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Developer Aral Balkan has written a reaction piece on human rights in response to some poor ideas put out by a Palantir- and Google- sponsored docent teaching "Privacy and Big Data" at a university in The Netherlands. His point is that the attempts to spin privacy as anything other than a basic human right are nothing more than efforts to eliminate it:
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. van der Sloot’s argument can be summarised with this doozy of a quote from his article1:
Should privacy science be pro-privacy, or is it an undermining of the neutrality of privacy science? If privacy science should be neutral, why is there so much commotion about the sponsorship by commercial parties like Google, Facebook and Palantir and are there few words wasted on sponsorship by activist civil rights organizations such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPiC), Privacy First and Bits of Freedom, which are outspoken pro-privacy? Does this not indicate that the criticism of sponsorship by commercial parties comes from persons who are not themselves neutral and objective, but actually pursue a pro-privacy agenda?
Where does one begin to dissect such a juicy turd?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @03:48PM (3 children)
If they'd replace animals with the worst crime prisoners for lab testing you can bet crime would decrease and prison costs would drop.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday February 17 2019, @04:46PM
I thought about that, but the idea might not work out so well. There's a great deal of uncertainty in lab experiments, and a twisted mind of a convict could imagine many potential outcomes of a random medical experiment. So they will want to cause as much damage as possible on their way out, and that just might include choking the shit out of the lab monkey charged with giving them that untested vaccine.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 17 2019, @09:31PM
Historical analogies don't back you up. Pickpockets used to do a thriving business at the crowds gathered to watch someone else's hands being cut off.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @12:48AM
Do you want supermutants? Because this is how you get supermutants.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.