Having worked in the creepy business of "location analytics", I'll say that American's should be more worried about corporations tracking them, than governments.
Both corporate and government surveillance are complements, and are ultimately both manifestations of power and monopoly. One form has an economic locus, one a political locus. Either may be abused, and each feeds on and amplifies the other.
Government surveillance has vastly less capacity without commercial services, particularly those tracking:
- Strong signalling via payments: commerce, credit and debit payments, ecommerce, Amazon, Visa and Mastercard
- Interests: marketing databases, demographics, AI-based content analysis, magazine and newspaper subscrptions, television and video watch history, video rentals (among the very few privacy carve outs thanks to Soliciter Bob), and online reading / views / interactions data.
- Social relationships: USPS postal covers, telecoms call records (dating to the 1980s), location data (corrolated with other individuals), email, social media friends and interactions
Corporations rely on powers of governments including:
- Courts
- Law
- The buying, selling, renting, borrowing, installation, or removal of legislators, executives, judges, and regulators
- Regulatory capture
- Law enforcement
- Military
The line that a government can kill or jail you whilst a corporation cannot is a fable long belied by history.
Corporations (or straight-up criminal gangs, where differentiable) can and do act directly, or bend the government where necessary. Adam Smith's notes on commercially operated garrisons, the history of the labour and environmental movements, oil and railroad companies, chemical industrry, and more, provide numerous examples.
Surveillance, censorship, propaganda, and manipulation are tools, features, and benefits accruing to the controlling actor of any informaation monopoly, regardless of how that actor is organised or aligned. Not all abuse the power, but as Lord Acton notes, the temptation is strong.
Either one is inevitable. The wealth of data that can be collected about a person through their phone is too valuable. Pick your poison. Massive government surveillance or massive corporate surveillance. Or both, as is currently the case.
This won't change. That ship has sailed and isn't docking ever again.
> Either one is inevitable. The wealth of data that can be collected about a person through their phone is too valuable.
The wealth and power attainable through child labour or slavery or unethical medical experimentation is also quite vast.
Your argument is, essentially, the state is powerless to restrict markets. That we exist in a laissez faire world, where anything economically possible will be done. I’ll give it this: I haven’t seen this pitch before. Would love to see you and a free market advocate debate.
Child labour and slavery remain commonplace in many poor countries. In industrialized countries, a high level of labour productivity, technology, and automation makes it impractical or too expensive to hire a slave or a child. Put another way, advanced economies are advanced enough that there is little useful work that could be performed by a child or a slave, if child labour or slavery were still legal.
Data collection, on the other hand, can only take place in countries with a high level of Internet penetration and a developed digital infrastructure.
> a high level of labour productivity, technology, and automation makes it impractical or too expensive to hire a slave or a child
> advanced economies are advanced enough that there is little useful work that could be performed by a child or a slave
I am uncertain about this idea that abhorrent labor practices vanish under the light of an industrialized workforce.
There are practical issues to which we could point; China is a rapidly industrializing country, yet remains notorious for continuing to employ slave & child labor. Advancements in the general productivity of China's workforce have not led to a proportional reduction in this kind of labor practice. China had yet another one of its main goods added to the DoL's list of slave/child labor goods just days ago. [0] (Yes, this list suspiciously fails to report on any of the US's goods but that's an issue for another controversial HN reply.)
Then there's the issue of advancing economies employing increasingly-"advanced" child labor protections, which corporations are routinely found to violate. [1] As countries improve their labor conditions and solidify regulatory environments within which corporations can work, firms are frequently found to do everything they can to skirt those laws.
More generally, I'd point to the fact that "advanced" economies outsource the production of goods to poorer nations that still allow, tolerate, or willfully employ (that last one being exceedingly rare today) child labor. This sort of outsourcing of ethical responsibility is a common trait that can be observed in just about all civilizations at every level of technological and industrial progress.
I think this is more an issue of widespread cultural values. Note that the DoL's list [2] has many examples of goods produced by China, but none produced by neighboring Tibet. Turkey is on the list for its production of several foods as well as garments, despite being a modern, industrialized nation. Italy and Greece are similarly industrialized, and in similar parts of the world, yet they are not on the list at all, despite their production of many goods that are typically produced by forced/child labor.
Some places make an effort to negate forced/child labor in their markets, others do not. The blanket notion, though, that advanced economies are rid of these problems due to the lack of incentives to engage in them in the first place, to me seems quite incorrect.
> That we exist in a (...) world, where anything economically possible will be done. I’ll give it this: I haven’t seen this pitch before.
Huh. And I actually use it as a heuristic in observing the world. That's exactly why I wasn't surprised by Snowden revelations.
And I would think this realization would be somewhat obvious by now. Anything that is within technological possibility and that can be profited off will eventually be attempted by someone. Child labor, slavery and unethical medical experimentation aren't exceptions - they still happen, usually where someone can make money from practicing it. We don't live in a laissez-faire world per se - regulations can make some things unprofitable and thus prevent them from happening. But regulations aren't immutable, and can be altered... with enough money.
I increasingly believe that trying to treat governance and market economy as completely different is a category error.
> Your argument is, essentially, the state is powerless to restrict markets.
This either/or attitude about free markets and regulation is upsetting. Someone makes a point about a specific technology and the effects of its high value to both public and private sector, and the common reaction is to generalize for the whole history of economic theory around markets. If people trust the state in its ability to regulate a given market, then great. I think it's overly optimistic in this case however.
This article is about corporations tracking them, and then the government buying it from them. Though I'd prefer the corporations weren't collecting and selling this data, te government buying this data to sidestep the need for a warrant is objectionable.
Why is it objectionable? Does the government need a warrant to e.g. read comments on Hacker News?
The purpose of a warrant is to override the usual protections of privacy and against government intrusion. If the information in question is not private in the first place, there is no intrusion.
To be clear, I strongly agree with the conclusion that the end result is distasteful and we should make some sort of change in our society to avoid it. But I don't think the right step is to say that certain information which is publicly available is somehow not available to the government - it doesn't seem like either a sound argument or an enforceable restriction in practice. I think, if the information is too private to reveal to the government, it is certainly too private to be in the hands of an unaccountable unelected unauditable corporation in the first place.
Because requiring a warrant means due process; it's part of the job of the government.
Buying data is using tax payers' money, to buy private data of the tax payers.
It's entirely reasonable that tax payers are upset about this.
> I think, if the information is too private to reveal to the government, it is certainly too private to be in the hands of an unaccountable unelected unauditable corporation in the first place.
I disagree. The government can require the information to be revealed if there is due process; it's never totally "not available to the government".
Corporations don't work for the people; the government does. Corporations cannot impose a rule on people by violence. The government can. They are fundamentally different; I don't see why one having the data leads to the justification of the other having the same unfettered access.
People can be upset about what the government is doing, and impose restrictions to its access and power, even when what it did was technically legal. If the government is as frivolous as corporations can be and act, it's dangerous and worrying.
It's a complete end run around regulation designed to keep government data gathering in check - just because its legal doesnt mean its the wrong incentive for our government to help corporations spy on us all and keep those corporate hegemonies which work best with surveillance states in power.
While I think this data should just be considered private, the reasons that a business would have for purchasing it worry me less than the reasons the government would buy it. Yes, both entities could abuse the data, but corporations also have the usual scummy profit based use as well.
The data collection companies say that they only sell to vetted clients. I agree that trying to make selling to the government illegal would be a poor move, but they should consider voluntarily barring government organizations in an attempt to prevent this becoming a bigger issue and laws being made to stop it
Or worried about anyone else too really. Platforms have had so much fun profiting off data that they chose to democratize the tools which enable random people with zero scruples to violate privacy at scale. The person who's actually spying on you might turn out to be some hobo who wrote an app you downloaded with overly broad permissions. It could be some open source browser extension author who got burnt out and turned to evil. I was just reading a lawsuit a few hours ago where some guys paid lenovo to preinstall a layered service provider on their laptops that decrypts https and proxies it through some service, but this particular time it generated a lot of outrage and attention because it injected ads on the page and broke nodejs. Somehow, that is called a startup.
I think most people get the sense that things like this are happening to them all the time. That their personal space is being violated without their consent. Except on a technical level, it's harder to understand than magic. The only people offering answers unfortunately are the ones who try and galvanize that anger towards big company x or government y, who are also totally culpable too, but for failing to act and defend us from all these micro-tyrants.
"Micro tyrants" - love it. It goes well with my own term, "petty injustice".
I do object to "it's harder to understand than magic". I think that's a failure in communication, in pedagogy, and perhaps most broadly, the poor priorities of our major information systems, which include homes, schools, churches, the boy scouts, and all mass media. The profit motive should itself be deeply suspect with respect to any information service.
I don't believe it is difficult to understand the nature of your phone and how it works. You hint at it with your term - it's about size. Your phone is essentially a vast machine (truly vast, like a city block) that has been shrunk down. Your screen is a camera into that tiny city, so its like a microscope. As we move around, we can mark particularly interesting or useful views, so that we can come back to them (and even arrange them side-by-side). We find that we not only have the ability to see, but also to emit into the image, changing it, adding to it. (It might get tricky once you recognize that movement itself must constitute an emission if we are to be consistent, and this would be the invitation to look at the text of the code, which ideally be written with this intuition in mind.)
But yes, let us put an end to all the micro-tyrants and the petty injustices they subject us to!
And corporations can put you in corporate "jail", lock you out of online services, or just disable or delete your identity being judge, jury and executioner...
With Government, there is some semblance of due process.
While I agree both are bad, the government is far far worse than corporations disabling your accounts
There are ways to migate the risk from corporations, and diservify that risk across several corporations
There is not anyway to mitigate the risk from government, and the idea of "due process" is really a myth created by TV Shows
With the number of criminal offenses if an agent of the government desires you to be in jail you go to jail. I guarantee you have done something, at some point that they can manipulate a jury into convicting you over
We are a criminalized society, especially the US, the "land of the free" where we put more people in jail than anywhere in the world (officially anyway)
I do agree with your later two points though, that there is an misalignment of goals for criminal justice, but, it isn't that bad because it is an outlined process, and it does not happen overnight, behind closed doors or behind a company friendly terms of service. At least you know how the meat is made, somewhat and there is transparency.
There is none, per se outside financial obligation for corporations.
whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case the idea the the constitution is proof of Due Process is delusional in the face of 1000's of data points proving the contrary
The constitution is more religion than it is law, as like the priests of other religions, the priests of the law (lawyers and judges) twist and pervert the plain text of the constitution to mean anything they desire even a clear and exact opposite position of the very text they hold to be scared
>>but, it isn't that bad because it is an outlined process, and it does not happen overnight, behind closed doors or behind a company friendly terms of service. At least you know how the meat is made, somewhat and there is transparency.
This is also false, there are all kinds of actual laws, or defacto laws, or regulations that are behind paywalls or simply ruled "national security laws", we have secret courts (FISA and others), there are all kinds of Sealed judgments that impact other things. Then there is the entire scheme of parallel construction the NSA/FBI invented to get around that pesky Constitution
The US government's concept of due process involves a pay to play scheme, but the results are a magnitude more awful than Google banning you, and the prices at play are a magnitude beyond what most businesses have the guts to ask for.
This data is being used in all sorts of ways to 'rate' and 'sort' people, from credit worthiness to ... well, let your imagination wander. As far as I'm aware, the US government hasn't started rating people.
Also, US is one of the good governments. Pretty much every government with the legal, financial and technical means is using this data (and the metadata). What are they doing with it?
They should be worried about anyone tracking them.
But it won't matter what most Americans think if there are just two choices and both are designed so that only a few can modify the OS.
There's also the pinephone of course, but "Most Americans" object to the pinephone so severely that they'll offer to buy you an iphone if you switch to one.
No cellphone can eliminate tracking by association.
For years you go to work driving the same roads or taking the same bus along with people with their cellphones, associating with the same towers and hotspots and stopping by at the same shop to buy a newspaper. Then one day you buy a PinePhone or a Purism phone with a new SIM thinking they'll lose all your tracks. Well, no. If you bring your phone along for enough time, it will do the same things the former one did, so that a simple query asking for new phone numbers producing the same metadata will return your new number along with some new others, which can be easily filtered away by conditioning the search to those associating for example with a tower where you usually spend holidays, or almost identical tower connections with a phone close to yours (wife, for example).
Cellphones such as the PinePhone or the Librem aren't intended to hide that you are you; that will be discovered in hours anyway and it's not even worth attempting; they're rather intended as a way to avoid direct data access and surveillance by corporations and governments. That is, they will immediately know it's you and where you are with coarse accuracy, but what you are up to is another story: they need to access the data directly by sneaking malicious software into your phone, which its Open Source nature will made extremely difficult to achieve.
You do one self-identifying thing (from the PoV of the mobile network operator) on your phone over network and your IMEI is forever tainted with your identity from then on.
(Say someone or some corp sends you a two-factor SMS that includes some identifying data)
Purism doesn't have this solved either.
And from the PoV of governement surveillance, lol. Just forget using a PSTN.
Yes, you're stating the obvious, but this service by Purism solves nothing if you think you're hiding from the mobile network operator this way, without taking other quite extreme measures on top.
And whether you've revealed your identity or not is in fact binary. This issue is not about security, but privacy.
> whether you've revealed your identity or not is in fact binary
No, it's not. It is equal to the price/time to find it out. Even though you are right that Purism does not protect from that fully, they do make it harder/more expensive.
Apple doesn't have a majority market share in the US. In this case, something closer to what you mean would probably make more sense than an exaggeration.
My expectation is that most Americans would have little interest in a detailed discussion of the Pinephone (so they would take a pass based on a brief description) and not care if you had one and thought it was great.
Statcounter uses active devices, so it seems like a much better indicator of what people are actually using, assuming they are able to get a good sample set.
> Apple doesn't have a majority market share in the US.
They do according to some sources [0]. By all accounts they have the majority when you breakdown phones by brand (as compared to platform). By every account they’re nearing 50% in the US.
Also, among the US youth market they have close to 90% [1] so fortunately the general share will keep rising. (I say fortunately because I look forward to the US being able to regulate their policies.)
Majority won't differ based on how you break it down (unless a brand has multiple platforms, which isn't particularly the case).
Largest market share would differ for brands and platforms though.
My broader point, that the exaggeration makes it difficult to understand what they are getting at, survives quibbling about what the words mean, and probably if some platform that isn't Apple has a 40% market share (Rather than just a brand). 40% is a big chunk when the starting line is that everyone will react severely.
> I say fortunately because I look forward to the US being able to regulate their policies.
I fear this, although regulation would be welcome. Already, the AppStore is a bigger revenue generator than PlayStore even though Apple holds about a 27% share worldwide. If a big market like US, went all in on iPhone. I fear that we will have an app problem in Android and other free Android forks, which eventually might kill competitiveness of any non iOS platform.
This is a scary post. Both are of extreme concern --- but it's especially worse when the government itself has the power to coerce AND force you to do something by written law.
Is there an easy way to see what data these companies have on us? Is there an easy-to-use service where I can pay $10 to get the data for a phone number?
Unless it becomes easy for the average person to realize without jumping through hoops, I fear there is little hope for change.
Is there a good way to get around location tracking without losing out on having a phone?
Even a feature phone would have location tracking from your cell service provider which I'm sure they would monetize because they can. Are there more privacy based cell providers that people could switch to? I know it's possible to make your own ISP for home internet but can that be done for cell phones too?
I primarily use a smartphone because my job makes me use one for VPN. If it was possible I wouldn't mind keeping a useless smartphone with no data plan sitting in a drawer at home and going back to a feature phone (especially one with a slide out keyboard :D).
>Is there a good way to get around location tracking without losing out on having a phone?
I think it should be mentioned that part of the 5G-NR wireless standard includes a protection against IMSI catchers (Stingrays as they are commonly called).
Having read what I've read about governments down through history I'd have to disagree. I am not that worried about google turning fascist and then kicking my door in and putting a gun in my mouth because I said something bad about dear leader. I'll take the bursting spam mail folder to that any day of the week.
Businesses can't imprison me for humiliating them. Neither can foreign governments while I remain on my home soil. This is why my own governments will always pose the greatest possible risk to my liberties.
Personally I don't care about corperations tracking me because I can generally stop the tracking by avoiding their software and websites. For me Google tracking me is a reasonable trade-off for free youtube and email, I can always install a clean copy of Firefox and LineageOS if I want. I don't generally do things online (or in person) that I'm worried about Google tracking.
I am worried about the government tracking me, because they have the ability to legally required me to be tracked, giving me no way of avoiding it if I ever have a need to do something privately. And the consequences of the government tracking me all the time are much higher, since they can put me in prison, or put me on some watchlist.
> Personally I don't care about corperations tracking me because I can generally stop the tracking
While I generally agree with your perspective here, it's worth noting [a] even if one eschews all services of tech giants, one is still tracked in practice through one's social network, such as through photo recognition or sending an email to gmail.com; and [b] the number of people who actually jump through the hoops required to live free of FAANG effectively rounds to zero.
The extreme imbalance of power between corp and netizen may not be as stark as between fed and citizen (the monopoly on force involves deleting accounts and predictive analytics rather than decades in a cage), but it should be concerning all the same.
> I'll say that American's should be more worried about corporations tracking them, than governments
This being the top comment is why I stopped working on privacy legislation.
Propose limits on governments? What about the corporations! Propose limits on private data collection? Why are we ignoring Snowden!
Zero coördination between the left hand and the right. I know this isn’t anyone’s intent. But it’s a seductive argument for complacency that has buried over a dozen bills in New York City, Albany, Sacramento, the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees.
If you're an average citizen, your life doesn't revolve around serious cases where monopoly on violence comes directly into place. It revolves around trivial cases, for which the government's response is proportional. Meanwhile, corporations - particularly Internet ones - are more than happy to escalate minor things into termination of service.
To use a concrete example, there was a case recently in which a streamer asked people to vote for things by posting red and green emojis on the livestream chat. YouTube's algorithms proceeded to ban people who posted too many emojis. A ban on YouTube means a ban on Google account, which means no more GMail and Google Docs in particular. For an average person - particularly average worker in a small company - this immediately turns one's life upside down and is likely to do permanent damage to employability.
An equivalent situation with a government would boil down to getting a small fine - nobody is going to terminate your driving license if the police spots you blinking your lights a few times to a friend driving ahead of you.
Yeah, which one of them has their CIA and FBI with many and many documented kills? Next thing you'll tell me corporations are basically comparable to the Communist party of China?
I asked for corporations that have armed secret services that aren't accountable, while comparing a corporation VS a state. These corporations don't have anything like I asked for, or I am massively overlooking something - please send a direct link to an example of a documented kill or something else comparable to what CIA or FBI does.
Also: does it have to be "armed secret services"? What about other ways of killing people? I vaguely remember some corporations being involved in funding militias to secure mining sites of tantalum[0]. But to use a more recent and easier-sourced example: how about driving people to suicide? There was quite a big fuss recently over France Télécom/Orange doing that in the process of privatizing public telecoms and turning lives of undesirable but unfireable employees into hell, which ended in multiple suicides[1].
Military contractors don't fight for themselves, they are contracted by a government, don't they? If you think they do, I am very interested in an example (I don't know that sector).
Funding a militia is a good one, that's some government-style play.
I think the Telecom and Orange one is more of some people within the corporations hand in hand with some people within the government.
> Military contractors don't fight for themselves, they are contracted by a government, don't they?
They are - depending on how you look at it, you can consider them an extension of governments, or as private companies that figured out a way to partake in the "monopoly on violence" and thus get to make money by killing people. Governments have limited ability to micromanage their contractors - in fact, a reason to hire a PMC is to outsource micromanagement. You tell them where to be and what to do, and they manage themselves.
Now if you give a company permission to use violence and legal cover, the obvious thing happens - the companies start to do their own things on the side. Documented cases include murder, smuggling of alcohol and weapons, sex trafficking and host of other evil acts[0].
> I think the Telecom and Orange one is more of some people within the corporations hand in hand with some people within the government.
That's true, but this is always the case with large corporations. Private markets and governance aren't independent - they're very much intertwined. Power begets money begets power. Trying to talk about government vs. private interests, we have to remember that the boundary between them is very fuzzy - the separation makes sense when economists talk about bakeries and barbers and mom&pop stores. It breaks down as you approach bigger and more wealthy companies[1].
[1] - Hell, you could say it breaks down as soon as company's wealth or influence approaches the wealth or influence of the political unit in which it's embedded. It'll take a megacorp to seriously play on the national politics stage, but even a humble factory can have huge impact on county politics if it employs a significant chunk of said county's population.
The problem is the number of people who actually care.
Look at the number of people who continue to use Facebook despite a long history of sketchy behavior with people's information and shady security practices.
Nobody cares.
We now have two generations of people who grew up with no privacy and don't care about it. This is a growing trend that people who are in those generations are starting to believe we need MORE suppression of speech. MORE suppression of ideas THEY deem dangerous to the state. The number of people who really believe and promote privacy is shrinking. The amount of people who feel this is normal is outpacing those trying to fight for their privacy.
The old analogy of the frog in the boiling water is apt here. So many kids have grown up not expecting privacy so why care now? To them it doesn't matter. To other's its already too late.
No one is getting rid of his phone, so I hope you mean people get rid of the habit of voting for the center right or center left party because the other one is "so bad".
I've tried that a few times- then I got lost and had no gps or ability to call anyone (and my city does not use the grid system). Eventually I stopped in a random suburb and knocked on a few doors until I found someone who was willing and able to tell me how to get somewhere I recognized. I was hopeless before Waze and similar apps became ubiquitous; I've always have to print out mapquest directions just to go to the store. For some reason, routing and directions can be very difficult for me.
I'm the complete opposite of you. In fact I resent GPS and use them only when I need to find an address in a big city.
I'm not sure but I think it's trainable.
About 20 years ago I had a transportation company and I invested in a GPS device for my van. After using it continuously for a few months, I noticed that I wasn't as good as before at orientation when I was driving my personal car without said GPS device.
I then stopped using it completely and got back my inner GPS.
Back in the early days of GPS, I recognized that you could either navigate yourself or follow directions (whether from a machine or a person). I at any rate find that I don't really have the mental capacity to simultaneously follow instructions and think too deeply about whether this instruction seems to make sense or not. I assume this is at the root of people doing dumb things because the GPS told them to.
If I didn't have a GPS in an unfamiliar area, I'd have a map. And if it were a remote area, I'd have both in any case. Although when traveling in normal times I do tend to depend on having my phone or at least access to a computer, the further I get from my home area, the more I try to have backups--including paper-based ones. But I expect that is increasingly uncommon.
So, uh, I guess we should, uh, limit government access to tracking data because uh government is the only organization that can send people to jail and fine people.
Everyone on HN knows if the public is going to evaluate the ethics and metrics of tracking data we should investigate it at the source first with private telecom companies. They can somewhat freely sell all of that data to people who operate outside the law.
I'd guess it will go the other way, but probably that's just wishful thinking.
This year has demonstrated quite well I think that old saying "If you trade freedom for safety, you get neither"
But I guess I sort of despise my phone to begin with. For years I had a dumb phone, but they started turning off the towers. So now I have a smartphone but I never look at it and forget to take it with me most of the time when I leave the house.
I'd happily downgrade back to a dumb phone if they made any in the old candy bar style. As it is, my desire to have a dumb phone is weaker than my desire not to have a flip phone.
Small point to make regarding your quote, since I see it come up very frequently in these sorts of conversations.
> It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
You say that, but attempting to get one that is compatible with Verizon's network is quite challenging, or at least it was a year or two ago when I looked.
Yeah, the amount of people saying "fuck your freedom" when blanket lockdowns with no end date were announced at the start of the pandemic was disturbing. As much as they complain about the PATRIOT act and government overreach, you'd think they'd have a higher bar for giving up their rights.
Having a right doesn't mean you must exercise it; that would be an obligation. Some rights can be exercised selfishly.
You may have a right to party so hard that you need an ambulance ride to the emergency room to save your life, and then you can't pay for it so our taxes bail you out. But it's personally dangerous as well as selfish toward your community.
Likewise you may have a right to large mask-less indoor gatherings during a pandemic, and we'll spend lives and treasure to help you when you get sick. But you could also just exercise some personal restraint for a few more months instead of risking your and our health as well as prolonging the economic damage. The government issuing lockdowns or curfews to help with the pandemic is just codifying what we should already be doing.
Contrast that with the PATRIOT Act and other surveillance overreach. If, after 9/11, the U.S. were on the brink of destruction, infiltrated at all levels of society by mustache-twirling Arab-looking extremists, then racial profiling and invasive surveillance of its own citizens might seem necessary. But it was clear then, as it is now, that those weren't the reality. So enacting those programs was wasteful government overreach at best, more likely intentional erosion of civil liberties.
In the pandemic case, it benefits you and everyone and the government for you not to use right of assembly for a few months. In the 9/11 case, it benefits only the government for you to have diminished privacy forever. See the difference?
> If, after 9/11, the U.S. were on the brink of destruction, infiltrated at all levels of society by mustache-twirling Arab-looking extremists, then racial profiling and invasive surveillance of its own citizens might seem necessary
The problem of course, is that there were people who actually believed this, and while I think the sentiment has died down, I still believe some of the paranoia survives.
The lockdowns are different because it’s not just someone’s own freedoms, but everyone else’s right to life. A virus that can kill and we have no way of knowing how well it transmits seems like a good enough reason to enforce social distancing and the like. I have the freedom to own knives, but I can’t go out in public brandishing one like a weapon. Is that an infringement on my rights?
Privacy invasions are always about everyone else's right to life. Supporters of Patriot Act honestly, wholeheartedly believe that there'll be more 9/11s if the government isn't allowed to spy on the public. I'm not an absolutist on this, there are some situations where there's just no reasonable choice but a temporary restriction on rights, but appealing to the sacred value of life doesn't work here.
Actually, you do have the right to walk around with a knife or sword as a weapon as long as it is not conealed and your local city has no laws against it. For a concealed weapon you do need a permit.
Somehow many on hacker news willfully forgot about the concept of externalities and simply saw government policies enforcing social distancing as a violation of one's rights.
The consequence of the virus on leaving your house is similar to you walking around with a Russian roulette pistol that randomly fires at others who are sufficiently close to you (with the probability determined by a myriad of factors including if you have covid).
In that case, you are a clear harm to others and a bring that can deprive them of their rights.
It is why we will likely need to force people to get vaccinated, despite their objections, as their choices don't simply affect themselves.
"Your body, your choice" is valid for things where there isn't some massive externality on others from your choices. Abortion has no impact on other beings with rights (as we do not assigned rights to a fetus). If you decided to irradiate yourself like the firefighters in Chernobyl and then in the few days you had remaining to live try to be around people you disliked, it would be totally reasonable to force you to be confined to a medical space where you couldn't kill others. However, a communicable disease is even worse. I would be fine with people who understood the risks of radiation making the choice to be around you because they would be basically only choosing to take that radiation/cancer risk on themselves (their body, their choice). But with a communicable disease, they can catch the disease and spread it to others who don't consent. That is where the "my body, my choice" is no longer valid.
I have a more authoritative body of text that I believe everyone should remind themselves of (yourself especially):
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
No emergency, situation, or "externality" will ever supersede this body of text as it is currently written. That is not a bug. That's a feature. A feature namely to prevent people like you from grabbing power and constricting rights when challenges inevitably arise.
Thanks for your appeal to authority, but such logical fallacies are not an answer to my points. And constitutional originalism is a terrible philosophy.
We have learned so much since our founding fathers wrote that document, but I'll quote the author of the bill of rights for just how ludicrous it is:
"We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
The concept of externalities is A fundamental part of an understanding of rights in modern philosophy and the social sciences. A direct response to it as opposed to a quoted dismissal would be appreciated.
Additionally, the supreme court has held in many cases that the right to free speech is not absolute. Shouting fire in a crowded theater is not allowed. Libel is not allowed. In both cases because of the harms to others and the lack of any positive value of said speech.
You quoted a text pretending like you are standing on some solid ground of an absolute and inviolable philosophy yet even the conservative supreme court chef justice recognizes limits of these rights as shown through Justice Roberts siding with limiting the rights of religious organizations to gather during the pandemic so long as those rights are not limited more than the rights of comparable secular organizations.
Predictable wall of text. Nothing you said changes my opinion. People like you come and go all the time with claims that "it is different" or "it is nuanced". It never is.
There’s also nothing in the constitution about murder, but it’s still illegal. Your rights end where they harm someone else. And killing someone is a valid reason to restrict your rights. Vaccines are a good example of this.
I'm sorry but the comparison to murder reads as hyperbole. People who deliberately spread any illness should be punished. That isn't what we are talking about here.
>>Abortion has no impact on other beings with rights (as we do not assigned rights to a fetus).
Aside from the fact that in law we do, if for example you were to commit a felony and in the act of that felony a pregnant women died, you would be charged with both the murder of the women and the unborn child. This discrepancy in the law is a very real one that defyes your logic here
The other problem with your argument is that your position that Person A that leaves there home is involuntarily subjecting "everyone else" is possible sickness.
However like person A "everyone else" also voluntary left their home thus assuming the risk. Thus there is no externalities in this equation at all. If person A got sick then they assumed that risk like everyone else.
For example I did not attend any holiday gatherings, nor have I been physically into a store since like April, all shopping is down online, and delivered or curbside pickup. I assessed the risks to myself and deemed curbside is my personal acceptable risk vector. For others they are fine with continuing to shop in the stores, everyone in that store has assumed that risk.
Likewise Family Gatherings where outside my comfort zone, however everyone that did have family gathers has assumed the risk for for them.
Watch for that phrase, "this time is different". It commonly signals the special pleading fallacy.
Parallel:
"Spying one everyone's communication is different because it is not just someone's own freedoms, but everyone else's right to be protected from terrorists."
I'm not sure that follows from the circumstances. There are plenty of instances of the government restricting individual freedoms for the safety of others. Examples include everything from speed limits to prohibitions against developing my own nuclear weapons.
The balancing test is which freedoms for what degree of protection. We collectively make that determination through a system of government.
It depends upon the premise which you extrapolate from. You could start with the premise of natural rights as described in the founding documents.
Alternatively you could proceed from a realpolitik perspective of what has been possible for the US gov historically and in the present. The government does many things and without exception these actions are construed as being for the public good. Despite this, we have witnessed countless abuses of authority.
Simply observing that an action is possible for government or that a precedent exists for a particular government action, is not the same as rationalizing it as just. Of course there's still room for moderation and pragmatism. It would be impossible to exist in the real world without some measure of pragmatism, but we should also strive for our ideals.
This seems to analogize roughly to the halting problem proof: because one can have no rights or liberty while dead, there is no right which is immune from a contrived example (real or imagined), which would demand violating that right for collective survival. (For example: a "Dark Forest" scenario, where a hostile alien intelligence would destroy all life in Earth if we're discovered, and therefore worldwide surveillance is required to prevent anyone emitting an interstellar signal.)
I never thought that terrorism was an existential threat that necessitated the Patriot Act or the GWOT, but one could imagine a scenario in which it was. What makes a worldwide epidemic so comparatively unique, is that it's quantifiable, and imagining alternative scenarios involves a smooth probability distribution. Those against lockdowns: would you change your mind if the fatality rate or R-number was 10% higher? Those for: same question, 10% lower? 50%? 1000%?
Indeed, those making (specious) comparisons of COVID to flu season, have instead prompted me to wonder if we should have seasonal mask mandates to reduce flu deaths also. I'm a pretty fervent civil libertarian, with a healthy distrust of the state, but it's not clear where that line should be drawn.
>> but it's not clear where that line should be drawn.
For civil libertarians it is very clear where the line is...
It is certainly not criminalizing every person that wants to make a living in a business deemed by a despot governor to be "non-essential" while similar businesses that happen to be political allies or have higher priced lawyers are allow to remain open (for example Walmart could still sell Lamps, chairs, tables, etc, but Acme Furniture Store was forced close (True story from PA). Or Amazon was still allowed to ship online orders, but Jane Doe's Knickknacks was not allowed to even sell online during the pandemic....(true story from NJ))
For Civil Libertarians livelihood can not be separated from Life, and Life with out freedom is not life at all. Simply taking in oxygen and exhaling CO2 is not "life". Life is living, interacting, being productive, enjoying the fruits of our labor, etc.
Life is not about existing, people that believe that are some of the saddest people on earth.
There is a difference between holding a principle, and holding an absolutist principle, absent thoughtfulness and discernment. While there are circumstances where it's admirable to risk death for a principle (fighting to free slaves, refusing to comply with literal Nazis), there are also circumstances where it is the height of foolishness (the right to keep lights on at night in an apartment building during the WW2 London bombings).
> Life is not about existing
Existing is necessary but not sufficient for life. And while there's a strong argument for allowing the individual to risk or even choose death (seat belt laws, assisted suicide), the real crux of the matter is when the individual should be allowed to create mortal risk for others. The moral evil of reducing freedom through the state's monopoly on force (such as a mask mandate) must be weighed against the moral evil of reducing freedom through harm (such as infection with a fatal illness). Whatever plausible scenario you can imagine that goes too far in one direction, you would be correct; and yet I can balance it with a plausible scenario that goes too far in the other direction. There is no rule or principle that frees us from the necessity of thoughtful discernment and debate.
The problem here is not really about a mask mandate, while some people piss and moan about wearing a mask the majority of people would not protest or outright risist such a mandate
However like with all government actions there is always subjective enforcement, and over reaction to the point that is no longer about inconvenience of a mask, but out right prohibition on activity including the ability of one to provide for their family via voluntary exchange with others that want to provide for their families.
I have had many debates with people that simply want the government to "pay people to stay home" all the while these people do not understand interdependent economics and how that is not possible in modern society. Such a measure when in fact collapse society not just at an economic level
So again you are claiming this is just "reasonable government measure" to wear masks, but the reality on the ground is far far far far different where governments are ordering businesses to close completely, and imposing other far more draconian measures on public.
if we are going to debate government response to COVID it must be about the governments ACTUAL, and ACTIVE response not simply about the non-controversial measures that have become controversial and politically precisely because of the over action and other draconian measures put into place by that very same government
Your final argument "when the individual should be allowed to create mortal risk for others" is also a false one and a dangerous one. The other problem with your argument is that your position that Person A that leaves there home is involuntarily subjecting "everyone else" is possible sickness, yet everyone else has assumed some level of risk on themselves that they may be exposed to sickness, but is COVID or the Flu, or the common cold every time they interact with others. They also have the option to limit to eliminate their contact with others, just as Person A has that option. If both parties have voluntarily agreed to the interaction, then both parties have consented to that by assessing their own personal risk.
For me, I have stopped in person shopping, stopped attending social and family events, etc. My risk assessments preclude me from participation in those things, however I have no either right to force other people to live under my personal risk assessment, thus if others choose a different path and want to take that person risk well that is on them
This is all with out getting into the fact that the CDC data says there 99.97% survival rate for all Americans between the ages of 20-49. So the "mortal risk" you have used to ethically justify the government intervention is debatable as well, as if that is the bar for extreme government intervention then we no longer have any civil liberties at all and must impose complete Authoritarianism upon all
> CDC data says there 99.97% survival rate for all Americans between the ages of 20-49
First: are citizens over 49 chopped liver?
Second: there are roughly 129 million Americans between 20-49 [0]; taking the 99.97% number at face value, napkin math indicates 39,000 potential deaths. This is roughly equivalent to yearly car crash deaths, which is the basis for a massive state safety apparatus, restricting both commerce and liberty (freedom to drive 120mph). Plenty of room to debate efficacy and tradeoffs in road safety policy; but it's arguably reasonable to justify non-zero state intervention in both cases.
Third: there are considerations beyond mortality rate; many survivors are expected to have ongoing health conditions and/or shortened lifespans due to lung damage.
Let the record show, I think lockdowns in some regions have gone too far, while the laissez-faire approaches in other regions haven't gone far enough. Framing the question as "Lockdowns: Y/N?" is exactly the kind of simplistic narrative thinking that I'm claiming is unproductive (and ultimately downstream of political tribalism). For instance, permitting tightly-packed indoor concerts with no mitigations seems foolhardy; but allowing haircuts with masks and temperature checks has no nowhere near the same risk profile, mathematically. We have to balance a variety of concerns, include economic factors, preferably using thought-technologies like QALYs [1] and micromorts [2].
> They also have the option to limit to eliminate their contact with others
This is a fantasy. While individuals have some ability to mitigate personal risk, absent a massive proactive intervention (MREs, medicine, and other essential supplies delivered by an E2E-tested supply chain, plus temporary UBI and/or rent freezes), very few people have the means to completely cut themselves off from all outside contact for more than a few days. Anything that increases risk to grocery stockers therefore increases risk to everyone, no matter the precautions individuals take. "If you have an immune disorder, you should have already prepped 18 months of resources in a bunker" doesn't pass a humanitarian sniff test.
I love the grocery example, most of the major stores now have Curb side pickup, why is this not a factor into your mitigation of contact.
Meeting a single store employee outside while wearing a mask has a near zero transmission risk, this does not require one to be a 18 month pepper to take advantage of
As to the debate over Traffic safety, I am sure it will not come as a shock that I oppose government mandated Seat Belt laws as well as many other items. I want a very very small government to the point of almost non-existence
Above you asked about hypothetical fatality rates. We could just as easily ask about the economic and social damage caused by the lockdowns. Instead of indulging alarmist hypotheticals, we can look at some of the data available.
According to the CDC, there's a 99.97% survival rate for all Americans between the ages of 20-49. This includes people who are already unhealthy.
The total number of deaths in Sweden hasn't increased, despite their lack of lockdowns.
We both seem to agree that lockdowns represent a departure from our ideals of individual liberties. If I am reading you correctly, you're asking for a more gradient interpretation of these.
We can agree to disagree here and move on to questioning the efficacy of the lockdowns themselves. If you're suggesting that the ends justify the means, fine. But if the means aren't especially effective at reducing deaths that argument falls apart.
Excuse my cynicism, but it isn't hard to imagine the 'ends' as yet another assault on personal freedoms and the agency of individuals. Here the concept of the ends justifying the means fits perfectly. Unfortunately, this perspective isn't out of place with the trend of a growing security state.
To be clear: I was neither advocating for or against lockdowns. I'm advocating thoughtfulness of trade-offs, informed by (but not limited to) data; as opposed to rigid ideology, or knee-jerk gut reactions. And in particular: to recognize that even if one believes that the data of a specific real-world circumstance clearly favors one end of the spectrum, there are also circumstances where the data can break the other way. Therefore we need to be tolerant and open-minded to good-faith skepticism in either direction.
The fact that a wrong answer can be fatal makes it all the more important to avoid what Daniel Schmachtenberger refers to as "limbic highjacking", or more colloquially, "being triggered" (which includes both fear of death, and fear of losing autonomy).
> ends justifying the means... the trend of a growing security state
It's also worth remembering that these are not mutually exclusive: that circumstances exist where the ends do justify the means, yet are also used as a cynical power grab with additional negative externalities. Again, the only way to know the difference is dispassionate discernment (what Julia Galef refers to as "scout mindset" rather than "soldier mindset" [0]).
In my country, people did it the (ex)communist way, wait a few months quietly then ignore the laws and pretend nothing's wrong, heh.
Same result as the US, hospitals over capacity, doctors just saying fuck this and quitting, infections and deaths through the roofs. At least no one got shot, I guess.
By referencing "lockdowns", you're just bashing some straw man. Only three states even have stay at home orders. From California's: "Nothing in this order prevents any number of persons from the same household from leaving their residence, lodging, or temporary accommodation, as long as they do not engage in any interaction with (or otherwise gather with) any number of persons from any other household". Despite the headline of "stay at home", you're free to go out whenever you'd like. There is no lock down.
The topic is about the US, and GP referenced the "PATRIOT" act. It was reasonable to assume we were still talking about the US. And there are plenty of Americans complaining about "lockdowns" even though there isn't one.
Probably a lot of people here on HN too considering the tide of downvotes you will get if you say you don't approve of building new surveillance systems just because they are said to be for $disease_du_jour
I have a hard time even imagining a plausible scenario in which the government stops tracking phone activities (with the exception of maybe societal collapse). Does anyone actually think this is going to happen?
Lol, not. Congress doesn't care much what the american people want, but rather disctract them with abortions and talks about scary socialism that might give them what they actually want and probably not what they fear.
The government is not allowed to directly spy on its citizen so it gets the data from other five-eyes countries, etc... when it feels like it should comply with the law
WWW is what it is: Wild West ++ :) Simply: law not yet catched up with current technology and someone is monetizing.
In ideal world self-spying on your nation would be unnecesary. But we are not ideal. So: the more privacy the better. That is why China and others are (curently) wasting themselves and keep being loosers.
Take it from ex-Warsaw Pact country citizen: resources put into spying on your own people are wasted and create more and more opposition, which requiure more resources, more manpower and bureaucracy which keep undermine the "goal".
Possibly distrust for own people was quite a factor in fall of Comunist quest for the world. And actually genocide was and is commies self-defeat "method".
That would really show the emperor has no clothes. Next we could have referendums on endless wars, healthcare and outsourcing all the jobs and when both parties still refuse to change anything a lot more of people will realize what's going on.
The push for any contact tracing apps will come from commercial businesses as a requirement to enter. Labeling it "Joe's Covid App" with an implication it's from the de jure government is a surefire way to make sure any criticisms you have become sidelined.
Overall the whole situation is a predictable result of what happens to liberty in the face of force majeure. The current conditions have been directly caused by all the institutional dereliction of duty and personal irresponsibility from February to October. Along with freedom comes responsibility, and when you don't heed that responsibility your freedom disappears.
Most americans still carry cell phones with them so they can't object that much. Just stop carrying the tracking bracelet everywhere. Or at least take the battery out when not in use. It may sound infeasible but it really isn't.
>Most americans still carry cell phones with them so they can't object that much.
And now you're telling me that it's infeasible that they would object. Yes, that's what I said.
But can they if they actually cared? Yes, easily. I just use a non-tracking dedicated car gps for directions. I use a camera instead of a camera phone, and so on. It's not infeasible.
You don't have to choose a cola. You could simply not drink anything. There's always a choice. Sometimes it is unpleasant or socially outlandish, but there is still a choice.
It's not remotely practicable. Go on and try. I look forward to the report proving otherwise after a year or three.
You can't buy things, have accounts (including banking), get healthcare, or get anything done with local government without a phone number. Forced 2FA via SMS is only accelerating normalizing ubiquitous demands for phone numbers. Just as claims of fraud protection have normalized ubiquitous demands for SSNs or driver's license numbers.
You can probably get by without a smartphone, but good luck getting by without a phone number.
Probably the best you can hope to do is to get a number through an online service that doesn't connect to a large telco and which you access solely through Tor.
But my money is on that system not working because you'll get stuck at infinite CAPTCHA loops or silently blocked for looking like abuse.
This is absolutely a place where we need a legislative solution rather than a technological one. Unfortunately the government and corporate incentives aren't aligned with the citizens', so it's not going to happen.
