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by sodality2 1752 days ago
The act of analyzing my data is what is the violation. The act of telling me is simply revealing that violation. This is why, when the US intelligence agencies were scanning and analyzing everyone in America's cell phone history and social graph, without interaction or active intervention, it was a privacy violation even when it wasn't being used. It doesn't matter who sees it. The fact that it is being scanned and analyzed for possible future use and abuse is the problem. Yes, this means that a computer in the middle of the rainforest analyzing my mail offline and nothing else is a violation of my privacy. And no, I do not believe that the two, Alice and Bob, can be equated.
1 comments
sellyme 1751 days ago
> The act of analyzing my data is what is the violation.

So to be 100% clear on this: if you tell someone information, and they think about that information, that's a violation of your privacy?

I've definitely always assumed that the right to think about information is intrinsically coupled with the right to know about that information. I wouldn't give someone data that I didn't want them to think about.

> for possible future use and abuse

This is a completely reasonable concern to hold, but surely "they could possibly do something bad later" applies to every email provider in existence.

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sodality2 1750 days ago
>So to be 100% clear on this: if you tell someone information, and they think about that information, that's a violation of your privacy?

If your phone began analyzing your local photos for child porn, you'd probably be upset, no?

>This is a completely reasonable concern to hold, but surely "they could possibly do something bad later" applies to every email provider in existence.

True, but google is CURRENTLY abusing it by selling ads to me based on it.

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sellyme 1749 days ago
> If your phone began analyzing your local photos for child porn, you'd probably be upset, no?

Yep. "local" here is the key word, though. If a service I uploaded photos to began doing that, I would not be upset. And indeed, just about every image-hosting website in existence already does this, because they're legally required to.

Gmail is markedly not a local service.

> True, but google is CURRENTLY abusing it by selling ads to me based on it.

This makes it seem like your concern is with the advertisement funding model, not with privacy.

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