EDIT: I hear this claim all the time on the internet: Collecting data is evil. So please, go beyond the claim, and give me an explanation. Why is knowledge about people inherently evil?
EDIT 2: I know you're not supposed to complain about downmodding, but this comment has been downmodded four times. If you disagree so vehemently, then try defending your position rather than censoring me :)
1) It's not being watched that's evil. It's watching - my argument is that being watched consistently has negative effects on a person.
2) I haven't said that collecting data is evil - by all means collect data. Data about a specific person or tied to a specific person on the other hand, is a mode of control of a person, whether or not there is intent to control the person with the data.
This fact, while not empirical, is reflected in the literature about humanity. Foucault, as I already mentioned, wrote extensively about the modes of security that a nation employs (note that security is a technical term that Foucault has defined to mean the ways that an entity in power may maintain that power, roughly). One such way is surveillance of the citizenry. Another is through spectacle (drawing and quartering). He argues that as a society, we've switched to a disciple/rehabilitation focused system of control. If you want to read more on this, see his work "Discipline and Punish".
Even fiction authors have found it fit to point out the control one possesses over another when they know things about someone. In "The Wizard of Earthsea" series, for example, knowing someone or something's name gives you power over it - and not just because of a mystical quality to a name. By the time the series is over, LeGuin has made her point that the name of a thing allows you to control it in part; at least make requests or commands of it, whereas when you did not know it's name you had no such power.
I could write a dissertation on this (and in fact, I did), but there's no point. I just figured that a question deserved a response. I'd love to hear if some disagree with me on this and why. Always love a discussion on Foucault.
It seems to me that when you compare what is happening in reality to the 'literature about humanity' they are very different. People are increasingly comfortable with allowing information about them collected and made public online. They are often prepared to give up significant aspects of their privacy for the slightest additional convenience. Check out Google Latitude or Rescuetime for some extreme examples. I fully expect this trend to continue to the point where significant chunks of people's life experience will be stored online.
I'm not sure what humanist literature will have to say about this. If you have an interest in where the world is headed with regards to issues like these you would be better to read some good transhumanist literature instead.
The key thing to understand about what is being discussed is that this is all with regards to an expectation of privacy. Such as, I buy product X and store Y every Friday. I have a reasonable expectation that store Y will not tell anyone that asks that I buy product X, or that I buy something every Friday, or that I buy product X every Friday.
This expectation of privacy is after having entrusted company Y with that information. An employee at company Y could suggest product Z to me, having seen me purchasing product X repeatedly. This is not an invasion of privacy as the information collected was with consent (I provided it to them), however, it may be a misuse of information collected, depending on any standing agreements.
However, if served with a subpeona, I should have no expectation of company Y withholding information, just as I have no expectation of preventing a search of my home if I was presented with a search warrant (providing the subpeona and warrant provide in them the necessary scope).
It would certainly be possible to have a situation where everybody is able to watch everybody else. Would that also be evil? Or is it just the asymmetry of access to information that is evil in your view?
Also let me clarify that I am not saying that Google has an evil plan to become a Big Brother and the aforementioned quote is not about that. My questions are (feel free to replace Google with any other company that collects information or even the government): A. How many googlers have access to my information? B. Am I sure that all those who have access are trustworthy? C. Am I sure that some ex-googler will not leak a big chunk of data just to get back at the company? And answers are always: A. I don't know; B. No; C No.
It is claiming that invasion of privacy is evil in the way that hurting people is inherently evil. You do not call on someone to explain why hurting people is evil. It is calling on you to accept that invasion of privacy is just evil.
What I want someone to do is justify their claim, point by point, that what Google does with information is an outright invasion of privacy.
I think that the problem is that private vs public is often a question of expectations. People know that when you sit in your car people can see you & when you site in your house people usually can't. If you become viewable (public) while in your house it feels like an "invasion" whether it is malicious (telescope) or not (neighbour's new attic window).
When we talk about privacy in complicated, non obvious & changing circumstances, people constantly feel invaded because they find out that they might be in public when they thought they where in private.
I think that invasion of privacy is mostly about knowing where you are at any given time & having private as an option.
Ultimately, though, your example highlights the main problem: hurt is poorly defined. Hurt could mean anything from dumping them through to outright torture and everything in between.
Hence here is my worry in the privacy debate: I think everyone has a huge variation in what they class as privacy and how they feel it is being invaded. As a result we end up with lots of mixed up opinions - and, I worry, the risk that really serious invasions of privacy are passing us by.
I feel like we should be talking about it a lot more from a perspective of; ok these guys want to know about us, so can we sit and discuss how they can do that transparently and in ways that make us comfortable. At the moment I get this odd feeling it is turning into a 3 way combat between consumers, companies (who want data to use to make money: either ethically or unethically) and government who want it for a variety of reasons.
The government thing is the most worrying aspect. Im slightly biased because I count, really, as a consumer of private information - I "invade" peoples computers daily. I have only seen it ever done ethically but there is always the serious worry that someone could play the system or could be using it for their own ends. In the future that risk is only going to get worse; and when you add in the fact that once beurocrats get involved the data is even more at risk from outside attack it is a worrying problem.
How do we fix this? Completely no idea yet. But I do think blaming Google is a bad move; because they have stood up for our data in the past (publicly)... and perhaps it is not too late to get them fully onside?
Besides that, I agree with you on everything else. If we are going to call invasion of privacy evil "just because," we should define it pretty soundly. If we try to define it, I think we find that it's mostly about expectations, so making some clear rules/agreements is important.
Se my comment upthread from here.
I, and many others, including Schneier think you are wrong. Privacy is a basic human need, a fundamental part of our psychology that is as deeply entrenched as all our other basic needs and emotions. We are not whole, happy, fulfilled human beings without it. I guess one can debate whether this fits the definition of "inherent" or not. But I don't think it's necessary to pursue it beyond this point because it doesn't really matter - once something is a basic human need, taking it away from them is wrong.
That is an assumption not an argument. Can you reference any studies or data to support your position?
The only place to find evidence I can think of would be to look at different cultures with differing level of privacy to see what inherent 'needs' there might be and what the results were in terms of people's mental well being. Totalitarian societies would not be a good example as they actually rely far more of secrecy than more open societies.
I would argue (without data I admit) that the desire for privacy is actually caused by the desire to avoid punishment, ridicule and/or social exclusion. If these could be avoided then I don't believe there would be much of a 'need' for privacy.
I think you deconstruct things far too much. If you removed all those things from society right now people would still "need" privacy because we have been programmed by thousands or millions of years of evolution to need it. We don't need it on a rational basis (although there are plenty of rational arguments one can make for needing it), we need it because our brains evolved that way and we're stuck with it.
If you find a culture that has no privacy and no compensatory substitute for it then I'll readily grant that people in that society don't need privacy and we can qualify "basic human need" to something slightly more constrained. But it won't change the fact that we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.
Actually I think our early ancestors would have lived with much less privacy than we do today. Many of the concepts of privacy don't even make sense the further back you go. Living in a tribe, spending nearly all your time outside and visible to other tribe members, with no/limited clothing, sleeping in large groups would offer limited opportunities for privacy.
If anything I would think that many of the traits of 'privacy' would have evolved more from the desire of others not to have to experience the 'private' matters of their fellow tribe members (i.e. see them having sex/naked/aroused or be interrupted by their loud conversations).
Even now they say that in small towns 'everyone knows everything about everyone else'. Only with the anonymizing effects of very large groups is the modern concept of privacy possible. So to me this all suggests that the 'need for privacy' is not a innate.
> But it won't change the fact that we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.
I would argue that this is true primarily because of people's upbringing - in the same way that it would cause people discomfort to have to adjust to a world where they would routinely be naked in public.
Privacy seems a modern phenomena.
Your really going to have to cite studies to be honest...
> we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.
Look at Facebook. There are lots of fairly complete options for privacy there. And yet most people don't even bother locking up their settings.
Given a choice, it seems, they aren't too worried.
You can try and justify any of these for other reasons. Discrimination creates civil unrest, it wastes some people's talents, it leads to civil conflict, etc. I think those are less satisfying. Discrimination bothers me regardless of its consequences.
I don't necessarily agree with Schneir I just think you have to admit some* arguments that things are inherent. We can reject this. Say that our inherently good/bad baskets are ful & that he'd better justify his need for privacy based on those inherently bad/good things.
I personally think that the further you go away from direct sensation (causing pain/injury etc) the more difficult it become to disentangle inherent and learned attitudes. Even with pain their are sadists and masochists who do not seem to share the normal response.
So while arguments based on our own 'inherent principles' may resonate with others (especially those in our self selected groups) we should be very careful before assuming that these are universal.
The subtle place we parted (I think) is where you interpreted "inherent" as meaning something about people, their feelings, attitudes, etc. I (he, really) meant it in a more abstract sense.
I'm not sure if this is something that reflects your general world-view, but you are taking a very relativist position. You are equating moral with subjective attitudes. That is OK of course, but it is a minority view.
(BTW, I'm not agreeing with the author, just commenting on the position he has taken)
Probably in the general population but I would have though it a fairly typical attitude of those who ponder these issues in depth with an open mind.
I should add that a great part of my relativistic attitude is informed by what I see as a great and inherent evil occurring in the world that apparently very few others seem to be bothered about - human caused animal suffering on a mass scale. I sometimes wonder if those who do not find this inherently bad can truly be sentient beings - but logic dictates that they are. Acknowledging that others don't share your point of view does not imply inaction in moral issues.
The place where relativist-like arguments are popular is with anthropologist evolutionist thinkers. From there perspective treating ethics as simply human traits, like a taste for sugar or music. They rarely attempt the normative leap though, go from a relativist argument to a 'you should do this' position.
Most vegetarian thinkers tend to be utilitarians. Most people are instinctively utilitarian & deontologist. When these come into conflict (kill a baby to save a village, harvest organs from unwilling person to save 5 people) they feel conflicted.
Search queries are pretty intermate knowledge. Who else has searched the anarchist's cookbook or DeCSS?