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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

If you look at all the top privacy theorists, one of the standard arguments for privacy is that it protects minorities and other people whose opinions are currently unpopular for whatever reason. But if you look at a lot of the recent writing coming from the feminist movement, over the last year there have been a ton of folks arguing that privacy mainly protects men and those currently in power, and actually oppresses women and minorities. Not sure what's going on here, but it's certainly something worth keeping an eye on.

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Freedom of speech also protects those who speak nonsense.

Privacy protects those not currently in favor with the rulers or the mob, without a doubt. But that is not the only thing it is good for.

I am not exactly certain how keeping your own business secret is a tool for oppression, other than the sort of anonymity desired by criminals as a means of evading retribution under the law. But you cannot pull the hood from the Klansman without also outing closeted homosexuals.

Public information can be used for good or ill, but private information cannot be used against those who keep it secret. Thus the default expectation of those who infringe upon your privacy is that they wish to use your information against you. Even when your private information is used for your benefit, it usually comes off as creepy.

Privacy is an essential part of how we control our public image and reputations. Stripping away privacy removes our essential ability to be who we say we are. So it does protect to a greater extent those who are more dependent upon good reputation, such as politicians. Or owners of professional basketball franchises. Or celebrity chefs. It enables the prosecution of thoughtcrimes in the court of public opinion.

I did some searches for (all without the quotes) "privacy patriarchy", "privacy protects men", and "privacy feminism," but I mostly found old articles from the 80s and 90s about how Roe vs. Wade should not have been argued from a privacy standpoint and arguments about how drawing a line where family is "private life" can enable domestic violence and inequality due to the state being reluctant to interfere with people's private lives. Can you provide some examples from the last year of the trend you're describing?

> Can you provide some examples from the last year of the trend you're describing?

I don't remember any specific articles, but they've mostly revolved around campus sexual assault and domestic violence.

The Newsweek article from yesterday, What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women, was also complaining about a tech CEO who received a relatively lenient sentence for a domestic violence incident, which happened because the main evidence against him was thrown out due to being seized without a warrant. I'm not saying the author of the piece was definitely coming out against the 4th amendment in this instance, but that is more or less the general sentiment.

edit: Here is one clear example:

http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome...

Also, here is a similar article on free speech.

http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-unsa...

"Under the banner of free speech, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been host to rape videos and revenge porn — which makes female users feel anything but free."

I say similar because the right to free speech has also traditionally been seen as protecting the rights of minorities, whereas recently we've seen an uptick in folks claiming that free speech mostly protects those with power.

> And similarly, the right to free speech has traditionally been seen as protecting the rights of minorities, whereas recently we've seen an uptick in folks claiming that free speech mostly protects those with power.

This seems like a self-refuting argument. You want privacy if you need to be protected from those in power. You want someone else to not have privacy if you want those in power to protect you from them. But those in power being against you is practically the definition of a persecuted minority.

Think about the phrase "women and minorities." The reason women have to be mentioned separately is that they're actually a slight majority of the population, but not (always) an ideological majority of the power base. What matters is who has the majority of the power, not who has the majority of the population.

But then that goes the other way too. There are specific issues on which a demographic minority (or women) have the support of the majority of power. In that case the "minority" consists of e.g. falsely accused defendants.

Which means that when you hear some historical minorities saying they don't want privacy, what you're really hearing is that in some cases they are no longer ideological minorities. Which I suppose you could call progress, but that doesn't make the new majority any more right than the old majority about what what the minority needs.

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