anti-hate groups today (who all collectively agree with my point of view that modern privacy matters) are not focusing on niche issues. The essential privacy protections that allow for modern advocacy that you seem to take as a given are not niche issues and they affect huge swaths of the population.
Your math is wrong.
> And to be clear, the only person dismissing the holocaust here is you, by equating it to something completely different.
Gosh, you should let the ADL know that they're dismissing the holocaust: https://www.adl.org/resources/news/politics-privacy
Your complete inability to be consistent in your argument kind of does my work for me. Look at the contortions you have to make to argue against the simple idea that western society isn’t doomed to repeat its worst mistakes.
If you had a good argument you’d have given it by now.
Your lower bounds on what qualifies as "not niche" is the hecking holocaust? Holy crud.
The holocaust was one of the single largest mass-death events in modern history. It is possible for a thing to be serious while not being worse than the holocaust. That is not a binary.
I also didn’t bring up the holocaust, that was also you.
> Which is just another form of: “because it harms one person ever, we can’t accept it.”
What's your definition of the word "niche" then?
Modern privacy violations harm enough people that they are worth taking seriously. They affect large swaths of society and bringing them up is not at all equivalent to saying that because something harms one person we can't accept it. Enough people get harmed by lack of privacy today to cross any reasonable threshold for justifing caring about privacy.
Incidentally, maybe re-read my comments, because I'm honestly really genuinely confused how you thought that I was arguing that modern privacy violations were niche. My consistent point every single comment has been than modern privacy violations are serious and affect multiple people. I'm at loss what you think I was saying other than "this stuff is a mainstream serious issue that affects a lot of people."
> I also didn’t bring up the holocaust, that was also you.
:) Yep, and my analogy stands and is supported by the vast majority of civil rights and social activist groups today, including groups like the ACLU and ADL. If you think the comparison is inappropriate, go argue with them. But you're right, you didn't bring up the holocaust; all you said was that everything that's happened since the holocaust belongs in the same category as saying "because it harms one person ever, we can't accept it."
Which... holy crud, you need to pay attention to the world if you think that.
It turns out that amazingly, it is possible for multiple things to both be very bad -- bad enough to prompt action and concern -- while not being the exact same amount of bad. It is remarkable, but true. For example, sometimes you might put your hand on a stove and it might be hot enough to burn your skin, but also not as hot as the surface of the heckin sun -- and somehow your hand will still be burned. It's just incredible the way that continuums work.
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Look, I've donated $5 to the EFF in your name, which I'm hopeful will allow me to more easily internalize that convincing one singular person online that privacy didn't become obsolete when Hitler died is not a good use of my time or energy. Nobody is going to read down this far so there's nobody else at this point who's sake I'm arguing for; and HN is enough of a privacy-supportive forum that very few people on here needed to be convinced you were wrong anyway.
In contrast to things like the civil rights movement, transgender rights, abortion rights, and so on, this argument we're having right now is actually something that only affects a single person and is not worth the trouble. I shouldn't have gotten pulled into it; I make this mistake far too often. And I think that $5 is enough to offset any potential social impact you would have in this thread.
Fundamentally, I think we disagree on whether or not privacy is worth the cost of the people harmed by its existence. I don't think a surveillance state is necessary, but I also don't think bad people should be able to operate with impunity. I trust the American judicial system to provide warrants when necessary, and I believe such an "invasion" of privacy is both necessary and important to keep our society safe.
I further think it's a straw man when pro-privacy advocates pretend like their opposition believes everything should be out in the open; my original point was that nobody thinks everyone's laundry should be fully public. Nobody actually thinks "I've got nothing to hide" (the submission's title). That's not the opposite of total privacy, the "opposing" view is much less extreme.