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Privacy is a Biological Imperative?
sevej writes "As a lead-in to an article in the August 2007 issue, Scientific American recently published an interview with Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Latanya Sweeney regarding the trade-offs between security and privacy. Dr. Sweeney provides a refreshing counter-point to Sun Microsystems CEO, Scott McNealy's 'famous quip', 'Privacy is dead. Get over it.' She advocates the idea that privacy is not primarily a political expediency, but rather a biological one. Suggesting that technological design doesn't have to take a 'soup OR salad' approach, she calls for changes in the way present and future computer scientists are trained. Dr. Sweeney is quoted as saying, 'I think if we are successful in producing a new breed of engineers and computer scientists, society will really benefit. The whole technology-dialectics thing is really aiming at how you should go about teaching engineers and computer scientists to think about user acceptance and social adoption [and also that they] have to think about barriers to technology [from the beginning].'"
Caveman A: "You leave that shit in the front lawn and it's going to get stolen!"
Caveman B: "Yeah, yeah, I'll move the carcass in the cave after the Price is Right is over."
I told ye I had grog in me veins.
Yo ho ho a pirates life for me!
Avast!
Ohhh, you said Privacy
liqbase
If someone is a biological imperative, we would be proactive about defending ourselves to protect our biological functions. If you're cold, you shiver. If you're still cold, you put on clothes. If you don't, you die.
If you're thirsty, your mouth gets dry. You drink water. If you don't, you die.
There is no biological response, yet, to keeping your information private. When you get a new credit card, do you read the contract that is included with the application? It's all there. When you install new software, do you read the contract? It's all there.
If you don't like a contract because it gives up what you consider private information, don't sign it. If you feel you need the item or service, find an outlet selling it that won't breach your privacy. It's quite simple. If there is no outlet for that service without giving up what you deem important, find out why. Many times it is State-intrusion in a market that creates a monopolistic cartel of providers. Don't blame that market for the privacy issues, blame your government that created the cartel (mercantilism, not capitalism).
Privacy to me is useless. I can't think of one reason why I need or require complete privacy. If someone wants to peep on my wife and I in bed, I close the shades. Big deal. Financially, it already makes little to no sense to have personal credit or a good personal credit score, because of past government interventions. I still track my credit report monthly, and am alerted to changes. If someone wants to try to steal my identity, let them try -- I already have an inexpensive insurance plan against identity theft. Privacy, to me, is irrelevant in my life.
What is important is the freedom for me to work the way I want to work, and have fun the way I want to have fun. If either of those issues "become public," so be it -- they're who I am. If someone doesn't want to work with me because of what I like to do, so be it, they're free to associate or disassociate with me. What do I have to hide?
Not according to the world's most dangerous criminal
We're getting there... http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SPZI.PK
not having doors on the toilets?
Not to mention orgies. (not just in factories and the military)
Uppity computer scientist thinks she can teach engineers more about those technology-dielectric things. I'll show her a dielectric - I'll teach her not to catch those technology-capacitor things!
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I never understood any of the arguments that said "you have to trade privacy for security", whether you're talking about security meaning phsycal safety or security of data or possessions.
I really wish someone would explain this to me. I really, really don't get it. I don't have to let you know what's in my car's trunk in order for me to lock it, do I? You don't have to know what I plan on carrying in my trunk in order to develop a lock, do you? WHY must I give up my privacy and/or anonymity?
Thanks in advance.
-mcgrew
"I can't think of one reason why I need or require complete privacy."
Have you ever tried to fill a sample bottle with medical staff in the same room? My biology at least doesn't seem to want to play ball!
Your darn right it's a biological imperative. I can't get anyone to have sex and continue the species without privacy!
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
as I'm sure that anyone who has seen a pair of dogs shagging in public will agree.
Summation 2
I find that funny. So why do you close the shades then if you don't need privacy? What exactly are you hiding? If you had nothing to hide, you'd keep the shades up!
The human being needs space and to be able to have his/her own thoughts, feeling, and actions, be their own.
Why should be give up our right to privacy? It is a Constituational right. But it is also a personal right. Stop for a moment to consider how much you want other people knowing about your bad habits. Opposite side, of that picture, do you really want to know how much lint come from your neighbors...... pockets?
I say no. Privacy is needed for inner peace of mind. This includes the knowlege that you are not being watched 24/7. People are more stressed out stuggling to keep their private lives private rather than enjoying their lives.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
OK, I know that's how a lot of people act - hopefully they will never reproduce, but having neighbours and sharing things with them is part of how we developed. Privacy only started when humans started wearing clothes: a great step backwards, ISTM.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Many monkeys will go berserk if you just stare at them, and staring at a charging feline will very often stop it dead on it's tracks; this is why thai farmers will wear masks on the back of their heads, it will stop tigers from attacking.
Animals need privacy, too, and will make sure they get it.
This is a nice selection of stories with the same idea:
If we just control people precisely and carefully in then minutest possible detail, we'll have utopia.
Privacy it a relatively modern concept. A few hundred years ago, it was unheard of.
Perhaps your biological urge has been suppressed by the conditioning of society, much like other "instinctual" urges that we have been trained to put down (anger? "Dominance"?). The question, as well, isn't what you have to hide, it's what they're doing with the information. I don't want my bank account / e-mails / etc becoming just other ways for the "Corporate Government" we have right now to start taking advantage of me. I'd rather know that the world is still operating by some face-to-face respectful standards, than have myself drug in the street and cut open to see if I've bomb.
"If you can't convince adults who've made up their minds, just indoctrinate the young to agree with us from the start."
For great justice.
If you consider privacy to be a trivial matter then why is the removal of privacy one of the first things done to prisoners, cult members, or hostages to break them down mentally? Forcing someone to strip is a form of this (that is why genitalia is referred to as "privates", right?). By removing privacy you break down the wall between a person's sense of self and those around him. You make them feel completely vulnerable and helpless. It is a form of abuse. Just because you have "nothing to hide" right now doesn't mean you always will or maybe you are just an exhibitionist by nature.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
There, that reads *much* better.
I didn't know that engineers and computer scientist were classified by breed these days. Anyway, I'm glad there is groundbreaking research on bloodlines going on to develop this new breed that they are looking for. I hear they are expecting a breakthrough any day now.
Do power players show their cards to each other? Why not? Because a poker game is a (somewhat) adversarial situation, in which disclosing information give an advantage to your opponents, which they are likely to exploit.
A large number of human situations involve some degree of negotiation and are to some degree adversarial. Knowledge can be power, and knowledge can be money. You don't need to be a control freak to want to retain some degree of control.
Not that I expect to get the better of a car deal, but I still don't necessarily want the salesman to know how much money I can write a check for today, and he doesn't necessarily want me to know the financial state of the dealership or his sales goal for the month and how many cars he's sold.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Every one of my cells' nuclear membranes and cell membranes would scream YES!!!, if they weren't so busy keeping to themselves.
--
make install -not war
My dogs get uncomfortable when you watch them poopie. Maybe there is something biological about the need for privacy.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I always thought it was amusing that when we clean our family's cat box, the cat decides to take a crap, but won't actually do the deed unless we turn away. (predator/prey response maybe?)
So... do cats want privacy or do they just want to make sure that no potential predators are watching them so they can pounce when they are, ahem, "busy"
The article in this slashdot story seems particularly relevant to your position.
While you claim the information is all there in contracts, most contracts are written in ways that only lawyers, or those trained in legal rhetoric can understand (just an observation). So it's not as clear cut as you think and that is the problem. Too many people view the world only through thier own set of blinders and don't/wont'/can't see beyond them. Training computer scientists to consider the impact of technology and how it affects users wether that is in UI desing, privacy and security, stability, what ever, is certainly a benefit. Unlike any other discipline that I can think of, programmers and designers have a huge impact in how technology is used or not.
While we are all used to the file system structure in Unix and Windows system, does it really make the most sense for an average user who hasn't necessarily been trained to think in heirarchies? Probably not. And if you reply with "Well, users should learn to think that way, damnit" that shows you don't understand the nature of the problem.
There is a visceral response most people have when their privacy is invaded, very much akin to fight or flight. Whether that is nature or nuture is immaterial. The result is still there. If you know that your privacy may be invaded, perhaps the shock is less, but it is still there. Do you really think if I provided you with your personal information like your financiual history, sexual history, book buying habits, you would not have a reaction?
Awareness it s good thing.
>> She advocates the idea that privacy is not primarily a political expediency, but rather a biological one. Suggesting that technological design doesn't have to take a 'soup OR salad' approach,
Nice soundbite. Has anyone got a clue if this actually means anything or is it just psuedo-intellectual drivel?
privacy is about the sovereignty of the individual. It has been around for a very long time.
government's took it away. The idea the the need for privacy dictated in law has only been around for a few hundred years.
I also happen to believe that there are different types of privacy, and that privacy is implicit in any relationship.
Meaning, If I choose to share information with a credit card company that's fine, but the data is still private between me and the Credit card company. Saying the credit card company can share your information implies that it's not yours anymore. It also mean information about you is being used and you have no control over it. Which is wrong no matter who is using it.
Our founding father understood this, and made it so the government can not take those things that would be private to the citizens. While allowing people to choose who the bring into there person ring of privacy; Which can include everybody.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As to animals attacking when you stare at them, they're not attacking because they want to be alone, they're reacting to what they perceive is a threat.
Privacy is all about information control, we forget that one of the main sources of power is control of information.
When someone (person, company or state) knows all about you, it will be a matter of time when that information will be abused, cause although your life is transparent theirs is not.
So Asimmetry of information gives those on top the best negotiating hand of cards, you might be getting all that convenience of service but will bite you back when you least expect.
Some examples:
- You start getting all that yummi mail spam, and direct marketing offers that you didn't ask for (like right before signed up for some service).
- When you feel defensive and start wondering if they are out to get you, your behaviour is seen as a proof of guilt or that you're up to no good (well, if you done nothing wrong what's there to hide, uhh??? a lot!!!).
- When you decide to change jobs, well that would make your current boss a little tiffed if he/she knew (oh, the consequences...).
- And there's the old, i have a women friend and it's purely platonic, and if my wife/girlfriend knows about it she's gonna be so furious that she'll make my life a living hell (wish is quite unfair since you ain't getting "any" from any of them).
So preserve some of your privacy for your own good, it might get in handy one of these days.
What do I have to hide
The hundreds of tiny embarassments that everyone is guilty of.
Society to date has depended on much of what one does being private - everyone knows that 90% of men masturbate (and 10% lie about it), but it's not polite to discuss or exhibit, and it's embarassing to be discovered. This is, perhaps, irrational, but it is also the way things are.
Maybe you don't want people knowing that you bought Hairspray on HD-DVD. Maybe you don't want people knowing that you're gay. Maybe you don't want people knowing you had an abortion. Maybe you don't want people knowing your great grandfather owned slaves. Maybe you don't want people knowing you smoke weed. Maybe you don't want people knowing you donate money to the Republican party. Maybe you don't want people knowing you did 3 years' hard time - whether or not you were actually guilty. Maybe you don't want your abusive ex-husband to know where you live.
The other alternative is to make sure you stay both legal and conformant to all social norms. Which, even if possible, isn't the way most people want to live their lives.
Given society as it currently is, those are your choices. Your personal crusade to change the social norms such that nothing legitimate is embarassing any more, though possibly impressive, is unlikely to bear fruit before privacy is eliminated.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Americans tend to mistakenly think in terms of rights granted by their federal constitution.
This is an especially ironic error since the U.S. Constitution was written in terms that make it clear that rights do not come from a constitution. You have rights, period. The U.S. Constitution does not list your rights. It lists the legitimate powers of government.
So, when someone says, "You have no constitutional right to privacy." they are making a fundamental mistake. They are suggesting that your rights are enumerated, when, both implicit in the structure of the U.S. Constitution and explicitly stated in Amendements IX and X: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." and "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Privacy is a natural right. Without it, many other rights become a nullity.
I wrote parts of this stuff
And a necessity in modern society. If you want to give a biological imperative, I think it would be the opposite. We are wired to be communal. Humans are social beings, pack animals as it were... we banded together, lived together, fought together etc so we wouldn't be eaten by the bigger, faster and stronger. In modern society we have to pursue privacy. Desmond Morris in the Human Animal explained it better than I, but one of the things is that is it very hard for one human to ignore another human. We have to work at it. Cities force us to seek anonymity, otherwise we would be overwhelmed acknowledging each other.
That said, one of the aspects of living in a polite society is that we work to respect each other's privacy. That is why, in my opinion, that violations of privacy, especially by people we don't know, is offensive to us.
...by the industrial revolution, economics, politics and The Media. I'm not sure a biological imperative means anything these days besides a bathroom trip.
technical writing / development
If by "secret section" you mean the 9th Amendment, then yes. Let me refresh your memory:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Blah blah blah. Correct, it isn't a RATIONAL need. We're programmed this way. And that's why point by point apparently coherent RATIONAL appeals are largely ineffective.
Frame it this way:
Why do we prefer shitters with stalls and walls vs. one in full public view?
Why do we have shutters and shades on our windows?
Is it because we all plan on doing something wrong?
No, it's just human/animal nature. Privacy and personal space.
Just think of all the hot chicks you can hear breaking up with their boyfriends. You can totally catch em on the rebound with your,"Hey I'm just passing through, and my job is an FBI agent." routine.
God spoke to me.
All you need to do is look at how the idea of privacy is communicated among various cultures. Some languages don't even provide a word for privacy.
is a biological imperative primarily among intellectuals I think. The way most people of this generation upload all their personal things on myspace without a thought says a lot. Contrast that to slashdot where the majority probably have no interest to do this and are more likely to be using tor and disabling cookies and other things that most people couldn't care less about.
Giving up privacy means giving up your ability to deceive another. The problem is that secrets are not evenly distibuted - my secrets are piddly little things compared to a governor's secrets. Existing power structures are such that those who have the most reason to value their privacy will also have greater means of preserving it, and those relatively inconsequential secrets that most people harbor will be exploited to control them in various ways.
Imagine the other side of the coin, though - giving up privacy voluntarily (how, when and to whom you choose) in order to create trust. The scope of the public is widening, and it provides a unique opportunity for people to change the ways in which they think about identity and power.
I have some trepidation about the creep of casual surveillance and monitoring - it seems very narrowly conceived, merely a way to further perfect law enforcement, to try and catch EVERY crime. It will be implemented in urban areas and used to police the already oppressed. It could be used to enable the opposite, however - transparent zones, lawless places, governed directly by the collective will of communities.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
You're looking at this in terms of a narrow range of limited issues, namely sex in the bedroom, credit reporting and identity theft. There's more to it than that.
For instance, if you can't see why privacy applies to you then you can't be among those who have complex political viewpoints, engage in "alternative" political activities, or simply have beliefs or opinions which others might deem questionable and which could be used against you later, or even cause you harm.
Many people from a wide range of groups are used to being cautious and have some expectation of privacy when they meet, engage in certain activities, or simply discuss these things.
There cannot be true democracy without this expectation of privacy, since it leads to people not being able to have or hold beliefs or opinions contrary to the endorsed viewpoints of those in power. Liberty and privacy go hand in hand. If the market or government starts encroaching on it then privacy isn't dead, democracy and freedom is, and privacy is simply suppressed.
And by the way, if you close the curtains to prevent others from peeping, you do have some use for privacy after all.
Soldiers are cult members (patriots), prisoners (economic) and hostages (support the troops) all rolled into one.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
There have been two main technological obstacles to ubiquitous surveilance. The first is getting the data from the sensor to some central location. Universal wireless networks have taken care of that. The second is the storage and filtering of all that data. That problem's been solved with cheap storage and better computers and software. So, in building other things people want (cell phone systems, computers with enough storage and power to handle video, etc.) we've put all the tools in place of a low cost, universal surveilance system.
Even the last minor hurdle - powering the sensors - is being overcome with "energy harvesting" technology. It's not enough to power video cameras yet, but the market forces will certainly push it in that direction.
The days are over when we could safeguard our privacy by technological limitations (the "who's going to bother looking at what I'm doing" defense). So perhaps it is time for the engineers and the computer scientists to start considering the privacy issues from the beginning, as a technology issue.
We work hard to build devices that don't electrocute or maim us. It's time we started considering social harm as well, and not leave it all to the politicians.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Scott McNealy is actually no longer the CEO of sun; that title now belongs to Jonathan Schwartz. McNealy should be referred to as a former CEO.
> If someone wants to peep on my wife and me in bed, I close the shades.
Fixed that for you.
Everything is permissible, anything is possible.
Pervasive monitoring would "out" a lot of human behavior and necessarily change social norms. Restricted, centrally controlled monitoring could only be a tool of oppression, protecting the secrets of the powerful as it uses the secrets of the weak to divide and control society. Here's a great comment on privacy from the other day.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
The desire for privacy may be entirely rational.
Humans are, after all, a thinking species - we know how to use information, both for ourselves and against our competitors. By denying information to our competitors we gain an upper hand, whether it be in war and combat, social standing, accessing food and water, and so on. How often, for example, has a social situation felt like a game of poker, with bluffing and deception?
Knowledge is power. By denying information to our competitors we may well improve our own chances for survival and procreation.
I think it's cool that we (USA) can have a Comp Sci Phd at one of the most prestigious Comp Sci schools named "Latanya" (whose picture in the article confirms she is black and female).
On the other hand, part of her interview was about racism/sexism she encountered at MIT in the 70s.
i read the article and while i find sweeney believable (and refreshing), there are too many examples of new tech being used directly counter to the intent of its originators, when it suits the aims of the people running things.
how long will it take for identity angel to be used to gather information in exactly the way that she is trying to prevent?
(tin foil hats! getcher tin foil hats right here!)
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =998565
I got that from a previous slashdot story. It brings up some good points to think about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You are drawing a misconclusion here. Animal tend to seek seclusion when they defecate because they are vulnerable at this point. Where a predator to spot prey making #2 its a good opportunity to strike. Yeah, if you have to cut and run, you have to, but with the unfortunate consequence that you might literally get fecal matter on yourself. Another potential evolutionary behavior is to find a spot "off the beaten path" to deposit material which, in the long run, will effect your biological health. So, privacy (a human concept) and seeking seclusion are different.
and missus almost all of privacy except one small piece.d =998565
That issue is addressed in:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i
Privacy is more then data, it's having control of that data.
That entire post is built upon a fallacy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Screw that, I get uncomfortable watching my dog 'poopie'. I have biological need to not feel like vomiting.
Of all the people I know, it's the computer engineers and software programmers who are the most privacy concerned. I'm not sure what this article is talking about (I didn't RTFA), but in my experience it's the non-technical who don't understand (like politicians, and business people) that don't care and need to be educated.
Look, all the socially conscious engineers in the world won't do you any good if the people signing their pay checks are demanding spyware, massive personal ID databases, and the like.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Pervasive monitoring would "out" a lot of human behavior and necessarily change social norms
Agreed.
I do not think, however, it's safe to say that it would change them for the better. One might hope that social norms would change to become more accepting - that is, that all behaviors that are not illegal or unethical would also not be shameful. One might fear, however, that what would really happen is a tyranny of the majority situation regarding such behaviors, moving them from simply shameful to practically illegal. Behaviors engaged in by any minority (by which I mean mathematical minortiy, not ethnic minority) would, potentially, be threatened.
Furries, for example. As far as I can tell, there is nothing unethical, illegal, or immoral about that particular fetish. Nonetheless, in an "everything is public" society, the population of non-furries is so much greater than the population of furries that the furries might just be effectively eliminated.
Obviously, there are plenty of other examples that could be used, but I hope you take my point.
In addition, there is another, more general concern: for all of human history, societies have found some activities to be taboo (I mean this as distinct from illegal). Assuming that some form of natural selection of societies takes place, the fact that this is still true may indicate that there is societal value in holding some behaviors as, while not illegal, worthy of censure.
Alternatively, of course, it could be argued that it is a form of societal natural selection to have a privacy-less society, and having no taboos is the next evolutionary step.
Of course, if it's an evolutionary dead end...well, I would rather not be a member of the group to find that out.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Is there a possibility that the need for privacy is an extension of the vulnerability compensation technique that you pointed out?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Oddly enough, I ranted about the whole thing yesterday here: http://www.unwesen.de/articles/ive_got_nothing_to_ hide
I don't think privacy is a biological imperative, but a psychological one, which I would argue is based on biological imperatives. You may disagree, of course.
Tiger: Gees, I mean Cmon. Can you give me a little privacy while I'm trying to maul you!
Besides which, I personally have never had anything against furries. I'm sure that when they are not fucking in their bear suits, they're pretty much like myself in most ways. They eat and sleep, walk around talking to people, do some job or other. They might not have such a hard time in, say, a transparent San Franciscan city-state, right?
So long, and thanks for all the fish
In the year 2068 not many people noticed when a law was passed preventing you closing your shades, not many people noticed or cared. After all their parents had always told this generation if you have nothing to hide then it doesn't matter. One person noticed though and that was dada21. This is his story.
In all seriousness though, I believe you would probably protest if say you were required to wear a wire all day which sent information to a global database. Or every time your body started getting excited it alerted some federal agent somewhere that you could be getting it on, because the chip you had implanted sends them information about your vitals at all time. Don't worry though, they will be able to track you to your home and prove you are either killing or doing your wife.
I don't mean to attack you, just trying to paint a visual image for you here. If you become uncomfortable when someone is watching you do the dirty with your wife, well then there you go you want privacy.
Sure, furries might end up being a minority, but the number of people who are in various minorities (although not the same one) would be a cumulative majority, and this may lead to acceptance of minority behaviors--a "I'll defend your right to be a furry if you defend my right to enjoy tentacle hentai" type of thing.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
I know for a fact that in many languages, there is no word for privacy ( for example, Hindi and some other Indian languages) . If indeed privacy was a biological need, I am sure languages would be able to express it adequately. The need for privacy is, at best, a creation of the western society.
No. The grandparent is right. Privacy is a relatively new phenomenon, though it certainly predates your Founding Fathers. History didn't begin in 1776, or even 1492 you know.
In Western Europe, it came about with the invention of the chimney. Before then, everyone in a large household, from the lords right down to the stablehands all slept together in one big hall, because that was where the fire and the heating was. When chimneys were invented, large dwellings could sustain multiple small fires and small rooms, and privacy suddenly became something that was possible.
Nowadays, technology is making it virtually impossible again, since getting rid of computer databases and camera surveillance (and stopping people using them) would probably be about as difficult as uninventing the wheel.
No, you are wrong. A secret is privacy. Secrets have been held for as long as humans have had society. Do you think when the local warlord made a secret pact to marry his daughter off to the warlord to the east, instead of the warlord to the west, that he wasn't very clear that he was keeping a secret? Whether he called it 'privacy' or not, he was very clear on the idea that letting just anyone know certain things about him would be very dangerous indeed.
I have no shades on my bedroom window. The ones that were there when I moved in broke, and I haven't cared enough to put in new ones. The only issue I've had is that the sun wakes up well before I'd like to, but with a north-facing window, even that's not that big of a deal. Besides, I'm a hairy 220 lb. 5'7" man. My potential voyeurs are already too busy looking at goatse.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
'I think if we are successful in producing a new breed of engineers and computer scientists, society will really benefit.'
I agree... work just never stops, but if society is at stake, what can you do? Honey, I'm coming home!
I collect the hottest girls of myspace and aggregate them neatly for all of us nerds to conveniently view. Check us out: http://myspacecollector.com/
If you're thirsty, your mouth gets dry. You drink water. If you don't, you die. If you're seen in an embarrassing situation, you blush.
You can't take the sky from me...
Maybe, and hopefully I misunderstood this, but her suggestion for us to get privacy is to work harder as engineers and computer programming...?
Does that even make sense...?! So when president Bush allowed wiretapping, we would've been fine if we programmed it so we couldn't wiretap? As if he wouldn't of made some other law to allow it? Not to mention the countless other privacy concerns hes ruined.
That's what they say when we're together
And watch how you play
They don't understand and so we're
Runnin' just as fast as we can
Holdin' on to one another's hand
Tryin' to get away into the night
And then you put your arms around me
And we tumble to the ground
And then you say
I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around
I think we're alone now
The beating of our hearts
is the only sound
Look at the way
We gotta hide what we're doing
'Cause what would they say
If they ever knew and so we're
Runnin' just as fast as we can
Holdin' on to one another's hand
Tryin' to get away into the night
And then you put your arms around me
And we tumble to the ground
And then you say
I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around
I think we're alone now
The beating of our hearts
is the only sound
You can't take the sky from me...
I have a bone to pick with him...
This is absurd. Take a little look at history before you start talking about lions and such.
The idea of privacy is a very, very recent. Most societies have a point in their history where everyone in the community lived together, ate together, maybe even slept communally. Even if there were walls, the neighbors would usually know when Jones' were working on making another kid.
If modern humans enjoy privacy, it is the effect of social change and perhaps overly comfortable living. Certainly not biology.
Secrets were a special case -- an exceptional thing. Ordinary folks had few secrets. Many folks had none. In contrast, modern privacy advocates suggest that secrecy is the norm and that everyone owes it to you to be 100% secretive about you and not even try to find out any info.
Also, notice that the secret in your example is used to lie and deceive people. You might want to come up with a better example.
It not really all that secret either. Local folks would know. Only outsiders wouldn't know.
None of this supports the article's point that privacy (as we know it now) is natural or a biological imperative.
Instead of waxing to verbosely, I'd like to respond to you with this: No secrets? How THE FUCK do you know? That's why they are fucking SECRETS!
In any one instance, the removal of a level of privacy is always trivial. Removing privacy has to mean copying some form of data from a place that was inaccessible before the removal of privacy. This means a copy of the data must exist in a place outside of its original origin. A simple example is a naked woman in front of an open window. If no one ever looked she would indeed have privacy, whether or not she was in plain view. Once she is viewed by someone, that person will have an image of her in their memory. That copy of her image is where the level of privacy gets removed. It is the sum of of the removed levels of privacy that creates a power imbalance between the people with access to the data aggregated from that removal and those without access to it. A simple example is that if I could see you naked, and if you had a cancerous mole in the middle of your back. But only I had that information. I would have a level of power over your life span. Remember knowledge is power.
Wrong. Privacy IS a biological imperative, only it's a PSYCHOLOGICAL biological imperative like FEAR. It's linked to your IDENTITY. Do you think all these new social networking sites that are popping up with "enter your mood" @ main their page, that kids are not going to get addicted? THEY ARE. Just like lack of privacy, fear, this method in particular is a transfusion of linking, transposition and synthesizing your emotions WITH a website.
You are actually REPROGRAMMING yourself to express your emotions through a WEBSITE.
yeh this is my sig
My potential voyeurs are already too busy looking at goatse.
I don't want to know what you do in front of your window.
I lived in Tonga for 2.5 years - they have no concept of privacy whatsoever. It is a communal society and they thought I, the european, was rather strange to want to be alone at all. My wife used to have her students accompany her to the outdoor toilet. It was pretty frustrating trying to get any alone time at all....
Their sense of privacy may extend to the village level, but this is a bit of a stretch. I really don't think the idea arises in that culture.
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Exactly, privacy is an extention of self-preservation instinct, it lets you feel secure in your surroundings. We create varying levels of physical & psychological privacy barriers to deal with different levels of perceived threat.
when did they fire Jonathan ?
it's either old news, or the news of tomorrow !!
I'm past 50, so my perspective may be a little different.
Basically, I think privacy is largely ignored, especially in the U.S., and it's appalling. Heinlein touched on privacy as a persistent societal mode in some of his works, notably 'Methuselah's Children'.
I think we need a new social contract that encourages and respects privacy. I don't care if Britney is wearing panties, or who's cheating on who, or what my neighbor paid in taxes last year. NONE OF MY BUSINESS! And none of what I do...in private...is anyone else's business.
I'm not advocating an ostrich approach and ignoring the meth lab across the street...the cooks have, by their actions, abrogated a broader social contract and rescinded their personal right to privacy. But on the whole, we need to re-learn the concept of "keeping your nose out of other people's business" and do just that.
In addition, I'm sick of pointless, bloated rhetoric and spin as practiced by the media, politicos, advertisers, etc. The list includes....everyone, I guess. So, I wish (and that's about all it is or will be) for CLARITY. Speak and/or write clearly and to the point. Tell it like it is and be done. To me, imprecise communication, especially on purpose (Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky debacle and virtually EVERYTHING Dubya has uttered) is too close to lying. Be precise and concise, then shut the hell up.
Couple this concept of being as clear as possible with a profound respect for privacy, and the world might actually be a better place.
I am my own gestalt.
"Also, notice that the secret in your example is used to lie and deceive people. You might want to come up with a better example."
You just used the "If you have nothing to hide, why do you need privacy" falicy. You clearly do not understand the issue, and apparently do not understand what the word privacy means.
Yes, all of us that currently develop applications have been trained to be evil privacy killers. We have no free-will in this area -- we are the Borg. Surrender your privacy.
Not really. You know that behavior when you pass a stranger on the street and avoid looking directly at each other, essentially pretending the other isn't there? That same behavior is observed in primate populations over about 100 individuals or so. It's thought to be a coping mechanism in a group where you can't know every individual. Anyway, it's definitely something built into primates at the very least.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Let me propose an experiment. Take some people you don't know particularly well, and open their mail. Make sure they catch you reading it. See how many pro-active responses you elicit. You can report back when you get out of hospital.
Something about they way you phrase that leads me to imagine how you mus t have been as a child:
Kid: "Hey, dada21, Who do you think is strongest? The Thing or The Hulk?"
dada21: "I think the market ought to be allowed to decide that on its own terms, don't you?"
Do we have to bring "the market" into everything? Privacy is a human issue; how about we leave the corporations out of it for five minutes?
Key word there being "complete", I suppose. So what level of privacy do you need?
I dunno. But if you give me free and complete access to all your data and all your activities, I bet I could write you a list.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
No I didn't. You did. It's your example. Come up with a non-deceptive example.
May I suggest a "surprise gift" example? Perhaps a business example: "The smith's son wants to build an inn, but didn't want others to know so he could buy land for less money". There are lots of non-deceptive examples.
---
It doesn't change the fact that privacy as we know it now is not the normal state of being. It's a recent cultural phenomenon probably based on the declining perceived trustworthiness of the people we interact with. Privacy is a personal defensiveness based on mistrust. Mistrust stems from being surrounded by and interacting with unfamiliar people.
Long ago, a kid would grow up and mostly interact with family, lifelong friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. These people shared a common heritage and culture and were under some kind of local authority, so there was a much better risk/reward ratio for trust. Also, it's quite hard to keep secrets from people when you sleep in the same room with them every night for 20 years. So keeping secrets was hard and there was little benefit.
The problem is that, even though you're in a private setting, the fact that your shades aren't close, you could potentially be arreseted for indecent exposure by people passing by .
If one actually reads the interview, we see that she never actually said that we "biologically" require privacy. That is what Slashdot's summary says; so, before we unnecessarily attack strawmen, I would suggest reading the article without the lens of the summary.
Height is not primarily a political expediency, but rather a biological one. Suggesting that technological design doesn't have to take a 'soup OR salad' approach, I call for changes in the way present and future computer scientists are trained.
I get to say what the right Height is.
Or maybe we should let the the government decide, or biologists, or God, or society, or Cartoon Network, or the Democratic Party and Al Gore, or maybe even Latanya Sweeney.
The converse is true as well: people are a lot more willing to tell things to their friends.
(IANAL)
....What do I have to hide?......
Honest people don't have anything to hide from other honest people. Privacy is needed only because there are some who do wrong by taking advantage of others. This includes those in government and business.
All theory is gray
... either up her own ass or somewhere else. The real biological imperative is instant gratification: it's been repeatedly shown that people will sacrifice privacy for as little as a piece of chocolate. Now, you might feebly argue that they're willing to do that because they don't understand what they're sacrificing, but then there can't be much of an instinctive imperative if they have to sit through a class in order to grasp the concept of privacy, now can there?
People make the dumbest most contrived arguments to support a desired delusion sometimes....
According to TFA, we apparently need privacy for stalking and for running away from our mistakes. This is not just the problem of a scientist from one field (here, CS) making statements relating to another (biology) but rather that the analogies are not valid. The first (stalking, as in prey) is not just privacy, it's secrecy. The second (moving far away to start over) is not just privacy, it's avoiding responsibility and making amends for mistakes made.
I agree with the premise but these examples are about hiding, not privacy. The latter is necessary but not sufficient for the former. In the first example, one is also hiding their intention to commit an act against another, and privacy does not require one to be planning anything. In the second, there is also the information regarding prior problematic behaviors that one has committed that one seeks to avoid.
If there is a biological imperative for privacy in humans, I would consider it to be a need to reduce the stress level (a physiological response) of having to act in certain ways due to social contact and expectations. Although these make civilization possible they also cause cognitive dissonance when one's behavioral preferences are not congruent with them. One still performs those acts but seeks privacy in order to reduce the dissonance and stress created unless and until one changes the incongruent beliefs or preferences. Not having privacy to do so causes over-stimulation and stress related illness. Not all people would require physical privacy to do so either. Some can achieve it in their head. Thus, the biological imperative would also be responsible for the apparent wide disparity in peoples opinions on it as being according to their own coping mechanisms.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I think agree with your posting, beginning to end.
Two points: information about me is a valuable possession and I am entitled to give it to whom and when I wish... and have a legitimate beef when it is taken from me without my consent.
Your point about "secrets are not evenly distibuted" is well taken. The situation is, of course, very analogous to money or power or anything else of value. P
orgy may say "I got plenty of nothing, and nothing's plenty for me... Folks with plenty of plenty/Got a lock on their door/They're 'fraid somebody's a goin' to rob 'em while they're out a makin' more/What for?" But the people who say "I don't care about privacy, I have nothing to hide" probably have more secrets of more value than they realize. People who are willing to practice voluntary simplicity with respect to money or possessions are good people, but I would put stress on the word "voluntary." Don't take my money and tell me you're doing it for my own good. The same is true of personal information.
Second, I am more than willing to discard concealment to build trust. However, discarding concealment does not automatically build trust. There are people who are more than willing to use their strength to exploit weakness, and to take information (or power, or money) without giving back anything in exchange. I believe people like this are borderline-sociopathic and very rare. However... they do exist; 1%-of-the-population-rare, not 0.0001%-of-the-population-rare, and they frequently manage to get themselves into positions of authority.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Bingo. Exactly the same as lack of privacy will do to society at large.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"One might hope that social norms would change to become more accepting - that is, that all behaviors that are not illegal or unethical would also not be shameful."
I think it would work the other way around -- all behaviours you don't want aired in public would automatically become shameful.
I vaguely recall that in Puritan society, the village proctor could walk into your house and inspect your life any time he pleased. And in that society, everything not officially sanctioned was shameful. I think the two concepts go hand in hand.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Various animals (squirrels, birds) hide food in order to survive the winter. If the privacy of their hiding places is compromised, they die.
The same applies to some aspects of modern life-- e.g., products of human intellectual activity (e.g. most white-collar type work and its products) benefit (i.e. retain economic value) from some degree of privacy. A consultant's list of clients, or a dealers wholesale price, is perhaps as important as the squirrels cache of nuts. There may also be a situation where knowledge of sexual relations (or even existence & location of compatible individuals) may be crucial to genetic survival of the individual.
The biological source of the instinct to hide certain valuable things seems, to me, intuitive.
Um... That is the exact same type of example that I used. It is no more or less deceptive than mine.
A belard)
Those same kids that grew up and mostly interacted with family, friends and neighbors, also were WAY more distrustful of people they didn't know than we are today. And no, it isn't quite hard to keep secrets from people when you sleep in the same room with them every night for 20 years. You just hide the tokens of affection offered by that suitor your parents disapproved of some place other than under your bed.
Well, here is a reference (that took 3 minutes to find) to people's attempts to maintain privacy, and the tragic results of loosing it, dating from ~1150 AD. Just how far back do you consider "Recent"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heloise_(student_of_
I'm sorry to seem off topic, but this is relevent today.
Register republican
Vote Ron Paul in the primaries.
It's one of your last chances to use the third box to vote for the constitution.
Exactly my point. Other posters seem to believe that everyone being "outed" would lead to some sort of "everything that isn't evil is acceptable" culture. I tend to agree with you, however, that it would lead to the kind of low-grade intolerance of differentness we have in modern society becoming high-grade intolernace with all but the force of law behind it.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I can vouch for this. My cat freaks out if I stare at it long enough.
However, in a chess game, knowing your opponent's positions and moves give you no unexpected advantage, because that's the normal way of doing it. There's nothing stopping business from being played that way too.
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/
Someone set you up the bomb.
Trevor Goodchild, is that you? What on earth are you doing posting on /.?
There's nothing stopping business from being played that way too.
Won't work. It's too easy especially for a big organization to hide important information.I'm willing to bet that, your economics teacher sexually molested you.
with you as a retarded child.
and you liked it.
If you had nothing to hide, you'd keep the shades up!
...and post your address.
arminw (717974):
EVERYONE is/should be entitled to their own privacy. Modded up as informative? As if, loser.
"When you get a new credit card, do you read the contract that is included with the application? It's all there. When you install new software, do you read the contract? It's all there."
No actually, only a very tiny part of it is there, and a good portion of what is there is incorrect.
The contract only has meaning within the context of the law as it exists when the contract is executed. And if you check most contracts carefully they are full of conditions and clauses taht clearly would not hold up in court under any reasonable reading of the law. A good deal of it is there to intimidate the meek and exploit the unwary.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
licet differant, aequabitur
There are more reasons than one for certain semantic entities not to occur in the vocabulary of a specific language.
Living in a society that is supposedly "social", and watching people hide in the anonymity of the crowd, I am familiar with how that works. Also, as I have watched words that supposedly "didn't exist" in Japanese be exposed by more non-Japanese developing a greater familiarity with the so-called common language, I can give you good odds that most of the languages that supposedly don't have words for privacy simply don't tell those words to them funny lookin' furrinyers what you dasn't trust.
Check yourself. As a foreigner, did you expect to be allowed into their inner sanctum within a mere two and a half years?
(Edgar Allan Poe)
My guess (Without knowing you personally, I have no way to tell how good the guess is.) is that you have convinced yourself that the best place to hide what you need to hide is out in the open where everyone can see.
The people who are looking don't matter because they don't really see; the people who might actually see are not looking, perhaps because you have directed their attention elsewhere with some slight-of-hand?
Is, or is there not, a reason for private data and methods in classes and objects?
What we call privacy is actually an artifact of two or three aspects of the real world --
There are too many things going on for any one person to know everything about everyone and everything. Thus, privacy exists and always has.
There are many forms of useful and necessary work that can't be performed without protecting the workplace from the external environment.
Short lines of control and simple interfaces tend to more durable and more reliable.
These are the issues of privacy, and without these principles the Constitution would be completely superfluous and, in fact, evil. These principles are implicit within the (original) Constitution, underlying all the technical features.
name me a single culture which runs around completely naked 100% of the time? there' aren't any, because all people feel the need to cover themselfs in some way even if it is only percieved protection.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Yep. All one need do is observe behaviour at any grade school, where there is effectively no privacy and everyone knows everyone else's business (as minimal as that is at the grade-school level). Tribalism and uniformity are, if anything, strongly enhanced by this "transparency" since everyone can SEE which folks are "not of our tribe" (for reasons that would go unnoticed were they private) and therefore should be done away with. And this has nothing to do with behaviour that adults enforce; kids do it all by themselves. Watch any unsupervised playground group for a while, to see it in action.
As to another poster who hopes that multiple minorities would trump the tyranny of the majority -- that's never worked before, why would it work now?? if anything, the various fringe groups consider one another even more the Enemy!
As I've said over and over: Privacy is personhood; the assurance that you matter as an individual. This is why I content that privacy, no matter how small, is the single most important factor in a child's normal development.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I was just going to say that.
If someone doesn't know personal things about me, they can't harm my reputation through true facts (people can always lie and usually do). If someone does know personal things about me, and there is something personal about me that people would ill-conceive, then that person can harm my reputation--and reputation is not something useless in the survival sense either. Reputation IS necessary for survival. If the reputation of an individual is damaged, people will tend not to want to work with that person.
Some have compared us to the animals and stated that because privacy is a social thing, and the animals aren't apparently worried about social life--they are only worried with immediate survival--privacy can't be a biological defense. But this thinking is wrong because these people fail to place animals and humans in proper context of their surrounding environment (although it's interesting to note that animals do have a social hierarchy). Animals worry about their immediate survival and (some) worry about their offspring. However, humans have to worry about social perception because we are social animals. No one human can survive on his/her own. We need each other to survive. How we are perceived is important for our survival, and our perception can be controlled through privacy. Privacy allows us to share personal things about ourselves with only those we know and trust, and helps prevent others from using personal knowledge against us. This is what attorney/client or doctor/patient privacy privileges are all about.
A lot of our survival needs and reasons for doing things are based in our subconscious. We do things socially for survival reasons often without even realizing it. Our brains tend to process our environments and then they try to adjust their subconscious patterns to that environment--at least, the healthy brains do this.
One question. Now that you are perfect enough to recognize that other people's opinions don't matter much in the eternal scheme of things, do you think you could have arrived at that conclusion without some privacy?
For my part, I recognize that God's opinion is more important that the opinions of other people. I know there is no hiding from God, but I also have known for a long time that hiding from God is not necessary. God is the originator of the non-interference policy, which is a big part of the reason a lot of people don't think God is there.
Well, I supposed I have poisoned my own well.
But I do have the experience of working out whether other people's opinions are important, and I do have the experience of discovering that other people really don't have the time to spend much of it laughing at or criticizing me. At least people who count don't, and people who might, temporarily, develop a fascination with me, will usually get bored quickly and go take out their frustrations with life somewhere else if I don't try to entertain them too much.
But I needed privacy to figure those things out. And some of that did have to happen in places which were not the privacy of the crowd.