One thing that is worth mentioning is the idea of a “private life” really hasn’t ever existed. Even before the internet and computers, banks still held records of customer identity, merchants would still track their customers and what they bought, and the government could still take those records with a warrant. Even before then in pre industrial or rural areas, people would generally know who the people around them were and would regularly discuss what others were doing.
The idea of a completely anonymous citizen that can bank, buy, and talk with others with full control of what other people know about them is pretty much a modern invention and is slowly disappearing again and society adapts to a technological world.
The problem is; it used to take lots of real effort and therefore expense to investigate those facts. The results are now worth far more, and the cost is now far less.
That is a change in the structure, the unwritten expectations of society, that I agree we should resist that change.
The previously unwritten expectations should be codified into rules that should be followed.
These "gaslighters" seem to show up to many discussion to say "what's the big deal, it's always been that way" when it obviously hasn't. I guess it's people who want the change and are trying to justify it?
Anyway, a good analogy is photo radar. Speed limits are set knowing everybody speeds. We could now easily enforce them everywhere. But if we do, we need to raise them to an appropriate level, not the "we know you're breaking them" level. Same with what you're saying about privacy, as the cost of invading it goes down, we need different controls, we can't just be cool with it because it was always hypothetically possible to hire a private investigator to stalk someone.
> We need to raise them to an appropriate level
I do not know what most people would find an appropriate level (I for one would prefer the current level, you would prefer a raised level).
Somehow I feel the same about all the privacy discussions. Are people really understanding and would be impacted in the same why by privacy issues or is this just a fight between various interests with no connection with the actual people?
To give an (extreme) example: without social networks elections will be influenced by newspapers and television. Would "the actual person" be much better of because he is influenced "by different people"?
Sometimes I wonder how it would be if some things would be less private. (for example if wealth information would be less private, would it be harder for some people to do "dubious stuff", from straight illegal, to huge bonuses, etc.). I mean look at open source - is open source a result of "let's keep everything private and separate" idea or exactly the opposite... ?
Radical transparancy only works in a world of radical acceptance. I deliberately hide some stuff I do from some people not because it is shady but because it will impact their view of me in a negative way.
In my grandma's village everyone knew that a neighbor was cheating, who got pregnant, and details about every single person in the village. Nowadays it's easy to track which websites I go to, but none of my neighbors have any clue about what I'm up to.
With this in mind, outright calling people that notice this gaslighters is immature. Make your point or don't.
You've literally just pointed out the difference between the people who used to know what you're up to, and the people who now know what you're up to.
Anyone trying to convince you there is no difference between the two states is trying to make you ignore that difference in the world, and convince you that your perception of that difference is faulty or mistaken.
How is that not gaslighting?
But - the difference in effect is that, under the old system, the government could not immediately get a summary of that information from everyone in the village, and do so without possibility of word getting back to you. Nor could a prospective employer. Or a bank manager. Or someone half-way round the world wanting to scam you out of your life savings. Or someone wanting to run for political office. Or someone wanting to persecute cheaters/unwed mothers/"sexual deviants"/etc... for personal gain.
Yeah, back then your private life might not have been private, strictly speaking. But at least it wasn't for sale, in bulk, at bargain basement prices, to anyone looking for any kind of leverage over you.
The only reason it is disappearing is the government keeps mandating surveillance. Anti-money laundering and know your customer are just the financial arm of global mass surveillance. They just say "terrorists" and suddenly everything is justified. Everyone just accepts it. Just an fact of life that you have to do all this bookkeeping when you have a business. In fact, such things should be literally illegal. This is just some loophole the government uses to illegally surveil its citizens. It's illegal to warrantlessly wiretap everyone so they get the private sector to do it for them. Then all they need to do is gently ask the corporations. The CEOs are only too happy to get in bed with them.
The bitter pill to swallow is society needs to learn to tolerate some amount of crime in order to maintain their freedom. They want the government to be all powerful so that it can stop crime before it even happens. They don't want the responsibility for themselves. The responsibility that freedom requires, the responsibility to personally defend themselves when the bad guys come knocking. No, they want to delegate it all to some authorities. They better hope they don't end up as serfs in somebody's fiefdom.
>The bitter pill to swallow is society needs to learn to tolerate some amount of crime in order to maintain their freedom.
I would go a step further and say that society needs some level of crime in order to gain freedoms, not just keep the ones they have. As a thought experiment, imagine you had a machine that would magically prevent anyone who would violate the law from doing so from the moment its activated for the rest of time. Is there any point in all of history that you think would be a good time to activate that machine? Certainly you would want to avoid activating it any time that slavery was legal. Probably be a good idea to skip the world wars era. Civil rights era would be another good time to avoid. The Troubles wouldn't be a great time either I wouldn't think. And if you believe in the benefits of medical usage of various schedule I drugs, I wouldn't recommend turning it on today either.
Sure, a reduction in crime might be a great thing for society, and there's no telling how many lives would be improved if truly bad people were prevented from doing their crimes. But the flip side of that is I can't think of a single point in history where some group or action was criminalized that later turned out to be something that should not have been so. And I don't have faith that we'd make nearly as much progress on things without people willing to break the law and bring those injustices to our attention.
Gotta actually have something worth defending in order to justify risking one's life. A family, a community, a nation. Even if you told me I could bring an entire army with me, I wouldn't step foot there. There's nothing in there for me.
The idea of a completely anonymous citizen that can bank, buy, and talk with others with full control of what other people know about them is pretty much a modern invention and is slowly disappearing again and society adapts to a technological world.