Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

People don't really grok the problems of things like web access or location privacy because they don't understand what that kind of privacy means.

They've seldom had access to their own data at all (or at least a clear view of it), nor have most suffered with snoopy busybodies with access to it... nor have they had that data about other people.

But for Cameras that record video (and maybe sound) people have a much more visceral understanding of the privacy consequences even though audio/video is often _less_ of a wide scale privacy problem than web access data, location, or phone/email metadata (because of the logistics about manipulating and analyzing that data).

But whatever. Just because people should care a lot more about their other (web/geo/meta)data than they do, doesn't mean that A/V privacy isn't a huge deal. If we, as technologists and experts, can manage to motivate the public on this issue we should do so. Advancement on this front will make success easier on others. Failure on this front-- where people do have an innate understanding of the privacy problems will bode very poorly for areas where they do not.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: