Thread

Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries

395 points · 229 comments · ortusdux

jsrozner · 1790181848 · focus · HN ↗
The best solution is a constitutional amendment that actually enshrines a right to privacy. Among other things, the retention, aggregation, correlation of any personal data should be illegal (including for commercial purposes). (Storage on behalf of users in encrypted form could be made OK. Could also be refined to support retention of data of the medical, legal, etc kind with the attendant non-admissibility protections.)
This would fix this issue, it would destroy the surveillance models of Google/Facebook, and it would fix the Flock issue, etc. It would also fix the Roe v Wade issue: women would be able to get abortions in the first couple months of pregnancy without the possibility of harassment, since law enforcement would have no capacity to detect pregnancy until then.
Also, tech won't save us had a podcast on the dynamic pricing topic: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-data-is-changing-air-travel-w-amanda-mull/id1507621076?i=1000680112948" rel="nofollow">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-data-is-changing-a...
1. twoodfin · 1790183497 · focus · HN ↗
  This is simply untenable. Institutions of all kinds have been keeping records connected to individuals for millennia.
  Try to run a school when you can’t maintain data on the students.
  1. cogman10 · 1790184001 · focus · HN ↗
    You can have privacy and an institution can collect data.
    HIPAA is an example of that.
    All personal data should be treated with at or near HIPAA levels of security. If I give my personal information to my bank, or google, that's fine for them to look at it, but it's not ok if that information magically lands in the hands of Coca Cola for marketing.
    jsrozner · 1790184566 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, mostly, but google shouldn't be able to "look" at it either. No entity should be able to derive a commercial benefit from my data; any commercial value of my own data should accrue entirely to me.
    You could build a test: the company should not be able to derive any additional value from 100 fully anonymized interactions with the same person as from 100 interactions with a deanonymized individual. Google obviously fails this test since targeted advertising is much more valuable if you have non-anonymized entities.
    The doctor can store my data because it is necessary to provide me with the service, but the doctor shouldn't be able to sell my data, nor correlate it with their other patients' data.
    Of course, a doctor will learn from treating me and become a better doctor, so you can't actually enforce this totally in practice. But it's like porn - you know when you see the violation.
    mrngld · 1790185509 · focus · HN ↗
    Let me get it straight. You want to be able to engage with a commercial entity, but you don't want that commercial entity to be able to look at anything that results from you interacting with them? That doesn't even sound like a good user experience. I want the companies I engage in business with to be able to look at the data within the confines of our relationship and be able to do useful things with it.
    If you don't want Google to be able to do anything at all with information you put into their system, easy, don't open an account!
    I can agree with some of the other points, Google shouldn't be hoovering up mountains of data, etc. Just have to be careful of extremes. If you enshrine something bad in something as difficult to change as a constitution, you're stuck with it, and all your unintended consequences, potentially forever. You say "you can't actually enforce this totally in practice" but have you ever met a law firm? They would absolutely take the most extreme possible interpretation and milk all of society for billions a year if they can find an appropriate avenue.
    This kind of extremism is what derailed some constitutional reforms in South America over the past decade. It started with reasonable center-left people saying some reasonable things, the radical left seized the process and wrote the final draft and faced with a choice between insanity and an unsatisfactory status quo people made the only palatable choice.
    jsrozner · 1790186301 · focus · HN ↗
    Your argument applies to the grocery pricing situation: "if you don't want the grocery store to aggregate all of your interactions, don't shop there".
    All aspects of the commercial transaction should be clear and transparent: I give the grocery store cash, it gives me food. My data shouldn't be taken from me, and nor should I have to consent to my data to be taken from me in order to shop there.
    Google can store and serve me my data. It cannot use my data for commercial purposes that do not directly serve me. Nor should it be able to aggregate my interactions in a way that serves to increase its own profit, as this, over time, increases the relative power of the firm.
    consensus1 · 1790187848 · focus · HN ↗
    Does showing you less ads for things you actually want to buy instead of more random adds serve you directly? You could make a pretty solid argument that it does.
    CamperBob2 · 1790189416 · focus · HN ↗
    Does showing you less ads for things you actually want to buy instead of more random adds serve you directly?
    It does until that mechanism is turned against me, as I have to assume it will be.
    twoodfin · 1790198236 · focus · HN ↗
    What does that mean?
    CamperBob2 · 1790198803 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't want my grocery list sold to my health insurance company, for example.
    ndriscoll · 1790190527 · focus · HN ↗
    No, ads are approximately never to your benefit, and if they are, it's entirely by accident. Their entire purpose is to corrupt your preferences or misinform you to the benefit of the advertiser. If you actually wanted to buy the thing, they wouldn't need to spend money on ads (and anyone competent would measure lift over a baseline, not just raw "did people buy the thing" for campaign effectiveness).
    If you're to see any ads at all, it is vastly preferable that you see random ads for things that you would never be interested in and that register as pure noise to you. Things you could be convinced to buy, or propaganda that elicits some response (positive or negative) are the worst case to encounter.
    consensus1 · 1790195028 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe you think so, but if Youtube offered a choice between targeted ads or 5x more untargeted I bet that > 90% of people would take the former.
    AshleyGrant · 1790211561 · focus · HN ↗
    There is no reason we have to make the false choice you present. That is simply Google holding a gun to our heads to encourage us to choose something that is in Google's best interests rather than our own.
    The choice should be between X targeted ads or X non-targeted ads. They can still target ads based on the content of the page, no different from how television and print ads worked prior to all of this data collection.
    twoodfin · 1790270787 · focus · HN ↗
    “Holding a gun to our heads”?
    How is that metaphor apt?
    AshleyGrant · 1790288952 · focus · HN ↗
    Because in OP's hypothetical, it is the equivalent of a gangster saying "I can shoot you in the face or punch you in the face, which do you prefer?"
    They present a false choice where Google is saying "We can do this the easy way or the hard way" and we are forced to choose between bad and worse. There is no reason we should not have a less bad choice: the same amount of ads but non-targeted. We, as customers, should not be held hostage by the massive corporations.
    twoodfin · 1790297873 · focus · HN ↗
    Sorry, what?
    We’re talking about offering users a choice of ad options on a site they’re choosing to visit.
    That’s nothing at all like a gangster threatening physical harm.
    AshleyGrant · 1790801302 · focus · HN ↗
    And businesses that are offered the option of paying "protection money" can simply go out of business, right?
    Acting like YouTube is a service that is not functionally required to use in the modern world is a disingenuous argument at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
    There is so much content that folks end up needing to access for so many valid reasons that is only available on YouTube. Plenty of companies only post troubleshooting explainers on YouTube, as one example. I am not "choosing to visit" YouTube in those cases, I am forced by a third party. And I'm being forced because YouTube has functionally built a monopoly on this type of content.
    You might as well be telling someone to "Just buy a helicopter and fly yourself" because they are unhappy with the quality of roads in their city.
    consensus1 · 1790304574 · focus · HN ↗
    This is Youtube. You can just not go there. You have no right to set the terms they offer their services by.
    AshleyGrant · 1790800848 · focus · HN ↗
    This is like saying "You can just sail to Europe for your week of meetings." While it may be pedantically true, it's absolutely false from a functional standpoint for most people.
    YouTube holds an absolutely dominant position in user created content. I have purchased products from many companies who post their troubleshooting video content on YouTube and only on YouTube. In many cases, those videos are literally the only content they provide. They do not provide any textual troubleshooting content.
    Telling people "Just don't use YouTube" is a functionally useless piece of advice as they cannot "just not go there."
    Also, I'm a paying customer of YouTube, why would I "have not right to set the terms they offer their services by?" Why is it that Google gets dictator-level control over the relationship, especially when they are operating as a monopoly?
    We the People absolutely have the power to dictate terms to Google or any other company.
    baggy_trough · 1790196844 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    ndriscoll · 1790197779 · focus · HN ↗
    So delusional that targeted advertising (a massively expensive thing to build) makes more money than random advertising, and advertisers are willing to pay a premium, leading to some of the biggest companies on the planet being in the business of targeting advertising! Almost like it's effective at manipulating people into making decisions they wouldn't otherwise make.
    And then entirely unsurprisingly, professional propagandists also manage to convince people that the proper reaction to being manipulated is "thank you sir, may I have another?"
    baggy_trough · 1790199073 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not a mystery that targeted advertising works better than random advertising and therefore commands a premium. It's an unjustified leap from that to the scary sounding 'manipulation'.
    ndriscoll · 1790199717 · focus · HN ↗
    Taking wikipedia's definition:
    > In psychology, manipulation is defined as an deliberate action that aims to influence or control another person in an underhanded or subtle manner which facilitates one's personal motives.
    Does that not describe pretty much all advertising? It's not like advertisers are going out and researching all other deals that are out there and making sure that theirs really is the best, and then paying to put theirs in front of you because they're just so great and want to help you out.
    No, they're putting themselves in front of you and hoping you don't notice that they're just another white label of some Alibaba special that costs 10% more than the other Alibaba white label. Or trying to pound into your head through constant repeated messaging that you want their thing when you don't, actually (oh and ignore that it will make you fat, give you cancer, lead to your financial ruin, etc. It's fun. And cool people do it. In fact only uncool people don't). Playing happy music when it's them. Playing stern music when it's their opponents. Look, if you gamble with us, you can be a BIG WINNER! LOOK HOW HAPPY AND RICH YOU COULD BE! etc.
    Then to make it extra effective, they spy on you to learn everything about your life, and intentionally feed your insecurities to make you into a softer target. Some kids might end up killing themselves when they take that a bit too far, but hey, what can you do?
    There is no ethical low to which that segment of society will not sink.
    baggy_trough · 1790204604 · focus · HN ↗
    No, it does not. I would not describe most advertising as underhanded or subtle.
    tzs · 1790220792 · focus · HN ↗
    The ads I receive in the mail from local grocery stores serve to inform me when stores that I normally don't shop at have something I already want on sale at a better price than my usual stores.
    How is this corrupting my preferences or misinforming me?
    twoodfin · 1790198130 · focus · HN ↗
    Nothing is “taken” when a shopkeeper writes down in his notebook that Sam Gallo bought two loaves of bread and a gallon of milk.
    I’m glad the parent of this thread specified the need for a Constitutional amendment. Anything less would be an obvious intrusion on free speech.
    jsrozner · 1790201064 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree. Hand-taken notes are valid. If a single individual wants to follow me around in the physical world and record my every action, then so be it.
    But if the single individual begins using robots to follow me around, it becomes problematic. The issue is in the power of the technology that is deployed. What's less clear is where to draw the line: can the shopkeeper type his notes (yes), but can he fill his store with surveillance cameras that correlate my every entry into his store (this one becomes unreasonable and this is the case for which we need laws).
    sib · 1790209212 · focus · HN ↗
    When you buy a 600g loaf of whole wheat bread from Ralph's Supermarket at 6:17pm on Tuesday Sep 22 2026 for USD4.99, there is zero (0) reason to consider that any more your data than Ralph's data.
    Just as you can use that set of facts plan and optimize your budget, so should Ralph's be able to use that data to plan and optimize their business.
    AshleyGrant · 1790211364 · focus · HN ↗
    That the company can use the fact that a customer purchased something is completely separate from tying that information to me.
    And they should not be able to sell that data to data brokers, whether is anonymized or tied to individual customers.
    danny_codes · 1790190094 · focus · HN ↗
    But Google is a monopoly, so you have little choice in the matter.
    Unfortunately these things are never so clean as in the theoretical model. As a monopoly, there are likely many situations where interaction with said monopoly is unavoidable.
    ikr678 · 1790209686 · focus · HN ↗
    If you pay a bank for use of a secure deposit box to store private documents, would you be upset if they started advertising services to you based on the contents of those documents?
    Or if your telephone service began messaging with offers for products on what you discussed in your phonecalls?
    Yet it's extremism to think Google etc shouldnt be able to do this.
    robertlagrant · 1790191149 · focus · HN ↗
    > but the doctor shouldn't be able to sell my data, nor correlate it with their other patients' data
    This definitely happens, at least in the UK. With anonymised data.
    classichasclass · 1790196784 · focus · HN ↗
    > nor correlate it with their other patients' data.
    Halting that would pretty much be the end of public health analysis or real-world work on medication effectiveness/adverse reactions. We do a lot of work with deidenitifed data to find health patterns in populations.
    jsrozner · 1790201400 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree. One of the things this debate reflects is that societies really do need substantial trust: I want to trust that if my healthcare data is aggregated, then it will actually be used to serve society (and me).
    In practice, data is often aggregated and then used to deprive some folks of healthcare, or sold to a pharma company below cost, with the pharma company then turning around and maximizing drug profits, where the drug was developed from the underpriced public data.
    LocalH · 1790208556 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe the law needs to be more like code and less up to the whims of whatever judicial interests are present at the time.
    Tracing code manually isn’t hard for a seasoned dev. Write it in BASIC if you have to lmao
    jsrozner · 1790201109 · focus · HN ↗
    I love the downvotes, probably from the people who like making money screwing over their fellow citizens.
  2. izacus · 1790186412 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not - GDPR does that and it could even be much stricter still and we'd be fine.
    [deleted] · 1790187736 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  3. [deleted] · 1790191777 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  4. bravoetch · 1790196911 · focus · HN ↗
    > This is simply untenable. Institutions of all kinds have been keeping records connected to individuals for millennia.
    This is the reason privacy is needed.
    > Try to run a school when you can’t maintain data on the students.
    Yes, we should try this. Zero-knowledge proofs and other modern technology allows for this. Even the first step of not selling or using student data for commerce is an easy step.
    Those who think that we should not try to improve because our privacy is already compromised, should step aside.
    twoodfin · 1790198281 · focus · HN ↗
    Teachers sending encrypted report cards home with zero-knowledge proofs attached?
    Reports they can never again consult when gauging a student’s progress over time?
    Say what you will, but at least it’s an ethos!
    tobyjsullivan · 1790200581 · focus · HN ↗
    The 90's was people worried they'd be treated as nothing more than a number. 2020's is people wishing they could be known only by a number (an opaque identifier).
2. kansface · 1790183820 · focus · HN ↗
  Would it? The 1st is a prohibition on the rights of government, not private parties. Would the new amendment apply to the government, or to private sector, or to individuals? In any case, the 1st and the 28th? would continually be butting heads, since the 1st prohibits congress from passing laws that would enforce the 28th (and by extension, the states via the 14th). Would a newspaper be allowed to publish unflattering personal, privacy violating details? Would you be allowed to put up a political flyer alleging the same? I'm not sure an amendment is _the best solution_.
  1. wlesieutre · 1790190010 · focus · HN ↗
    We already have laws that abridge the freedom of speech, so it's not absolute.
    What's special about slander that we can have a say "you're not allowed to make defamatory false statements about people," but we couldn't have "you're not allowed to spy on people and sell information about them"?
    Granted slander is a civil and not criminal matter, but if I could sue companies for sharing personal information about me that would still be something.
    otterley · 1790202814 · focus · HN ↗
    There's nothing in the Constitution as it stands today that prevents us from having strict data privacy laws. No amendment is needed.
  2. mikem170 · 1790201616 · focus · HN ↗
    I suggest that the new amendment make it illegal for devices to track us.
    Cameras, microphones, computers, robots, algorithms, etc would not be able track people. Those are in-animate objects, not people, and shouldn't have any rights, especially the right to intrude on people's privacy.
    Individuals would not be able to leverage such devices for power, influence or other selfish raesons.
    Only another person, a real human, can watch you in public. Even take notes on you. Like a doctor. Or the employees of a grocery store.
  3. int_19h · 1790203470 · focus · HN ↗
    > Would the new amendment apply to the government, or to private sector, or to individuals?
    It depends on how it's written, but there are no inherent limits here. You can make it do either.
    > In any case, the 1st and the 28th? would continually be butting heads, since the 1st prohibits congress from passing laws that would enforce the 28th
    Amendments, by definition, amend the constitution, as it was prior to them (meaning with all the previous amendments applied) so a later amendment can always override an older one explicitly, and even if it doesn't do so, the plain intent of the new amendment would likely suffice.
    AshleyGrant · 1790211203 · focus · HN ↗
    And we even have an explicit example of this in the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th Amendment.
  4. 8note · 1790205301 · focus · HN ↗
    id see a limitation on the government to limit or remove liability for private entities to invade privacy.
    private corps could still invade privacy, but they wouldnt be able to shrug the liability from torts related to their bad activity.
    eg. the government can not remove liability to any behaviour that breaks the constitution, as thats the government brraking the constitution by deputizing somebody else to break it
  5. xphos · 1790263743 · focus · HN ↗
    The fun part about amendments you can write that into the amendement and it can say whatever you want. There is no special expceptions, it defines what legal government and persons actions are by definition. The only problem (good thing imo) is it takes 2/3 to approve it which is a mountain of opposition. Complex Amendements suffer immensely from this since they have much more power than laws congress passes. But honestly privacy could probably be ensired easier with a law from congress. It is a right but perhaps starting with a law would actually be easier than an amendment nothing stops the government currently from have laws about privacy if there is an objection the escape hatch could be granted by an amendment
3. roamerz · 1790183836 · focus · HN ↗
  Cool thought but until violating the said constitution actually has enforceable consequences it’s not more than a paper tiger.
  Take for instance the 2nd amendment. It is constantly under siege by government officials, both elected and appointed, as well as an activist judicial. Thankfully the SCOTUS has been somewhat successful in parlaying these incursions but someday the perpetrators will succeed, and I think mainly because there are no consequences for trying.
  Just an example and JMHO.
  1. grubbydiff · 1790184449 · focus · HN ↗
    > The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the work fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies—the militia—would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.
    Sounds like you have been a victim of fraud. At least according to a former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. To prevent more people falling prey to fraudsters, Justice Stevens recommends that this amendment should be repealed - <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens-repeal-second-amendment.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens...
    nickff · 1790185065 · focus · HN ↗
    > "Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. To prevent more people falling prey to fraudsters, Justice Stevens recommends that this amendment should be repealed"
    I think you might be missing a sentence or a citation there, because Stevens was an associate justice, never the chief on SCOTUS.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Stevens" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Stevens
    hypersoar · 1790203106 · focus · HN ↗
    Parent's link about Stevens was separate from the quote, which is from Warren Burger. And Burger was hardly a lefty. He was appointed by Nixon specifically to begin the work of dismantling the achievements of the Warren court.
    Terr_ · 1790185188 · focus · HN ↗
    Amen, I've ranted on HN about that a few times. [0] There is zero question that the Second Amendment was created as limit on the federal government interfering with individual states, and did not bar any state from whatever policy they chose for themselves. (Also, at that time, every state was already mandated by mutual treaty to have a "well-regulated militia" with state-appointed officers and state-funding, so the term had existing meaning.)
    Whether that narrow scope is/should-be still true is trickier given the 14th amendments, although I believe it was wrongly included in the incorporation doctrine. [1]
    [0] I know Google-search scoped to HN used to find them, and today it doesn't. The enshittification continues, is it time for me to start slowly scraping my own comment-history?
    [1] <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/incorporation_doctrine" rel="nofollow">https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/incorporation_doctrine
    jack_h · 1790191541 · focus · HN ↗
    > There was a want hitherto, and there remains a want now, in the Constitution of our country, which the proposed amendment will supply. What is that? It is the power in the people, the whole people of the United States, by express authority of the Constitution to do that by congressional enactment which hitherto they have not had the power to do, and have never even attempted to do; that is, to protect by national law the privileges and immunities of all the citizens of the Republic and the inborn rights of every person within its jurisdiction whenever the same shall be abridged or denied by the unconstitutional acts of any State.
    > Allow me, Mr. Speaker, in passing, to say that this amendment takes from any State any right that ever pertained to it. No State ever had the right, under the forms of law or otherwise, to deny to any freeman the equal protection of the laws or to abridge the privileges or immunities of any citizen of the Republic, although many of them have assumed and exercised the power, and that without remedy.
    -- John Bingham, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2542
    > Such is the character of the privileges and immunities spoken of in the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution. To these privileges and immunities, whatever they may be -- for they are not and cannot be fully defined in their entire extent and precise nature -- to these should be added the personal rights guarantied and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as the freedom of speech and of the press; the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances, a right appertaining to each and all the people; the right to keep and to bear arms; the right to be exempted from the quartering of soldiers in a house without the consent of the owner; the right to be exempt from unreasonable searches and seizures, and from any search or seizure except by virtue of a warrant issued upon a formal oath or affidavit; the right of an accused person to be informed of the nature of the accusation against him, and his right to be tried by an impartial jury of the vicinage; and also the right to be secure against excessive bail and against cruel and unusual punishments.
    -- Jacob Howard, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2765
    It's correct to say that the second amendment was a limit on the federal government only as decided in Barron v. Baltimore (1833). Total incorporation was the intent of the 14th even though the courts ultimately re-affirmed Barron in US v. Cruikshank (1876) which was a 14th amendment case over the 1st and 2nd amendment. De Jonge v. Oregon (1937) overturned part of Cruikshank by incorporating the right to peaceable assembly from the 1st, later that year Palko vs. Connecticut created selective incorporation doctrine and incorporated double jeopardy from the 5th, and of course McDonald v. Chicago (2010) overturned the other part of Cruikshank by incorporating the 2nd. All this to say, incorporation doctrine is pretty convoluted. If you think that the 2nd amendment should not be incorporated but the rest should then that would make things even more absurd. There's just no way via either total or selective incorporation that you can exclude the 2nd without it becoming nine judges determine what rights the government grants you, thus defeating the entire purpose of the bill of rights.
    Terr_ · 1790201167 · focus · HN ↗
    > All this to say, incorporation doctrine is pretty convoluted. If you think that the 2nd amendment should not be incorporated but the rest should then that would make things even more absurd.
    Please indulge me in a hypothetical. Suppose the 2nd amendment had almost exactly the same practical effect when ratified, but was phrased as: "The Federal government may not restrict any State maintaining its militia, nor seek to restrict or impair that state's supply of future potential volunteers and their armaments."
    Would you consider that to be a rule about the fed<->people relationship (creating a personal right for all "potential volunteers"), or do you read it as a rule about the balance of power between fed<->state layers?
    Does the difference between those categories matter when it comes to applying the 14th, and which fed-can't-do-X rules autogenerate new state-can't-do-X rules?
    > [...] without it becoming nine judges determine what rights the government grants you, thus defeating the entire purpose of the bill of rights.
    Maybe, but that's an appeal to consequences, the truth of something shouldn't depend on whether we like what it says about the universe... and that's a problem we already have.
    jack_h · 1790449907 · focus · HN ↗
    If you change what the 2nd says then it would be interpreted differently. That would not have the same practical effect either, it would invalidate a chunk of the Militia Acts of 1792.
    I understand that one side of this debate really looks towards the prefatory clause as somehow being operative, but that doesn't even mesh with contemporary usage of the pattern. Two very analogous examples:
    > The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a State; it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.
    -- Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, pt. I, art. XVI.
    > The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a State; it ought, therefore, to be inviolably preserved.
    -- New Hampshire Constitution of 1784, pt. I, art. XXII
    This was in fact a very common construction in early American legal history. While membership in civil society may impose civic duties and responsibilities the foundational philosophy underpinning these amendments, including the 2nd, is that civil society could not abolish natural rights. The right to self-defense is deeply rooted in English common law stretching back nearly a thousand years. We therefore arrive at my two original quotes from Representatives Bingham and Howard addressing what they considered a weakness in the original construction of the Bill of Rights for which the people had no redress; Howard even mentions the operative clause specifically. They are not the only ones to mention this either given the backdrop of Southern Black Codes.
    > He should have the right to bear arms for the defense of himself and family and his homestead. And if the cabin door of the freedman is broken open and the intruder enters for purposes as vile as were known to slavery, then should a well-loaded musket be in the hand of the occupant to send the polluted wretch to another world, where his wretchedness will forever remain complete.
    -- Samuel Pomeroy, Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1182
    > As citizens of the United States [blacks] have equal right to protection, and to keep and bear arms for self-defense.
    -- James Nye, Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1073
    The Second Freedmen’s Bureau Act even plainly states that "the right… to have full and equal benefits of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens of such State or district without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery."
    To say that incorporation doctrine of any variety would not incorporate the 2nd would be to ignore both founding era law, philosophy, and the context surrounding the passage of the 14th which would render it a useless doctrine.
    bigstrat2003 · 1790196069 · focus · HN ↗
    > There is zero question that the Second Amendment was created as limit on the federal government interfering with individual states, and did not bar any state from whatever policy they chose for themselves.
    Amendment 10, brought into force at the same time as amendment 2, says that the states can't infringe upon the right to bear arms either. That is very far from "zero question" as you stated.
    Terr_ · 1790198682 · focus · HN ↗
    > Amendment 10 [...] at the same time [...] says that the states can't infringe upon the right to bear arms either.
    Uh, no. Just... no. Perhaps you've mixed-up the 10th and 14th, which occurred about a century later.
    The 10th does the exact opposite of limiting state power, it says states continue to have all powers they didn't specifically give up by joining. It sets the default for when there's ambiguity, and it sets it in favor of not-the-feds.
    > The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
    int_19h · 1790203727 · focus · HN ↗
    You have to account for the fact that several states have equivalent provisions in their constitutions, some of them explicitly protecting individual rights, and other states have added such provisions shortly after.
    That is, the right was broadly recognized as an individual one and not just a state/federal interaction issue early on. The federal constitution didn't consider that case for the same reason why it didn't consider them for all the other amendments - it was simply out of scope there then. But given the historical recognition of the right at the time 14A was enacted, it makes sense to incorporate it.
  2. Terr_ · 1790184533 · focus · HN ↗
    > until violating the said constitution actually has enforceable consequences it’s not more than a paper tiger. [...] Take for instance the 2nd amendment.
    That seems like an exceptionally tepid constitutional violation to pick, after the last several years of massively-worse and flagrant violations.
    Are you offering it because you think it represents something typical, and current events will prove to be an extreme outlier?
    roamerz · 1790185369 · focus · HN ↗
    Honestly it is the one that came to mind as I am apparently a victim of fraud.
    More seriously though what good is a constitution if it can be violated without repercussions?
    You and I do agree on one thing though but I would adjust that to being the last 40 years rather than just several.
  3. WalterBright · 1790185844 · focus · HN ↗
    Once people manage to bypass the 2nd Amendment, the next one to go will be free speech.
    someonebaggy · 1790188438 · focus · HN ↗
    Free speech has already gone, but guns have not. In fact, the guns are being used to suppress free speech.
    AngryData · 1790228615 · focus · HN ↗
    Civilian owned guns are suppressing free speech? Because the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with police or government agencies.
    colinb · 1790189491 · focus · HN ↗
    I know. I’m willing to bet the first thing they’d do after seizing the guns would be to stop unfriendly media from first hand reporting of events in the White House.
    Then, when they know they’re proof against an armed citizenry, they’ll start running government policy as a way to line their own pockets. Why, it wouldn’t surprise me if a sufficiently emboldened crook, safe in the knowledge, that you personally cannot stop them by armed force, started to flout the laws left and right.
    Put it another way. I never fail to be amazed by the fantasies that govern significant chunks of American thought. People who’ve lived there, and also in other places are able to figure out pretty quickly where they’re actually safer, and more respected by their government, and able to live a decent wholesome life.
    I’ll note in passing that there are other countries with similar levels of gun ownership but less suicide and violence. Perhaps the first is because they have slightly more left leaning social policies. I’m all but convinced that the second is because they aren’t driven to a frenzy of terror by their local media. Maybe that cat has escaped its bag and isn’t ever going back. A shame. To live one’s life in fear of angry frightened people with guns sounds awful to me.
    Last thing. I’ve had guns pointed at me twice. Once by an infant British soldier in 1990s Belfast. And once by a robbing bastard in a very wealthy part of Los Angeles. Neither was fun, but at least the soldier was predictable in the then prevailing circumstances
    WalterBright · 1790207705 · focus · HN ↗
    I, too, have been threatened by a gun. Once by a cop, the other was a mugger.
    8note · 1790205538 · focus · HN ↗
    free speech is abridged without the 2nd amendment being hit.
    unless you are suggesting CNN show up at the whitehouse and shoot anyone that gets in their way to asking the president a question
    WalterBright · 1790207443 · focus · HN ↗
    The White House has always chosen which press could be on the grounds. It's not a 2nd Amendment issue.
    Do you think you or I, frequent posters on the intertoobs, would be allowed into the press room under any Administration? There's no right for us to be there.
    rootusrootus · 1790209184 · focus · HN ↗
    Seems like the first amendment has been bypassed for quite a while now. Recall the creation of 'free speech zones' and "first amendment areas". We keep telling ourselves that the Constitution applies everywhere in the US, but that is clearly not true.
4. augment_me · 1790183877 · focus · HN ↗
  This is impossible is you consider the financial sector - any kind of unsecured private lending like mortgages become dead in the water, fraud detection goes out the window, money laundering, etc.
  1. jsrozner · 1790184882 · focus · HN ↗
    Good points, but there should be partial solutions. For example, you can present data about the consumer in order to decide on the mortgage, but once the transaction is complete, the data should disappear. You need something akin to "the data can be used only for the particular purpose of the transaction at hand, and the data must be wholly necessary for the transaction at hand."
    We also know that mortgage lenders use irrelevant---well, scratch that---protected data to make decisions (i.e. discriminatory). Race for example is not supposed to be used in lending decisions.
    Fraud detection can probably be solved by other reasonable means. And in any case, if you take the fraud argument to the limit, then you'd end up advocating for constant surveillance to prevent fraud. Equifax, Experian, and Transunion are all horrible companies who do their ostensible job minimally well, while maximizing the exploitation of the data of the people.
    consensus1 · 1790188414 · focus · HN ↗
    This hurts me. I want lenders to have good access to the data that shows I am a high quality borrower. Less access adds risk to the lender which they will respond to by taxing me with a higher interest rate and it benefits scammers and people who don't pay their bills.
    Leynos · 1790194673 · focus · HN ↗
    You can consent to your data being shared with other lenders when you apply for credit under such regimes.
    augment_me · 1790195076 · focus · HN ↗
    And then the lenders say that you are required to supply your data for a discount and we are back to where we are today.
    jsrozner · 1790201820 · focus · HN ↗
    Imagine that you have (on some blockchain) an encrypted history of prior transactions between you and lenders, etc (signed by you, signed by the entity). You can submit through zero knowledge a certificate certifying a certain percentage of on-time payments/ net worth against this self-owned history.
    It would seem that no one gets to monetize your data but you (to avoid overly invasive questions, the govt could, e.g., regulate the kinds of ZKP questions that the mortgage lender is allowed to ask).
    In practice, I'm sure this has some problem, because societies can't function without trust. But in theory, you could imagine something that is more private and harder for other entities to monetize.
  2. izacus · 1790186429 · focus · HN ↗
    And?
  3. flowerbreeze · 1790190551 · focus · HN ↗
    I am not convinced mortgages is a net benefit to the society in any way.
    otterley · 1790202935 · focus · HN ↗
    Very few people can afford to pay for homes in all cash up front. Plus, financing a home is usually a great idea, since they tend to be appreciating assets (as long as the interest rate is lower than the rate of appreciation).
    burlesona · 1790211587 · focus · HN ↗
    There’s a strong historical case to be made that houses only cost what they do because they receive government insured mortgages and preferential tax treatment. The costs rise to consume the available funding.
    sokoloff · 1790214090 · focus · HN ↗
    The reason owner-occupied financing gets that tax benefit is to put owner-occupant buyers on a (more) equal footing with a commercial borrower as commercial interest is deductible as a business expense against income whether it’s startup costs, financing a factory, an airplane, or a rental house.
    theandrewbailey · 1790254102 · focus · HN ↗
    Perhaps interest should not be tax deductible. It's a huge subsidy to the banks and finance industry, which does not need any assistance, and has routinely caused destructive economic recessions.
    otterley · 1790261616 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't follow. How does a tax deduction for paid interest subsidize banks?
    theandrewbailey · 1790282308 · focus · HN ↗
    It's a subsidy by proxy. The government forgoes tax revenue on money that goes to interest payments. People deliberately get loans for the interest deduction.
    If you earned $100,000 in a year but paid $5,000 in mortgage interest, government will not collect taxes on that $5,000, because you gave it to the bank. The bank gets money, but government doesn't: makes little difference if you gave it to the government first (who then handed it on to a bank), or you gave it directly to the bank.
    otterley · 1790367010 · focus · HN ↗
    That doesn't make sense to me. Given an interest rate and a financed amount, I have to pay the same amount of mortgage interest to the bank whether it's tax deductible or not.
    tshaddox · 1790222299 · focus · HN ↗
    If financing a home is such an obviously great deal then why are mortgage lenders okay issuing debt with very long fixed interest rates when they receive nothing from the appreciation of the underlying assets?
    otterley · 1790533807 · focus · HN ↗
    Because they’re backstopped by the federal government (Fannie and Freddie) and thus the income streams are practically risk free, yet still yield a much higher interest rate than T-bills.
  4. kelseyfrog · 1790191411 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not impossible. It just raises risk and thus borrowing rates to compensate. That has a dragging effect on the economy and brings up an important question: Are there rights we're willing to give up for money? For a lot of people, perhaps yourself the answer is yes. For others there's no price on their rights - they're not for sale.
5. dgellow · 1790184722 · focus · HN ↗
  But that will absolutely never happen, the country is more corrupt than it has ever been and doesn’t care one bit about citizens concerns
  1. agent_turtle · 1790186852 · focus · HN ↗
    one only needs to open a history book to see that this country used to be much, much more corrupt. while this country has problems, we are far from the first generation to face them.
    dgellow · 1790243843 · focus · HN ↗
    Mind being more specific? You have a rapist, demented president who previously failed to coup his way back to power, who has gutted all institutions and is siphoning as much wealth as possible to the pockets of himself and his cronies. You have open financial corruption of the whole administration by industry leaders. You can now literally buy pardons and citizenship. The Supreme Court is a full-on political activist court, and created a whole concept of executive immunity that never existed before, to protect Trump. Every single week is a new scandal by this administration that should be career ending.
    Please educate me, when was the country more corrupt?
  2. rootusrootus · 1790208532 · focus · HN ↗
    It's really hard to say with a straight face that the citizens are not getting precisely the government they [collectively] want.
6. WarmWash · 1790187556 · focus · HN ↗
  It would also return tech to something only the wealthy can afford, and the poor get scraps.
  The advertising model is socialist utopian business model, where everyone gets the same service, for the same cost, with money being no barrier to entry. Kids in Indian slums are watching the same Youtube as Moms watching 105" OLED TVs in the Hampton's. Hell that mom might even be watching that kids video, which Google happily hosts and promotes for them. All for the cost of being shown detergent and car ads.
  People take the internet for granted, and treat ads as some invasive species commandeered by mega corps to extract money from the communal nature of the modern web.
  The alternative though is not the current internet sans ads, the alternative is paywalls on everything, and only the rich kid having a Google, Meta, Discord, and Reddit account.
  Ads suck, but at least make an effort to see the whole picture.
  1. flufluflufluffy · 1790187911 · focus · HN ↗
    Nothing that person said was about removing ads.
    WarmWash · 1790192192 · focus · HN ↗
    The value of non-targeted ads isn't high enough to support what people are accustomed to getting for free.
    izacus · 1790195935 · focus · HN ↗
    Non-targeted ads have supported full industries for centuries. Cut the bullcrap.
    itsboring · 1790199171 · focus · HN ↗
    Agreed. Traditional TV and radio ads target demographics, not individuals.
    sib · 1790209348 · focus · HN ↗
    And knowing those demographics implies knowing something about those individuals.
    tancop · 1790230967 · focus · HN ↗
    The only thing we want to ban is ads based on individual peoples data. Content targeted ads would still be legal, like betting sites on a football highlight reel or HyperX gear on a gaming stream. They can be even more profitable because people are more likely to check out something if it's related to what they're doing right now and not some stupid classifiers idea of their personality.
    And if targeted ads are banned advertising budgets still have to go somewhere. Demand for the only option left will go up and keep ad revenue high. It also lowers the barrier for entry because you don't need advanced behavioral models to compete with Google and Meta, just some basic tagging or even a static profile if your site is single topic.
  2. jollyllama · 1790190328 · focus · HN ↗
    There's plenty of other laws that limit the choices of the poor for their own good. You can't just build a lean-to slum, you can't buy swill milk.
7. skyberrys · 1790188644 · focus · HN ↗
  Your solution is so efficient and workable that I highly doubt we will ever be able to implement it. Any future has to be something we can arrive at from where we are today, and since your future involves a few large corporations dropping their hands on fistfuls of cash, it's going to be really hard to get to it.
  1. kelseyfrog · 1790191456 · focus · HN ↗
    The other framing of this is: how much money are you willing to sell your rights for?
    skyberrys · 1790364086 · focus · HN ↗
    Do humans even get much choice in this though on an individual basis? Even the wealthy among us have plagues of paparazzi following them around invading their privacy. The poor have even less choice it's like either eat (grocery shop) and hand over your data or starve with your rights.
8. germinalphrase · 1790189679 · focus · HN ↗
  The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is the educational equivalent to HIPPA.
  1. dragonwriter · 1790190142 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, no, its the law that contains the educational parallel to the privacy and rights of record access parts (but not the rest) of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.
    Aside from the wrong acronym, the privacy and access rights are the central focus of FERPA, but pretty far down the list for HIPAA, despite being what many people think it is centrally about—which is why both “rights” and “privacy” are in the name of FERPA but (despite the joke about the common error in the acronym that “the second P in HIPAA is for Privacy”) neither is in the name of HIPAA.
  2. [deleted] · 1790203023 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
9. bigstrat2003 · 1790195848 · focus · HN ↗
  > The best solution is a constitutional amendment that actually enshrines a right to privacy.
  This seems like a category error on two fronts. First, the constitution is a law which applies to the government, not to private entities such as stores. The proper way to restrain behavior of private entities is with a regular law. Second, we already have a right to privacy under the US constitution (amendment 9 says that rights not enumerated in the constitution are still valid rights, and amendment 10 says that they are reserved to the people).
  Moreover, as others have said, you really don't want to use the constitution as your method of first resort when solving societal problems. It's hard to change (by design), and you don't want to have unintended consequences baked in at that level. Sometimes an amendment is necessary, but that needs to be used very sparingly.
  1. dcow · 1790202212 · focus · HN ↗
    The constitution applies to government, yes. But it's predicated on an enumeration of inalienable human rights that need to be recognized and defended. That's what makes our government different from other instances of government. The enumeration of rights sets the stage for what we value as a society. And privacy is sorely missing from the modern dialog.
    I'm sympathetic to the idea that the right to privacy in the digital age is fundamental enough that it needs to be distinguished in our founding documents and elevated to a level on par with the freedom of expression in more than just case law. Most importantly, the government shouldn't be able to spy on citizens either. Right now it does. This has implications for encryption law too.
    The point of an amendment is to establish the axioms upon which we evaluate all future laws. From there we can build a legal framework that applies similar ideas to the private sector, as and where appropriate.
10. benced · 1790196797 · focus · HN ↗
  This will make the world much poorer. You might think that's worth it but it's true.
  1. darksaints · 1790197942 · focus · HN ↗
    No it won't.
    See? I can make unsubstantiated sweeping claims too.
    [deleted] · 1790203505 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
11. powvans · 1790212272 · focus · HN ↗
  There are a lot of commenters responding to this that appear to be confused about the Constitution and government power in the US.
  The federal government has the power to regulate the conduct of private actors and to regulate the activity between private actors. The Civil Rights Act is an obvious example.
  Relevant to this discussion, obviously HIPAA regulates how certain private actors must treat the data of other private actors, aka patients.
  It's probably confusing because the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, primarily restrain government power. These were enacted because people believed that the original articles granted the federal government too much power. Amendments alter the existing document. Just like the articles in the original document, an amendment can also authorize government powers.
  The 13th amendment is a clear example of an amendment that authorizes government power and restrains the conduct of private citizens. It abolished slavery and gave Congress the power to enforce the prohibition.
  An amendment can absolutely be written to establish a right to privacy against other private actors and authorize Congress to enact regulation to enforce that right.
  1. dcow · 1790221223 · focus · HN ↗
    And even if you prefer to view the constitution as primarily setting up restrictions on government power, I think most of us here would agree that the at-scale data collection and surveillance our government performs under the guise of national security is an incredible power that is new and novel enough to warrant a discussion on keeping it in check.
    The federal government a) saves everything, b) is constantly trying to attack encryption, c) tries to insert backdoors in hardware, and d) otherwise gives itself the means to spy on citizens and aliens alike. Even though we fight and have won, it’s been pyrrhic. I’m tired of constantly having the battle every time a new generation forgets why privacy is important.
    I can’t imagine ways in which an amendment asserting every citizen’s innate ownership over their digital footprint, data sovereignty, etc. could be a misuse of the constitution. “No government shall abridge access to secure and private communication technology. No government shall collect or persist a profile of any citizen except as required to serve justice. No government can compel decryption of private data. Etc…”
12. trinsic2 · 1790225523 · focus · HN ↗
  You should probably start with an amendment to end citizens united fist. That law is making all of this possible.

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