do you care about privacy?

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Ah. thunder_squall just playing... I started to suspect that as well... I'm not sure if you noticed I was playing along too.. a little... but hey, it's conversation... better than nothing.

[Wolf]

Awkward... Moving on:

Did you know that the erased data on your cell phone can be salvaged?  Getting rid of your phone in person may be a better idea than turning it in for a discount on a new phone.  I've heard that some companies sell the old phones.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

How can it be salvaged?

When you delete something, is it like being left in ROM/RAM, and the reference pointer is simply removed? Could you max out the data with a bit of random files hoping to overwrite the garbage data?

[Atrius (He/Him)]

Essentially, yes.  The entry in the file list for the file is erased, but the data is still there.  Even if you overwrite it, the physical medium still has some risidual charge left over that can be pieced back together with the right equipment.  It takes several rewrites of that sector before the risidual charge becomes useless for advanced data recovery techniques.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Are there any free apps used for managing memory to help get rid of such data?

[Atrius (He/Him)]

I don't know, they're often referred to as "file shredders" though.  I would expect a good one to require root access so it can actually work with the storage space on the lowest level without being filtered through the operating system.

[Thunder-squall]

wait till we get time-travel.  Then there'll be no privacy for anyone ever.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

^ Wouldn't that only be if anyone knows where to find you and what to look for? Even so, with so much history available, I would think it'd take way too long to go over it all.

Privacy by obscurity...

[Thunder-squall]

In the future, we'll have search engines whose jobs it is to find out everything, ever, before or even regardless of whether anyone wants to know that information.  I figure we'll have physical versions of our online web crawlers time traveling back through history to figure absolutely everything out.

I think it's less likely that UFOs are an alien race finding us, and more likely just us from the future sending us bots to gather information.

So we have no privacy, regardless of whether or not anyone cares.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

But we actually do have privacy... Just not from those that have the ability to gather logs on the past.

If such technology was made, how come we don't know about it? Hmm? Surely people from the future would go to the past and hand this technology to us? Or maybe that'd create a TIME PARADOX....


I think the Street View maps on Google is enough for saying no one has privacy... You can view the front of everyone's house on there from back in 2012. Although, they do blur out sensitive stuff like license plates, people's faces(?), contents in trash, and what not...

[Thunder-squall]

Is it really useful to say "we have privacy from person A, but not from person B?"  What difference does it make?

If you walk naked down the street, you don't say "hey, at least people on Mars don't know I'm naked, so at least I have *some* privacy"

That's technically true, but I think we're talking about privacy from *everybody,* in this case.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

@1: A big difference? - Person A loves you, Person B is your best friend and knows you're cheating on Person A?

@2: But you might say to a friend: "My mother would be ashamed of me if she saw me at the strip club."

@3: I was replying at "So we have no privacy" when I said that, so I maybe I slipped? (Since there was no mention of an individual being labeled in that sentence.)

[Thunder-squall]

--> If you don't have privacy from Person A, and Person A is capable of telling Person B, then you don't have privacy from Person B as well.  Follow that chain, and eventually you don't have privacy from anyone.

(Those above were versions of the same questions and the answer's no.  When someone says "your mom would be ashamed if,"  the only way you have privacy is if you can prevent that someone from knowing as well.  Otherwise he/she could just tell your mom, and you basically have no privacy form your mom)

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Summary:
-Trust & Friendship
-Rumor? / Validate information from original source.
-Blackmail
-Two people sharing the same secret
-People who gossip don't deserve secrets.
-Science & Life, and how all things may naturally never go away concept idea.
-Most secrets are probably not that important, and most of them may not be important enough to keep hidden for secrecy?

the only way you have privacy is if you can prevent that someone from knowing as well

That would be the most logical approach... but to reword that a bit:

one way you have privacy is if you can prevent that someone from telling someone

That doesn't come without a risk, though... (It's not proven privacy, but trusted privacy.) It's usually best if they have something to lose if they gave away the secret...

In my first example, what are the chances Person B would tell Person A if Person B values trust and friendship with you?

There's also a chance that if they told, that message could come back to you one way or another. For one, Person B couldn't know who would come to you when they tell the secret. There's also a chance that what Person B says may be assumed as a rumor. (It's a different perspective when someone else tells the story.) In some circumstances, people may actually need to come to you in order to validate the rumor.  Especially when your integrity may be viewed as being greater than your friend's.

There's also the effective blackmail if trust/friendship wasn't valuable. You tell my secret, I tell yours...

And how about things where two people are co-partners sharing a secret where both would be affected had the secret been exposed?

If your friend hasn't told you secrets other people have been keeping, there's a chance you can rely on that friend to at least a small degree.

Science/Life itself may already know everything...

Science & Life

By the way, I don't think Atheist is really Atheist if you look at Science itself as your God. (If that makes sense.) Although, that might be a bit different. (Science is not exactly a living being... Or is it? Since we happen to be alive ourselves.) Maybe it could be a different type of living? Similar to how Plants live differently than humans/animals? Or maybe it's both types...? Hm... I could assume that everything around you has life, but it may not be the type of life you might be thinking.... For example... bacteria... and how mold got on food... etc.

How would you know that Science knows all the things about you, etc? -- Perhaps it's the evidence left behind that are a reminder of history. (For example, we are always shedding hair/skin which is DNA.)

Does History Ever Truly Disappear?

Do you think it could be possible that every event in life is still stored somewhere even in the present? (At least somewhere... even if it is completely hidden away from humans.) For example, there are some tools that can assist humans in seeing what they normally couldn't. Heat detectors, x-rays, microscopes, night-vision goggles, sonar, changing sound frequencies, to name a few. And every thought that you might have may even be in your sub-concienceness. It'd be really interesting if humans could ever find a way to pick up on thoughts people may have had dozen of years ago. Although, quite difficult because the molecules might be broken up too much? ... We only ever have a limited amount of knowledge about Science, anyway. And it's not like one can decrypt/read DNA. (Aside from using them for matching identities and stuff...) That's just assuming that DNA is more than what you might think?

The future

Maybe it might seem bazaar to most, but I do wonder if future events could be stored in a similar encrypted fashion... (Especially if all things are pre-determined/Can only be lived once.) ...but they would be even harder to figure out. Think of it like loading a file to RAM, if you delete the file, only the reference pointer is removed, and the rest remains garbage data, etc. RAM would represent the past/present, while ROM would represent the future.

Why does Science even exist?

So if Science knew how to put you on the Earth, and had the ability to make you feel life, as well as giving you free-will, then what does Science want from you? Maybe one could say that Science is trying to find new ways to engage with itself.

I'm guessing that in the end, it's fair enough to say that even though people may value their privacy, it's not really as important as it may seem?  Sometimes the truth is the best way to know if people still feel the same about you. Knowing how to keep from being "tortured" when you do tell the truth would be more important, in my opinion.

Is there even any real reason to keep a secret of anything an average citizen might have from anyone? If it is something negative, I think they have the potential to 'haunt' you. (Haunt=frequent)

Some ideas I had for reasons:
-Temporary time period to rethink.
-Trust, since it's someone else's secret.
-Respect, if it happens to be too terrible for some people to hear. (But still, examining your body can reveal many things like Cancers/etc. that you might not know about.)
-If it's something wide-spread and dangerous. (But still, if you think of things that could go wrong, maybe not. For example, a lab with chemicals... if the chemicals put you out, you have no partner to call 911. That means you'd die.)
-Your assets/wealth. (Which can include your personal information.) (Although, revealing this may make it easier to set up traps to catch more criminals in the act!)

[Thunder-squall]

Most of that doesn't hold up. If there's anything there you'd actually want me to spend time responding to, then highlight it.  But I think you already know most of the answers to that stuff, and I kind of feel like I'm just going through the motions, rather than participating in any real conversation.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

I sense I was starting to stray off this topic:

Is it really useful to say "we have privacy from person A, but not from person B?"  What difference does it make?

The point I was trying to prove is that there is an indirect difference here.... Whatever your "doesn't hold up" means...

-If you've only told one person, and you find out they tell... you get the opportunity to take action.
-Some privacy may be automatic... A person might avoid uninteresting topics others might think of as spam, or it could be a "long story," and the person doesn't feel like talking about it.

I get the feeling this is one of them "Maybe it is, maybe it's not" type of topics... (When you no longer care who knows what, because life doesn't have a true value.)

And now, this topic is boring....

[mickbrown]

"Privacy is about keeping sensitive information out of the hands of everyone..."

I would say that privacy is about having control over your own personal information, and being able to decide who you give it to. You may choose to give your personal information to others — it's about choice and control, not necessarily all-encompassing confidentiality. This follows the principle of "informational self-determination."