Excellent video, and very applicable indeed! :)

But it naturally skews the results, especially when baby boomers and gen X alone constitute 57% of all respondents: which are typically less digitally literate, and therefore even less considerate of downstream consequences. Am I missing something? Because I cannot find any reference to another study, if that is what you mean. I’ve seen my share of pseudo studies that governments desperately cling onto, and by all means, this appears to be another one of them.

The shift from access control cards to biometrics (fingerprint or facial) is industry-wide, especially for sectors impacted by the Patriot Act. Even maritime workers are increasingly required to have their fingerprint scanned (to be compared to the print of their TWIC). I wish them the best of luck in resisting the safety tyranny.

The statistics appear to originate from from this pseudo study. All of the questions related to supposed “protection of children”, are framed within this context, without concretely considering the possible downsides; which strongly biases participants’ views. I also like how it typically reduces ages 18-54 to a single bracket (while statistics on page 18, demonstrating a trend of younger respondents, responding with reduced strength), and especially how it doesn’t consider minors to be Canadians (18- being asked absolutely nothing, at all…).

The first is subject to the “expectation of privacy” demoralization, while the others don’t really seem quite specific enough. In another thread on this post “anonymity” was brought up, and in the context of public surveillance, it’s a pre-established term that thus far, most closely matches the requested quality. So one could argue that public surveillance lowers their level of anonymity in public, potentially leading to details of one’s private life to be uncovered.

I despise Alex Karp and Palantir, but this feels like a pathetic attempt to discredit him, for reasonably throwing shade on grossly over-valued AI products, unsuitable within the context of critical infrastructure and enterprise. His Berkeley faculty member argument simply seems to be an analogy, for other models being capable of performing the task, but it simply not going to happen in his belief. This article appears to serve stakeholders of the AI bubble.

I’m glad it was of interest to you. He’s free to express whatever, and all I can hope for is that others don’t compromise on their believes either; besides countering the rhetoric in his statements of course.

I think to me anonymity is not quite that. my desire is not that I walk on the street and nobody recognizes me.

If used in the context of public surveillance, it quite accurately corresponds to the requested quality; whereas pseudonymity would be too forgiving therein. Persons should generally not really be considered a threat, unless they’re partaking in an authoritarian regime.

I agree on that. that depends on the operator doing the right thing, for which there is no incentive by not being verifiable.

Exactly. :)

OP seems to be same person as the OP of the Mastodon post. I think it would a lot more clear to copy the content of the Mastodon post over to this Lemmy post, and have a link directly to the FSF article.

Wouldn’t it be more useful to link to: https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2026/summer/ensuring-freedom-one-blob-at-a-time? Interesting project though.

A term describing the quality of being “off-the-record” would be ideal: like “off-the-recordness”, but one that doesn’t sound silly. And unfortunately there either don’t seem to be any “rights” to be off-the-record in any context, they are overruled by “legitimate interests” with trivial ease, or come with “consequences” (the last two in case of the GDPR, for example).

If there’s anything useful that came from the discussion with @whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml (to answer your other reactions too), is that “anonymity” might actually be a reasonable fit, that is if:

data couldn’t, in any way, shape or form and without measurable confidence, be attributed to a person (or context related to them: a car, or a specific shirt worn that day, being examples); then details about one’s private life couldn’t be inferred, based on publicly available information.

Perhaps the only situation it doesn’t account for is the tracking of groups of persons, rather than the individual. And it increasingly being mentioned in the same breath as “pseudonymization” (which does allow for re-identification: by design, or as a result of poor “anonymization” practices). I personally have no confidence in any “anonymization” post-collection; and a camera for example, physically unable to capture my likeness, being the only meaningful reassurance anonymity is being preserved.

Anonymity might actually be a reasonable fit here: if data couldn’t, in any way, shape or form and without measurable confidence, be attributed to a person (or context related to them: a car, or a specific shirt worn that day, being examples); then details about one’s private life couldn’t be inferred, based on publicly available information.

If for example: a surveillance system logged a person frequently moving from one house to another, while confident in the identity of the person departing from home, and a track record of the persons present in the house of destination on arrival, it can be inferred the person in question, has some relationship with the other persons.

So because this person has no choice, other than to be subjected to public surveillance, it is physically impossible to keep such details to oneself (private if you will). Similarly, if every other started wearing spywearables (“smart” glasses, pendant, pin, etc.) or (unknowingly) bugging their houses (a home surveillance system, robot vacuum, or any other “smart” appliance with listening devices); how are you going to keep anything private, and when is in no context “expectation of privacy” “reasonable”?

Got to keep shoveling that minimum viable product slop, but heaven forbid a label which might serve as an indication for it.

Yeah, maybe in a different context, as in a scuffed AI-slop The Onion clone haha.

I think it’s clear I can’t convince you, you can’t convince me, and that the only thing left is to respectfully disagree.

And fight, hard, for a world where the watching goes both ways

So it’s top-down by default, and if the underclass fights hard enough, they míght get a “trust me bro, this is all data there is, and we certainly didn’t destroy any”.

We can keep falling over these minor differences, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a distinction without a difference, practically speaking. You seem to disagree, which is completely fine too. Have a good one! :)

And this is why you use No-AI DuckDuckGo

The discussion was about “effective privacy” in public: your every move not meticulously being monitored in it, and therefore effectively remaining unknown; despite technically falling under public “knowledge”. I understand how “privacy” is typically interpreted in context of legal cases and law, and how it doesn’t, or inadequately accounts for advances in technology: leading to formerly hidden public activities, possibly becoming uncovered as a result. If anything, I think we’ve clearly demonstrated the usefulness of a catch-all term, that generally doesn’t discern between context, in which personal data is being collected; which was ultimately the intent of this post.

Ah, I see. Then I’d argue that which applies to masking, similarly applies to tag obfuscation. And ideally the plate would remain readable in case of disputes (as would recognition of a face), but mass-surveillance systems have taken that nuance from the equation.

If overall collection of personal data isn’t a concern (which it is for me), and the focus is solely on sabotaging automated systems: clothing with confusing patterns may throw off classifications, IR glasses might impair facial recognition, and dirt-like noise atop license plates might hinder character recognition; but the irony is, that one likely draws more attention to themselves in doing so (an officer being alerted upon failure, and likely required to manually review: potentially leading to an actual investigation).

I don’t mind what most ordinary people know about me, unless they’d systematically collate those activities: especially for the purposes of exposing underlying patterns. If the persons involved or activities carried out weren’t memorable, they are likely to be forgotten. And generally speaking: observations by an untrained person are hardly reliable, and they certainly lack the resolution of digital counterparts.

But that lack of anonymity directly translates to a potential privacy-implication. You may also argue that nothing is private, because you could put a gun on a person’s head, and force them to give up any secret they have. Surveillance is equally involuntary, and similarly exposes details about one’s private life, which where traditionally very unlikely to be extracted.

Yes, exactly. If there’s no systematic record-keeping of my activities by actual human beings, I have little reason for concern. But with advances in technology: increased coverage, data quality, retention periods, automated detection/tagging/notifying/reporting(/actioning) and real-time or low-friction sharing through networking; it has become such an undeniable vector for (future) abuse. There’s nothing which can reasonably assure me, these systems aren’t going be abused, because there’s a track-record of abuse already, and the incentives for abuse are only gaining in strength.