Re: [cryptography] Define Privacy
On 22/10/2014 03:22 am, Jason Iannone wrote: On a fundamental level I wonder why privacy is important and why we should care about it. Financial privacy is all about theft. If someone knows where the money is, it can be stolen. It works statistically, in that the set of attackers is typically not well known, so people tend to habitualise financial privacy. There would be some who would say this isn't required today, but this is just sophistry. The wealth-stealing attack is as pervasive today as it was thousands of years ago. One inside complaint about for example AML is that it is a setup for theft, and there are plenty of cases which bear that out. I.e., now that wealth can be measured via pervasive financial monitoring and now that the principle of consolidated revenue has been breached, the police are incentivised to become the attacker. Because they get to share in the proceeds. C.f., recent reports that foreigners are being warned not to carry cash in USA because police steal it. Financial privacy isn't universal. In my work in Kenya I discovered that it is somewhat reversed, groups come together and share their financial information as a defence against other attackers. I speculate that this may be helped by the fact that most of their wealth is observable at a close distance by their close community. One can get into trouble mixing financial privacy with other forms of privacy. The conversation gets tortured. A system to protect money might provide for split keys, which results in less 'privacy' but more security. As security of money is the number 1 goal of any money system, other forms of privacy might be compromisable, it isn't an absolute. This philosophical flaw might be levelled at Digicash which placed the blinding formula on a pedestal, and we can note the irony of financial privacy with Bitcoin. iang ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] Define Privacy
Michael Rogers writes: | | I always enjoy your writing and the broad scope of thought it reveals, | but I think there's more to privacy than a dichotomy between keeping | things to ourselves and revealing them to the world. | ... | I wonder if you've chosen the dichotomous view because you believe | that there's no longer a meaningful distinction between revealing | something to a circle of intimate friends and revealing it to all of | humanity. But even if that is, or soon will be, the case, that reality | can be challenged, both normatively and operationally. In order to do | so we must first acknowledge that there's territory between the poles | of private and public that's worth fighting for. I sort of answered your question at RSA(*) in that I do conclude, as you guessed, that in our context as it is, [W]e are becoming a society of informants. In short, I have nowhere to hide from you. (The part of your note that I elided was very interesting and I will read the references you included.) --dan (*) http://geer.tinho.net/geer.rsa.28ii14.txt ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] Define Privacy
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 Hi Dan, I always enjoy your writing and the broad scope of thought it reveals, but I think there's more to privacy than a dichotomy between keeping things to ourselves and revealing them to the world. I like David Feldman's conception of privacy, which is based on the observation that individuals live their lives in a number of social spheres, which interlock, and in each of which they have different responsibilities, and have to work with people in relationships of varying degrees of intimacy. Privacy in this sense means managing the various social spheres in which we live, and the sharing of information between them. The core of privacy as a civil liberty, then, is the entitlement to dignity and autonomy within a social circle. The ability to have not just an inner, private self and an outer, public self but many selves, or aspects of self, appropriate to different contexts is indispensable to our understanding of what it means to be a whole person. When Mark Zuckerberg says that people who have one self for their friends and another for their colleagues lack integrity, he's criticising them for possessing exactly the quality we call integrity in public officials - the ability to maintain boundaries between their personal and professional lives, for example by refraining from nepotism. Helen Nissenbaum's view of privacy as contextual integrity likewise recognises that not only is privacy dependent on context, but the definitions of privacy and context are intertwined. Developed by social theorists, [contextual integrity] involves a far more complex domain of social spheres (fields, domains, contexts) than the one that typically grounds privacy theories, namely, the dichotomous spheres of public and private. I wonder if you've chosen the dichotomous view because you believe that there's no longer a meaningful distinction between revealing something to a circle of intimate friends and revealing it to all of humanity. But even if that is, or soon will be, the case, that reality can be challenged, both normatively and operationally. In order to do so we must first acknowledge that there's territory between the poles of private and public that's worth fighting for. Cheers, Michael http://clp.oxfordjournals.org/content/47/Part_2/41.full.pdf http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/13/zuckerberg-privacy/ https://crypto.stanford.edu/portia/papers/RevnissenbaumDTP31.pdf On 23/10/14 17:52, d...@geer.org wrote: Sir, This is a question for which hard answers seem difficult. Nevertheless, below are a few paragraphs from my current book draft. The draft does not now include Ayn Rand's pronouncement that Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. In any case, I concur with you that it would indeed be prudent to nail down an answer to your question well before science allows us to read the mind externally and without reserve. --dan -8cut-here8- There are two ways to define privacy, and neither involves the squishiness that begins a reasonable expectation of... The first is what privacy means as a civil construct -- what Brandeis described[1] as [T]he right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men. The second is what privacy means at its operational core: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself with de minimus side effects. As to the first, privacy is something that society, meaning you, give the individual, meaning me. When privacy will not be given and is thus not available, secrecy is something I can take for myself -- secrecy is a functional backstop for the absence of the civil construct. If privacy is a gift and secrecy is a taking, then the possibility of privacy is inversely proportional to the numbers of those who must do that giving for the state of privacy to prevail, hence privacy is inversely proportional to interconnectedness. This is consistent with a view of risk as proportional to dependency where dependency, in turn, is proportional to non-optional interconnectedness. This is where the all-wired world's information wants to be free is most robustly anti-privacy. As to the second, Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.[2] which means that in choosing what to reveal, however idiosyncratically we choose, we demonstrate our liberty. As if that were not enough, Philosophical and legal analysis has identified privacy as a precondition for the development of a coherent self.[3] which asks the question of whether a person whose life experience has been one without privacy can even comprehend the desire of those who prefer privacy. As a matter of prediction, raising the young to not expect privacy foreordains
Re: [cryptography] Define Privacy
When Mark Zuckerberg says that people who have one self for their friends and another for their colleagues lack integrity, he's criticising them for possessing exactly the quality we call integrity in public officials - the ability to maintain boundaries between their personal and professional lives, for example by refraining from nepotism. Well said. On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 9:36 AM, Michael Rogers mich...@briarproject.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 Hi Dan, I always enjoy your writing and the broad scope of thought it reveals, but I think there's more to privacy than a dichotomy between keeping things to ourselves and revealing them to the world. I like David Feldman's conception of privacy, which is based on the observation that individuals live their lives in a number of social spheres, which interlock, and in each of which they have different responsibilities, and have to work with people in relationships of varying degrees of intimacy. Privacy in this sense means managing the various social spheres in which we live, and the sharing of information between them. The core of privacy as a civil liberty, then, is the entitlement to dignity and autonomy within a social circle. The ability to have not just an inner, private self and an outer, public self but many selves, or aspects of self, appropriate to different contexts is indispensable to our understanding of what it means to be a whole person. When Mark Zuckerberg says that people who have one self for their friends and another for their colleagues lack integrity, he's criticising them for possessing exactly the quality we call integrity in public officials - the ability to maintain boundaries between their personal and professional lives, for example by refraining from nepotism. Helen Nissenbaum's view of privacy as contextual integrity likewise recognises that not only is privacy dependent on context, but the definitions of privacy and context are intertwined. Developed by social theorists, [contextual integrity] involves a far more complex domain of social spheres (fields, domains, contexts) than the one that typically grounds privacy theories, namely, the dichotomous spheres of public and private. I wonder if you've chosen the dichotomous view because you believe that there's no longer a meaningful distinction between revealing something to a circle of intimate friends and revealing it to all of humanity. But even if that is, or soon will be, the case, that reality can be challenged, both normatively and operationally. In order to do so we must first acknowledge that there's territory between the poles of private and public that's worth fighting for. Cheers, Michael http://clp.oxfordjournals.org/content/47/Part_2/41.full.pdf http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/13/zuckerberg-privacy/ https://crypto.stanford.edu/portia/papers/RevnissenbaumDTP31.pdf On 23/10/14 17:52, d...@geer.org wrote: Sir, This is a question for which hard answers seem difficult. Nevertheless, below are a few paragraphs from my current book draft. The draft does not now include Ayn Rand's pronouncement that Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. In any case, I concur with you that it would indeed be prudent to nail down an answer to your question well before science allows us to read the mind externally and without reserve. --dan -8cut-here8- There are two ways to define privacy, and neither involves the squishiness that begins a reasonable expectation of... The first is what privacy means as a civil construct -- what Brandeis described[1] as [T]he right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men. The second is what privacy means at its operational core: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself with de minimus side effects. As to the first, privacy is something that society, meaning you, give the individual, meaning me. When privacy will not be given and is thus not available, secrecy is something I can take for myself -- secrecy is a functional backstop for the absence of the civil construct. If privacy is a gift and secrecy is a taking, then the possibility of privacy is inversely proportional to the numbers of those who must do that giving for the state of privacy to prevail, hence privacy is inversely proportional to interconnectedness. This is consistent with a view of risk as proportional to dependency where dependency, in turn, is proportional to non-optional interconnectedness. This is where the all-wired world's information wants to be free is most robustly anti-privacy. As to the second, Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to
Re: [cryptography] Define Privacy
Sir, This is a question for which hard answers seem difficult. Nevertheless, below are a few paragraphs from my current book draft. The draft does not now include Ayn Rand's pronouncement that Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. In any case, I concur with you that it would indeed be prudent to nail down an answer to your question well before science allows us to read the mind externally and without reserve. --dan -8cut-here8- There are two ways to define privacy, and neither involves the squishiness that begins a reasonable expectation of... The first is what privacy means as a civil construct -- what Brandeis described[1] as [T]he right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men. The second is what privacy means at its operational core: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself with de minimus side effects. As to the first, privacy is something that society, meaning you, give the individual, meaning me. When privacy will not be given and is thus not available, secrecy is something I can take for myself -- secrecy is a functional backstop for the absence of the civil construct. If privacy is a gift and secrecy is a taking, then the possibility of privacy is inversely proportional to the numbers of those who must do that giving for the state of privacy to prevail, hence privacy is inversely proportional to interconnectedness. This is consistent with a view of risk as proportional to dependency where dependency, in turn, is proportional to non-optional interconnectedness. This is where the all-wired world's information wants to be free is most robustly anti-privacy. As to the second, Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.[2] which means that in choosing what to reveal, however idiosyncratically we choose, we demonstrate our liberty. As if that were not enough, Philosophical and legal analysis has identified privacy as a precondition for the development of a coherent self.[3] which asks the question of whether a person whose life experience has been one without privacy can even comprehend the desire of those who prefer privacy. As a matter of prediction, raising the young to not expect privacy foreordains that when it is their turn to run society they will be as happy despite privacy's absence, and leglislate accordingly. It is said that the wonderful thing about a small town is that you know everyone, while the terrible thing about a small town is that they all know you. Indeed, a coherent argument for a transparent society[4] can be made, one where there are no secrets, where there is no privacy, where everyone knows everyone else's business, where unsolved crime is very nearly impossible, where neither need nor triumph is invisible, a place where everything that is not self-incriminating is therefore public and yet, at the same time, it is that surveillance which preserves liberty. Even were you able to craft the consensus that we all would each tell each other the contents of our hearts while leaving our cameras on at all times, I'm afraid that in such a utopian society you would soon find some were more equal than others. In short, I reject the one extreme, that of glass houses for us all. I have come to the conclusion that in all things it is bigness that is the enemy, neither ideology nor biology nor theology but bigness. Big business, big government, big labor, big money, big crime, big media, big religion -- their bigness predisposes them to predatory behavior. It is they who own the bulldozers that unlevel the playing field. The two economists Adam Smith and Ronald Coase described the nature of our economic interactions -- Smith with his millenial ideal of small producers trading amongst themselves in the mutual self-interest of wealth maximization,[5] and Coase with his explanation of why the millenium does not arrive.[6] Coase observed that economically viable firms expand until intra-firm coordination costs exceed inter-firm transaction costs. Putting it in biologic analogy, cells grow until their surface to volume ratio crosses a survivability
Re: [cryptography] Define Privacy
Thank you, Maarten and others who responded off list. I have some new sources to consume and I appreciate your input. Jason On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 10:40 PM, Maarten Billemont lhun...@lyndir.com wrote: On Oct 21, 2014, at 22:22, Jason Iannone jason.iann...@gmail.com wrote: On a fundamental level I wonder why privacy is important and why we should care about it. Privacy advocates commonly cite pervasive surveillance by businesses and governments as a reason to change an individual's behavior. Discussions are stifled and joking references to The List are made. The most relevant and convincing issues are documented cases of chilled expression from authors, artists, activists, and average Andrews. Other concerns deal with abuse, ala LOVEINT, etc. Additional arguments tend to be obfuscated by nuance and lack any striking insight. The usual explanations, while appropriately concerning, don't do it for me. After scanning so many articles, journal papers, and NSA surveillance documents, fundamental questions remain: What is privacy? How is it useful? How am I harmed by pervasive surveillance? Why do I want privacy (to the extent that I'm willing to take operational measures to secure it)? I read a paper by Julie Cohen for the Harvard Law Review called What Privacy is For[1] that introduced concepts I hadn't previously seen on paper. She describes privacy as a nebulous space for growth. Cohen suggests that in private, we can make mistakes with impunity. We are self-determinate and define our own identities free of external subjective forces. For an example of what happens without the impunity and self-determination privacy provides, see what happens when popular politicians change their opinions in public. I think Cohen's is a novel approach and her description begins to soothe some of my agonizing over the topic. I'm still searching. [1]http://www.juliecohen.com/attachments/File/CohenWhatPrivacyIsFor.pdf ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography Without any reference, it is my understanding that privacy is very much a luxury right, not unlike education, which grants us the freedom to perform at our individual best when not alone and contemplate, experience and learn all the wrong paths away from the unforgiving blind judgement that is inevitable in a society of men. To unpack that slightly, privacy is very much a low-priority benefit, one that comes far behind keeping fed and physically healthy. It is often first out the door when sacrifices are being made with only minor short-term damage to the society. Privacy's benefits are very much long-term, and mainly favour individualism in the sense that it allows the individual to develop their own self, their own views, and their own solutions to societal and other problems. These benefits are highly praised in individualistic societies but hardly a necessity for any society to operate. Privacy is optional in a society geared toward pushing values; such as those strictly governed by religious principles (eg. Roman Catholic), economic or militaristic goals (eg. Total War), and desirable in societies open to exploration, the sciences and new understandings. In the absence of privacy, people tend to fall in line. Dreams and their many benefits are in my opinion proof that the human psyche needs and thrives on privacy. I've read others defining privacy as a withdrawal for the sake of making life with others bearable, in the sense that privacy is truly necessary only when the only alternative would be a personal conflict[1]. [1]http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2775779(The Social Psychology of Privacy, Barry Schwartz) — Maarten Billemont (lhunath) — me: http://www.lhunath.com – business: http://www.lyndir.com – http://masterpasswordapp.com ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] Define Privacy
The US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will be having a public all-day meeting on November 12th on exactly this: Defining Privacy. http://www.pclob.gov/newsroom/20141020/ I've been to their meetings before, in person here in DC, and I find some (not all) of the board members to be in sync with many (not all) of the norms of the privacy and security community. They've also hosted a number of guests from civil society, on panels and to submit oral/written questions, that I've been glad to see have a prominent voice in the process. -- Eric On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Jason Iannone jason.iann...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you, Maarten and others who responded off list. I have some new sources to consume and I appreciate your input. Jason On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 10:40 PM, Maarten Billemont lhun...@lyndir.com wrote: On Oct 21, 2014, at 22:22, Jason Iannone jason.iann...@gmail.com wrote: On a fundamental level I wonder why privacy is important and why we should care about it. Privacy advocates commonly cite pervasive surveillance by businesses and governments as a reason to change an individual's behavior. Discussions are stifled and joking references to The List are made. The most relevant and convincing issues are documented cases of chilled expression from authors, artists, activists, and average Andrews. Other concerns deal with abuse, ala LOVEINT, etc. Additional arguments tend to be obfuscated by nuance and lack any striking insight. The usual explanations, while appropriately concerning, don't do it for me. After scanning so many articles, journal papers, and NSA surveillance documents, fundamental questions remain: What is privacy? How is it useful? How am I harmed by pervasive surveillance? Why do I want privacy (to the extent that I'm willing to take operational measures to secure it)? I read a paper by Julie Cohen for the Harvard Law Review called What Privacy is For[1] that introduced concepts I hadn't previously seen on paper. She describes privacy as a nebulous space for growth. Cohen suggests that in private, we can make mistakes with impunity. We are self-determinate and define our own identities free of external subjective forces. For an example of what happens without the impunity and self-determination privacy provides, see what happens when popular politicians change their opinions in public. I think Cohen's is a novel approach and her description begins to soothe some of my agonizing over the topic. I'm still searching. [1]http://www.juliecohen.com/attachments/File/CohenWhatPrivacyIsFor.pdf ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography Without any reference, it is my understanding that privacy is very much a luxury right, not unlike education, which grants us the freedom to perform at our individual best when not alone and contemplate, experience and learn all the wrong paths away from the unforgiving blind judgement that is inevitable in a society of men. To unpack that slightly, privacy is very much a low-priority benefit, one that comes far behind keeping fed and physically healthy. It is often first out the door when sacrifices are being made with only minor short-term damage to the society. Privacy's benefits are very much long-term, and mainly favour individualism in the sense that it allows the individual to develop their own self, their own views, and their own solutions to societal and other problems. These benefits are highly praised in individualistic societies but hardly a necessity for any society to operate. Privacy is optional in a society geared toward pushing values; such as those strictly governed by religious principles (eg. Roman Catholic), economic or militaristic goals (eg. Total War), and desirable in societies open to exploration, the sciences and new understandings. In the absence of privacy, people tend to fall in line. Dreams and their many benefits are in my opinion proof that the human psyche needs and thrives on privacy. I've read others defining privacy as a withdrawal for the sake of making life with others bearable, in the sense that privacy is truly necessary only when the only alternative would be a personal conflict[1]. [1]http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2775779(The Social Psychology of Privacy, Barry Schwartz) — Maarten Billemont (lhunath) — me: http://www.lhunath.com – business: http://www.lyndir.com – http://masterpasswordapp.com ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography -- konklone.com | @konklone https://twitter.com/konklone ___ cryptography mailing list
Re: [cryptography] Define Privacy
Their bios are here: http://www.pclob.gov/about-us/leadership And a bit more info on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Civil_Liberties_Oversight_Board#Nominations The PCLOB issued two major reports this year. The first, civil liberties folks loved, on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, where PCLOB analyzed it and found it both illegal and unconstitutional: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140123/11362425968/civil-liberties-board-completely-destroys-arguments-bulk-metadata-collection-program-is-both-illegal-unconstitutional.shtml The second, people were less excited about, on Section 702 of the FISA, where the PCLOB raised concerns and suggested reforms, but basically said it was legal and effective: http://www.pclob.gov/All%20Documents/Report%20on%20the%20Section%20702%20Program/PCLOB-Section-702-Report-PRE-RELEASE.pdf Section 702 is upstream collection, which includes taking traffic off of the Internet backbones. The Board declined to consider this bulk collection because it always involved a targeted selector, and (in my personal opinion) totally missed the point of what bulk collection means. The EFF did an outstanding infographic on what is happening, that I wish the PCLOB was more aligned with: https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg Those two reports consumed the PCLOB for a long, long time, and they're now working on a bunch of things, including Executive Order 12333. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-executive-order-12333-the-reagan-rule-that-lets-the-nsa-spy-on-americans/2014/07/18/93d2ac22-0b93-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html I don't want to go into too much detail about the people, and in part because I don't want to reduce a set of 5 complicated people to something like partisan lines, but it feels like the board's power dynamic is something like: 2 more establishment-friendly people, 2 people who are more critical of power, and 1 person who seems capable of leaning either way. I encourage you to read the two primary reports they published -- some individual board members include additional statements and recommendations not endorsed by the entire board, that can help shed light on their internal debates. -- Eric On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Jeffrey Walton noloa...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 5:22 PM, Eric Mill e...@konklone.com wrote: The US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will be having a public all-day meeting on November 12th on exactly this: Defining Privacy. http://www.pclob.gov/newsroom/20141020/ I've been to their meetings before, in person here in DC, and I find some (not all) of the board members to be in sync with many (not all) of the norms of the privacy and security community. Out of curiosity, who are the board members? It would be a real drag if the organization was setup like Citizens for Fire Safety. The action committee campaigned to continue use of toxic chemicals as a fire retardant at the expense of resident's and firefighters' lives. Later, it was learned the two or three members of Citizens for Fire Safety were chemical companies. -- konklone.com | @konklone https://twitter.com/konklone ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
[cryptography] Define Privacy
On a fundamental level I wonder why privacy is important and why we should care about it. Privacy advocates commonly cite pervasive surveillance by businesses and governments as a reason to change an individual's behavior. Discussions are stifled and joking references to The List are made. The most relevant and convincing issues are documented cases of chilled expression from authors, artists, activists, and average Andrews. Other concerns deal with abuse, ala LOVEINT, etc. Additional arguments tend to be obfuscated by nuance and lack any striking insight. The usual explanations, while appropriately concerning, don't do it for me. After scanning so many articles, journal papers, and NSA surveillance documents, fundamental questions remain: What is privacy? How is it useful? How am I harmed by pervasive surveillance? Why do I want privacy (to the extent that I'm willing to take operational measures to secure it)? I read a paper by Julie Cohen for the Harvard Law Review called What Privacy is For[1] that introduced concepts I hadn't previously seen on paper. She describes privacy as a nebulous space for growth. Cohen suggests that in private, we can make mistakes with impunity. We are self-determinate and define our own identities free of external subjective forces. For an example of what happens without the impunity and self-determination privacy provides, see what happens when popular politicians change their opinions in public. I think Cohen's is a novel approach and her description begins to soothe some of my agonizing over the topic. I'm still searching. [1]http://www.juliecohen.com/attachments/File/CohenWhatPrivacyIsFor.pdf ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
