[Silhouette]

Well, if there was ever any doubt that technology like Google Glass encourages creepy mass surveillance and that powerful new privacy laws are overdue, I guess there isn't any more.

As far as I can see, the path this kind of technology leads us down is only likely to end one of two ways:

1. We develop a more open and forgiving society that acknowledges everyone has faults and treats everyone fairly as the person they are today.

2. We create a society where every time you leave your home, or even in your own home, you constantly have to guard every little thing you say or do, including giving up all kinds of otherwise useful or enjoyable activities that might (justifiably or otherwise) reflect unfavourably on you in the future to someone whose opinion matters at the time.

Sadly, while there might be many people in the world who would both enjoy and respect the first option, it's not really an option at all right now, because there are also a lot of people in the world who will exploit personal information at the expense of the subject. Sometimes that is simply because they aren't very nice themselves. Sometimes it's for more indirect reasons like the way our societies have set up commercial incentives for businesses.

As long as everything from human nature to our economic systems are stacked against the transparency/fairness outcome, maybe it's best if we don't go too far down that path. This seems like a great example of the saying that just because we can do something, it doesn't mean we should.

[whackedspinach]

Laws may help some, but I worry that as devices get smaller and computers are integrated into everything, they won't be able to protect us for long. Ubiquitous computing may (in the next decade or two) actually obsolete any expectation of privacy. We need to start acting as if every digital device nearby is reporting information about us, because most of those devices will soon have that capability.

In that case, I hope (1) is the outcome.

[dredmorbius]

Universal surveillance capability with strong and effective laws protecting privacy should help restore the balance of power.

If there's a presumption of surveillance, and an effective means to compel production of any electronic records, the you end up with an effect similar to that which some people have noted concerning reviewing social networking pages as part of hiring practices (either public-facing content or by the reprehensible practice of requesting passwords).

As several people have noted: sure, if you want to go there, you'll discover that I'm a member of X, Y, and Z lawfully protected groups in terms of discrimination. In which case the onus is then put on the employer (preponderance of evidence) to show that a discriminatory hiring decision wasn't made, to say nothing of legal costs in defending against same.

I'm not entirely sanguine that this be the case -- there's a lot that can go wrong with legal procedure and protections. But laws do matter and can help.

Simply because something is technically possible doesn't mean it must happen.

[username223]

You're hoping against both human nature and statistics. Even if 99% of people are decent, that 1% will still eventually screw you over for their own profit.

Maybe it will come to active countermeasures. For example, you could set your browser (fingerprint and all) to trawl through an invented web history to poison tracking databases. Running such a program would both screw with the trackers and give you plausible deniability. Tag other people's selfies with your name on "social" sites, and tag your own with several names.

[alexeisadeski3]

No, he's hoping that there are fewer opportunities for you to be screwed over for profit.

[giantrobothead]

Unfortunately, those opportunities appear to be as boundless as human stupidity.

[Silhouette]

Laws may help some, but I worry that as devices get smaller and computers are integrated into everything, they won't be able to protect us for long.

Sure they will. Laws help to protect us from all kinds of unwelcome behaviour despite there not being any direct physical intervention to prevent someone who is willing to accept the consequences from acting in that way. This is actually a particularly easy problem to solve.

For one thing, even if miniaturisation of the technology does make it hard to detect, someone still had to create it. That will require sophisticated and expensive manufacturing facilities for the foreseeable future.

Then in most cases it's going to be sold. That means money changing hands, and some form of advertising so vendors can be found by interested buyers.

Arguably the big new risk to privacy from modern technologies is the scale they can reach, uploading, correlating and redistributing vast quantities of data. That means someone has to store the database and provide access to it and probably charge money for that access.

Any of these aspects can be identified, challenged or restricted in law as a preventive mechanism. Moreover, doing so will typically be much easier than identifying someone walking down the street with covert surveillance equipment, which frankly is already widely available without trying very hard to find it, it's just not widely used.

The idea that mass surveillance and the demise of privacy are inevitable conflicts with reality. These things don't happen in isolation, and the people doing them have motivations for their behaviour, and you fight socially unacceptable behaviour that happens to invade privacy the same way you fight any other kind.

[username223]

As Eric Schmidt might remind us, "if you don't want anyone to know about something someday, maybe you never should have done it."

[marquis]

I wear corrective lenses. Every time I hear that I think of Pol Pot.

[dredmorbius]

I'm not sure I grasp the connection.

[marquis]

"During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, at the same time executing selected groups who they believed were enemies of the state or spies or had the potential to undermine the new state. People who they perceived as intellectuals or even those who had stereotypical signs of learning, such as glasses, would also be killed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

[dredmorbius]

Thanks.

[Silhouette]

Absolutely. It's not like millions of people have ever been rounded up and executed just for following the wrong religion or anything. And you'd better believe I just Godwin'd this thread, because this kind of thing is exactly why the Germans are much more cautious about things like privacy and state surveillance than most.

[Zigurd]

Security cameras have face recognition (and other identification technologies) behind them already. Putting recognition technology in the hands of the people will level the playing field: Is that the cop or TSA agent starring in a YouTube video abusing someone? Is that previously anonymous bureaucrat helpful or a time-waster?

So it's not a matter of choosing between those two futures. "They" have already got their database about you. Do you want the same tools, or not?

[alexeisadeski3]

>powerful new privacy laws are overdue

Problem with any new privacy laws is that they will only restrict us, not the government. Since the government is the only one with the legal authority to torture and imprison and rob us, I don't much see the point.

[icebraining]

That's such an oversimplification, both in how it treats the "government" has a single undivided entity, and on how it implies that illegal acts are the only thing that people have to fear, that I don't have the will to counter argue.

But regardless of that, privacy is a right onto itself, it shouldn't need justification. It's violations of thereof that should need to be justified.

[Silhouette]

Since the government is the only one with the legal authority to torture and imprison and rob us, I don't much see the point.

There is a lot more that can hurt quality of life than something as obvious and severe as imprisoning someone. And if your government has the legal authority to torture you, you need a new government.

Failing to control sensitive personal information, and for that matter the inevitable mistaken information that will go along with it, could harm innocent people for reasons including but certainly not limited to: their religious views, their political inclination, their stance on controversial subjects such as abortion or legalisation of drug use, their employment history, any previous criminal activity no matter how minor and how long ago, and the lies a bitter ex once told about them in an online forum.

The kinds of harm caused might include but again are certainly not limited to: inability to get various kinds of insurance or paying excessive premiums, inability to get a job or to negotiate a fair employment contract and compensation when they do, inability to get credit, inability to travel by certain modes of transport, inability to attend certain public events, inability to send their kids to a good school, inability to meet the special someone they would have had those kids with, and in too many real world examples already, harassment, assault, injury, or death.

Governments should be restricted in the personal information they collect and how they can use it, not least because "government" is a sweeping term that probably includes a substantial proportion of the entire adult population in any first world country. But in some respects, preventing the unjustified collection, processing and disclosure of personal information in the private sector is far more important, because that's where most of the risks of nasty but not life-destroying, hire-a-lawyer-and-sue-for-millions damage will occur.

[alexeisadeski3]

Totally agree that having one's privacy protected from the private sector is important!

But it's more important to have one's privacy protected from those who, as I said, have the legal authority to torture, imprison, and rob.

Problem here being that any legislation, in current climate, will only restrict private spying and not government spying.

>And if your government has the legal authority to torture you, you need a new government.

Agreed!

[Silhouette]

I don't disagree with you, nor do I have any problem with creating constitution-level changes that would in principle bind governments in similar ways. I just think these are two different issues, and a win on either one of them is still a win, even if the other one is still a problem.