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It's also interesting to look at Stallman's tone: he's defeated. "What can be done about privacy Mr Stallman?" "Society needs to care more." It's the same tone JPB had when asked about how the EFF can have an impact on younger generations who take the internet for granted. "They need to care more. And education."

They're not wrong, of course. And your comment is very similar: the problem isn't the technology, it's the impetus of society that needs to change.

I mean, they're kinda wrong.

You can care plenty about these issues but not see an actual way to have impact such that your concerns are addressed. If society isn't caring, then either society doesn't see why there's a concern, or society recognizes that atomically it does not have agency to address the issue, and the people who do have that agency are the ones that don't give a shit.

They mean that the majority of society needs to care more collectively. If that were to happen then there would be impact.

Saying "society needs to care more" is the last stop before the final destination of "this can't be done". Getting great many people to coordinate on something that's beneficial to them long-term, but carries an (even insignificant) short-term cost is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) things to do, out of all the things humans ever tried.

I don't think calling out 'society needs to care more' as bullshit means we collectively throw up our hands and walk away. It means we recognize that 'getting many people to coordinate on something' just plain isn't going to happen as the primary mode of addressing these issues and instead work on solutions that do work.

For a subset, sure, maybe a good PR push gets people sufficiently inflamed about a particular topic, but does that mean that key problems that aren't 'viral' enough aren't deserving of a proper solution? If "society needs to care more" is the answer, then that's the implication. But that's obviously wrong.

I interpret "society needs to care more" as a challenge: what can we do to make society care more? Put another way, I view this as a collective action problem.

The classic solution to collective action problems is to have the government take care of it.

But here, the government is probably the biggest offender. You'll pry their databases and TSA inspections from their cold, dead hands.

I meant it more as: you need both. (At least I'm not suggesting people shouldn't care--can't speak for the GP, RMS and JPB, but I suspect they also still care[d]--and you always can care.) When you've spent large portions of your life advocating for digital liberty and software freedom only to see it decimated in both the public and private sectors in favor of convenience & control, it probably makes you a bit jaded. And you wonder if you missed something. Where the battle stands today, at least in my opinion, is with convincing people that their life is better with these freedoms, not as much that these issues exist.

My point was simply that we can't skip the stable society part and sit in an ivory tower of activism.

He doesn't sound defeated to me. He's repeating the same message he has for a long time now. The only practical realistic solution is at the political level. I don't recall him ever implying the tech alone was a complete solution. Votes, not Code.

>the video feeds would still be recorded, and facial recognition could be easily performed.

As another pointed out, the article covers this topic, explicitly.

>The best safeguards are to create strong institutions

I would replace 'strong' with 'transparent and honest'. Further, calling it a losing battle is a bit defeatist.

>Yet, those technologies have severe downsides for both individuals and society at large.

Out of curiosity, what are some of these downsides?

Zuckerberg- is that you?

Seriously, WTF!?!

Not one part of that comment is true.

The cat’s not out of the bag. Nothing “permanent” has happened. A law could be passed tomorrow requiring that all of our personal data be erased. You might not like it and it would put you out of business.

And that part where you say “best safeguards are to create strong institutions...”. That sounds strangely like “the 4 dog defense” article that’s currently on HN. You just skipped the other arguments

1. We don’t have your data 2. If we had your data it’s it would have taken work to collect it. 3. If it took work to collect it it’s ours since you should have protected it. 4. If you didn’t protect it, the only answer is to form strong instituitions to protect the information formerly about you, but which now belongs to us.

> A law could be passed tomorrow requiring that all of our personal data be erased.

Such a law would be politically viable in only the most enlightened of governments and societies. Which goes back to the parent's point of "strong institutions, informed citizens, stable economies, and all the usual boring social reform stuff".

> Payments on public transit could become anonymous, but the video feeds would still be recorded, and facial recognition could be easily performed.

In the article Stallman explicitly proposes deleting such video recordings after a timeout, and forbidding facial reco without prior cause.

His first argument was that accumulation itself needs to be prevented. If security requires accumulation proceed, then the answer is that his vision of preventing accumulation is not really possible.

How many times have we heard of large institutions suffering data breaches or failing to delete data that they are supposed to delete? Once it is accumulated, all bets are off.

Once again, The Fine Article has you covered. Stallman says when such logs are necessary, they should never be network accessible. Go get the disk out of the physically secured machine if you need the data for $SERIOUSREASON.

Maybe the answer is to turn the dial to 11 on information sharing and require data transparency from managers/leaders/public servants who operate data accumulation outfits.

Track users' location data? Then your location must be public record & realtime. Etc.

At the end of the day, this is about information asymmetry. If the general public loses privacy, then so should those who benefit from that information, in order to level the playing field.

> At the end of the day, this is about information asymmetry. If the general public loses privacy, then so should those who benefit from that information, in order to level the playing field.

This could be said for literally any transaction, ever. The bank knows how much money you have, but you don't know how much money the teller has. You don't know which books your librarian has out or what the bartender drinks. They are also citizens with their own right to privacy.

I'm all for transparency and oversight, but information asymmetry will always exist. Some industries have regulatory structures around that asymmetry to prevent abuse, HIPAA for example, and others have not.

maybe replace "managers/leaders/public servants" with "shareholders/party donors" to really ruffle feathers

also , why settle for a level playing field ? why not high privacy for citizens and high transparency for gov/large orgs ?

How about wearing huge Sombrero so that your face is invisible for cameras mounted above your head?

Then they just track the person with the huge Sombrero!

What if we all wear huge Sombreros?

Or walk around in grey suits and bowler hats with apples in front of our faces