Comments
Comment by Simone Manganelli:
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Instead of pointing out that people having to hide things in that way are probably crooks [emphasis mine], I used my surprising ability to at the same time sneer at people and yet remain polite, to just say that I don’t have any accounts in Liechtenstein that I need to hide.
I’m sorry, but no. People have a right to privacy, including honest people who don’t have “things to hide”. To assert that these protections shouldn’t be in place because honest people shouldn’t need these protections is a slippery slope. If you have nothing to hide, then the police can come into your house anytime they want to make sure you don’t have any dead bodies in your house, right?
No, that is a very bad position to take.
Comment by Simone Manganelli:
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Err, the first half of that quote before “[emphasis mine]” should have been italicized, not the latter half.
Comment by ssp:
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Oh, I’m totally in favour of privacy. But I tend to think that most other areas of privacy are more important than that of finances. Yet, financial privacy is much better protected than those other areas. And it always seems like that is the case because a lot of money considers it more profitable to remain unseen.
I don’t have first hand experience with it, but somewhere in Scandinavia that do that public tax record thing. I haven’t heard about big problems arising from that.
(Emphasis is a concept, italics are a font variant – perhaps that’s irritating you.)
Comment by LKM:
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But I tend to think that most other areas of privacy are more important than that of finances.
Wha? That strikes me as quite an odd position to take. For example, I’m actually quite happy my employer doesn’t know I donated money to wikileaks, you know, given how [deleted]. And that [deleted] and [deleted] [deleted] [deleted]. And [deleted]. On second thought, I probably shouldn’t post that. Wait, let me go back and delete most of what I just wrote.
Comment by ssp:
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@LKM:
I think we have a slight misunderstanding here: I didn’t say that your bank should uncover all the details of your transactions to anyone asking (do you disrespect your employer? do they disrespect you? Just wondering…) And your bank’s idea of ‘privacy’ is certainly a different one as well. They’ll just make sure that whatever obvious tax cheating you do the state won’t hear about it. If, however, you have some money coming in, they’ll be very quick to make sure their call-centre apes call you. That much for privacy…
I am sure that anybody who’s interested in it can deduce a good approximation of how much money you have anyway. By where you live, by where you spend your money and so on. It’s just that that ‘privilege’ is restricted to the businesses trying to get their share of your dough.
Comment by LKM:
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Well, I’m Swiss, so my bank respects my privacy ;-)
Do I disrespect my employer? Not sure how the concept of “disrespect” could possibly apply, so I guess the answer is “no” :-) But you can probably figure out why - as an example - giving money to wikileaks is not always something you want your employer and its clients to know about if you’re in Switzerland.
I agree that it’s usually possible to figure out approximately how much money somebody has, but that’s not what you wrote; you wrote:
But I tend to think that most other areas of privacy are more important than that of finances. and I disagree with that.
“Finances” is much more than just how much money you have; your finances potentially can tell somebody pretty much everything about you, and since privacy is a fundamental human right, your finances should be kept private whenever possible.
Now, I will agree that there are huge issues with foreigners illegally moving money to Switzerland. However, the answer is not to give up privacy, but to make sure that courts can get banks to release data in a legitimate trial (which is currently not the case - not that Switzerland is the only country trying to get around this; just the one shown most often in James Bond movies :-).
Comment by ssp:
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@LKM:
As for your employer, you at least seem to be reluctant to trust them to accept you and your opinions about sites like wikileaks if you’d be happy that they don’t know about donations.
I am sure we can find some reasonable middle ground there. If you take such a broad view of ‘finances’ you may have a point. I guess the perspective one has on the topic also depends on how seriously you take money and what you are doing with it. Personally I have neither enough money nor enough debt to feel ashamed about it. And I don’t feel the need to hide my opinions about or support of organisations. Perhaps I’m naïve there, perhaps I’m just not doing exciting stuff, perhaps my environment is just exceptionally tolerant.
We’ll talk about this again when I’m on a big career in the weapons industry. Perhaps that’ll change my opinion…
A general problem are of course the banks. They tolerate – and it seems reasonable to suspect that they also support or even encourage – things like tax evasion if there’s a profit in it. As long as that happens it’s hard to take their statements about privacy as anything than double tounged blather.
In fact, I never had the impression that my bank cared particularly about my privacy. They certainly analyse my account movements to see whether they can make me new ‘offers’ and I have the impression that any of their staff can snoop around my data without my explicit permission. If they really were serious about privacy, I’d expect less casual behaviour in those areas as well.
[I took the liberty to edit your comment, which originally contained part of your text in the blockquote.]
Comment by LKM:
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@ssp: It’s not about opinions, it’s more about conflict of interest. I think the issue with wikileaks should be reasonably obvious; for my own benefit, I’m not going to spell it out for you. If you think your employer needs to know what organizations you give money to, I won’t stop you from sending them your receipts :-)
I don’t think it’s a matter of how seriously you take money. It’s also not (or not only) about debt. Whether you take it seriously or not, the flow of your money says a lot about you (perhaps for you not quite yet, but it will). This is somewhat frustrating for me, since I can’t really get into details here, and I don’t want to ask you to “just trust me.” Instead, I’m going to say: be sceptical. The banks sure as hell aren’t on your side in this, but neither is the government. Just because your particular bank abuses its knowledge of your finances to send you ads doesn’t mean they should give the government the same access. Your privacy is an important asset that you should not give up just to make it easier for the government to collect taxes, because you can be sure that won’t be the only thing they’ll use that power for. There has to be a way of fighting tax evasion without giving up your privacy.
Good luck with your career in the weapons industry, though :-)
