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Aurornisyesterday at 11:16 PM3 repliesview on HN

> Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one.

These constructions feel too simplistic to capture anything useful.

My credit card company can see my transactions. My medical provider can read my medical records. People who hire house cleaners let people see inside their house.

It's commonly accepted that when you engage with a company for business purposes, they can see things involved in your business with them.

The problem with the Ring situation isn't that Ring can "see" your video cameras. It's that they were using the information for things outside of the scope of business that was implied when you bought the camera.

People don't care if a Google bot "reads" their e-mail for spam filtering. They don't care if a contractor sees the inside of their house during construction. What they do care about is if the other party tries to use that access for something outside of the scope that was agreed upon.

> It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.

These snooty takes where we're supposed to look down upon others for having reasonable assumptions about usage of their data are why it's so hard to get the general public to care about privacy. It's unnecessarily condescending for what? To look down upon people or play "told you so" games? If privacy advocates want to get anywhere they need to distance themselves from people who run with this kind of attitude.


Replies

fn-motetoday at 1:13 AM

> > It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.

> These snooty takes where we're supposed to look down upon others for having reasonable assumptions about usage of their data are why it's so hard to get the general public to care about privacy.

In addition: it’s not just the Ring camera installer whose rights are being violated (to be optimistic), it’s everyone who walks past on the sidewalk.

Privacy is a public good.

And it’s so long gone nobody (in the US or UK at least) can see a way to get it back.

protocolturetoday at 12:39 AM

>People don't care if a Google bot "reads" their e-mail for spam filtering.

There was that google engineer who was reading kids emails to groom them.

If someone can abuse something, you should expect it will be abused and you might not expect the avenue of abuse.

I get what you are trying to say, that its outcomes that are important. But you cant just hand everything over and trust.

cindyllmtoday at 12:18 AM

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