Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

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Eric Schmidt, as Google CEO, had a habit of saying unpopular but true things. When he responded to a question about how people interact with Google with "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," he wasn't so much offering self-criticism as a warning regarding the overall societal trend, of which Google was merely a part.

The context is often left out in that interview snippet, because he goes on to say "... but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

Actions online leave a data trail. The US government has broad subpoena power to acquire that data trail. DDG is a smaller aggregation house, so it's less likely to be hit first, but I wouldn't assume that they don't retain routing info, IP addresses, etc. that could (with some difficulty) be collected and aggregated to narrow the search space for a person.

Schmidt had some incident where some info about him was posted. He was really upset. Pretty sure he threatened or did do legal action. Coming from his position of power.

Doesn’t make what he said untrue. Just funnier.

Privacy is generally agreed to be a human right. And privacy means that you can do or say something and have a right to have it not be known or made public. If someone with access to you data exposes it, it's a violation of privacy.

So no, the old argument of "if you don't want it known, don't do it" is fallacious and dangerous.

Doesn't the added context change it from a moral argument to a pragmatic one about opsec as it were? Morally not locking your door doesn't mean you should be robbed. Practically it means you are more likely to be robbed.

Well, no, because that's not what it says. The qualitatively different statement "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't tell Google about it." is probably true, but... well, qualitatively different.

(If the problem with the original isn't obvious to you, try specific cases like "If you don't want people to know you're gay, maybe you shouldn't be being gay.".)

> Privacy is generally agreed to be a human right.

Correct, but not a universal, constant, perpetual one like life and liberty. It is situational and context-specific; for example, it is not assumed you have a right to privacy regarding what you shout in the public square.

The still open question is the scope (perpetuity and breadth) of that right regarding things like the information you query on a publicly-accessible third-party search service... Does it look more like the privacy around what you do in your own bedroom or around what you do in the public square. And we have precedent that pokes at this topic... One's banking affairs, for example, are relatively private, but the state has a vested interest (taxation and investigation of a crime) in acquiring that information in special circumstances, and banks can and will divulge their copy of that information upon due legal request from the state.

I think it's hard to build a case that you have the same right to privacy as a bedroom right regarding information that you have queried in a third-party's database over a public network. It certainly seems like the jury is still out on the topic (and has been for two or three decades now, at least).

I do agree with you that privacy as a concept is variable, as with many other notions. I wasn't thinking with the right to privacy as a bulwark against a state's legal jurisprudence.

For example say a disgruntled ex-lover posts private medical information on someone else and this gets indexed by Google. Obviously this is a breach of privacy. I would extend that to any private information, and the person should have the ability to remove that private information.

I think it has also been made more and more clear that platforms should not perpetually and forever host information about individuals against their wishes. People change, and this should be reflected in the public square. In the old days, your shouts only existed in the memory of those that were there. Now they are as fresh as the day they were posted.

The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12 states: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

The key is "protection of the law" and this is why I think that privacy should be regulated by government which extends its authority into "private" companies. Clearly that function is needed. However, I am constantly hearing the opposite case being made, that government should use its power to dig up information on law-abiding citizens as they could be doing something illegal.

Unpopular but true? No. Popular and false.

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