Comment by sowbug
2 years ago
Read at least the summary of James Scott's Seeing Like a State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State) and let the concept of legibility percolate for a bit.
Governments view legibility of their constituencies as a feature, not a bug. They want to be able to query the population like a database in order to manage it better. This is exactly like a product manager at a tech company who wants to know whether a certain feature is being used, and asks for more instrumentation in the next release of the product if needed. Over time the product (the population) becomes better and better instrumented.
Of course, the other side of the coin of better legibility is worse privacy. Their feature is your bug.
Are there ways to circumvent or mitigate what's happening? For you, personally, sure. You can turn on all the buried options, add VPNs, proxies, additional profiles/accounts, etc. And for a while it will work.
But you're defeating legibility by doing that, so you're fighting against a very strong opposing force. Over time, the bugs that reduce legibility coverage will be fixed. The options will go away, VPNs will be banned or at least instrumented well enough to nullify their utility, COPPA and porn age-verification laws will extend to make multiple or anonymous identities impractical, and so on. And the few of us who do manage to go online fully anonymously might as well be wearing a "CRIMINAL" hat, because the public will have been trained that only bad actors want privacy, but not to worry if they themselves have nothing to hide.
You can see this already happening with financial transactions. Try to conduct a significant low-legibility transaction (in other words, buy something big with cash). Your bank will ask why you want to withdraw $20,000. Cops might seize the cash, legally and without probable cause, while you're driving to the seller. And when the seller deposits the cash, the bank might file a SAR. This is all working as designed. You're being punished for adding friction to legibility.
Even on HN, where you think people would be ahead of the curve, the PR campaign against financial privacy and censorship resistance is winning. Mention The Digital Currency That Shall Not Be Named, and suddenly the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse are in control. Why HNers are pro-VPN but anti-Bitcoin, when both stand for privacy and censorship resistance at the price of reduced legibility, is beyond me.
The battle to fight is not just protecting your own privacy. It's protecting your right to protect your privacy without being ipso facto declared a criminal for doing so. Turn on all the options, hold Bitcoin, use VPNs, pay with cash, delete cookies, etc. But above all, be an ordinary, conscientious, law-abiding citizen. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Be average. Be unremarkable. Privacy should be the default. Not unsavory, not for those with something to hide. Just the default.
Oh boy. I was shaking my head in agreement while reading your comment, until that part:
> Why HNers are pro-VPN but anti-Bitcoin, when both stand for privacy and censorship resistance at the price of reduced legibility, is beyond me.
neither vpn nor btc are "for privacy and censorship resistance". Maybe in some dystopian neoliberal every-man-is-an-island way. I think you were thinking about "overlay networks (tor et al) and communal economies" maybe? Those would fit with the rest of the claims.
The actual mechanisms don't matter that much. The point is not letting government or big corporations default to being the gatekeepers for (or monitors of) basic -- and legal -- social activities like communicating or transferring value. Information technology has shrunk the world, but our rights shouldn't also shrink.
I'm not talking about a choice of implementation. I'm pointing out you suggested a brick wall for a road. It's not picking a dirty road or asphalt. it's a wall. it's not a fitting concept.
but again, you are correct on the concepts. I would only add that corporations and gov are not that separate as you think. They have that power because they must have that power. capital will flow. rentiers will get paid. and those rentiers either have connections or they are the inteligence agencies. Do you think cesar could just fire the praetorian guard?