Yes, that's the direct subtext of that phrase.

well isn’t the point of the movie that if you have a doomsday-(dead man switch)-device you should let everyone know?

I don’t get that comparison with data being available everywhere

Some of us are more practical than ideological, but we tend not to put as much energy into communicating our views as the ideological types. The result online is an often distorted sense of the universality and importance of ideology. You feel That your data is part of your personhood? I feel that it’s more like tracks in the woods and scat.

Loss of privacy has no upsides. The bomb, on the other hand, saved many millions of lives over the last 80 years, so it works as a metaphor everyone shares, but the metaphor itself was always much more arguable with nukes. It's possible to actually rationally love the bomb, but what are the upsides for everything about me being exfiltrated at will?

Yeah, like the way US citizens now are not targeted at all by ICE because their data is out there? Future evil government will not care about your data, they can just invent shit. The idea is to instill fear and uncertainty not "finding the correct people".

On the other hand, said data can be today use because various entities use extremely shitty authentication methods, like just insert your birthday and first name and voila you have a credit with our bank (not an actual example, just for illustration purposes).

> Google somehow got to know that I played Minecraft again after a decade. [...] I knew at that point already that probably all my PI is public information anyway

How are you jumping from Minecraft (probably one of the most watchtime-generating content types out there) being displayed on your main page to… your personal information being known to everyone?

>My browser was carefully containerized, with a ton of anti fingerprinting measures, VPN, Linux, Librewolf, everything

Doesn't that just make your browser very unique?

>Then one day I went to the YouTube main page, and I saw that Google somehow got to know that I played Minecraft again after a decade

Did you play minecraft on the same network? If so, I'm not sure why the results are surprising or why it would negate all your efforts. If someone else played minecraft on your network you would also see a minecraft video on your main page I would imagine.

We use xmpp in the family and the experience is good enough. I wish WhatsApp would support official federation and it would be perfect.

There's concierge services for this kind of data removal. At a certain level of wealth I assume there are teams working on this with lawyers 24/7.

I bet you could find his SSN if you looked.

> The next frontier is to maintain 'limited privacy'.

The real next frontier is to maintain one or more carefully curated personas with various companies to optimize how they treat you. Wear shabby clothes and fake beards when grocery shopping so that the cameras think you're poor. Security will be all over you, but the digital price tags will give you lower prices as long as you don't have your cell phone on you and they can't get a good face ID because then they won't be able to pull up your actual income level.

Create and maintain specially crafted social media accounts filled with fake hobbies and AI generated photos but never express an actual opinion on anything at all so that future employers can see you have a "presence" but they won't see anything that might disqualify you a job, like your political views.

Buy multiple high/low end devices and rent a closet or PO box in both rich and poor neighborhoods so that you can selectively hand out a mailing address that will make you appear either poor or well off.

Pay someone to take your cell phone out them on friday night so that you can appear more socially active otherwise you'll be flagged as anti-social which can impact employment, raise your health insurance rates, etc.

It's a bit like physical security of your house - could someone break into my house, not easily but it's a house not a bank vault. Keeping our gate closed and having a large dog (who is actually very friendly) about the place probably keeps the vast majority of possible thieves away.

That's still a bit on the obsessive side. The reasonable position is the same as it always has been in the real world too:

- Don't volunteer your intimate details left and right;

- Feel entitled to deny requests for unnecessary data (and advocate for such rights if you're in position to)

- Otherwise don't sweat it, because you can't actually control what others know about you, you never could

> I have mainly one distinction: the state is the worst protector of your data and the most ruthless gatherer of all your details.

How many state data breaches vs corporate data breaches? There are hundreds of state entities with my data (probably thousands), and yet private companies with my data have been hacked more times.

> big data breaches are inconsequential for an average person

A relative killed herself after her therapist was hacked[1] and the data was leaked. If that is inconsequential, I do not know what isn't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vastaamo_data_breach

[dead]

Because it did not. Extensions page used them but nothing else.

I just use the noun in the question. The name of my pet is pet, my favorite movie is movie, and I attended High School. Add your own standard prefix if you want it impossible to guess. Nobody will know you attended “BLARG High School.”

Then lawyer replies in plain email discussing those very things...

“We can’t open this”

It was .7z with strong pwd. The normal zip is supposedly too weak according to llms

If normal people aren't, I wouldn't expect lawyers to be either. If there's no happy path to encrypted communication, then it will not happen.

Yeah, it's old-school people control. This said, these days it could be done electronically, without the hotel storing physical information: at check-in, you put your passport in goverment-issued, (hopefully) tamper-proof machines, the hotel confirms length of stay, police server gets the info and that's it; early checkouts, the hotel must notify via some web portal. It would be relatively easy to implement.

But nobody really cares enough to spend money modernising this sort of system.

The requirement is that they provide some of the information contained in the visitor's id to a police web application. At least, that's how it works here in Spain. But it doesn't mean the hotel needs to take a picture of your id, nor scan it. They just need to transcribe the required information. Yet some would not let you check-in if you refuse to let them scan your id or take pictures of it, that you never know how and for how long will be kept. Of course, you usually don't want to argue after you arrive at some place to make the check-in when the alternative is to sleep on the street.

Not in my, admittedly limited, experience. I've stayed in hotels in at least a dozen countries and under half of them wanted my passport. In the UK it's usually enough to just say my name to the receptionist, they confirm how long I'm staying, ask me to sign a form and tell them my car registration number and then they hand me the key. Quite often there isn't even a form to sign, just a terminal to enter my car registration number to avoid parking fees.

I was asked for my passport in a Premier Inn this summer because they thought I was a foreigner but when I pointed out that I was a UK citizen they dropped the requirement.

In Europe it was mostly Italy and Poland that wanted to see my passport.

I politely refused the data collection a couple times just to confirm my understanding, expecting to trigger some discussion in case I was wrong. But hotel staff was perfectly aware of the applicable local rules and just skipped ahead to explaining the most convenient route to my room. Apparently the general assumption among visitors is that they would not ask if they were not required to collect it.

Travel to Spain and they will not give you a room key until they can take your passport and make a scan of it, often times on an old flatbed print/scanner combo, that they print out a copy on paper to staple to their copy of the invoice and put god knows where. It's been like that for about 6-8 years. No more showing up and paying cash for a hotel room.

You can try to say no, but I don't think you can anymore. I go through this a dozen times a year on my travels there.

This is Spain.

If democracy really worked, and your desire to spy on politicians is shared by enough people, supposedly, you should be able to create your own party which has that explicit goal. Maybe find a few other goals, or you will end up like the pirates :-)

I am writing this because I don't think democracy works as advertised.

Because you are a slave, Neo.

> cash

How can you presume we do not pay with cash?! How can you remotely suppose one sane mind would not use cash for all sensitive private transactions - books, medicines, preferential (profiling) products etc.?

We use cash in general because nobody in Dignity would accept their own daily matters to be recorded and given to multiple untrusted parties¹, not to mention potentially retrievable by even more untrusted parties - of course the matter is much more evident for all transactions over confidential items!

(¹EU here: 12 public-hybrid-private DBs as per the PSD2 legislation.)

No, in the EU, you don't "own" the data about yourself in any meaningful sense. For example, under the GDPR, consent is just one of several potentially available legal bases for processing personal data — in fact, it's the one basis you usually want to avoid as a business if at all possible — which also means that for most uses of your data, you do not have any unqualified right to demand a controller cease processing or remove your personal data.

Whether or not that data exists to be leaked is entirely within my control though.

Thanks, I got a good laugh out of this comment, but therapy is just a tool to mostly learn how to deal with things that are outside of your control.

A therapist reads like the-rapist, in his case, and in many others. It's bandaid on a failing system, a failing society, and instead of fixing the system the victim has to pay the-rapist. Misaligned incentives all over again. To correct this therapy should be free, because the need for it shouldn't exist. Let the tech billionaires pay for it: if they cause the damage, they have to pay the bill. That'll teach them how to prioritize user satisfaction.

> things that are out of your control

That's because of corruption. A system that doesn't want to change because some tits can't be let go of. A well working system would render control back to you.

Right. It was harder to spoof my bank (since banking was an in-person affair), and steal all my money back then. Now, this information is available to anyone in the world, and there aren’t good protections. I don’t know the solution, but the world is a different place than it was in the days of white-pages.

It used to be illegal here to reverse look up a name matching to a phone number, since it was "owned" by the state telephone company and they didn't want that happening. But you were allowed to reverse look up the address of a number and then look up the person and match it to the number. So that magic happened under the hood. The trick was getting the residential information but since that wasn't a problem in the '90s I'm sure it is even less of an issue now.

But that was optional, you weren’t forced to reveal your location to the person who raped you

In Sweden I have looked up someone's phone number through the info I got from the license plate to notify the owner of a BMW M5 that their 20 years old son was often speeding down the 30km/h street close by my house where kids would cross coming from the metro or a bus stop nearby.

The owner just thanked me, and said was going to have a chat with the driver. Never saw that car speeding nearby again.

When you do this the owner of the car is notified. And there is an audit trail because you do it by sending a text to a premium number.

The debt information is there so that when the owner sells the car the buyer can check to see if they actually really do own it outright.

I don't even see salary or what your debt is as "personal information" (am Swede not in Sweden), personal information is stuff that no one else would need to know. What people earn affects not just people around you and others in the workplace but also society at large, makes a ton of sense for that stuff to be public.

Especially great that you can see what employees at competitors earn, what your peers at your workplace earn and what your boss earns. Become a hell of lot easier to ensure you're not exploited. Helps that Sweden has a really strong union-culture as well.

It seems that you can have a protected address in Denmark as well. Apparently, the protected address is even a field in the current leak.

Ah, so the “open” system is actually a two-tier system where everyone’s information is equally open except for those who are more equal than the rest.

> Personally I solved this problem for myself by moving away from the country.

Quite drastic to move away from a country for just this. Did you only do it for just this? Or was this simply one of the factors why you moved away?

>I feel like this should be the default.

The autorities do not, and the guy who "leaked" the CPR number of Mette Frederiksen was thrown in jail.

On an unrelated note, I recently read about voyage of the Mayflower across the Atlantic. It's a captivating piece of history.

Yes, it's great for businesses, you can search for the cheapest labor, and helps you avoid paying someone much more than they previously earned.

It will be registered if you ask Skatteverket directly, but if you go via a company (i.e.: Eniro), the subject does not get to know it.

If you login with an account (which you can create for free), you can also see the personnumber. See someone elses salary without them knowing about it for 39/49SEK, which is around 3-4$

Kind of. It's advised to keep it secret but I'd be astonished if most people haven't had it leaked whether they realise it or not. Usually when identifying with e.g. a telecoms provider you would give your SSN and then some additional piece of meta-data such as address. Chances are everyone has a combination of SSN + address + phone leaked.

When you change your address you can click a checkbox saying you want a protected name/address. This means that companies that have you as customers/clients won't be able to get the new address, mail won't be redirected, etc

I did it accidentally during my last move and it was a pain in the behind

And it expires after a year by default so it feels rather pointless

  Domain:               ft.dk
  DNS:                  ft.dk
  Registered:           1995-07-04
  Expires:              2027-09-30
  Registration period:  1 year
  VID:                  no
  DNSSEC:               Signed delegation
  Status:               Active
  
  Registrant
  Handle:               DATA REDACTED
  Name:                 Folketinget
  Address:              Christiansborg Slot 1
  Postalcode:           1218
  City:                 København K
  Country:              DK
  Phone:                +4533375500
  Email:                webmaster@ft.dk
  ID status:            ID verified via electronic ID
  
  Nameservers
  Hostname:             maleah.ns.cloudflare.com
  Hostname:             yichun.ns.cloudflare.com

You can just apply for protected address. I did that once, because I did not want that my .dk domains whois would show my name and address.

I managed to get protected address, it's just to log in somewhere and request it. I can't remember the details, but it made for example banking _slightly_ more annoying. They would call me so they can send me a letter. Also makes it harder for people who know your name to look up your address.

Never managed to get my name removed from my domain whois and at some point removed protected address again. In theory, if I share one of my other .com domains on the internet, an attacker could reverse DNS the IP, find my DK domain and thus get my full name and address.

I think they do this to make it easier to remember your number. It’s really not private data in the Nordics as others mentioned, even your address and phone number and , on request, salary can be easily found out legally.

It's honestly worse. DDMMYYY (the last Y is from a lookup table to know if it's 18YY, 19YY or 20YY). If a person is born before October 2007 you can even do a checksum using the last digits to verify that the number is "correct" (not necessarily in use). And yes, last digit is an even number for women, and uneven for men.

You're conflating two different things here. What Denmarks excels at it implementing public IT solutions that makes processes smoother, like patient records, medical perscriptions, digital signature, a nation-wide digital identity, things like that. Digital sovereignty isn't part of this, and Denmark isn't particularly good at it, nor is it really valued that highly. Same for cyber security, I'd say that it's down to dumb luck that it's not worse. There is a city, Randers, they can't send email to the domain anders.dk (Anders being a pretty normal Danish name). Why? Because the butterfingered public employees in Randers could stop sending personal information about citizen to anders.dk, which has a catch-all email. They simply forgot the "r". The problem is the lax attitude to emailing sensitive information, probably via a Microsoft run Exchange server, but rather than fixing that, they just blocked the anders.dk domain.

Mhh, I don't know. In Germany they proudly proclaimed their BAföG / Student loans (SU in Denmark) is now digital. But what was digital was just the client side, on the government agency side they still would print out the applications. And because they where used to people sending in paper, they had to hire more people to help with the printing. AHHHHH. That is the state of German digitalisation.

There are things I wish I could change in Denmark, mainly the power sockets and number system (Base 20 what the heck?) but Denmark is on a good course when it comes to IT understanding. Both the broader society and government implementations.

Yes yes, Estonia is better. But Denmark is still doing good.

> Where's your source to back up this claim?

Feel. Having lived in Denmark and Germany. And working for the public sector.

MitID is just chefs kiss how many other countries can you log in to your bank, student loan, and local municipality with the same sso. Country wide app for local transportation tickets of different types. EPJ / Elektronisk Patient Journal has it's fault, but compared to other countries[2] yet again not that bad.

Shit man, even something simple has going to the doctor for blood tests. I think you can get the results on the same day via app. Maybe next day. In Germany[1] you have to wait a few days, then the Dr. calls you with the results and then you can ask him if he can mail it to you.

What in Denmark actually requires you to get physically to the municipality? Weddings? Even divorces work online. Compare that to Germany, Austria, Italy etc.

Why do you think Denmark is not one of the leading countries in digitalization?

    [1] Probably dependens on location / Bundesland.
    [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektronische_Patientenakte_(Deutschland)

Edit: Just looked at some real benchmarks. One from EU where they put DK at 7th out of EU27 https://composite-indicators.jrc.ec.europa.eu/explorer/indic... And one UN E-Government Survey from 2024 where they rank first. https://publicadministration.un.org/egovkb/en-us/Reports/UN-... (I just looked at an overview)

I can't say how accurate these lists are. But they match my observations. Nordics lead.

Or how there still are over 200 people working fulltime on the corona mink .. "event"

That said, compared to other countries the tax / SKAT is also quite decent.

It is more or less trivial to find someone's home address now if you try at all. Thats my point on duplicated data in hacks.

> Like Google and Apple?

Yes, like Google and Apple. If you would take a look at my submission history, you'll see exactly one. It was me celebrating the passing of the Digital Markets Act more than four years ago. This Act clearly lays out requirements for gatekeepers like Apple. I summarise these requirements in a comment in the submission:

* Install any software

* Install any App Store and choose to make it default

* Use third party payment providers and choose to make them default

* Use any voice assistant and choose to make it default

* User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it default

* Use any messaging app and choose to make it default

* Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay out concrete examples like file transfer

* Use existing hardware and software features without competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC

* Not preference their services. This includes CTAs in settings to encourage users to subscribe to Gatekeeper services, and ranking their own services above others in selection and advertising portals

To date, Apple has implemented only a handful of these, and they have done so with malicious intent. For example, they have made the creation and distribution of third party app stores to onerous that very few companies have navigated the gauntlet and actually used it. Third party browser engines are now technically supported, but so poorly that not even Google has endeavoured to create an iOS browser engine. The worst example is app distribution. The DMA requires gatekeepers to facilitate free distribution. Apple has failed to cmoply with this for four years, and has repeatedly appealed when admonished. The Commission has been sitting on their most recent "review" for over a year now, without any updates.

The net result of all of this is that Apple has retained almost all of their duopolistic market power, and has implemented almost none of the DMA requirements. They have given us the middle finger and our legislators have gone to sleep.

> Which would those be? I would be interested to know.

I'll give you me perspective as a Danish citizen.

The EU imposed working-time recording requirements, so now I have to log my working hours every week. I'm a full time employee and I work longer and shorter weeks. Now I have to waste time each week logging my hours. My company has to waste time each week logging hours and reporting them to the government and the EU.

The EU required bottle caps to remain attached to most plastic drinks containers, so now I have to wrestle with an attached cap every time I drink from one.

The EU banned ordinary disposable plastic cutlery, plates and straws, removing products I previously had the choice to buy.

The EU introduced rules requiring consent for many non-essential cookies, helping turn everyday web browsing into an endless series of cookie banners.

The EU introduced "Strong Customer Authentication" requirements, so routine online payments and banking increasingly require additional authentication steps.

The EU abolished the €22 VAT exemption on low-value imports, making even tiny purchases from outside the EU subject to VAT. This one in particular sucks because the company or local tax authorities impose huge minimum fees, making small cross-border purchases far too expensive now.

The EU imposed expanded producer-responsibility rules on packaging, adding recycling fees, reporting requirements and compliance costs that ultimately feed into the prices I pay.

The EU passed even more extensive packaging regulations covering recyclability, recycled content, packaging minimisation and reuse, adding another layer of costs and restrictions to ordinary products.

The EU imposed increasingly strict CO2 targets on car manufacturers, financially penalising manufacturers whose fleets exceed them and increasing the pressure to make petrol and diesel cars more expensive or stop selling them.

The EU created ETS2, which from 2028 will add a carbon price to road fuels and home heating, creating another cost that fuel and energy suppliers can pass on to me.

The EU imposed sustainable aviation fuel mandates and tighter carbon rules on airlines, increasing the regulatory cost of flying.

The EU brought shipping into its carbon-pricing system and introduced FuelEU Maritime, leading shipping companies to add explicit EU environmental surcharges that feed into the cost of goods I buy.

The EU imposed Ecodesign restrictions on appliances, including maximum power limits for products such as vacuum cleaners, reducing the range of products I am allowed to buy.

The EU passed a minimum-wage directive despite Denmark already having its own collective-bargaining model, forcing Denmark to fight the EU in court to protect a labour-market system that was already working without a statutory minimum wage.

I used to agree.

But since then I have experienced how scared mugglers get when they get a threatning mail with the only legitimacy of naming and old leaked password.

This will be easy to exploit on a scale.

Scammers used to prey on the weakest hence the many Nigerian Princes. But as they get more sophisticated and move up the chain they start to look more and more legitimate.