Post by Tim McNamaraI don't even know if Google's revenue generation is the key consideration here. I fail to see how it is even personal information. Yes, it is information that can be used to personally identify people. However, that in itself doesn't make it information that should be made private by law.
If people do not want their computers to emit data about themselves, then they should take precautions. This means they should use operating systems and applications that respect their desires to keep their activities private.
unfortunately, this is nothing more than blind liberal ideology, with
no consideration of the consequences, or of the reality of how and why
people and corporations use technology
as you're aware, the subject of data privacy is not trivial. it's nice
to suggest everyone should have perfect information to allow them to
make a perfect decision, particularly from your situation of
knowledge, but pointing the finger at people when a multi-billion
dollar company intrudes on their world is somewhat missing the huge
imbalance of power that exists there.
Post by Tim McNamaraI haven't thought about privacy too deeply, but I fail to see most of its virtues. I think privacy in some matters, such as allegations of misconduct, prevents speculation and taint of association. Other than that, I'm not sure. It seems like privacy advocates think that any information is private and therefore should be hidden, despite the fact that it could be very beneficial to allow things to be public.
that's fine, if you are happy sharing your data and info, then fine go
for it. but that doesn't mean the rest of us gain from that
in short, any observation of society, be it through CCTV, data mining,
gps tracking of vehicles, search warrants, etc., etc, has a
demonstrable, significant effect on individuals and society. it
necessarily pushes all towards a 'norm' for one [1], and results in
ever further degradation of humanity. if you want to know more, read
some foucault. if you don't, don't complain at what others see value
in
Post by Tim McNamaraAs an example of what I mean, analytics data is almost only useful in aggregate. It tends to be used to make sure that content is relevant and applications are easy to use. Therefore, even though it it potentially private information, there is a positive utility for keeping it public. Facebook pushes new interfaces onto people. Although the people moan, the stats say they use the site more. This means that the service is likely to be more useful for users. That is, users' behaviour indicates they like the new interface more even though they feel that they dislike it. Without access to analytics data, application designers and developers would be unable to make people's lives better without relying on unreliable, expensive and annoying mechanisms such as surveys.
who says it makes people's lives better? can you provide some
reliable, scientific evidence for that? i'd suggest all it does is
provide sellers with more data to sell people more crap they don't
need. your 'better interfaces' do nothing more than further
consumerism, by encouraging people to find some sort of fulfilment in
buying junk
Post by Tim McNamaraMoreover, I disagree that personal information is necessarily private information. Take people's names. A name only makes sense in the public sphere. If a person's name were not public, names would have zero utility. Its the key in the key=>value datastore that is society. The same thing is true for contact details. Why does this information need to be private? It only serves its purpose by being public.
oh fantastic, let's liken humans to cells in a database, that sounds
wonderful. i want to be a part of that world
Post by Tim McNamaraDoes anyone have references to arguments strongly in favour of privacy? I'm interested in learning more about this area.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish
is a good start. it's nominally about prison, but the effects can be
used as a metaphor to demonstrate the same consequences of observation
across society
also, anything on the panopticon. facebook is probably the best
example of a panopticon in modern society
[1] there are hundreds of scientific research papers written on this.
try a search in a social science journal archive for 'observation' and
'discipline'
--
robin
http://tangleball.org.nz/ - Auckland's Creative Space
http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/
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