Marc thanks for continuing this discussion, privacy is important, as well as trending but its a complex, multidimensional issue
We are not dealing with honesty ignorance or simple fallacy but with vicious deviated powerful and criminal organisations operating within legal systems (such and govenrments) above and beyond the law- often in the name of national or global security, who have the power to distort/omit/manipulate information to influence the public opinion. This is done routinely, sometimes called politics, Honest surveillance exists for example, when I entered a country last March they told me at the airport that my phone was going to be tracked by contact tracing apps because of Covid - they did not ask my permission, but they informed me, verbally I may even have signed a card to say I agree in some foreign language I dont understand, but I dont remember, I was tired and wanted to get in I may not like it, but I am not afraid of this situation, Basically now that I know, if I dont want to be tracked, I can leave the phone at home. Unless someone is going to misuse this tracking situation for other purposes, which nobody may ever know Dishonest surveillance is when I dont know who is tracking my location, every movement I make every word I say, what they do with this info possibly feed it to networks which may contain disgruntled folks who may want to see me dead - for whatever reason , possibly ideological political personal I am more afraid of this latter scenario.which is quite common, and undocumented. all done under the radar Especially when the person being tracked is/was a journalist, or researcher who may have accidentally stumbled across some dodgy fact and may have made some public disclosure in the public interest of such facts and is now the targed of some secret state Privacy is a human right, but it is regularly infringed by we dont know who, why or how They do not document breaches of privacy, they make sure not to leave any trail behind when they do Marc Sunet <[email protected]> wrote:. > I think the question here is what is considered "public". To me, this > mailing list is not as public as, say, explicitly addressing the crowd in a > public event. Here, I am addressing a specific set of people; that the > email happens to be forever-archived and made publicly available does not > make it "public" in my opinion. It's like having a conversation at the > park; that the park is publicly accessible does not mean you should be > nosing around other people's conversations. > > The privacy issue may benefit from being defined on a scale, degrees of privacy. For me, based on my awareness of surveillance, even what I think in my mind or do in my bathroom may be or become public to some extent (not that I authorize this, is done without consensus). They can track my every online activity, every word I search for, every noise I make listen in through the microphone on my laptop next room, or by simply hanging something from the window. (note: I am VERY paranoid, but have learned that surveillance is a fact and live with it) Posting on a mailing list which is publicly accessible, for me is public. (cyberpublic) Posting to a list that is accessible only members, is less public. etc, possibly on a scale Private emails, or private conversations in public places, are not intended to be public, however when someone snoops then posts to public lists, it becomes public Everywhere I go, every train, every appointment with friends, I wonder if the person sitting next to us is recording what we say - (veeery paranoid) I live with that and as you imagine, I do not have much of a life and live far from people Much information is not public - say wrongdoing of all sorts is carried out by governments and corporations privately but it should be, I think There is nothing that can be done to prevent people with motivation and technology, or policy (say a mandate to carry out surveillance if you, your interlocutor or the conversations you have may be considered a matter of national security) What is considered a matter of national security, should be of pubic concern But it is not., is it? It can get very complicated :-) Even privacy advocates can be twisted to abuse privacy (say to spy or to stalk physically or virtually others) if someone they trust tells them that spying on people is carried out to protect them or their privacy, ultimately for their own safety some people infring your privacy with that justification > I think technology has eroded this concept, in particular social networks > like Facebook and Twitter whose business model relies heavily on making > everything "public" so that the hate and the dissonance can spread and be > consumed like popcorn. > > for me, it is a surveillance technology that erodes the concept. Social media play a part, but its is what is not public that may impact the public that needs to be better addressed yes maybe, but at least public information is open to scrutiny.by everyone not just a single party > There have been numerous examples of retroactive attacks, like somebody > being fired from their job because of something they did or said ten years > ago, which also happened to be recorded for posterity, surfaced from the > depths of the web and taken completely out of context (not to mention that > the person might be a different person 10 years later). The person gets > doxed and the company caves in to the pressure. Spanish author Juan Soto > Ivars devoted a whole book to this called "Arden las Redes"; I am not sure > if it has an English translation. Of course, the permanent record here is > not the root cause of the problem, nor does a lack of it fully solve the > problem, but I think the record does facilitate the attacks to some degree. > the point here for me is not the information, but the attacks and the motives. someone with a motive to attack will find or create information to use for that purpose yes, public information may be easier , but those with motivation have budgets, big budgets entire education systems, science, research funding, legislations are built on partial facts or false facts and those who expose them, are persecuted and surveillance and breaches of privacy are the mechanisms for this prosecution. If its secret states, corporations or powerful political or economic lobbies who are after you, the fact that your postsa may not be publicly accessible will not stop them, there are plenty of ways to get to people, much of the prosecution of innocent folks is done with public money but the justice system itself in democratice countries where politics is controlled by money In that sense, having messages in the open for public scrutiny means that > anyone could verify what was said, and expose the intentional > misrepresentation de-contextualization and the manipulation for the > deliberate purpose of putting the messenger in a bad light. > > I think this assumes that everything I say in public is recorded, which is > not exactly the kind of world I want to live in. And even then, I don't see > what problem this would solve. > no, I am referring to public information which is deliberately shared openly with the purpose to exercise freedom of speech and opinion, and/or to infor and it is recorded as in publicly accessible mailing list archives or other public records. A lot of person information is public or findable with little effort and incerasingly so. > I am all for sticking to the right to say what we have to say, and > learning how to deal with deliberate targeting of the folks who say what > they have to say. We need to continue to build civil society. and pay the > price for doing it > > To instil fear and to injure who are not afraid of free speech is > ultimately what they want, we need to learn and teach civilization. Long > way to go, it seems > > Yeah, no question there. > Very big topic, not black and white PDM > > On Sat, Oct 3, 2020 at 7:34 AM Marc Sunet <[email protected]> wrote: > >> It's a good one, here is a related one that talks about the social >> effects: >> >> https://www.socialcooling.com/ >> >> To me, part of the problem is that online communications are constantly >> creating a permanent record, like Snowden puts it. This list, for example, >> should really be regarded as private, a conversation with the liberation >> folks. But it's actually public by virtue of having an eternal record of >> everything said here made available on a discoverable part the Web. Any >> joke, criticism or statement can then be taken out of context and >> copy-pasted somewhere else; in the worst case, this results in a public >> lynching of the author. The lack of privacy then leads to a chilling >> effect, to self-censorship; every word must be carefully measured, even the >> email address you send this from and other metadata must be considered. >> >> On the other hand, if the mailing list record just self-destructed after >> a while (Signal does this with messages), then the problem would not be as >> bad. Copy-pasting something out of context and lynching the author would >> now have to be a targeted attack as opposed to something you can do >> retroactively any day and any time. Most people would not bother unless you >> were a high-profile target. The same arguments Snowden makes about the NSA >> collecting a permanent record to then retroactively find crime as opposed >> to looking for evidence for an existing investigation apply to online >> social communication just as well. >> >> There is of course value in making the list publicly available to build >> community, provide a learning resource and so on, so automated >> self-destruction seems like a good balance and default to me. Things become >> semi-private, or semi-public; words are written on sand instead of stone. >> On 10/2/20 8:57 AM, Yosem Companys wrote: >> >> https://inre.me/why-privacy-is-the-most-important-concept-of-our-time/ >> >> -- >> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major >> commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you >> moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. 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