The USS Quad Damage

Some interesting ideas.

Many years ago, I wrote my own online photo database. The article you link to is part of an ongoing effort to replace it with 3rd party solution. When I originally wrote it, I envisioned a tool that your friends would be happy with. Photos would only be visible to me (the photographer) and the subjects, until each of the subjects in the picture had approved it for outside consumption.

I soon realised that less than 1% of photos would ever pass through this hurdle. Now, I publish by default, and only hold back and check about ones I am not sure about. (“Visible panties” is actually a classic example. Some women are horrified and some don’t care.)

I do take this trust (that I wont publish unflattering pictures) seriously. I also have a war-chest of unflattering pictures of all my friends, so never cross me! :-)

But I wanted to talk about the premise of the post. You seem to start with a premise that a completely open and privacy-free world is utopian. You get annoyed when we are being held back from progressing towards this ideal.

I find the idea of such a world abhorrent. I value my privacy. As a blogger, Facebook user, occasional performer and social animal, I acknowledge I have a reasonably large “social surface” (to coin a phrase) but I am still careful about what appears and isn’t permitted to appear on that surface.

My question is: if we can find some reasonable examples where privacy does good, are you willing to concede that a privacy-free world is not utopia?

(Another approach would be to show that such a Utopia isn’t an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (or at a Nash equilibria) and therefore will never happen for long.)

The “privacy free world” is something that I have believed in for a long time. However, the reason for this may be because the problem of privacy is just “too hard”, so as an engineer I’ve just said “screw privacy!”. However, like in AA, this is possibly just denial of the benefits of privacy as opposed to actually believing that privacy is a bad thing.

Having said that, though, I got through the article and I couldn’t really think of a good reason for having privacy, so I ended with my original proposition. This pretty much means that, yeah, if you could find me an example of where privacy is good (without citing weak security policies of dodgy companies, or some tenuous “feeling of comfort”), I’ll concede that it belongs in a Utopian world.

I’m using Utopia informally — You can’t divide by “0” but you can get infinitely close, it could possibly be the same with reaching Utopia.

Scenario #1: The Good Surprise

Bob is organising a surprise party for Alice. Bob doesn’t want Alice to know. (This is the reason given for incognito mode in both Chrome and IE8, when the real reason is obviously secretly watching porn.)

Alternatively, Bob is buying an engagement ring for Alice, Bob doesn’t want to ruin the surprise. (This was the scenario used to argue against Facebook/Beacon.)

Scenario #2: Boredom of being defined by one element.

Charlie has cancer, or is an astronaut or is a famous writer or plays unicycle hockey. Charlie is bored of everyone choosing the exact same aspect of his life as being the most interesting thing to talk about. Charlie wants to talk about other stuff. He doesn’t want this information to appear before him every time he walks into a room.

Scenario #3: Avoiding stereotypes

Humans take shortcuts in thinking. You can abhor this, and wish it didn’t happen, but it is a key part of successful intelligence in real-time and isn’t going away.

Anyone who has an attribute which is a stereotype trigger, but doesn’t meet the stereotype might want to avoid revealing that attribute. In today’s world, for example, you might hide the fact that you are a Scientologist, to avoid people assuming your behaviour is going to be similar to that of Tom Cruise.

Scenario #3: Avoiding hurting your loved ones

If your grandfather is a devout Catholic/Scientologist/Rangers-supporter, but you don’t carry the faith, it may be easier to keep this private, rather than to cause hurt. You can argue that this shouldn’t cause hurt, but I don’t see this as something that is ever going to go away.

Scenario #4: Avoiding repetitive arguments

Similarly, if you are an atheist, but don’t want to continue to have arguments about the existence of God with your religious brethren every time you meet one, you may prefer to keep that part of your life quiet.

Is that enough? Do you need more?

OK let’s go through these one by one:

1) I can agree with this, but “good surprises” isn’t really “privacy”, It’s more of a “time-bound secret”. After the party is over, the value of the privacy of the fact that you organised the event is unnecessary. I don’t understand how “porn mode” is an equivalent form of privacy to a surprise party.

However, it does raise an interesting slightly different point, which is, say I wanted to donate a large amount of money to a charity, but so as not to attract attention (or to discourage others from donating) I didn’t want to disclose either who I was or how much I donated. Unlike the party secret, this one is not time-bound.

For (2), this goes back to the tacit rule of going to see a live band — Do not wear the T-Shirt of the band you’re going to see, you’ll look like a noob. In Australian culture, specifically not talking about the defining issue of a person is something that’s already done. If I saw Hugh Jackman on the street and yelled out “Hey Hughesy, how’s your latest movie going?” it would be seen as tactless and possibly even rude. In this case, exposing that you “have AIDS” might actually push the topic of conversation to something else.

For both of the two (3)s, you can say that society has to “get over it”, and the best way to do this is to stop privacy around the area. My parents once remarked “There was this guy with a Tattoo, and I thought he’d be really mean but he was actually really nice” — The only way to challenge Stereotypes and social norms is by putting it in big writing. This is how gay people did it (by “coming out”), and I’d have to say it was a pretty big win for them. In fact, this is exactly the sort of thing I’m encouraging.

(4) is an interesting point… I don’t see this happening with your religious bretheren. Like (2), I’d assume that once someone you knew had an arguement with you once, they’d get tired and not have the arguement again. For strangers, unless you have a green triangle above your head with the word “Atheist” on it, I don’t see this causing many problems. More specifically, me and a bunch of other people don’t keep this information private, and (at least I) haven’t noticed any problems because of it. Keeping your mouth shut on some issues sometimes does have it’s benefits, but this is not privacy.

I think the only point that’s really left is the first, but it sort of mingles the idea of privacy and what I see as security (or secrets, specifically). Obviously, I’m not advocating that my passwords or fingerprints be there for everyone to see. I also don’t think things such as my bank account number, how much money I have in my bank account, or my earnings should be public knowledge. I also don’t want my doctor to release information about what kind of problems I’ve got.

But I guess if I wanted to, I’d want to be able to describe a scene with my doctor, what advice he gave, and what kind of problems I’ve got. Hm.. I guess this is really about who let’s this knowledge slip out, or the context of the knowledge?

Sorry for the delay in responding; I have been ill, and I am still catching up.

I don’t understand how “porn mode” is an equivalent form of privacy to a surprise party.

This is a digression from the topic at hand, so I have put it in a separate comment. I just wanted to clarify the confusion I caused.

In the bad old days of Internet Explorer 6, plenty of utilities sprung up to help people clear their cookies and caches. The primary usage of this was almost certainly to help people with shared computers to hide their online porn viewing habits.

As a result, modern browsers have special modes that avoid leaving traces of your viewing habits. (IE8 calls this feature InPrivate, Chrome calls it Incognito.)

This left a problem to the marketing teams; how can you describe this usage of this feature without being indelicate? Both Chrome and IE8 documentation used the same out: they used the “Surprise Party” scenario to describe their new feature.

And that is how the porn modes are equivalent to surprise parties.

You consider “time-bound secrets” to be somehow less than privacy. I think a key part of privacy is acknowledging the right to keep secrets, whether they are time-bound or not. But it doesn’t matter because this whole example isn’t crucial to my argument.

I didn’t get your reference to the live bands or Hugh Jackman. But it doesn’t matter because that whole point isn’t crucial to my argument.

I don’t agree that it is reasonable to expect that every person becomes an activist on every issue that might affect them every day. I don’t need for the whole world to finally acknowledge unicycle hockey as a legitimate sport; I just want the chance to talk about other subjects. I was listening to a radio show about parents of a transgender 9-year-old. They tried to start a support group, but they couldn’t find anyone else in the area with the same issues. It isn’t reasonable to expect every parent in the world to sit down with their children and explain the issues of transgender children that they will almost certainly never meet. In the mean-time, the 9-year-old liked it when others were unaware of the issue. She clearly had enough trouble just being a 9-year-old without having to be the visible face of a complex gender issue. But it doesn’t matter because that whole point isn’t crucial to my argument.

Are there problems for athiests? Undoubtably – the Atheist Foundation of Australia is currently pursuing at least two anti-discrimination cases. The problem seems to be a more personal/practical issue in parts of the USA, where studies show they are the most distrusted minority group identified and that 48% of parents would disapprove their child marrying an athiest. If I was an athiest living in America, I would think twice about revealing that fact. But it doesn’t matter because that whole point isn’t crucial to my argument.

You talk about there not being green triangle above the heads of athiests. That is exactly the issue; the right for people to not have green triangles (or any other indicators) being displayed without their permission – whether the green triangle means they are athiests or gay or like to get drunk at parties. If your photos of your friends appear on Facebook, is it any different to a triangle above their heads, except, perhaps, in degree? But it doesn’t matter because that whole point isn’t crucial to my argument.

What is crucial to my argument is that you have accepted that there is at least one scenario where you think privacy is good – you seem to propose that doctors, bankers, password-holders and charities should protect the privacy of their customers.

You have also agreed that “if you could find me an example of where privacy is good […] I’ll concede that it belongs in a Utopian world.”

Therefore, we can conclude that, as we strive towards a more utopian society, we need to consider privacy as something to be (at least somewhat) protected.

Hi Julian,
Yeah a lot has caused me to re-think the issue, and I want to write a new article but I’m procrastinating about it because it’s a complicated issue, and I don’t really have the drive right now. This was, in part, due to some conversations I’ve had (including comments on this site and on facebook), a particular incident I messed up, and this movie where a guy gets his life pretty much ruined purely by rumor. I need to draw some new lines and state my case more clearly.