> Western society learned the lesson from those awful events; they’re therefore not going to happen again.
"But it couldn't happen here" is so widely understood as a fallacy in thinking about how fascist movements operate and spread that it's become a meme at this point. There is no reason to believe that America would be incapable of mass-discrimination against a minority group.
But for the 4th time now, my more relevant response to your dismissal of the holocaust is:
> Society has improved slowly, via heavy investment from anonymous activists and advocates who put themselves in harms way to improve it. Every single one of those activist movements relied on privacy. Quite frankly, there really aren't many examples of social movements that have improved society that haven't heavily used privacy and anonymity to aid them. Certainly at the very least this displays a startling lack of knowledge about the history of race and gender in America.
> If that's not enough, consider that there might be a reason why we literally have laws preventing the requirement of disclosure of sex/race in hiring today? Consider the countless studies about how anonymity benefits the ability of oppressed groups (particularly women) to participate in public spaces online, consider that the Supreme Court has very directly said that anonymity and privacy are an essential component of 1st Amendment rights. You also still really haven't grappled with the fact that multiple states today are pushing to get access to medical records and social media messages both to prosecute people and label minority groups. These are not issues that are affecting only one or two people.
> "because it harms one person ever, we can’t accept it"
Not a single one of the things I mentioned above only affects only a single person. The current harms in America today are sizable enough and severe enough to justify privacy. None of this is niche. If you think that current discrimination is something that only affects one or two people, you are burying your head in the sand.
Anti-discrimination privacy rulings did not get affirmed by the Supreme Court because it was a niche issue. The numerous anti-hate groups today (who all collectively agree with my point of view that modern privacy matters) are not focusing on niche issues. The essential privacy protections that allow for modern advocacy that you seem to take as a given are not niche issues and they affect huge swaths of the population.
Your math is wrong.
> And to be clear, the only person dismissing the holocaust here is you, by equating it to something completely different.
Ok either this is a niche issue or its the next holocaust. It can’t be both.
Your complete inability to be consistent in your argument kind of does my work for me. Look at the contortions you have to make to argue against the simple idea that western society isn’t doomed to repeat its worst mistakes.
If you had a good argument you’d have given it by now.
> Ok either this is a niche issue or its the next holocaust. It can’t be both.
Your lower bounds on what qualifies as "not niche" is the hecking holocaust? Holy crud.
The holocaust was one of the single largest mass-death events in modern history. It is possible for a thing to be serious while not being worse than the holocaust. That is not a binary.
> Which is just another form of: “because it harms one person ever, we can’t accept it.”
What's your definition of the word "niche" then?
Modern privacy violations harm enough people that they are worth taking seriously. They affect large swaths of society and bringing them up is not at all equivalent to saying that because something harms one person we can't accept it. Enough people get harmed by lack of privacy today to cross any reasonable threshold for justifing caring about privacy.
Incidentally, maybe re-read my comments, because I'm honestly really genuinely confused how you thought that I was arguing that modern privacy violations were niche. My consistent point every single comment has been than modern privacy violations are serious and affect multiple people. I'm at loss what you think I was saying other than "this stuff is a mainstream serious issue that affects a lot of people."
> I also didn’t bring up the holocaust, that was also you.
:) Yep, and my analogy stands and is supported by the vast majority of civil rights and social activist groups today, including groups like the ACLU and ADL. If you think the comparison is inappropriate, go argue with them. But you're right, you didn't bring up the holocaust; all you said was that everything that's happened since the holocaust belongs in the same category as saying "because it harms one person ever, we can't accept it."
Which... holy crud, you need to pay attention to the world if you think that.
And? Unless your cutoff point for "bad enough to care about privacy" is the literal holocaust, that doesn't change a single thing about what I've said in a single one of my comments.
It turns out that amazingly, it is possible for multiple things to both be very bad -- bad enough to prompt action and concern -- while not being the exact same amount of bad. It is remarkable, but true. For example, sometimes you might put your hand on a stove and it might be hot enough to burn your skin, but also not as hot as the surface of the heckin sun -- and somehow your hand will still be burned. It's just incredible the way that continuums work.
----
Look, I've donated $5 to the EFF in your name, which I'm hopeful will allow me to more easily internalize that convincing one singular person online that privacy didn't become obsolete when Hitler died is not a good use of my time or energy. Nobody is going to read down this far so there's nobody else at this point who's sake I'm arguing for; and HN is enough of a privacy-supportive forum that very few people on here needed to be convinced you were wrong anyway.
In contrast to things like the civil rights movement, transgender rights, abortion rights, and so on, this argument we're having right now is actually something that only affects a single person and is not worth the trouble. I shouldn't have gotten pulled into it; I make this mistake far too often. And I think that $5 is enough to offset any potential social impact you would have in this thread.
Okay argument aside, I appreciate the donation. I do kind of find the EFF to be insufferable in their outreach (hyperbolic), but that's a really nice thing to do. Thanks.
Fundamentally, I think we disagree on whether or not privacy is worth the cost of the people harmed by its existence. I don't think a surveillance state is necessary, but I also don't think bad people should be able to operate with impunity. I trust the American judicial system to provide warrants when necessary, and I believe such an "invasion" of privacy is both necessary and important to keep our society safe.
I further think it's a straw man when pro-privacy advocates pretend like their opposition believes everything should be out in the open; my original point was that nobody thinks everyone's laundry should be fully public. Nobody actually thinks "I've got nothing to hide" (the submission's title). That's not the opposite of total privacy, the "opposing" view is much less extreme.
"But it couldn't happen here" is so widely understood as a fallacy in thinking about how fascist movements operate and spread that it's become a meme at this point. There is no reason to believe that America would be incapable of mass-discrimination against a minority group.
But for the 4th time now, my more relevant response to your dismissal of the holocaust is:
> Society has improved slowly, via heavy investment from anonymous activists and advocates who put themselves in harms way to improve it. Every single one of those activist movements relied on privacy. Quite frankly, there really aren't many examples of social movements that have improved society that haven't heavily used privacy and anonymity to aid them. Certainly at the very least this displays a startling lack of knowledge about the history of race and gender in America.
> If that's not enough, consider that there might be a reason why we literally have laws preventing the requirement of disclosure of sex/race in hiring today? Consider the countless studies about how anonymity benefits the ability of oppressed groups (particularly women) to participate in public spaces online, consider that the Supreme Court has very directly said that anonymity and privacy are an essential component of 1st Amendment rights. You also still really haven't grappled with the fact that multiple states today are pushing to get access to medical records and social media messages both to prosecute people and label minority groups. These are not issues that are affecting only one or two people.