from Hacker News

Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation

by oznathan on 12/30/15, 5:49 PM with 81 comments

  • by rayiner on 12/30/15, 6:44 PM

    > It is really a generational effect. People in law school learned this way of thinking 10 years ago, and they are coming into their place in the regulatory space.

    As someone in that group, I don't know if I see any evidence of this generational effect. The Internet is just the latest battleground for ideologies that have always existed: consumer protection, national security, business freedom, market solutions. The same sort of thinking guides the people who call for backdoors now, who called for banning encryption in the 1990's, who called for easier access to credit card and other transactions in the 1970's, etc.

    Businesses that create technological products are always going to be entities the government can control. And regulators will never be encryption utopians. They'll always be mild pragmatists willing to make compromises whose values fall moderately left or right of center on the authoritarian scale.

  • by mark_l_watson on 12/30/15, 9:21 PM

    I think that Lessig has it right: people will not fight for privacy if privacy inconveniences them too much. I jump through hoops to get some small level of privacy and still enjoy web properties that track users.

    A little off topic, but I think it is time for the USA to do a "let's go to the moon" type effort to make digital systems secure and protect privacy. I know this is a long shot though: it would take re-purposing the capabilities of the NSA (and the FBI, etc.) to making digital communication secure. Obviously this requires NO BACK DOORS, and more research into digital security. There are a lot of smart people working at the NSA and it would be good to have them working on helpful tasks like securing the Internet for businesses, the government, and individuals - and not waste time on spying on innocent people. In the 1990s the NSA and FBI did a lot of good work in this direction, but then the bogus 'war on terror' pushed them off course.

  • by miguelrochefort on 12/30/15, 6:44 PM

    None of these articles explain why privacy is a good thing. They just assume it to be a fact. I have some issues with this.

    What if the entire premise of privacy being beneficial is flawed? What if the actual problem is that we build systems and processes that rely on the unsustainable idea of privacy and the wishful ability to keep secrets? Do people not see that this makes everything more fragile and likely to break?

    I don't want more regulations for startups that want to analyze my genome, nor do I want to become an expert in internet security just to browse the web. Writing software is already difficult as it is, and the requirement to protect privacy makes it even more difficult and risky.

    The real question is, what can we do to make living a transparent and open life possible.

  • by Create on 12/30/15, 8:33 PM

    [Moglen] said "You mean The United States government is, from now on, going to keep a list of everybody every American knows. Do you think by any chance that should require a law?" And he just laugh because they did it in a press release in the middle of the night on Wednesday when it was raining

    https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-...

  • by zby on 12/30/15, 7:20 PM

    That Enigma project that he bases his opinion on looks rather suspicious for me.

    Here is their white-paper: http://enigma.media.mit.edu/enigma_full.pdf

    I am a bit skeptical on anything with blockchain in the synopsis these days.