When talking about government surveillance, people often ask some version of 'well, if you're not doing anything wrong, what are you afraid of?'. My response is always, 'It's not that I don't trust our current government, I don't trust all future governments that come after this one'.

I hope given the recent events of having some hired thugs rifle through government databases (including the OPM, which supposedly has very sensitive data from security clearance applications), that maybe letting people collect and store data on you should be avoided at all cost.

The older I get, the more I understand the stereotype of the eccentric former techie who no longer wants anything to do with modern technology or society

I see no reason to trust the current government, nor any of the previous ones in my lifetime.

Why would people distrust governments more than companies? I never understood that part.

Because the government has more power over you. Thus, they deserve more scrutiny and suspicion.

True, but the government also has more accountability.

Exhibit A: freedom of speech. Public institutions have a very high bar they have to meet to ensure freedom of speech. The private sector has nothing of the sort.

You can be banned or censored for just about anything in the private sector. So when we move really important stuff to the private sector, that can be a problem.

In action: payment processors, which provide essentially public infrastructure, censoring immoral or profane content, such as pornography.

Isn't it the case that companies are hiding in the government's shadow? Who enables a government to exert power over its people?

> Who enables a government to exert power over its people?

Mostly the police and military, not the companies.

Except the ostensible motive of the government is to serve its people, whereas the company’s motive is either those of the people who control the company or profit.

Even then, if the government is weak than the ‘more power over you’ is simply false. Maybe the magnitude of the power is more for a government, but companies apply their power with much more frequency.

  > the ostensible motive of the government is to serve its people

Your conclusion doesn't seem to match your usage of "ostensible". Yes, /democratic/ governments claim to serve its people, but do not necessarily do so. You should always be suspicious and critical of your government in an effort to ensure that the stated goal and actions are aligned. You should always be treating your government as adversarial. In fact, if you read a lot of the writings of people influential to the founding of the US you'll find that they were explicitly trying to design a system where they say its biggest adversary was itself.

But also, there are plenty of governments that do not even pretend to serve its people. They are completely self-serving and transparent about that fact. You never know when one is going to turn into the other but often going from ostensibly benevolent to explicitly malevolent is relatively mild, but gaining back freedom usually requires a lot of bloodshed. There's always exceptions, but this is common. The wort part is that people frequently vote in the malevolent leaders. Democracies can turn into autocracies without spilling a single drop of blood. I'm unaware of the reverse ever happening.

> ostensible

That's a very load-bearing word there.

> the ostensible motive of the government is to serve its people

I see your history teachers did a poor job. My condolences.

Personal attacks are not welcome here. Btw, "the apparent motive of the government is to serve its people" still stands even if the government does not serve its people.

I guess the point is whether it's a private company collecting your data, the good government, or the bad government that gives the access to your data to random non-vetted individuals for fun, the end result is the same — your data ends up with people who have the ability and desire to cause you harm.

Sorry, I was only giving government surveillance as an example, I trust no one to protect my privacy, government or corporation.

I distrust both, but the government is generally capable of much more significant threats to me. Notably it is the government which prevents companies from posing similar threats (at least currently, in the west).

I mean, I dont want the private details of my life exposed, illegal or not. Who does

I know, it's not as if I just let the cops walk through my house whenever they want. I just don't understand the "I've got nothing to hide" defense.

> 'well, if you're not doing anything wrong, what are you afraid of?'

I like to go with the simpler "I hold lots of sensitive data for people who trust me: my family, my friends, my employer. One would have to be a sociopath to disclose other people's secrets without their consent."

> "I hold lots of sensitive data for people who trust me: my family, my friends, my employer. One would have to be a sociopath to disclose other people's secrets without their consent."

Oh, that's a good one. I'ma totally steal that...

Same happened with Komoot, a popular German outdoors app. They have millions of tracks and user profiles, it's also a bit of a social network.

From one day to the next they sold to the Italian "developer company" Bending Spoons.

That company acquired Brightcove a few months earlier and several other services like Evernote, Meetup, companies which have nothing to do with "outdooring".

From one day to the next they got access to my 13.000 tracked km, 800 hours of data. My profile is set to private, but now I have to assume that all this data will be sold to advertisers. "Anonymized".

Every company is exactly one CEO away from doing anything none would ever expect.

Most companies are exactly 0 CEOs away from that

Not only companies sadly.

It's kind of different in that with 23andMe they know your name and genetic data. With Worldcoin you don't give your name and they just get a photo of your eyes.

> they just get a photo of your eyes.

this comes across as if you are attempting to downplay the importance of this biometric data which is weird considering Altman is paying to get access to just a photo of your eyes.

They are more paying to get you signed up to and using their payment system. The eye thing is not so different to most online banking wanting to see photo id and sometimes a selfie vid that matches to check who you are. Except they get less info - just the image, not your name, dob and id number which banks want.

So anyone who can scan your eyes can get into your bank account is very different compared to 23andme where you can give fake information as a name, buy a test with cash and they collect limited data that isn't worth much to advertisers. The first opens up many risks and surveillance opportunities that are different from the second where pooling of dna can link you to physical crimes or paternity confirmation where dna is found.

The first wants one data breach anywhere to last a lifetime and the second is a bigger media story because people believe what we can do with the dna 23andme collects is more than reality.

No, the system doesn't work like that. The eye scan is just to check you don't get multiple accounts. After that it's like a crypto wallet with access by private key.

no, there shouldn't be a photo, only a hash, which is useless by itself.

It is insane to defend Sam Altman here, but it looks to me that World goes out of their way to not to link the biometric data to identity or even save it. Sure you need to trust the black box but if the company gets taken over there is no data to for the new evil owners to access.

I would trust Apple, though.