Slashdot Mirror
Reconciling Information Privacy and Liberty?
thetan asks: "F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' However, for many outsiders, it's hard to understand how cliques reconcile seemingly contrarian views.
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons). Amongst the Slashdot commentariat, one often hears that information wants to be free, almost as a catchcry of the open source, copyfight and related info-libertarian movements. OTOH, these same Slashdot readers stridently guard their privacy, so presumably information about their shopping preferences or websurfing does not 'want to be free'. How does the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd reconcile the liberty of other people's information with the privacy of their own?"
Not all information is created equal. The information that "wants to be free" is information that adds meaningfully to the sum of human knowledge. Whether that's an algorithm to quickly sort large amounts of information, a law of physics, or a new economic model.. these types of information want to be free.
Information that "doesn't want to be free" is the kind that doesn't give anything meaningful to humanity at large or the kind that bring me to some harm if released. If the information in question doesn't pass this test then it's okay to keep it secret. What porn I bought yesterday is not really of interest to anybody except me and therefore, under my model, this information is best kept secret. Other secret information, like passwords, credit-card numbers and social security number are outright danger to me if they are released to the public.
We have to be careful what line we tread. In the US, companies like choicepoint are collecting huge amounts of data and yet even though the data is about us, it does not belong to us. This causes huge problems for us because Choicepoint doesn't really care if this data gets out. What skin is it off Choicepoints back? Will it lose sales? These data collection companies need to CARE about keeping our data SAFE. The only way to do that is make them liable for incredible sums of money if that data ends up in the wrong hands.
Privacy is under attack and we need to defend it. A 150 years ago, I could walk out in to a field and have a private conversation and be sure it was private. These days, there could be lazer microphones and bugs. A 150 years ago, I could disappear on a horse for a couple of months and nobody would know where I am. These days they can find you with your mobile phone and CCTV. A 150 years ago you could build a house and not care about somebody using spy-satelites to check for building code violations.
Privacy and Liberty are not at odds, they are one in the same. Being free is about people not knowing everything about you. People often retort by saying "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care if they collect the data". Yes, I'm sure the Jews had nothing to hide from the government in 1920s. Only ten years later, their census data was being used to round them up and murder them. Privacy is important not for the reasons we can readily think of but for all the reasons we can't think of.
Simon.
I thought this was "news for nerds", not "political drivel in article descriptions".
Easy. I only want other peoples' information to be free.
I think the key is that there's a very big difference between the information that "wants to be free" like algorithms, software, Cisco vulnerabilities, etc. and information like your globally-unqiue database key (SSN in the US). In one case there's you have information that has no particular relevance to any one person, but could benefit society as a whole in some way. The other case is information that identifies one person and doesn't necessarily help society in any way.
At least for the slashdot comparison, the submitter is comparing apples to oranges.
"Free as in beer" is gratis. Beer is not libre.
Anyway, information hates it when you anthropomorphize it.
The "catchcry" is fundamentally flawed, because information doesn't want anything. People want information.
Information - knowledge - is directly related to power. Those that know are in control. The phrase, then, stems from the socialist inklings in the hearts of the Good People (TM). This is to say that people who have interest in others tend to share - or at least want to share - information with them. Now, before you go off flaming me, not being a Socialist (captialized) doesn't make you bad. We all express this in different ways.
Also, somewhat offtopic, but:
The abortion/death penalty "conundrum" is really simple.
Being pro-life is about saving innocent lives.
The death penalty is about ending guilty ones.
Plenty of hairy details and opinions to go with those, though.
Not to take a side, but it's not hard to see the GOP argument here.
Fetus, embryo, pre-born child = innocent.
Capital criminal = guilty.
The general line of thinking is that if you violate or nearly violate someelse's right to life your own life is forfeit as a penalty.
It's not exactly rocket science.
Merits aside, really, it's not a mystery!
1) You don't know what "clique" means.
2) You don't know what "information wants to be free" means.
3) Opposing abortion and supporting the death penalty is not contradictory. Neither is the opposite position.
4) Slashbots simultaneously demand regulation and libertarianism because they're idiots.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Let's take your two examples: I'm not right-wing (nor am I left-wing for that matter), so I can only guess how they reconcile the seemingly contradicting abortion-no/death penalty-yes issues. It's probably a shade of gray like this: Every newly-formed life deserves a chance to live. But a criminal who does something so heinous that he forfeits his right to live among society should be put to death. Not a contradiction, but a recognition of differing circumstances.
On to 'information wants to be free.' That refers to knowledge that can benefit humanity, whether it's sharing of source code so that other coders can learn and improve, or sharing of knowledge so that everyone can benefit from the wisdom of the group. However, we do not want to give up our personal privacy because harm can come to us if that happens. Stalkers, criminals, cranks, whoever wants to harm us for either personal gain or vendettas, can do so if they know our name and SSN and so on. Not to mention spammers. See? It's once again not a contradiction but a recognition of differing circumstances.
It's perfectly possible for someone to oppose abortion and support the death penalty, although I'm not sure how it would fit into the Christian ethic espoused by Republicans of late in the US. I, personally, oppose both, but not for the usual reasons.
Since I'm not religious, I believe that there is no inherent right to human life -- or anything else -- because no one has demonstrated the presence of a universal authority who could bestow that right. We are each granted "the right to life," such as it is, by our society. There are things you can do, such as committing a capital crime, that represent a voluntary renunciation of that right.
An unborn child, conversely, has done nothing to give up whatever right to live that society can confer.
I am troubled by abortion rights -- even in the absence of religious motivation -- because I can't answer the question, "When is it no longer OK to kill a baby?" At the moment of viability outside the mother's body? No; that fails as a test because technology will eventually make in vitro incubation a reality. At the moment of conception? Yeah, that would be fine, except for the point I just made. At the moment of discernible brain activity? Same problem. At the moment of birth? Only a barbarian would be OK with that. At the onset of conscious awareness? That happens after birth.
The reason why I oppose capital punishment is purely pragmatic -- I don't trust the government or the judicial system to get much of anything else right, so why should I trust these proven-fallible institutions with a decision that by definintion can't be reversed?
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)
The reasoning is generally based on accountability and culpability. A feutus is neither, while presumably an adult facing the death penalty is both. The larger problems with the death penalty isn't the taking of a life, but that the process is so potentially flawed for a miriad of reasons that the life in question may in fact not be culpable at all.
Please note that I'm not advocating, just clarify what was a needlessly murky aside which could have very appropriately removed by a more astute editor.
The web article linked in TFA is so blatantly biased and the author full of his own agenda that it makes for a poor basis for discussion, and ironically underscores the point illustrated by juxtaposing the Fitzgerald quote with the remainder of the topic at hand.
First, as Orwell very correctly observed, the human mind is not the least bit troubled by self-contradiction. Logic is much more of a conceit or a learned skill than a human trait. Or as Swift said, human beings are just Rationis Capax. Well, it doesn't really surprise any observer of humanity that we're all so often blithely illogical even as we express pride at our reason and intelligence. It's just an all-too-familiar fact of life.
:D
The second thing is that people who are ungifted or unfamiliar with the subtleties of a situation very often mistake nuance for a self-contradiction. We've all watched politicians make our most cherished freedoms into evils to be ground under the bootheel of a five word slogan. The truth is that we reason modularly with symbols and representations that reduce the immediate and full impact of what they represent, and we communicate using the same imperfect tools.
Slogans about information wanting to be free are symbols that make a far more specific case than they appear - because (forgive the half-hearted semiotics) of their context. Take them out of context and you are now merely playing dishonest rhetorical games. To clarify this as one example: "we" (not really, but lets say for the sake of the example) don't want "information to be free" - we want copyright to be limited (or at least its enforcement to take a backseat to civil liberties). And yes, we consider privacy to be one of those civil liberties.
Remember, too, that common law, and indeed all of our human society, is not a mathematical model descended from the heavens. It's a permutation of our instictints and our necessities - strictly arbitrary and animal in nature.
There are many "inconsistencies" around us that deserve our full attention. And I take it as a compliment that the story's attempt at producing one for the slashdot crowd's approach towards copyright and privacy amounts to a vapid, dishonest hat-trick.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
To paraphrase one of my favorite musicals, 1776
"You should know that information always wants to be free when its in the 3rd person, such as 'Your Information'. It is only in the 1st person, 'My Information' that it wants to be unfree.
Things fall down...People look up... And when it rains, it pours.
Disclaimer: I'm a hardcore liberal. But I can't stand it when liberals make the "how can Republicans want the death penalty, but not abortion." It's easy. Unborn children haven't committed crimes. Criminals have. Personally I still don't want the death penalty for a different reason, because there is a clear racial and financial bias going on in the American legal system; however, I still hate it, and feel embarassed when, my friends try to use this idiotic argument of "Republicans are contradicting themselves!" when my friends are arguing for abortion or against the death penalty.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Discussions of "bias" are most commonly used when the complainant has no serious factual or well-reasoned rebuttal to defeat the opposing side's positions. If bias were in fact warping things to the point that serious contrarian evidence is being ignored that could utterly demolish the argument, it should be trivial to simply make those points and win the debate. Instead people choose to attack the messengers rather than the message, since they can't win via rational argument using rigorous standards of evidence.
Thus, saying "those silly republicans don't mind killing killers but don't want a fetus killed" implies the fetus is indeed alive, which is contradictory to most pro choice advocates will have you believe.
I think what both people on either side of pro-life / pro-choice debate fail to see is that the each side is striving for the most compassionate and human choice given a core set of assumptions. Just this morning I was listening to Air America radio, and I heard callers impugn pro-life people opposed to stem cell research as being motivated by profit for drug companies and as being heartless towards suffering people with diabetes and spinal cord injuries. I've heard pro-life people call pro-choice people heartless baby-killers with no care for anyone but themselves.
Both sides are wrong about each other. Both sides are trying to do what they see as best with a compassionate heart. The core question about abortion is, "Is the unborn a human being?"
For those who answer, "Yes," pro-life is the only sane and humane choice. If we must treat the retard, the senile, the newly born, and others with undeveloped minds who are dependent on the care of others as having a right to life, we must treat the unborn similarly and must give that right to exist the highest priority. That life must not be sacrificed for the convenience of others when that life has done no deliberate harm to anyone. That is preserving the life and freedoms of the innocent.
For those who answer, "No," pro-choice is the only sane and humane choice. A woman must have the right to choose whether she is ready for motherhood and must not have it trust upon her. She must be allowed the freedom of control over what happens to her body. People who are dying of preventable diseases must have access to medicine that could save them regardless of the religious beliefs of other people. Their lives and freedoms have higher precedent than the offended sensibilities of others. That too is about preserving life and freedoms the innocent.
You'll find extremely few pro-lifers who don't believe that a fetus is a living child. You'll find extremely few pro-choicers who do believe that a fetus is a living child. It's this fundamental question of the humanity of the fetus that is at the core of the argument. Since neither side really wants to address this argument, they cast aspersions on the character of the other side. No one really wants to sit down and discuss this because the lines were drawn before I was born. It's kind of sad because I think that the argument is one that it important and there are secular and religious arguments for both sides.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You are basically pushing the incorrect notion that "all opinions are equal", that all opinions should be treated with equal respect and never challenged, and that it is "biased" and "prejudiced" or even "offensive" to diss someone else's opinion if you believe it is wrong. This is Political Correctness run amok. People are NOT entitled to ignore facts and hold incorrect views, and they should be flamed if what they are saying is, in fact, incorrect, and does not take into cognisance all the facts.
For example, the astroturfers on /. keep pushing the (incorrect) idea that it represents a bias to seemingly apply "different standards" to different companies, based on the false implied premise that companies are like races, "all essentially equal and thus an unfair bias not to treat them equally" --- but this is nonsense because companies are not like races, companies really are very different from one another, and so it makes perfect sense to treat them differently. Many people here actually have a knowledge of what different companies have done over the years. It is not "biased" to thus dislike and distrust companies that really have behaved unethically for twenty odd years.
Likewise, the "differing views" you mention on the War on Iraq almost always ignore most of the facts that also happen to be kept out of the mainstream media. Nobody is entitled to hold particular views on a war if those views deliberately ignore significant facts.
OK true, "Troll" and "Flamebait" are the wrong moderations, sure, but that's only because there is no "-1 Ignorant" rating.
I'm tired of this "don't offend anyone" BS. People who speak rubbish should be flamed and offended.
Supporting the death penalty, yet opposing abortion, is contradictory, eh?
Ok, what about opposing the death penalty, yet supporting abortion? Isn't that JUST as contradictory in exactly the same way?
The justifications on both sides sound the same too:
"Adults who have shown that they only care about killing others have EARNED the death penalty, whereas an unborn child is innocent and has earned no such punishment."
Or, on the other hand
"An adult has an established identity, and as such killing him is always wrong, whereas a fetus has no identity, and as such is just extra tissue for disposal."
Neither view is actually contradictory in the mind of the person who holds it, because they see adults and unborn children as being separate cases to be governed by separate rules.
I am more interested in genuinely contradictory views such as "It is perfectly acceptable for a female interviewer to be granted access to the men's locker room, but it is outright wrong for a male interviewer to be granted access to the women's locker room. The men who don't want women watching them shower are just being silly, whereas the women who don't want men watching them shower are being quite reasonable."
--AC
The problem is deeper than gratis vs libre, because most people misunderstand libre.
Liberty is not license. It doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. It doesn't mean a lack of rules.
Liberty needs rules. Information might want to be libre, but that doesn't mean you can take whatever information you want from whomever you want and do whatever you want with it. Your liberty (and liberty is ALWAYS both personal and individual) is limited, as Jefferson said, by the bounds of other people's equal rights. Law is there to enforce those boundaries.
Without some set of rules keeping other people from choosing to violate others' rights you have anarchy, which has very little to do with liberty.
The ideal is to want rule of law and not of man. To have a playing field where the rules are understood, and enforced equally on everyone, and are there to protect people's liberty; instead of a system of arbitary power where individuals (private, corporate, or state) can arbitarily change the rules, arbitarily enforce them, and do so for their own benefit.
Information wants to be free because it is easy to move it around. But in the interest of protecting the rights of all people (you and those in the RIAA as well) there have to be rules protecting the ownership of information. Otherwise there is no libre, only anarchy.
Is selling your personal data to some shady group wrong? Yes. Is getting copyrighted music of a P2P system without paying for it wrong? Yes, and for exactly the same reasons. Without ownership there are no rights, and disrespecting ownership is disrespecting libre.
As for the death penalty/abortion thing, it comes down to 2 basic disagreements over world view. First: is a fetus a human being? Second, the left believes in "thou shalt not kill" while the right believes in "thou shalt not murder." There's a world of difference in there, because one side believes that all violence and all killing is wrong. The other believes that violence, even up to lethal levels, is often a very beneficial thing. It is the misuse of it that is wrong.
Specialization is for Insects
This whole article is nothing but a flamebait troll. Just like the mainstream media, it reduces complicated issues into aggravating soundbites designed for nothing but rowling its readers into generating a shitstorm of comments. The author/editors must be aiming this one at the Hall of Fame. Can we please extend the mod system to article submissions as well, please?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
More than one person posts on Slashdot.
Some of these people think informaiton should be free. Another thinks completely differently, believing that holding some information privately is OK.
The conflict is between different people with different opinions, not between one person with differing opinions.
What's so unusual about that, and why is it people always think "typical slashdotters" always think alike?