Is Privacy an Over-Rated Legacy of the Past?

The concept of privacy is a tricky one, to say the least.  Most people, when asked for a quick response would likely tell you that privacy is very important to them and that they are concerned about who has access to what they consider “private” data about them.

However, these very same people will create Facebook accounts, wander the web without using any sort of anonymous IP cloaking, send emails without encryption and speak loudly on their cell phones at crowded restaurants.  Many people are surprised to learn that things like your home address, phone number, email and endless other data is already freely (or at least) easily accessible to anyone handy with a few search engines and a database or two.

As we willingly share more and more information about our day-to-day lives via Twitter or Facebook status updates one has to wonder if we might not be better served giving up on this false sense of privacy and just open the floodgates.

As Matt Asay at CNet says:

Think about it. My in-box already knows where I’m traveling, what I buy, etc. because my receipts go there. If someone were to merge this data with my phone records (easily had for the price of my AT&T login credentials), my e-mail log, and my Twitter, IM, and social network data, they’d know exactly who I know and where I’m likely to bump into them…I’d love to automatically be told that my good friend Mike is in London at the same time as I am, and have a service suggest a reservation at a favorite restaurant (which it would know through my past OpenTable reservations). I’d “pay” for that by giving up a lot of data.        LINK

At first glance, this sounds crazy to a lot of people but the question is whether it is more valuable to you to keep your travel plans secret or to make them widely available as a potential way to add value to your travel.  We are already targeted by advertisers for our social behavior and choices made both online and offline, so it’s not especially new, at least in concept, that our personal data could and should be used in this manner.

The larger question is whether or not the whole concept of “privacy” is really just a social concept that is undergoing a major shift.  I am sure that the views on privacy from a sixty-year-old are radically different from those of a twelve-year-old.

EyeBorg is Watching (and so is the government…)

Filmmaker Rob Spence is missing an eye so he is in the process of making a fake eye with a tiny video projector installed within it, allowing him, eventually, to record everything he “sees.”

In addition to helping make important strides in the research and development of possible prosthetics for the blind, Spence is hoping to turn his eventual videos into a study on privacy and surveillance.

I was listening to a story about Spence on BBC World Service this morning and the commentators were saying they would hide if they saw Spence coming their way if they knew he was an “EyeBorg.”  Of course, what is so silly about hiding from an eyeborg is that we are being recorded by, depending on where you live and what you do, many cameras every day.  Take money from an ATM (or just walk past one slowly) and you’ve been taped.  Go in or out of almost any major retail store, you’ve been taped.

The notion that it is somehow more invasive for a private citizen to have the same recording capabilities as the government and businesses is kind of “head in the sand” thinking.

It’s interesting how many people reactly with a strong negative response if you take pictures of them in public.  It might not be against the law but people feel violated nonetheless.  Yet, nobody seems to be upset when they get money from the ATM.

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Step One: Surrender All Privacy. Step Two: Cut Lines at Airports

I am slightly terrified by a recent post in SAI, in which the writer brags about how his new Clear Card allowed him to speed past security at JFK.

Last Saturday, I flew from Jacksonville, FL, to JFK, and I would never have made my flight without the Clear Card. The regular security long was long, but I was ushered to a special line along with military personnel (there are many in Jacksonville) with no wait whatsoever. The attendant slid my card and checked my boarding pass, I presented my retina to the eyeball-scanning machine, and off I went.

Yup.  All it took for this guy to give a notoriously loose government agency a slew of personal information and put his retina scan on permanent record was a speedy passage through the airport.

Imagine how little it is going to take for most Americans to simply surrender what little annonymity they have left in the name of convenience.

What’s Your Privacy Worth? A Free Smartphone?

Image via Wikipedia

The NYT has a good article about the pros and cons of massive data mining and the state of our personal privacy.

As a jumping-off point they look at a program being run at M.I.T.

“Now, when he dials another student, researchers know. When he sends an e-mail or text message, they also know. When he listens to music, they know the song. Every moment he has his Windows Mobile smartphone with him, they know where he is, and who’s nearby.

Mr. Brown and about 100 other students living in Random Hall at M.I.T. have agreed to swap their privacy for smartphones that generate digital trails to be beamed to a central computer. Beyond individual actions, the devices capture a moving picture of the dorm’s social network. ”

While this is a relatively harmless and completely voluntary invasion of privacy it raises a slew of questions about what constitutes “private” actions and how, in this digital age especially, are we going to balance the technical ability to track and gather personal data with the rights of the individual?

NYT piece is definitely worth a read.

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