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Comment by nym | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame the general public doesn't care about privacy. Even techies use AT&T despite their involvement with the NSA's secret spy program.

[ source: http://news.cnet.com/AT38T-sued-over-NSA-spy-program/2100-10... ]

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I don't care about privacy in general. I do care about asymmetry of privacy. Although it would be a radically different world to the one we currently live in, I think I would actually be quite ok with the idea of everyone having access to the GPS data, all the time.

To know with who your political enemy is meeting? CEOs considering a merge (on a prominent law firm)? Police officers off-duty? People on the witness protection program?

Where all the criminals are?

So you can know that the family down the street is on holidays (in Wallyworld!) and you can now rob their house?

Sure. Since if privacy wasn't asymmetric, they could just look up who had robbed their house by checking whose GPS appeared there while they were away.

And they appeared because they have been tagged with some RFID device they haven't been smart enough either to not have it put in in the first place or to have it removed by a doctor?

I don't know about you, but I don't think anyone in their right mind (apart from Mexican politicians) would really want to have tatooes on their arms/embedded RFID devices in them.

And if smart crooks knew they were being tracked by their mobile phones you think they would be smart enough not to bring them to a place they decide to rob.

You explain how the situation is asymmetrical, which would mean the grandparent wouldn't be happy with it. There's no conflict here; I think we understand the impracticality of the suggestion.

But wouldn't they also know when someone that didn't know was in the house?

only if they monitored it from their holiday location

Sci-fi short story on this topic: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

+1 because Manna has a nice message about what could happen in a utopia:

"Live Your Life means that you are able get the most out of your life, as opposed to the least. Instead of dying in Terrafoam, or dying in some job that you hate, you live your life in the Australia Project in freedom and prosperity. Live Your Life means that you are in control -- again, the emphasis on freedom of choice. You decide what you want to do, and then you are able to do it. You reach your full potential. Live Your Life is the idea of thinking about your life as a whole, as something that you get to design and control. Does that make sense?"

I don't have any real data or direct experience to back this up, so I'm really just pulling this out of my ass, but the NSA seems like a very different entity than "law enforcement" when it comes to privacy.

The rules, laws, hiring, and budget at stake is very different at the NSA versus your local FBI or police office. Think ten or eleven figures versus six. Polygraphs and M16's. Football fields of data centers.

Frankly the NSA can read my email. Law enforcement is a whole different beast.

I hadn't thought about it that way before. You make an excellent point. The most worrying part about losing your privacy isn't that someone like the NSA might read your documents. Mid-level or lower-level officials are the ones to worry about, because (1) they are not screened as thoroughly and would be more likely to abuse your rights, and (2) if the NSA wants to infiltrate/detain/kill you, you're probably screwed anyway.

Outrage fatigue: www.theonion.com/content/node/30624

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