[HN Gopher] The Marginal Ethics of Privacy
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The Marginal Ethics of Privacy
Author : sdas7
Score : 37 points
Date : 2021-03-11 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (consult.sauvik.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (consult.sauvik.me)
| woopwoop wrote:
| In the last year, differing answers in different societies to the
| following hypothetical privacy scenario have seemed important.
|
| Suppose there is a dangerous, highly infectious novel pathogen
| which can be spread by apparently asymptomatic people. Alice
| tests positive for this pathogen. Does she have the right to keep
| this information private? Alice tells Bob, but asks Bob to keep
| the fact of her positive test private. Bob knows Alice has seen
| other people during the window where she could potentially have
| been infectious. Is it socially acceptable for Bob to post on
| Facebook that Alice tested positive?
|
| What if Alice's government systematically tests people and
| carefully follows people who test positive? Is Alice less free?
| Does she have fewer rights than if she lived in a society with
| strong norms against this kind of thing? What if the latter
| society has a much harder time containing the epidemic, resulting
| in longer-lasting, more onerous restrictions on public gatherings
| due to uncertainty about who is and isn't infected?
| dud7eurru wrote:
| Seems pretty simple, Bob is the asshole for being a bad friend
| and for pretending his backstabbing made a difference in the
| grand scheme of things. The people who were already exposed are
| either already in a hospital and know or they're fine. If I had
| a friend behaving like Bob I'd counter by saying I got it from
| him and that he's deflecting.
| woopwoop wrote:
| What if the people who were already exposed are currently
| asymptomatic but contagious?
| dud7eurru wrote:
| Same answer. Bob's decided to take something told in
| confidence and risk my reputation sharing it. He's not only
| a bad friend but clearly a risk so the best move is to burn
| him back and as hard as possible. He's getting dragged in
| and if he argues Im going to turn it into a larger issue
| for him. If we're coworkers I'm going straight to HR and
| asking what to do because a fellow employee infected me and
| then tried to put the blame on me. Anything but total
| calculated aggression will justify Bobs behaviors.
| woopwoop wrote:
| I guess it depends on whether you think someone has a
| right to a reputation independently of how they behave.
| Thanks for your answer, it was very enlightening.
| dud7eurru wrote:
| To clarify, I'm aware there's a difference in perspective
| occurring. You're approaching it more from if it's
| beneficial to the larger group. But Bob is supposed to be
| my friend, if I can't trust him to keep something
| socially volatile like that a secret then he's failed me
| at an individual in a potentially harmful way. At an
| individual level it makes far more sense to bury Bob than
| say 'thanks for screwing me Bob'
| woopwoop wrote:
| Is your name Alice? I'm pretty sure I posed the question
| in the third person.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You should probably add to the equation that in the past
| scenario the government is still systematically collecting
| information about your location, they just don't use it for
| contact tracing.
| woopwoop wrote:
| Why is that relevant?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| In 2021, there is not really a question about whether your
| government is going to track most people's movements - the
| question is actually if that should be used for productive
| uses also. Which is a difficult question, don't get me
| wrong, and arguably more interesting.
| zwkrt wrote:
| Well your scenario is obviously playing out to be true, this
| doesn't mean that we need to degrade privacy on all fronts.
| It's reasonable to me that someone might have to disclose that
| they have a communicable disease yet still have privacy in the
| vast majority of areas of their life. Heck, before the pandemic
| this was already the case; you can be prosecuted in many
| countries for the intentional (or intentionally undisclosed)
| transmission of HIV.
|
| Talk about privacy reminds me of Wittgenstein's Philisophical
| Investigations, in which he expounds that we get into so much
| conceptual trouble when we try to use words like "truth" in the
| abstract instead of looking at cases where people actually say
| that word. Privacy is not a single right or a single action, it
| is an umbrella term for hundreds of unrelated things. Privacy
| means totally different things in the following scenarios:
|
| - at the doctors office - at a nude beach - in a changing room
| - between neighbors - among parents and children - a "private
| person" (i.e. someone who doesn't share their thoughts readily)
| - private enterprise
| woopwoop wrote:
| The last one is different from the rest, but not in a way
| that is especially relevant I think. No one is confusing the
| private sector with a right to privacy. The rest seem to me
| to have an obvious common thread, and it should be possible
| to make arguments general to all of them even if there are
| meaningful specific differences. The question is when are you
| willing to declare it illegal to disclose facts about another
| person, because in some sense that person owns facts about
| themselves. When are you willing to declare it utterly
| socially unacceptable? I'm willing to accept that there may
| be cases where the answers to these questions differ, but
| there should be principles common to all scenarios.
| fitblipper wrote:
| I enjoyed the breakdown of the 2 hypothetical worlds since it
| gives a mental model for how to think about the problem.
|
| I personally have never taken a class on ethics so I'm not sure
| how to handle the fuzziness that comes from translating this into
| the real world. Just because technology exists does not mean it
| is applied everywhere it should be. We _could_ be in a state
| where bad guys (tm) may be able to hide while the general
| population remains in a blissfully ignorant state of being
| surveyed. Is improving privacy enhancing tech ethical in this
| situation when the general population may continue to ignore the
| tech and continue being surveyed?
| yboris wrote:
| A recent book on the topic for those interested: _Privacy is
| Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data_ by
| Carissa Veliz
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Power-Should-Take-Control/dp/...
| kenjackson wrote:
| At the end the author asks which world are we closer to. I think
| we're close to both. For people that want to cloak their
| identity, it is getting easier to do so, while at the same time
| having world-wide scope for distribution or consumption. But it
| is also the case that for the average person their behavior is
| available for the government to observe.
|
| For me the problem with lack of privacy, isn't the lack of
| privacy itself, but rather the lack of symmetry. For example, if
| I had the same visibility into the individuals/orgs observing me,
| including knowing they were observing me -- I feel like I'd be
| less worried about lack of privacy.
| clairity wrote:
| > "...if I had the same visibility into the individuals/orgs
| observing me, including knowing they were observing me -- I
| feel like I'd be less worried about lack of privacy."
|
| we should take this one step further and escalate transparency
| based on size, money, influence, and power. a poor individual
| generally has little power, so gets broad privacy protections,
| while a multi-national corporation needs to be fairly
| transparent in its practices and aims.
|
| the constitution (with amendments) plus public markets together
| sort of implement this at a course and haphazard level, but we
| should implement it broadly and smoothly. both democracy and
| fair (not simply free) markets depend on individuals having
| autonomy and information.
| dud7eurru wrote:
| Poor individuals also commit most of the crime that damages
| their community. Focusing only on the money at stake ignores
| whether or not the victims matter. I care a lot more about
| getting thugs and shoplifters out of my neighborhood than I
| care if Google 'violated' my privacy since the former hurt me
| in the real way and the ladder only hurts me if I'm white and
| paranoid.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I'm not sure it is getting easier to cloak identity, because
| privacy-defeating mobile phones are required to do more and
| more things in society, for example:
|
| 1) Around the world, ID is increasingly required to buy a SIM
| card, because governments want one-to-one mapping between a
| phone number (and IMEI) and a particular person. Surveillance-
| heavy countries can then trivially link all mobile web-browsing
| to that particular person.
|
| 2) Nearly all of the "vaccine passports" that have been
| announced recently are intended to be mobile phone apps that
| generate a limited-time QR code, ostensibly to prevent forgery
| as could happen with paper certificates. Knowing how lazy
| governments are, the Android version will probably require Play
| Services, which means Android phone owners will have to
| disclose a ton of info to Google - it won't be as easy for
| people to install a de-Googled Android and still e.g. enter
| restaurants or cross borders.
|
| 3) The same is true of online banking, as many banks have
| phased out e.g. code cards and they now require a mobile app
| for authentication. Such mobile apps often require Play
| Services and, citing lack of security, refuse to launch if a
| user has unlocked the phone's bootloader and installed a more
| privacy-respecting Android version. It is not longer reasonable
| to tell privacy-savvy people to eschewing online banking and
| visiting their bank to do their business: physical bank
| locations are being slashed left and right, and even in the
| physical location they might tell you "Oh, you have to go
| online to do that".
| [deleted]
| ece wrote:
| I think a similar question worth pondering is: Is increased
| development of pay-for-privacy ethical in similar extremes?
|
| Extending the authors arguments, it would be unethical to develop
| pay-for-privacy if it reserves privacy for the few and ends up
| hurting democracy. I wasn't a fan of CA's prop 24 precisely
| because it wasn't clear enough on this question.
|
| Offcourse, most people aren't worried about ads, but about their
| boss seeing something they want to keep private. I imagine once
| the ads and tracking get invasive enough, there will be more
| outcries if there aren't enough already. Anyone can setup a Pi-
| hole, get Signal, and at least try to use alternative privacy-
| respecting platforms, but even that may not be enough if ISPs and
| other lower-tier providers also track you and offer opt-outs to
| only those who can pay more.
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