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The "Hidden" Cost Of Privacy
Schneier points out an article from a while back in Forbes about the "hidden" cost of privacy and how expensive it can be to comply with all the various overlapping privacy laws that don't necessarily improve anyone's privacy. "What this all means is that protecting individual privacy remains an externality for many companies, and that basic market dynamics won't work to solve the problem. Because the efficient market solution won't work, we're left with inefficient regulatory solutions. So now the question becomes: how do we make regulation as efficient as possible?"
1. Fake own death
2. ???
3. Private!
It's funny that one could look at this and say the markets don't work. The markets ARE working and that most people don't actually care about privacy.
If people -cared- about privacy, they would be willing to pay for the extra care it takes to ensure that their data is private. But, we live in a world where most people really don't care so much if everyone else knows what they are doing, so long as they are not confronted with it, or misuse the information.
Like, if you told someone at a grocery store that, to get their "club card" savings, the store would know exactly what they bought, they would say, they probably didn't care. Now, if they got a letter from the grocery store saying, "hey, since you like strawberries, you might like our sale on blueberries", they might dig that too. And, if they got junk mail from blueberry and strawberry growers, even that might be ok. But, if they got an email saying, "hey, you are killing humanity because you are eating strawberries and your preference for red fruit makes you some kind of a communist", then they would be pissed off.
Bottom line is, people don't care about privacy, but they do care about having their personal information being used to hurt them. It's pretty much the 5th amendment proposition, writ large and writ everywhere. Nothing is really private, but, you can't have your personal information be used to attack you, and that is what the market reflects.
This is my sig.
Define the ownership of personal data to include the person whom the data applies to.
If I enter into a business relationship with someone else, all the information I provide should be considered to be co-owned by both of us. Any subsequent sharing of that information with a third party should involve both the consent of both of us as well as sharing the proceeds of that subsequent exchange. When the costs of managing such transactions are factored in, far fewer of them would occur.
The idea that anyone complains about the costs of complying with such regulations puzzles me. I mean, I could start a business stealing cars and then complain that the costs of complying with auto theft laws were onerous and harming the profitability of my enterprise. Tough sh*t. Its all based on fundamental property rights. Just because someone has developed a business model based upon a legal oversight doesn't legitimize their complaint when the law catches up and plugs the loophole.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes, it is.
Transparency for the state means transparency on laws as they are prepared, transparency towards regulatory bodies of those laws, etc... It means that the rules that state officials prepare and their work is fully transparent.
Still, the said officials can retain the full privacy of everything that isn't directly work related (IE. What they do on their time off work, what they do during their lunch breaks, whose photo they have in their wallet and what bodyparts have they pierced...)
State is indeed some concrete thing, independent from individuals. Ideal situation is that state represents the masses but it never represents the individuals.
If a company wants to reduce its costs for protecting private information, stop collecting the damn stuff in the first place. As a recent example, why do I need to register at a website just to listen to a few bird call recordings? Or give my (fictitious) name and address just to read an article?
I see rationalization for government and business intrusion into private lives. 90% of the information requested and/or demanded by any given government agency or business is totally unnecessary. It is none of my phone company's business how many people live in the house, or might use the phone. It is none of my ISP's business how many computers I own, or how many of them might connect through the gateway, or even HOW they might connect. The government's preoccupation with the precise identification leads to requirements for fingerprints, DNA samples, and more. I once ordered a pizza, in person, with cash in hand, and the cashier insisted that she needed my phone number and address!! The stupid broad doesn't even need to know my NAME to trade a pizza for a twenty dollar bill!
In the article, a baker was entrusted with financial information of her clients. HOW FREAKING BOGUS!! To bake a wedding cake does NOT require storing my credit card information, or any other personal details.
Totally unnecessary information is harvested for the most trivial dealings. And, it's WRONG.
No government agency, and no business should request information that is not absolutely essential to perform the business at hand. Nor should they request any more information than they are willing and capable of storing in a SECURE manner. It is their RESPONSIBILITY to safeguard that information, it isn't some "expense", or an "option", it shouldn't be considered a "burden". If and when safeguarding information becomes an "expense", then it should be obvious that they are collecting unnecessary and trivial information.
TFA is bogus rationalization, and an attempt to get people to sympathize with some perceived need to dump privacy laws. Forbes and Lee Gomes should be slapped silly for even writing and printing the article.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I agree, with additions. When I say that wealth flows upwards, I mean that the wealthy do not create wealth. The poor and middle class create wealth.
And luck has more to do with poverty and riches than any other cause. Look at Bill Gates - his parents were lawyers working for IBM. If he'd been born in poverty, there would never have been a Microsoft. If the guy IBM was going to buy their OS from hadn't gotten sick of IBM's BS and told them where to shove it, PC/M would have been the dominant OS, rather than DOS.
My uncle was rich. He was wounded in WWII, and several lucky things caused his wealth. First, creativity and eye-hand coordination runs in the family. Second, he was in the right place at the right time. If his ship hadn't been bombed, he wouldn't have wound up in the hospital with his future partner, who had lost a leg. When the guy showed his new artificial leg to my uncle, my uncle said "that's a piece of shit, I can make a better leg than that", and did.
His partner was a born salesman. He'd walk into the hospital to talk to the new amputees, who would say something to the effect of "what the fuck would you know about it?" and he'd just roll his pants leg up. Instant sales.
Sure, there was a lot of hard work and sacrifice involved, but if it hadn't been for luck he'd never gotten rich.
The same goes with poverty. Few people are born rich and wind up poor. Even if they squander all their money, they still have contacts. A while back there were radio commercials about Donald Trump's "how to get rich" book, what would he know about getting rich? He was born into wealth!
Do you think anyone would have ever heard of Paris Hilton if her parents weren't the billionaires who owned the hotel chain? What chance does a kid born of illiterate drug addled parents who is shuffled between foster homes have?
If you give rich people money, they'll just squirrel it away -- they already have plenty. But give it to a waitress and she'll spend it, because she has to. Only money that's spent helps the economy.
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