I'm sorry, but that's private.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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Privacy
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Law enforcement used Facebook private messages to investigate and prosecute a woman for an "illegal abortion". This is not a hypothetical, this happened.
I care about my privacy because I don't want right-wing weirdos and perverts incarcerating me for controlling my own body.
There are more reasons. This is just the one most recently in the news as a glaring red flag real-life example.
Uhhh... if that's the situation that blew up on lemmy shortly after the reddit API-pocalypse, that specific one probably isn't something you want to rally behind.
That situation occurred in Nebraska, before the messy Roe v Wade repeal. At the time, abortions were 100% legal and available until the end of the 20th week (5th month) of pregnancy, far past the point that anyone shouldn't be aware they are pregnant.
Beyond that, fetuses are considered viable outside the womb at 24 weeks (6 months). They show clear signs of conciousness before this point.
This woman waited until week 28. Two months past the point it could have been done legally and safely by a doctor. One month past the point of being viable to survive outside the womb. No US state has ever allowed abortions that late into the pregnancy.
The way she performed the abortion was to take medicine to kill the fetus. She still had to go through the normal process of labor and delivery (of the stillborn) afterwards, without any medical assistance. She and her mother then burned the stillbirth and buried it on a farm.
At that moment, if she had had labor induced, she could have went through the same process in a safer manner, and given the resultant baby up for adoption. She had roughly two months left until she would have given birth naturally. Going through labor in the manner that she did does not sidestep any of the postpartum medical and health stuff that happens after a normal pregnancy either.
This also ignores all of the many contraceptives available to help prevent pregnancy in the first place as well.
The only change was causing extra danger to herself, two months of time, and whether or not a living baby existed at the end.
She and her mother discussed their plans at length on Facebook messenger, before Facebook implemented end to end encryption. One of the last comments is of the woman stating she couldn't wait to wear jeans again.
When questioned by police, they admitted to their actions, and admitted to discussing it on Facebook messenger. That is the reason the cops even got the subpeona for the chat logs. They told the cops where to look for evidence of their crime, and the cops followed normal investigative protocol.
Don't talk to cops.
Privacy is important, but that was not the narrative of some downtrodden freedom seeker's rights being infringed upon by regressive right wing policy, the surveillance state, or anything else that a lot of people took it to be.
Those details are unnecessary for this conversation. Cops used Facebook private messages to build a case to prosecute an illegal abortion.
They have established the process and the precedent, next time it will be a woman only 5 months pregnant. Or who has an ectopic pregnancy and is past six weeks. Or was raped. Or isn't in a financial situation suitable for raising a child. Or simply doesn't want a child. It doesn't matter the details, cops have and will use private messages to prosecute women getting abortions.
The arguments that "because of her one comment about wanting to wear jeans again means she was just a careless, shallow woman who didn't want to take responsibility for her actions and got what she deserved" is a load of crap. Not saying you are doing that solely, but that is not a good argument for not caring about privacy.
You're welcome to your opinion, but I feel the bolded section is distinctly relevant.
If you want privacy, don't admit to a crime and tell the cops where to find the evidence. Privacy starts at home with proper OPSEC.
That's the story. It has very little to do with the specific crime committed.
The cops did as the cops do: if they are given a lead, particularly by the perp themselves, they investigate. To not do so would be to not do their job.
There was no new precedent here. This was not some brand new enforcement of a new law, and the chats were not the definitive evidence in the trial. Cops using Facebook chat transcripts were likewise not something newly established in this case.
The rest is me emphasizing that this lady was not a martyr, with the jeans comment being the least damning part of it all. Meant as a lead up to the bold.
She overwhelmingly had the ability to do what she needed to do, safely and legally. That has to mean something. And if it doesn't mean shit to you, I know for a fact it means something to the people who want to take your reproductive rights away, or to ignore the very real dangers you're worried about.
That said this is not the first step down that slope that you're acting like it is, and it is not some datapoint on a downward trend towards what you are afraid of. This is a intersection of already existing problems that someone thought they could spin for clicks and emotion bait, and it overwhelmingly worked.
Stay safe, take steps to prevent ending up in that situation, only discuss dangerous shit using safe protocols, and for fuck's sake don't tell the cops where the evidence is.
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- Feeling clean
- Not being exploited
- Minimalism
- Less power drain
- Less data sent
- Freedom
- Everything works better and faster
- I hate spying because they can
- To be honest also because most people don't care
The only con is convenience.
I hate that most people don't want to care for convient's sake.. "You're only making your life harder for yourself". I simply want to be in control, not the corpos.
It’s kinda like this. Say you lead the most boring, law abiding, square life, top 20% of the bell curve in that zone.
Would you want strangers in your house, even if they couldn’t technically touch or take anything? Would you want them in your spouse’s closet? Your kid’s room? Looking in your fridge?
Creepy and “hell no”, right?
That’s what privacy is about. The right to lock your door against strangers snooping.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
From Cardinal Richelieu
Combine this with the fact that entities which have access to our data rarely have our best interest in heart. Governments change, the political climate changes, and people change. What’s honest and just today may not be next decade.
Also, people change over time, and more and more of our lives are ending up online earlier and earlier.
Do you really want some stupid "hot take" you were passionate about as a teenager effecting how someone sees you a decade or more down the line?
Everyone deserves the right to change their mind and not have old beliefs hang around their neck forever.
Why do so many external entities care so much about constantly trying to reduce my privacy?
If they would not have started it, I wouldn't have started to care.
The right extremists are on the rise in my country. I would rather not have them knocking on my door in a few years to detain me for calling their leader a cunt on the internet.
Judging by your username: same country, same reason here! I‘d have been put in the chamber back then and I dont want people to do it once the swastika is back on our flag.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times.
that's not a world i want to live in...
Too late. If you're in the US, it is officially known that the feds already can record roughly half of all national internet traffic. AT&T room something or other.
The current saving grace is that the amount of data generated over time is outpacing increases in the ability to store and analyze it all. God forbid that ever changes.
Privacy should be a basic human right.
Data collection could be massively abused by oppressive governments.
Not caring about it = Not caring about your rights.
It is a human right..
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Let's flip this question. Why do you think an organisation should get my data?
Are they reputable? Are they secure? Are they domiciled in my country and follow the laws of my country?
In a perfect world, data collected by companies would be used to improve user experience. But we don't live a perfect world and nowadays if a company doesn't provide yearly income from investment it goes under. And to keep the numbers up, companies screw its users.
Improve user experience?
I don't give a flying fuck if a web page loads .5 seconds faster.
What u care about is an interface that works, has labels instead of symbols, that doesn't change every month trying to be more minimalist.
A bank website doesn't need my browser history or my charges to Amex or what pets I have or what car I drive or the color of my bedroom. But they want all that and a mobile phone number to tie it all up with a common index. VoIP numbers are refused because they change too often.
That's what pisses me off
Similar to you, but I also hate the advertising industry with a burning passion and want to deprive them of any and all data possible.
Same reason I shit with the door closed; I've got nothing to hide, but it's none of your business regardless.
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having a stalker, makes privacy very important
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Having identity theft, makes privacy even more important
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Being pigeonholed, makes privacy important
There's no file system in existence that can handle a text file large enough to include all reasons why people care about privacy.
It's a pillar of democracy to protect the autonomy of the people.
To me it's much more of an ethical concern than a practical concern. Digital privacy is a human right (privacy is listed under Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). The only immediate ways in which I can uphold this right and contribute to a fairer society is through exercising my right to vote and making ethically superior choices as a consumer. So for me, it's less about avoiding the government or big tech for practical reasons like surveillance and scams driven by data breaches (though of course these are still valid concerns for many) and more about supporting those who I believe are doing the right thing (or are at least an improvement).
If we don't support the better alternatives then they will never grow enough to achieve mainstream success and challenge the current establishment. I know some people here hate Proton, but that is a great example of a privacy-focused tech company which has grown significantly because of consumer support - to the point where it has a full suite of products that do a much better job of competing with heavyweights like Google than a tiny, unsupported startup would have had. A company like that might not even have survived without its early adopters, and then the next one to come along would be even less likely to receive investment in the early stages due to the history of failure within the sector. To me, being privacy conscious is all about being part of a positive movement; supporting people and companies that are doing the right thing and refusing to accept problematic behaviours and practices I see in the world.
I know for some people, particularly minorities, privacy is a real world concern and I fully acknowledge that but I think sometimes we do ourselves a disservice by trying to sell it to everyone in such a scary way. Humans are not very good at perceiving or responding to threat until there is actual undisputable evidence of it in their immediate surroundings. So when you tell these people that they'll lose all their money to scammers or that their government is going to unjustly target them they don't actually believe you or take you seriously. They think you are insane. The better sell, I think, is to show people that this is a positive movement and worldwide community that they can be a part of.
EDIT: I was going to add this yesterday but forgot. I don't know if anyone here has seen The Social Dilemma - the big reason that documentary went viral was not just because it gave a very detailed and scary overview of all the problems with surveillance capitalism and the attention economy, but also because it finished on quite an optimistic note. They told viewers "we know this is all really scary for you but we have smart people working tirelessly to change things and build a movement that we want you to be a part of". It left people feeling engaged, like they still had some level of agency over the situation instead of paralysed with fear and just totally abandoning all hope.
The same reason I care about a working democracy. You can't have one without the other.
To be honest. What made me care about privacy was social media apps such as Reddit. Every single day, i used to get reddit notifications promoting "the most popular post in my country". Look, at first i didn't care. Now it got annoying, to the point where i replaced Refdit with Lemmy, getting rid of windows, switching to FOSS (free and open source software) apps and also using Degoogled Chromium. While reddit wasnt the only thing i mentioned so far, i hate how Youtube has to know where you live, and giving you directions to the nearest store (for certain ads). This probably may get malliciously used in the future, that's what i got really aware of. Now it really hurt me when Youtube has killed most 3rd party frontends (such as invidious and piped). So in conclusion, Privacy can really matter for me as a lot of services i used to use can now collect data about you.
That's so great! Can I just recommend Firefox over Chromium? Perhaps privacy-wise is similar, but at least you send your User Agent to website as "firefox" which tells the websites to still make them compatible
If you have ever had a psycho (or two) stalk you online and/or in the real world, you will understand why privacy and anonymity is important.
I work in the public health sector.
And I am trans. Need more reasons?
Because in real life I don't like people looking over my shoulder at everything I do and digital snooping is the same (or worse).
Privacy is a foundational right. Without it inviduals suffer from the imbalanced power dynamic of the states resources.
i don't want anyone i work with to be able to find out what kind of porn i'm into
Because without privacy you can't be a proper human being. You need privacy in order to have the safe space to develop, to dare try, to explore without the constant judgement of others. If you can't be a proper human being, can you genuinely have democracy?
It's both a per-requisite for humanity and what the political system that is often considered as the most just.
That's why I care.
It's curious that you claim privacy and anonymity are clearly differentiable but didn't bother to define either of them. Is your claim accurate? We have no idea, because we don't know what you're talking about.
George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, and Corey Doctorow already covered the basics, and two of those authors did so decades ago. Why are you asking this question now? What is it that you want to hear that they didn't already say? Or are you asking us whether we've read those authors?
Privacy means that no one can see your data, and only you can decide who can see it. Anonymity means that everyone can see your data but no one can match you with the data.
As for the question, yes, I would more than happy when people could understand the risk of giving up the privacy. But I'm afraid that not many people would understand the message carried by those books.
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What?
Do you people sniff into your stuffs? No. So why do you allow companies to make profit on?
And we need the anonymous part too.
Privacy means hiding our legitimate stuffs to others than could spy on. In this way, privacy is a big family that needs anonymity and security to work well
EDIT : Anonymity and security are not different than privacy, they are a way to achieve it
Similar to your experience, I've seen several large governments and organizations mishandle or mismanage user data by accident or on purpose many times with little or no recompense. If nobody can do it right they should either make it all publicly transparent for everyone or not store it at all.
Misinformation, not using accounts or accounts with incorrect information, multiple accounts, etc counter ops seem prudent at this point as the information system and monitoring apparatus of some of the most powerful governments and corporations in human history remains largely unchecked.
Privacy is an important right to protect and value because of the damage that can and will be done when groups hold personal information (financial, medical, behavior patterns, etc) and either sell it without explicit consent or leak it because they have no expectation of risk or loss if they don't protect it.
Tl;Dr The oldest rules of the Internet are don't believe everything you read and don't dox yourself.
Traditionally, people like myself get killed due to bad opsec.
It all kinda boils down to the Cambridge Analytica scandal for me. Harvesting people's locations and data, accessing and logging our daily lives is what facilitates mass manipulation of the public's opinion, therefore distorting their view of the world and killing freedom of thought. GAFAM and others are specialists in controlling their users. I ultimately don't want to be profiled, controlled and/or rail-roaded in any aspect of my life.
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