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burningChrome10/01/20246 repliesview on HN

Which begs the question, why are we constantly trying to off load personal security to others? Where is your personal responsibility to secure your own information? If you want better privacy, why not just not use Google or Apple? There are several phones and mobile OS's which are hyper focused on privacy. They all come with compromises, but even decent OpSec is hard.

We've become such a lazy society, its depressing.

Thanks for pointing out how worthless this bill was.


Replies

BobaFloutist10/01/2024

For the same reason it's not my job to make sure my food doesn't have arsenic or lead in it, or for that matter to avoid buying from corporations that propagate bird flu.

In many ways, privacy violations fit the public health model better than the user features model - my privacy can be infringed upon through no action of my own if a contact of mine fails to secure theirs. Surely I shouldn't be expected to carefully vet and interview all acquaintances, neighbors, third party partners to my grocery store, security cameras I happen to walk past, and friends of friends to make sure they follow best practices?

Right now you can't drive on public freeways without commercial entities capturing your license plate, and they can retain it as long as they want and do whatever they want with it, as long as it has the potential for profit. That's not the world I want to live in.

digging10/01/2024

Terrible take. Our modern world is hopelessly complicated and we don't ask every citizen to personally defend their physical security from outside threats, nor personally manage their water and food security.

How do you even square these adjacent statements?

> even decent OpSec is hard.

> We've become such a lazy society

The plain and obvious response to our situation is that digital privacy and security should be opt-out, not opt-in. It's not as simple as adding a button that does nothing, but it actually is relatively simple for browser vendors et al to reverse their assumptions.

If you don't agree, are you knocking on doors and teaching your neighbors how to manage their security? I hope you've got a lot of patience.

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saagarjha10/01/2024

Because not everyone is an expert in security and privacy and yet benefits from having some. This is why we regulate things.

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janalsncm10/01/2024

Because “personal responsibility” only goes so far. It doesn’t account for how people in a society actually interact.

If your friend doesn’t jump through all of this month’s hoops in BigCorp’s shiny new privacy policy (so lazy for not opting out yet again!) then your privacy might become collateral damage.

My personal opinion is that framing problems as personal responsibility rather than collective action is a conspiracy to stunt actual solutions. It is effective because it shifts blame from offending companies to unknowing individuals.

perilunar10/02/2024

Ironically enough your username is from a short story in which some hackers take down someone with supposedly very tight security.