Who’s Collecting Kids’ Personal Data? Lots of People | Hacker News Reader

Who’s Collecting Kids’ Personal Data? Lots of People

openstandard.mozilla.org

35 pointsdsr128 comments

They failed to give a example of how this harmed children, or is unique to the internet. The biggest harm they mention is getting an unsolicited email for a private high school. I remember in high school getting unsolicited postal mail from collages. The other harm was a neighbor made a youtube account and posted videos with her parents knowing. It sounds more like the parent's were harmed instead of the child, presumably she wanted to make a YouTube account and post videos otherwise she would not have done it.

I just don't really understand what we are trying to protect and what the big deal is. (Seriously if someone does understand I would really like to know.)

The data would allow a person who is not capable of giving informed consent, to give consent. Its the same reason a kid can't be interviewed by a cop without informing an adult (for example).

More than this, it means you can track a person for their entire life. Regardless of where one stands on the negative impact of tracking, a person should be able to decide, and a kid simply cant.

Kids arent allowed to win contests either (some contests) or the lottery.

> They failed to give a example of how this harmed children ... I just don't really understand what we are trying to protect and what the big deal is.

A few thoughts about this argument, which many people bring up:

1) Many people value their privacy; it might not be universal (though I think everyone does to some degree) but it's widespread and has been enshrined in law and custom across many (I suspect all) cultures.

2) Information is power. I don't have to explain why on HN (I hope). People who control information about you have power over you, to varying degree. Information also has value and should not be taken without consent (which is financial harm, arguably).

3) Some argue that if loss of privacy results in no physical or financial harm then it results in no harm. If you think through this argument, clearly there are other universally recognized kinds of harm. For example, the following might result in no physical or financial harm: Sexual assault, kidnapping, home invasion, theft (if the assets are returned soon), if I caused your spouse to divorce you or family to disown you, installation of malware on your computer, etc.

I think the question of the harm in an invasion of privacy is an interesting and valuable philosophical one to consider, but I feel it's a bit disingenuous to propose seriously that privacy has no value.

The question should never be "why should we protect $SUBJECT" (where $SUBJECT is anything, not just children), as that question implies an allow-by-default policy. Usually, this is done to shift the burden of explanation away from those actually doing the actions in question.

Instead, the question should always be "why should we allow $ACTION". Show why $ACTION isn't going to cause problems instead. The "default permit" approach has never been sane security policy, as it presumes you are able to enumerate all possible current and future threats.

Why is it that things which are problems, in general, only seem to get focused on when you get "Think of the chiiiildren."?

While it's nice that people are doing things for children, these same privacy issues exist for adults.

Well, in this particular case with adults you can make the (in my opinion very flimsy) argument that they're at least in principle capable of understanding the ramifications of who they give their data to and the websites they visit etc.

A child on the other hand can't be expected to exercise good judgment and discretion about who they should and shouldn't give their data to. The landscape is just too complicated.

(Of course, the aspects that are complicated are ones that adults don't understand anyway.)

Because we are humans, and care about our children? I don't have kids, but I suppose we will both understand this when we have one.

Children are an excellent argument. Many revolutions started because students were beaten by the police (or sent to war), and it made their parents angry. Children are other people in the world we care about the most, and only by caring about other people a just society can exist. So take it as a road to privacy regulations.

I wish engineers understood this better, and wouldn't shy from doing the same. The argument "think about the children" is often invoked by conservatives in support of authoritarian policies, but there is no reason why it can't be an argument for democratic and liberal positions.

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