🏴Radio aka ThePunkGeek🏴Feb 14, 2019
Aral Balkan

Privacy is not a science, it is a human right

https://ar.al/2019/02/14/privacy-is-not-a-science-it-is-a-human-right/

My response to a dangerous turd of an article by Bart van der Sloot (co-founder of Amsterdam Privacy Week – sponsored by Palantir and Google – and docent teaching “Privacy and Big Data” at Tilburg University)

Mr. Sloot attempts to reframe privacy as a “science” and shame those who work to protect it for having a “pro-privacy agenda” & not being “neutral”. He also calls for “new rules” to disallow such biased behaviour.

Privacy is not a science, it is a human right

Given the levels of institutional corruption in academia and in the regulatory bodies and advocacy institutions that should be protecting our privacy, very few things shock me these days. So hats off to Bart van der Sloot for managing the impossible and finding a new low by framing institutional corruption as scientific neutrality in his article Dubbele petten in de privacywetenschap. The gist of Mr. Sloot’s argument can be summarised with this doozy of a quote from his article1:

Feb 14, 2019 at 12:44pmWeb
Show threadNach ✖️Feb 14, 2019
@aral wow. what a fucking turd of man.
Show threadKellyn DelgadoFeb 14, 2019
@aral Wow what a shithead! Course I'm not surprised, given how Zuck says "Privacy Is Dead". We really need more privacy advocates like you out there being heard by the masses. Ones that don't take money from the Capitalists. It's a hard road but someone has to do it. There are way too many slimeballs in positions of power after all.
Show threadJoseph Nuthalapati Feb 14, 2019

@aral Reminds me of that one scientist sponsored by Big Oil who publicly denied and ended up creating a public "debate" on climate change.

The same old tricks.

Show threadフォギーFeb 14, 2019

@aral Aral, believe it or not, I think you might actually be _under_selling just how bad this is!

Nobody in their right mind would ever say “Having conferences about ethical genetic science suggests that there are biases with respect to selectively breeding and cloning humans, so that’s bad science.”

Show threadフォギーFeb 14, 2019
@aral holy sweet shit
Show threadBob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅Feb 14, 2019
@aral The reason why they want to describe it as a science is so that they can then pedantically argue over details where you'll get bogged down with precisely trying to define things. "That's not the correct definition of privacy", they'll say, "which peer-reviewed journal supports your view? Where is the formal proof of your assertion?" and things like this.

They'll probably hire some mathematicians to get some "privacy science" formal proofs into a vanity journal, preferably alongside more credible cryptographers.

I can guess because I've come across this type of personality before in other contexts. It's possible to dress up prejudices in math and then pretend that they're "neutral", "formally validated" or "backed by the scientific community".

"Are you trying to refute all of mathematics?", they'll say indignantly when you complain that their article is BS.
Show threadZ̈oéFeb 19, 2019
@aral Science is probably invading people's privacy while being legally OK.
Show threadMatti MinkkinenFeb 19, 2019

@aral
This came as a surprise. I don't know van der Sloot's work that well but enjoyed some parts of his article on privacy interpreted as non-domination in courts.

Seems like they are building a similar divide that we have in futures studies (emancipatory research / instrumentalist foresight) and also in security research (peace research / traditional military security research). Can they really not see how this dismissal of ethics is dangerous with privacy at this point in time?