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RE: Privacy vs Secrecy, The Differences and The Importance of Access Control
Privacy in my terms of personal information rather than sensitive information. Public information should not be private or secret. It is hard to define the word privacy when somethings are sort of considered private, yet they can be made public.
I am looking at this subject from a legal perspective. Of course, your definition of privacy is relevant to the crypto world. Sensitive information does not necessary include private stuff. Sometimes your hobbies may be considered private. I believe this post is in relation to passwords.
What counts as public information and how does it become owned by the public? Are you talking about information which no one is claiming or able to claim as being somehow able to effect their life? My definition is more about the ethics of it, if the information could negatively effect someone's life and they don't want the public to know then it's private. It's private and important to remain private because it effects someone personally and to release that information would violate them personally.
From a corporate point of view, it's bad for the reputation of a company to violate the trust of the customer. So when you consider the amount of damage certain information could cause if released to the public then it is fairly easy to see the value of privacy. In some situations it could be political views, because we know in certain parts of the world people who have the wrong views can be killed or harmed. When information is intentionally released to harm people personally, or to terrorize or influence behaviors, this could be considered information warfare. While information warfare does take place, it's a sign of insecurity.
Any information that is made public, whether it is published in the public forum (internet, public space, published in news paper for general consumer...etc.) is considered public information. I am not sure if the "public" owns it, since information in say a legal proceeding is public at one moment could be under seal and all that information was accessible is now not public. I am not sure if anyone owns the public.
I am saying that information that is considered private, say like my favorite vice (which may or may not be morally or ethically wrong). For sake of example, my let's say my vice is eating ice-cream. I would not want anyone to know this even if it doesn't have any effect on my life.
I totally understand your perspective. Information that is private does not necessarily have to affect one's life from a negative or ethically way. I am saying that there is information that does not affect anything and is still considered private and should be for reason of privacy.
The reason I make this distinction is important, because whether it should affect us negatively or not is irrelevant to the protections of privacy. As the Courts in the United States have said, what one does in the privacy of his/her home is in of itself their business and no one else (I'm paraphrasing, sort of ). If private information is only considered private for sake of protecting one from negative effects, then that would be a pretty strong argument for the government to infringe on that privacy.