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:

@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.”

@aral holy sweet shit