Privacy#

• Privacy is about power, and human information confers power over human beings.
• If we care about being authentic, fulfilled, and free humans, we have to care about the rules that apply to information about us. Privacy gives you the freedom to live your life in a way that best suits your personal goals and needs.
• Doing privacy first tackles multiple online harms by addressing corporate surveillance.
• A society with no privacy is a severe disadvantage in any resistance against the oppressive tendencies of the state and other large corporate actors.
  • Think about how badly things can go if the wrong people end up in positions of power.
  • What happens when someone is being stalked by an abusive ex-partner who works in law enforcement and has access to those databases?
• Data mining can be a weapon.
• Privacy is the assurance that your data is only seen by the parties you intend to view it.
• Anonymity is the ability to act without a persistent identifier.
  • Pseudonymity is a persistent identifier.
• You shouldn't confuse privacy with secrecy. We know what happens in the bathroom, but you still close the door.
• Privacy is an important guarantor of decentralization: whoever has the information has the power, ergo we need to avoid centralized control over information.
• There are always certain facts about us, say, personal health information, or sexual behavior, that we wouldn't want the whole world to know.
• Less privacy => you give more data to advertisers => you get more personalized ads => ads are more effective on you => political ads change your opinions more => your political views are partly bought by money.. Ads work, on everyone, regardless what you think.
• You may be fine with being influenced by ads, but you are also imposing it on everyone you care about, without their consent.
• Companies can see all your data, and companies are made of people, and people can be malicious.
• Companies can share your innocuous data with law enforcement and get you arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Any information that is tied to your person can be used against you if it lands in the wrong person's hands. Privacy is safety.
• Digital privacy is even more paramount than social non-digital privacy, because it can be accessed or exploited remotely from anywhere.
• You behave very differently when you know you are being watched. A lack of privacy changes how you act.
• You do have things to hide. You do not know what you need to hide today for the reality of tomorrow.
• Privacy is less needed for people whose life situations are relatively normal, and more needed for people whose life situations deviate from the norm, in any direction, and you never know when you will be in that situation.