[slg]

You inadvertently hit on another problem with this debate. The three historical examples you chose were identity theft, Muslims post 9/11, and trans people. The root of all those people’s problems isn’t privacy, it is some other broken part of society. So why focus on the symptom instead of that root issue?

Muslim and trans people don’t want to hide their status, they want people to accept their status. Their effort would be more efficiently used advocating for acceptance than advocating for privacy.

Same goes for identity theft. That isn’t caused by bad privacy regulations, it is caused by bad financial regulations that put too much of the burden of fraud on the individual and not the company who fell for the fraud.

In any debate about privacy, it never seems like privacy should be the number one concern for the people involved. Like if you are worried about your credit report being hit for your HN comments, maybe spend some effort trying to change that credit system rather than trying to hide your HN account.

[seethedeaduu]

> trans people don’t want to hide their status, they want people to accept their status

They want both (stealth/passing and acceptance)

[slg]

Fair point, but in the context of an oppressive society the variance from the perceived norm is what presents the problem. That makes the hypothetical "hidden" status I was discussing their gender and not their non-binary status.

[advael]

I mean I think as with many broad groups of people, different individuals likely want each of those things, as well as many wanting both or neither. My comment referred specifically to a subset that wants to assimilate, as they were more likely blindsided than activists who fight for acceptance, but we're nitpicking here

Regardless, the way in which surveillance harms them, as well as other minorities, whether political, racial, ethnic, sexual, or religious, isn't that their "secret" is revealed, it's that they are monitored and can be targeted. Their status can be used to aggregate and group them, but other information can be used to harm or target them. My point in bringing up minorities that suddenly become more prominent targets isn't that they need to hide their minority status and thus are uniquely harmed by surveillance. My point is that surveillance is a weapon, and you only feel the harms of it when it is used on you, not when it's being built

Again, the issue isn't that particular information is especially dangerous. It's that information is power, and there are lots of very concentrated and unaccountable powerbases being built through mass-surveillance, which can be deployed to harm people in all manner of different ways for all manner of different reasons. People feel violated when their privacy is invaded because it is an incursion of power that violates their autonomy, and power is quite versatile in the harms it can do