Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/12/30/lawrence-lessig-how-technology-policy-will-evolve/?mod=WSJ_TechWSJD_NeedToKnow

by oznathan • 11 years ago

57 81 11 years ago

blogs.wsj.com

None of these articles explain why privacy is a good thing. They just assume it to be a fact. I have some issues with this.

What if the entire premise of privacy being beneficial is flawed? What if the actual problem is that we build systems and processes that rely on the unsustainable idea of privacy and the wishful ability to keep secrets? Do people not see that this makes everything more fragile and likely to break?

I don't want more regulations for startups that want to analyze my genome, nor do I want to become an expert in internet security just to browse the web. Writing software is already difficult as it is, and the requirement to protect privacy makes it even more difficult and risky.

The real question is, what can we do to make living a transparent and open life possible.

jpollock• 11 years ago

Humans lie all the time. We lie to each other, we lie to the government. We cheat, break rules and break laws all the time.

Societies rely on privacy to limit the intrusion of others into our lives. It becomes really easy to avoid enforcing a law when you can't see it happening.

For example, without privacy, sodomy laws become much easier to enforce. No longer would it be 2 closeted gay men living together happily, it would be acceptable for the government to setup a mobile array and detect that the two men were sharing a single bed, and then charge them with sodomy.

Another example. In New Zealand, prostitution is legal. However, income information and receipts are private between the business and the tax department. Visiting a prostitute is generally frowned upon publicly. So, what happens when all prostitutes are "outed", and their customer lists published? Is that a good thing? Is it just another way of making the job illegal again, with all of the societal ills that making it legal was intended to avoid?

For a US example, imagine publishing the health records from Planned Parenthood clinics - any and all. Venereal disease, birth control, abortion, anything.

I don't see how we can prevent intrusion of individuals and governments into private areas of life without a definition and expectation of privacy. Particularly when there are differing opinions on morality and what the government should do to enforce it.

miguelrochefort16• 11 years ago

Are you arguing that it's my responsibility to be careful and discrete when I commit crimes that should be legal in the first place?

If both murder and sodomy are illegal to the eyes of the government, then wouldn't more accessible privacy protect both murderers and sodomists?

Clearly, the issues in the examples you describe are with the expectations of the government and its citizens. I don't want to ever have to lie about things I'm not ashamed of, and neither do I want to be ashamed of things I do. Society's foundation is Trust, and Trust starts with Honesty. We want everyone to be as honest as possible, and we should therefore change the system to motivate honesty. Only then will we have a clear picture of reality, human nature, and problems we ought to fix.

I want lying to be considered as the worst crime. I want a currency that's built on trust. I want every commitment and promises to be tracked and evaluated. I want fairness, and it starts with understanding reality.

We lie so much that we can't imagine a world without a right to it.

TeMPOraL11• 11 years ago

Humans lie all the time. We lie to each other, we lie to the government. We cheat, break rules and break laws all the time.

And this is fucking up things big time on this planet, and maybe it's high time for it to stop.

A lot of the problems you described have nothing to do with privacy, and are entirely because general population is bunch of hypocritical children. They get scandalized. It's a hallmark of a mature person that they don't get scandalized over things, but that they seek understanding instead.

If anything, sudden and total lack of privacy would show everyone just how hypocritical people are. How many of those against sodomy laws visit prostitutes? How many of those against prostitution are homosexual? Not saying that either is wrong - my point is that what privacy does is it creates power asymmetry. I can shame you all day long for your "sins" and you can't fight back because you don't know about mine. I'm not really convinced that the solution to this problem is more privacy.

Yes, telling people to grow up is a tall order, but I hope that as a civilization, we can reach it. And then, privacy will be something that isn't really needed much, and enforcing it only makes things less efficient.

That, and of course total impossibility of getting back the pre-industrial privacy levels while retaining XXI century technology.

dev1n• 11 years ago

privacy is of the utmost importance to prevent the degradation of what makes us human; free will.

If Fred goes to a certain three websites fairly regularly, and Joe (a bad guy, thug, gangster, terrorist) also goes to those three websites fairly regularly, some other authority monitoring Fred's traffic could say,"Hey, this Fred guy is following the same patterns as this other bad guy Joe, so we should probably intercept this guy and tell him we're worried he will fall into the same trap as bad guy Joe."

miguelrochefort16• 11 years ago

So Fred should hide because some powerful entity could draw invalid conclusions about him?

Who let this powerful entity exist in the first place?

Avshalom• 11 years ago

On one hand: no fuck you I want to pee in solitude.

On the other hand: I can't remember the title/author but there has absolutely been the argument floating around for a while that the problem isn't the lack of privacy it's the asymmetry of power combined with asymmetry of privacy.

hackuser• 11 years ago

You are of course welcome to your preferences and opinion, but shouldn't others also be able to make their own choice that they want privacy? Certainly many feel that way.

I've tried to put together a smartphone that simply gives me the choice: Control over my own data. It seems nearly impossible without a large investment.

miguelrochefort16• 11 years ago

No. It's not up to you. You have no right (or at least shouldn't) to expect me from ignoring or forgetting any data whatsoever. You can't just come to me and ask me to forget that you crossed the street. You can't ask me to forget what I just heard. For some reasons, you people seem to think that you have exclusive rights over any information that involves you. In a way, it's just like the music industry trying to stop people from accessing their content through PIPA/SOPA. You're supporting censorship. You're destroying my freedom to information.

On the other hand, you hurt yourself the most. You don't seem to realize that you're rejecting all social interactions that lead us where we are today. You'd rather live alone in the mountains, isolated from evil people like me that want to capture your information. You fund Kickstarter campaigns that build devices and network that willingly gets rid of everything that makes them valuable. And you don't even realize that's a problem.

What I see is a group of people that are scared. Afraid to take risks. You pick the blue pill, hoping to reduce potential losses while completely ignoring all of the gains the red pill would make possible. I can't blame you, loss aversion is a bitch that drives you blind.

forgottenpass2• 11 years ago

What if the actual problem is that we build systems and processes that rely on the unsustainable idea of privacy and the wishful ability to keep secrets? Do people not see that this makes everything more fragile and likely to break?

I think you have that backwards. Privacy is a protection from the massive amount of failure states otherwise present in systems by refusing them information to operate on.

Can we build systems and processes that can protect that information from all known incentives and motivations (both commercial and socially driven). And accommodate for all unforeseen ones, in a society that already doesn't have a single set of harmonious goals?

nunyabuizness14• 11 years ago

Privacy is a protection from the massive amount of failure states otherwise present in systems by refusing them information to operate on.

Then that means he has it right and you might have it backwards: the problems are the massive amount of failure states for which privacy is a protection.

Archio• 11 years ago

The real question is, what can we do to make living a transparent and open life possible

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you advocating for people to make as many details of their life open and transparent on the internet because we should have nothing to hide?

nunyabuizness14• 11 years ago

I think he's proposing that it's not privacy that's the problem, but society's laws and morality that require us to use privacy to protect ourselves.

If no one had to be punished under unjust laws for living a decent life transparently, why would privacy be beneficial?

miguelrochefort16• 11 years ago

Yes. I'm advocating for people to make as many details of their life open and transparent on the Internet.

Unfortunately, society is currently built in a way that coerces me into keeping secrets (i.e., private key encryption, credit card number, ridiculous laws everybody breaks because privacy makes it easy to conceal). I would much rather live in a society that's built in a way that I can be honest about myself and not lose everything in exchange.

There is no debate that one needs to keep some secrets in today's society, but unlike most of you I believe this to be a necessary evil due to the current nature of the system, not something we should strive for in the long term by making privacy more accessible.

sbov2• 11 years ago

Privacy is important because people are assholes.

My wife has an ex-boyfriend who went to prison. She was pretty terrified when there was an internet trail to our current home address (which I have since closed). Largely because of our Macy's wedding registry which showed up when you searched her name, which had my name, and there's only one of me in the US.

We know he found the registry because he emailed her about it. But he had to be a bit technical to connect the rest of the dots, and I don't think he did.

miguelrochefort16• 11 years ago

Do you seriously believe that we can (or should) reach a point where nobody can be identified or located?

Instead of getting rid of the bad guys (or preferably get rid of incentives that motivate actions you don't agree with), you seem to be suggesting that we should hide from them. I can imagine this would lead to a world with more bad guys (because no effort exists in preventing them), a lucky minority of people who have the skills to remain hidden/unidentified (not mentionning the constant worry and utilitarian trade-offs) while letting those who don't have this chance be vulnerable to this threat.

What I hear is "let's keep marijuana consumption illegal, as long as it's easy for my fortunate white self not to get caught smoking it". No wonder so many visible minorities go to jail for crimes that white people commit just as often, ethnicity is hard to conceal. I have yet to see a movement helping black people look white so that society treats them more fairly.

nunyabuizness14• 11 years ago

I wish I could upvote this more. One reply mentions how easy anti-sodomy laws would be to enforce if we had no privacy. Considering how much faith people put in democracy and the democratic process, you'd think that people would concede that it's the law and our influence over it that's the problem, not privacy.

One question I like to propose to those who disagree with this sentiment is as follows:

Imagine you live in a hypothetical world where all things you consider moral, just and socially acceptable were legal and societally acceptable and where everything else was illegal and societally reprehensible. What role would privacy play in such a society? What benefits would it provide?

I have yet to get a good answer to that question; if peeing in public was ok with me, everyone else and perfectly legal, what reason would I have not to do it? (You can mention shaming and whatnot, but I posit that in this hypothetical world based on my morality, if I didn't shame people, no one else would either).

tl;dr: the problem isn't privacy, the problem is law and our inability to influence it, for which our best tool for the problems that arise from our lack of influence is privacy.

teddyh3• 11 years ago

If we assume that laws can never be perfect, it is obvious why perfect enforcement of laws can never be a completely good thing. Not to mention corrupt officials, selective enforcement, etc.

nmjohn• 11 years ago

Imagine you live in a hypothetical world where all things you consider moral, just and socially acceptable were legal and societally acceptable and where everything else was illegal and societally reprehensible. What role would privacy play in such a society? What benefits would it provide?

Sure, that hypothetical would be great for _you_ (you being the decider of morality) - but what about everyone else living in the world? It is fundamentally impossible for a world to exist where your hypothetical can be true for everyone.

Consider this - the hypothetical you describe is currently true for some set of people. And yet it ruins lives and causes misery for millions of others.

jib2• 11 years ago

Privacy is a protection and insurance for the future.

Things, like say, recording the religion of someone in an open, embracing and understanding society that has full religious freedom, so you understand what your population identifies seems harmless, right?

It certainly seemed like it to the Jews in the Netherlands in the 1930s.

teddyh3• 11 years ago

Read The Eternal Value of Privacy by Bruce Schneier:

http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securi...

nunyabuizness14• 11 years ago

Everything he states in that article points to privacy being a defense against unchecked power, for which the simplest long-term solution is check the power, not admit defeat to unchecked power and shore up your defenses.

rayiner3• 11 years ago

It is really a generational effect. People in law school learned this way of thinking 10 years ago, and they are coming into their place in the regulatory space.

As someone in that group, I don't know if I see any evidence of this generational effect. The Internet is just the latest battleground for ideologies that have always existed: consumer protection, national security, business freedom, market solutions. The same sort of thinking guides the people who call for backdoors now, who called for banning encryption in the 1990's, who called for easier access to credit card and other transactions in the 1970's, etc.

Businesses that create technological products are always going to be entities the government can control. And regulators will never be encryption utopians. They'll always be mild pragmatists willing to make compromises whose values fall moderately left or right of center on the authoritarian scale.

mindslight8• 11 years ago

Politicians/regulators can never be encryption utopians because they always seek more power. However, widespread adoption of secure encryption [0] could turn proposals to ban it from being seriously "debated", to the equivalent of that state senator who wanted to legislate pi = 3. "Physics drives finance drives politics", and all that.

[0] Obviously without centralized database MITM, using software not distributed by a centralized entity that can be easily controlled as you point out.

rayiner3• 11 years ago

It's not even a matter of "politicians wanting more power." The public wants the government to have power over people, because they are (reasonably or not), more scared of other people than they are of the government. People fall on different places on the spectrum for how they weigh the loss of privacy versus the need for security, but very few are willing to say "we need pervasive unbreakable encryption, whatever the consequences to law enforcement." Even terrorism aside, very few people are willing to give up the power of authorities to investigate, say, the transactions of suspected financial criminals.

zby• 11 years ago

That Enigma project that he bases his opinion on looks rather suspicious for me.

Here is their white-paper: http://enigma.media.mit.edu/enigma_full.pdf

I am a bit skeptical on anything with blockchain in the synopsis these days.

Create• 11 years ago

[Moglen] said "You mean The United States government is, from now on, going to keep a list of everybody every American knows. Do you think by any chance that should require a law?" And he just laugh because they did it in a press release in the middle of the night on Wednesday when it was raining

https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-...

mark_l_watson• 11 years ago

I think that Lessig has it right: people will not fight for privacy if privacy inconveniences them too much. I jump through hoops to get some small level of privacy and still enjoy web properties that track users.

A little off topic, but I think it is time for the USA to do a "let's go to the moon" type effort to make digital systems secure and protect privacy. I know this is a long shot though: it would take re-purposing the capabilities of the NSA (and the FBI, etc.) to making digital communication secure. Obviously this requires NO BACK DOORS, and more research into digital security. There are a lot of smart people working at the NSA and it would be good to have them working on helpful tasks like securing the Internet for businesses, the government, and individuals - and not waste time on spying on innocent people. In the 1990s the NSA and FBI did a lot of good work in this direction, but then the bogus 'war on terror' pushed them off course.

Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

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