this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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I'll try to make a case for why you should care about privacy aswell:
First of all there are some aspects where privacy is simply a requirement for things to work. For example there is a lot of talk about banning end-to-end encryption, but things like banking or remote work rely on this. Even if you wouldn't care about someone else having the opportunity to read your personal messages, if those aren't encrypted you are opening the gates for malicious actors.
For me in a lot of aspects you simply can't have "freedom of choice" or "consent" without the default being privacy.
Take for example medical records: those aren't just relevant for you, but also anyone you are related to. At somepoint insurance might factor in medical history in their rates. You might not care about your record being public, but if you e.g. carry some genetic predisposition for a disease that will also have consequences for your child or sibling.
If the default for privacy is "opt-in", then in many cases this will have a negative affect on people who do want it. Want to rent an appartment and the finances of most people are public? Well tough luck. Guess you have to decide, if you give up that privacy or keep searching. Because surely you have something terrible to hide otherwise you wouldn't want privacy. Not much of a fair choice.
For a lot of things once the genie is out of the bottle you can't reverse it. Extreme case: a far right party like the AfD comes into power. Suddenly you might get targeted for certain information that is available about you. And you can't also easily hide it for future things, because that sudden shift might make you suspicious.
I think there are a lot of cases where most people might not care about their privacy. But those that do need it are reliant on the default being privacy and most people having it. Because otherwise it does not work. Then you just have "those that have nothing to hide" and "those that clearly have that particular thing to hide, because otherwise they wouldn't chose privacy".
Another aspect is targeted advertisement. Despite whatever you think, even if you know how it works, it'll have an affect on you. Whether you like it or not. Human beings can't be perfectly rational and psychology will have an affect.
Besides that a lot of efforts to dismantle privacy will just lead to average people losing it, while e.g. criminals will still use it. Privacy is also highly important for things like journalism or whistleblowers, something you are also profiting from.
This i disagree with, we certainly aren't SOLELY behind in digitalization because of privacy concerns. Most of the time it's just incompetence or bad implementations (often time coupled with some corruption and lobbying).
These are just some random thoughts and far from exhaustive (probably also not perfect arguments)
Thanks for writing all this. I really like that you named actual tangible negative effects of loss of privacy. Most of the usual reasons I hear are too abstract/paranoid to me and this wasn't. Suffice it to say, this is not a direction I have given much thought to so far, so feel free to tear me apart here.
The insurance and apartment scenarios are both discrimination. Why is people's first instinct here to hide instead of work to fight discrimination? We already have openly visible "attack vectors" for discrimination, like being a foreigner, disabled, or simply a woman. And while I wouldn't say the systems work perfectly, I believe we've come a long way, and only because people's weaknesses were laid out in the open and they fought to be able to live the way they are. For the insurance thing, couldn't it simply be forbidden that rates are adjusted to people's medical records? As for financial stuff, isn't it already as you said? For renting and for loans, you need to prove your credibility. And unlike with the insurance, people on both sides realize that it makes sense in this case because it is in both parties' interest that nobody commits to a financial commitment they cannot afford. And for those who cannot afford essentials, and who would be getting nothing under the harsh conditions of capitalism, there is social help. And I do believe in more/better social help systems.
As for the AfD scenario: what good does having privacy now have, if their first move can be to just forbid privacy?
In short, I think a lack of privacy is only bad in combination with the evil intent of people wanting to abuse others' weaknesses. We should try to fight the evil instead of clinging to privacy in the digital era (which I believe will be impossible within the next decade or so anyway) so we can have the advantages of more data-driven tech advancements while minimizing the negative consequences of a loss of privacy. I think we can have our cake and eat it too.