[jaredklewis]

I strongly disagree.

This policy fight isn't a fight to regulate the market (like the automobile regulations you mentioned). It's a fight for a fundamental right to privacy. Any technology improvement that can protect privacy can be made illegal, and enforced by a boot on the face (see China).

If the government makes encryption without government key escrow illegal (not at all outlandish, has been discussed in many countries), will you personally, nikcub, continue to use encryption without key escrow? If you are willing to risk imprisonment to do so, you are among the bravest people. It is a small group.

The policy fight is massively more important than the tech. A tech that takes 100 years to develop can be made illegal in a day.

If everyone starts using VPNs, ISPs will ban them. There might be some game of cat and mouse, but eventually the same lobbyists that lobbied to remove these privacy rules are going to lobby to take some of tech options off the table.

[TeMPOraL]

Maybe nitpicking, but:

> a fight for a fundamental right to privacy

Many don't consider this to be a fundamental right.

> A tech that takes 100 years to develop can be made illegal in a day.

As the recorded history goes, I think it was always the other way around - a new technological development suddenly invalidating a set of laws, and lawmakers playing catch-up with its use.

I wish governments of the world got their collective shit together so we could have sane privacy laws, but as it is now, technology is an important leverage to push the policymakers in the right direction. Maybe you can't focus 100% on it, but it would be foolish to just ignore it. It's the single most powerful tool we have here.

[jaredklewis]

I partially agree with your points, but I still insist the policy fight is more pressing, because the tech is only possible to use with the right policy.

If the US and Europe change to be like China, all that tech is worthless because the spooks can come knock down your door if they suspect you're "hiding something."

[youdontknowtho]

This really can't be overstated.

"Engineering around" the failures of democracy in the West won't work. We need to fix the issues with our democracies and change the policies.

[shwouchk]

> Many don't consider this to be a fundamental right.

Is that why everyone agrees that the constitution protects this right in the physical domain?

[TeMPOraL]

In physical world we differentiate between public and private spaces, with different expectations of privacy in each of them. There's a debate to be had about appropriate demarkations on the Internet.

[erelde]

Where I walk and what I do on the street is private even though it's in a public space (exceptions apply). Similarly what I do and where I go on the internet is private even though it is a public space (exceptions apply).

If someone follows me in the street for hours (days, weeks, life) and note everything that I do, I'd be right to call that a violation of my privacy ?

[dredmorbius]

And many do. The right is enshrined in several of the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

There is Warren and Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy", 1890, which specifically addresses the publication of private aspects of citizens' (and residents') lives:

* Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone" [10] Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops." For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons;[11] and the evil of invasion of privacy by the newspapers, long keenly felt, has been but recently discussed by an able writer.[12] The alleged facts of a somewhat notorious case brought before an inferior tribunal in New York a few months ago,[13] directly involved the consideration of the right of circulating portraits; and the question whether our law will recognize and protect the right to privacy in this and in other respects must soon come before our courts for consideration.*

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Privacy_(articl...

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priv...

The only possibly validity to your nit is that it might be applied to any subject of human discernment: some will differ.

Those differences are quite frequently exceedingly poorly founded.

[demonshalo]

> It's a fight for a fundamental right to privacy.

Where did this right come from? and since when is this a thing? Don't mean to be condescending but "the right to privacy" isn't really a thing in this particular domain (legally speaking)

[agentcoops]

Sticking to a Western context, this is a pretty fundamental distinction between the US and the EU in the understanding (and, crucially, in the implementation/enforcement) of human rights.

I can't pretend to do justice to the long history of the concept, but we can at least say that for the latter, privacy has been considered an important human right since at least the UN declaration of 1948. This has been carried over into European law, see all the iterations on EU data protection laws. The UN statement is Article 12: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

For the US, this dimension of human rights did not deeply inform policy. Here discussion around a "right to privacy" really began in a different context with Brandeis and a right to be "left alone", largely meaning from the press. Many of the cases that inform privacy law in the US are oriented towards such scenarios and do not necessarily translate well to the context of data. See http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priva.... There is rather a discussion on the accuracy of financial data about a person that stems from credit reporting.

The other area that would have to be discussed is of course wire-tapping laws, but leave that for another day... In sum, the question of a "right to privacy" has a long tangled history even just within the West, but is decidedly a thing in the EU.

[jaredklewis]

Fair point. I certainly don't believe in natural law. I don't think we should fight for a right to privacy because it's inhenrently owed to us by the universe or some such.

I think we should fight for it because I think it makes life better and because I don't want to live under an oppressive government.

[lucideer]

I really don't understand this line of logic on fundamental rights. If you're referring to the UDHR, it's a piece of paper put together by Eleanor Roosevelt a little over half a century ago. It's a human document of arbitrary concepts put together by people who believed enforcing those would improve the world in aggregate.

The idea of basing our sense of right on what is law, rather than basing the laws we write on our sense of right seems to be bafflingly common.

[dredmorbius]

Re your final sentence, there's a possible third option (though your second has merits): coming up with both rules (law) and guidance (rights, ethics, morality) based on what improves the overall common weal.

Another archaic concept, I fear, most days.

[lucideer]

I guess I was conflating the latter two...

In my mind:

ethics = definition of what improves the common weal

law (should)= enforcement of said ethics

[dredmorbius]

Hrm. I'm wondering now if there's a possible ethical case for actions which don't improve the common weal. Or how to resolve conflicts between short-term present vs. long-term future outcomes, or other conflicts -- say, you classic Trolley Problem.

I also wanted to note that your dismissal of Fundamental Rights is a good point. I'm finding far more agreement with the Pragmatists (Dewey, James, etc.) than various Natural / Fundamental Rightists. If only because any idiot can jump up and claim "This is My Fundamental Right" and ... all rational discussion stops.