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Comment by streamofdigits | Hacker News Reader

It is actually more than that. Privacy is exclusively cast as an individual / personal concept. But that is just the basis. If people have no privacy, any organizations, or enterprizes they form have no privacy either.

Privacy is one of the very foundations of social and economic organization. It is deeply connected with ownership and agency. Holding on to a private piece of the information universe is what underpins also all civic and commercial activity.

It is not clear why we still just talk about privacy instead of actually doing something meaningful about it [0]. This is maybe the most glaring example of how modern society has degenerated / cannot solve any of its self-inflicted diseases.

[0] That's obviously not a critisism of the tor project :-), these early pioneers are the saving grace of our society.

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I don't know. The future of privacy doesn't look good. Maybe Ted Kaczynski was right and many of our modern technologies are antithetical to certain freedoms people in the past enjoyed, like privacy. If that is the case, then no amount of legislation can restore or save privacy. Maybe only delay its inevitable death.

There is a certain truth to that, in that modern digital technology (from digital networks, to data centers to satellites orbiting constantly above Earth) makes it easier than ever to collect and process a lot of very detailed data about everybody and everything

But modern technology has also made it very easy to rob or kill people in large numbers and we (generally) don't do that.

Whether "privacy is dead" or not is not a technological question, it is a moral, political, economic and social structure question. Legislation that is aligned with what society wants (or should want) and is thus enforced can be very effective.

If we resign and normalize the current status quo there will be nobody to blame for the dystopia but us.

> we still just talk about privacy

I am not sure what your "we" refers to.

I am sure people can "do more" on improving privacy.

But in many places the concept "privacy" is vague, without much explanation of why it's an important concept. And I would like to see more discussions about this concept.

I do like you saying "Privacy is exclusively cast as an individual / personal concept".

Individuals are the smallest unit in our society and has the least protection against larger groups of people (e.g. companies, governments, other powerful groups). Privacy would be one of the concepts as basis of "individual protection".

"we" as in everybody :-), in particular in our capacity of shaping legal frameworks and regulation

maybe there reason there isn't more discussion about something so deeply relevant is that we are already in a stage where what is being discussed is pretty much channeled and controlled.

I would imagine if somebody declared "your property ownership is dead, from now on you own nothing" there would be quite a bit more discussion about it.

That would be too obvious.

The enemies these days will come with "justice" and "ensure your safety" and "save you from dangerous X". And hey just at a price of "a little" privacy and freedom!

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