> There are plenty of things you and I don't want anyone to know. I don't want the world to know when I'm on vacation. I don't want my neighbors to know I left my balcony door open and I just have the screen door closed so I conserve energy. I don't want every girl I meet to know that I collect comic books. The idea that I shouldn't be doing any of those things is completely absurd.

The point is that if the world really wanted to find out about these activities, there is someone in the world with the information who knows of it.

Just taking one of your examples: comic books---you buy them from some source, and that source likely knows who you are.

Absolute privacy is impossible unless no one is interested in your activities, and your activities don't involve any other human being or leave any trace.

I hear this reasoning all the time -- that your desire to keep X private is null and void because some fringe Y case would expose you. The world isn't black and white and privacy isn't binary.

There are already privacy protections for doctor/patient and attorney/client, so clearly a legal precedent has been set in those cases -- why not others?

The comic book example, just because the source knows who you are doesn't mean it's for them to plaster your picture up on every internet site and telephone pole.

Consider this analogy: Before Google and Wikipedia, to find out about some subject, you'd have to find an encyclopedia, journey to its location, and spend time paging through it to get info.

While that was possible, the price in time and effort was very high compared to an internet search.

That same change affects our privacy. Before, a scammer could single you out, look through your information, and visit people to make connections. Today, a scammer in a foreign country can search through millions of public records to find the connection he knows he can exploit every morning, while laying in bed.

My point is, more of what happens on planet Earth is determined by ease than possibility. And ease makes new things possible. This fact is especially relevant in terms of computation.

> Yeah online privacy is nearly non existent. Especially so when you are reckless and use connected identity systems. That doesn't mean the message should be "give up."

I don't think the question is over whether it is worth it to fight for online privacy, but rather if online privacy is the right end goal to begin with.

People are very uncomfortable with radical openness and transparency of their personal lives because it is a radical departure from the way life used to operate. People have always been uncomfortable with technologically driven cultural changes (easy examples would be the original Luddite movement or luddites today), and probably always will be. Online privacy gives an ironic twist on the situation since many hackers, the people who should be pushing the world forward, are disturbed by this change and want to hold it back.

Facebook, and more recently Google (with their real name push), have moved to envision this different mode of human interaction. In its extreme incarnation, your digital and 'physical' lives are inextricably merged. I don't think this is a trend that can or should be fought: it would mean fighting the integration of technology with day to day life, and so would eventually be analagous to fighting the benefits technology can bring to human life. With this integration, though, your personal life accessible to those who want it. Yes, having everything be open is very different and uncomfortable. But look at the environment created by allowing total anonymity: 4chan /b/. I feel comfortable saying that I would rather see human interaction move in a direction where you are responsible for all of your actions, rather than one where you can avoid all responsibility.

Near-total transparency is inevitable. The tech is already as cheap as candy and getting undetectably small.

Total anonymity of speech though, is likewise inevitable. Data is the only thing small enough to slip unseen in a transparent society.

> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" is bullshit.

No, it's fact.

> There are plenty of things you and I don't want anyone to know.

What good does that do us though?

> I don't want the world to know when I'm on vacation.

But they can easily. A webcam watching the street could make it easy to tell whose lights are on a timer, or not on at all. Google not needed.

> I don't want every girl I meet to know that I collect comic books. The idea that I shouldn't be doing any of those things is completely absurd.

No, it's perfectly reasonable. After all it's the only way you'll get what you want.

And if you find a girl who doesn't know you collect comics she'll be disappointed when she figures it out. Wear it on your sleeve and be happy. Ditto porn, whatever.

> It was hardly 10 years ago that the message was - never meet anyone you first met online.

That's what FOX and CNN were telling you to panic about, yes. Do you really live your life in so much fear? Never physically meeting people you met online because they might be serial killers?

> In the same fashion, would you like everyone to know what parking spot your teenage daughter parked in, in the back of a mall parking lot Friday night?

Think of the threat vectors. There are a lot of pretty girls out there so this one specific girl isn't going to be sought by online creeps around the world. Everyone knowing doesn't change anything, except perhaps to let me keep an eye out for her.

If anyone hurts her it'd be a random attacker who spotted her in the mall or a friend/family who had stalked her. The first wouldn't care where her car was - she'd lead them to it. The second would recognize the car.

> Or where your kids go to daycare?

Oh yes. Because your crotch-fruit are so special that perverts would see them online and have to have them, specifically. Again, the only threat to your children specifically is from your family, and they know which daycare you use.

> Perhaps the parallel increase in information access by law enforcement has made us feel safer.

Hah! Those snoops are the problem. Technology is making us safer by letting us finally know what our 'servants' are really up to.

>But they can easily. A webcam watching the street could make it easy to tell whose lights are on a timer, or not on at all. Google not needed.

>There are a lot of pretty girls out there so this one specific girl isn't going to be sought by online creeps around the world.

>Because your crotch-fruit are so special that perverts would see them online and have to have them, specifically.

Besides being unnecessarily rude, you're arguing that since everyone is vulnerable to an opportunistic thief, you are not entitled to protecting yourself from a thief that specifically targets you.

Since you're just like everyone else, you're not entitled to take reasonable precautions to protect your family.

There are PLENTY of situations where complete candor will get you fired or worse. Proclaiming you're gay in the U.S. Military during DADT. Holding unpopular religious faiths or marrying someone of the 'wrong' race or sex. Perhaps you had an abusive ex-partner that you're concerned about.

If my privacy is so worthless, then why do companies like Google and Facebook go to such extreme measures to collect, retain, hide, and protect 'their' data about you?

your privacy is your own responsibility, not google's. there are services you can pay for that will erase your online identity and there are programs you can use to ensure you won't have to use them again.

> >Because your crotch-fruit are so special that perverts would see them online and have to have them, specifically. > Besides being unnecessarily rude,

If calling your hypothetical children crotch fruit is rude you've got another lesson coming to you in the outside world, Susan. The point is that your little bundles of joy aren't everyone else's, and the world is full of them. For an attacker they're fungible.

> you're arguing that since everyone is vulnerable to an opportunistic thief, you are not entitled to protecting yourself from a thief that specifically targets you.

No. I'm not arguing entitlement. I'm saying you're paranoid, as in need to take medicine, for fixating on such non-issues. It's like stranger-danger and everything else our media has scared us with. A non-problem.

> Since you're just like everyone else, you're not entitled to take reasonable precautions to protect your family.

I sure am. Try threatening me and you'll end up with a four-pound steel bar upside the head. But that's protection, not the net-nanny fixation on it.

> There are PLENTY of situations where complete candor will get you fired or worse.

Yup. And none of them involve pretty girls and comic books.

> Proclaiming you're gay in the U.S. Military during DADT.

Being fired from an organization that went on to murder over a million people during that time seems like a benefit, not a loss...

> Holding unpopular religious faiths or marrying someone of the 'wrong' race or sex.

Yeah, and these usually aren't secret, even without the internet. If you were in an interracial marriage in the US south (or select other places) you'd want to keep a gun in the house and shoot anyone you see carrying an oversize cross onto your lawn.

> Perhaps you had an abusive ex-partner that you're concerned about.

You know, detectives were tracking people before the net. It's almost as easy but requires more phone calls. If you're worried about danger, protect yourself from danger. Don't uselessly cower.

> If my privacy is so worthless, then why do companies like Google and Facebook go to such extreme measures to collect, retain, hide, and protect 'their' data about you?

Their marketing value is unrelated to your privacy value. And your false privacy - that sense of security you get by curating cookies or hiding which preschool your kids go to, is useless.

> If calling your hypothetical children crotch fruit is rude you've got another lesson coming to you in the outside world, Susan.

Sure, and we could be talking about this on 4chan. But we're not, are we?

4chan is just something you've heard of, right?

Anyways, in the outside world, the big blue room so to speak, if you brought up something irrelevant like someone's characterization of children as crotch fruit as if you were personally insulted you'd get a laugh, then as your seriousness became apparent, a scoff, rolled eyes, and the conversation would continue without your input. It's not an insult so don't get bent out of shape. This isn't me being rude, it's you being hypersensitive.

I'm not saying your child - Timmy, age 6, blonde, missing tooth, slight lisp - personally is a worthless being. I'm saying that as far as availability, children are a dime a dozen. There's no neighborhood in the world without an over-abundant supply of them. While everyone is a wonderful snowflake, each one of us is just someone's inadvertent crotch-fruit. This attitude of "perverts are just waiting for me to let my guard down" is ridiculous. It's unlikely a kidnapper will ever look at a given child, let alone that children are routinely stalked.

I'm saying that

1. In most professional settings, such a comment would be inappropriate.

2. There's no need to be so caustic.

Commenter was an obvious troll.

>And if you find a girl who doesn't know you collect comics she'll be disappointed when she figures it out. Wear it on your sleeve and be happy. Ditto porn, whatever.

Some things of this nature are illegal, socially unacceptable, or simply result in constant harassment by the authorities regardless of their legality. It is unreasonable, I think, to expect every homosexual man in Iran to wear his pink triangle on his sleeve. Considering that we live in a country in which young people are assaulted by police officers for standing around in public in New York City, I can hardly imagine what would happen to an American who proudly announce to strangers that he or she really enjoys using opium, is occasionally attracted to people who haven't yet turned 18, or believes that the government should be overthrown.

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe the problem isn't you.

> Some things of this nature are illegal, socially unacceptable, or simply result in constant harassment by the authorities regardless of their legality. It is unreasonable, I think, to expect every homosexual man in Iran to wear his pink triangle on his sleeve.

No. In fact, if those homosexual men in Iran want not to be oppressed they have to do something about it. Shoot a local police officer or religious leader or something. (Only sort of joking - who would order or carry out their death if they were caught?)

> Considering that we live in a country in which young people are assaulted by police officers for standing around in public in New York City, I can hardly imagine what would happen to an American who proudly announce to strangers that he or she really enjoys using opium, is occasionally attracted to people who haven't yet turned 18, or believes that the government should be overthrown.

Everyone enjoys opium, that's the point. People younger than 18 are very attractive, that's why we have so many laws against taking advantage of them. And the government should be overthrown if it harms the people.

> If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe the problem isn't you.

No, but if you live in fear because of it, it is.

You're confusing what I'm offering, practical life advice, with me saying I think it's better this way. Realize what the world is like and, if getting caught scares you too much, don't do things you can't get caught doing.

>> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" is bullshit.

>No, it's fact.

No, its bullshit. Or should I really refrain from scratching my ass right now because the internet would say "at 3:40 pm 11/9/30 John Doe scratched his ass"? Or should that not be published online?