Comment by dmitryminkovsky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmitryminkovsky | Hacker News Reader

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dmitryminkovsky

What I want to know is: what happened? I always think of this event 70 years ago [0]:

> "police obtained the fingerprints of every male aged 16 and over who had been in the vicinity of Blackburn on the night of 14-15 May to compare their fingerprints to those left at the crime scene by the perpetrator. ... a milestone in the history of forensic science; this being the first time a mass fingerprinting exercise had been implemented to solve a murder in the United Kingdom."

> Just weeks prior to the execution of Peter Griffiths, all the fingerprint records obtained from individuals who had been in the vicinity of Blackburn between 14 and 15 May were publicly destroyed [emphasis my own] in a mass pulping exercise at a local papermill. Several local journalists were present to record the destruction of the records.

Why was society so vigilant about giving data that might be abused to authorities, and now, when the data is so much more vast and powerful, no one seems to care?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_June_Anne_Devaney

Because it's abstract. The people aren't _actively_ having to do anything, such as hand over their records - it's happening away from them. It's hard to connect with abstract.

It's easier for people to connect with the reason _for_ doing it. Stop the terrorists, it may happen to you, etc. But the other way round is harder because it's invisible and you can live your life without caring. Even the warnings fall on deaf ears because "come on, you're being irrational" or "meh, doesn't affect me".

I think it's also a lot easier to dismiss with the use of media pundits on replay saying "if you have nothing to hide then there's no issue".

In a similar way, withholding of income tax feels much more painless than having to pay it in full backwards in April, or even several times a year.

There is a good chance that if everyone had to pay their income tax manually, the tax burden would shift quite a bit.

> if everyone had to pay their income tax manually

Isn't this basically the US model though? And ...

> the tax burden would shift quite a bit.

Hasn't really happened for them (unless you're in the 1%, obvs.)

People are apathetic and ill-informed.

It is far easier and more enjoyable to believe that Britain is peace- and freedom-loving, which is the continual message from the tabloids, than to keep track of these developments and their implications.

If so, why were they not apathetic and ill-informed a mere then, not even 100 years ago? Certainly people of the time thought Britain was peace- and freedom- loving then, too.

Complexity. A policeman taking a literal print of your body is far simpler and more direct than "big data" and so on.

Remember that most computer users are hazy at best about whether `natwest.my-account.co.uk` is a phishing scam. There isn't the necessary baseline of informed opinion to have a reasonable discussion about this kind of snooping.

In part possibly because it was a few years after WW2 where millions of allied soldiers thought against Fascism which was enforced via secret police (Gestapo).

It's easier to stand against something when there is something stand against - The end of the cold war meant the west didn't have a "At least we don't do <insert Stasi tactics">" to oppose itself to.

Now we routinely do things that would have made the Stasi wet themselves in excitement.

The Allies did not fight against Fascism, they fought against Germany.

The average person doesn't understand all our nerd worries.

Neither does this specific "nerd". I honestly have yet to be convinced; a lot of it seems very similar to fear mongering and illogical with the arguments being very nebulous. Maybe I have yet to sit down and flesh it out with a deep privacy advocate.

Not that long ago the most powerful and free country in the world was engulfed in chaos after the killing of George Floyd.

The event was polarising and you had your anti-rioter camp and anti-police camp. It should not be hard to see how there would have been direct chains of command on either side which could facilitate data misuse.

If you want a hard example, look at Hong Kong: protestors getting arrested via all manner of tracking, but also police's family being doxxed by protestors.

Also see Belarus and now Myanmar.

Things are all fine and dandy, until they aren't.

This is why you need checks and balances.

I understand the need for wire tapping and for the police to be able to do their job. What I don't understand is the no need for a warrant. Also the list of public bodies who can access this data includes the health and safety executive, the pensions regulator, the environment agency.

I see no reason why bodies like this can have access to sensitive data about individuals without requiring a warrant.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/...

The big problem is that our modern legal code is so convoluted that people regularly accidentally commit crimes[0][1] but aren't aware of it, leaving a big gap for inconsistent enforcement (mostly against those who dare challenge authority or the authorities are biased against). There's reasonable evidence that the FBI or rogue agents within the FBI tried blackmailing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into committing suicide.[2] J. Edgar Hoover was collecting a stash of blackmail information on politicians.

I'm very unlikely speak up enough to become a target, but the next Dr. King, the next Snowden, the opponents of the next Trump or next J. Edgar Hoover are going to have big problems if privacy continues on its present course.

Privacy isn't currently a big problem for the average citizen in our society, but it's very important fat-tail event insurance to have in the future. By the time you realize you need to worry about privacy, it's probably already too late. History has shown liberal democracies are at best metastable (all governments tending toward authoritarianism if not actively maintained) and whistleblowers are an important stabilizing force.

[0] https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/7-easiest-felonies-to-com...

[1] http://thinkaboutnow.com/2016/07/average-americans-commit-3-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

If I understand correctly, fingerprints were quite the nerdy technology back then. They're not beep boops in a data center, but it takes a high degree of nuance to argue against "if you didn't commit a crime, you have nothing to worry about."

I wonder if it's to do with the physicality of older data collection methods. In your example, the data collection method was very clear: getting your fingers black and ordered to perform an action with them by someone in uniform. The use of that data is even clearer: the potential for being executed.

It is very different to the newer methods where you don't necessarily know what is being collected or what it is being used for.

I saw discussed online the other day some alarmist comments about the government wanting to know "what your bedroom activities are" in response to receiving the census letter in the post and seeing a mention of sexuality. Putting aside the ignorance of conflating sex with sexuality, I thought it was interesting how hard this problem is for most people to deal with.

That same person no doubt uses multiple mainstream social media sites, has browsers full of tracking cookies, uses loyalty cards and has their data collected, sold and used for all sorts of things. But it's the letter through the front door, for, of all things, a function of society that is over 200 years old, that causes alarm.

It's a good observation. Not unrelated I suspect io why society no longer cares about basic personal freedoms in the wake of covid panic. Basic private peaceful assembly with your family is now or recently has been a civil and in some places criminal offence.

Few seem to care

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