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Comment by ls15 | Hacker News Reader

Let's hope so. Privacy needs to be acknowledged as a basic human right.

It is. But only for some people.

No, privacy runs counter to a world with free information. If privacy was an actual right we would need to destroy most history books because we never got those people's permission to reshare information about them. News reporters would have to get permission from people and companies they are writing reports about.

You're being downvoted, I think, because this entirely ignores the extent to which modern dragnet surveillance snoops on and categorizes every last person. We have history books that tell a lot about important public figures (and society generally) without data brokers or Palantir being a thing for any part of that history.

>We have history books that tell a lot about important public figures

That's because the process doesn't scale. With technology we can scale this to a large percentage of the population of Earth. Imagine being curious about someone and just being able to look up what they did in life.

Dead people don't need privacy or most other human rights. The living ones need them. And we need to separate between public interest and mining information about every individual. It is fine to show the Rajapaksa's bedroom on TV, because it was paid for with stolen money that was taken from the people.

> Dead people don't need privacy or most other human rights.

Dead people obviously don't need the exact same rights as live people, but I guess many (most?) people would rather their most intimate secrets, nude photos, etc etc not get uploaded and publicly shared 5 minutes after death even if we won't be around to witness it ourselves. And if you go to a graveyard and unilaterally start digging up bodies you'd find a lot of relatives (and people generally) not happy on behalf of those dead people.

But I do agree those rights are less important compared to those of the living, if there's a conflict between them.

Famous people who donate their stuff to archives often disallow access— even to the archivists themselves— for multiple-decades. Dead folks’ possession could have serious privacy implications. PII aside, people might have letters discussing quietly miscarried children, other people’s non-public embarrassing financial mistakes, or any number of other things that would be unethical to expose any other people while it could be consequential. It’s not like everybody they interacted with is dead, too.

The census laws in many countries protect access to the actual raw data until at least a few years and usually a few decades after the people in question are dead and sometimes there’s even blanket rules on accessing anything more recent than 75 to a hundred years ago. So even the governments with extensive historical records tend to follow similar rules to the ones you mention about archives access.

>And we need to separate between public interest and mining information about every individual

It's the same thing. One man's junk information is another man's treasure. The interest of the public is very wide since different people can have widely different interests.

> One man's junk information is another man's treasure.

Just because someone wants to know the color of my underwear (even if they regard that knowledge as a treasure), there is no valid public interest in that. Preemptively and forcibly opening up all personal information is a very dystopian thought.

>there is no valid public interest in that

and how is a valid public interest defined? To me I would consider it to mean a piece of information that a person may be curious about or may want in order to make a decision. If someone is making an underwear recommendation system then I can see how they can be interested in collecting the color of everyone in order to offer this service.

>opening up all personal information is a very dystopian thought

I don't think it needs to be like that. Freedom of information will allow things to be made more efficient and for better decisions to be made and their impact measured. Anything you are curious about you are able to find out.

> and how is a valid public interest defined?

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_interest :

> The public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society.

So unless someone can prove that the knowledge about the color of my underwear is crucial for ensuring "the welfare or well-being of the general public", I would say that I should have the right to keep that secret.

Journalists usually write about public individuals, or where private people do something in the public interest. History is usually written about dead people, who you can find in publicly released census records. Companies have no right to privacy, only the limited concepts of trade secrets, etc.

You may want to distinguish between what is published and what is collected for analysis. The GDPR covers both.

>Journalists usually write about public individuals

There are plenty of news stories involving people who aren't public individuals.

>History is usually written about dead people

History is written in real time. See wikipedia for example.

> There are plenty of news stories involving people who aren't public individuals.

Typically because there is a public interest in the story and/or because that individual did consent. It is not common to publish investigations of common people's bedrooms without their consent.

I think that is caused more by there not being a demand for news about random bedrooms. If you look more at social media if you are at someone's house and take a selfie, you aren't going to ask your friend if having their room as your background is okay.

> If you look more at social media if you are at someone's house and take a selfie, you aren't going to ask your friend if having their room as your background is okay.

Prepare to get kicked out if you post my private space on the internet without asking.

"basic human right" does not mean "absolute right disregarding any other consideration and for eternity":

* Should you have the same level of privacy after you die as when you were alive?

* If you assume a public position of power, can you not be considered to have relinquished some measure of privacy to allow for public evaluation of your conduct?

etc.

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