Asking smokers to stop smoking is futile. Asking people to break invalid standards of societal structures is non-trivial. Asking people to protect their privacy is moot.
Unless, there is intrinsic motivation. This is an attempt to understand my analysis of “why”.
More often than not, when I have had conversations about Privacy, the argument goes something like this: I have nothing to hide, I don’t fear/mind them looking into my private life. Let’s dissect this statement.
I
Each of us has a different world view at some level(s). Our surroundings, people, location, culture, financial background; has an impact on our world view. Some of the beliefs that we hold are derived from our world view. They do not necessarily have to be true. We need to learn to un-learn the beliefs and make small incremental modifications to our world view when challenged with facts that render our beliefs to be invalid.
When the topics which have an impact on a larger portion of the populace, deriving conclusions only from an I perspective is not justified. An average or median case has to be considered in such scenarios. I or you might be comfortable sharing a piece of private information publicly, people may not be. It can be any trait with various reasons to not make it public information. From snoring to sexual orientation. A weak analogy would be: because you don’t have anything to say, does it mean freedom of speech is not beneficial to a wider populace?
have nothing to hide
It’s not about hiding. Privacy is to have control over information about oneself, control over giving access to other entities with transparency and accountability as to how that information will be used if given access.
Does all your friends, family, colleagues have the same level of access to information about you? Depending on the amount of information one divulges to others, it helps to maintain different levels of intimacy, some of those relations might not be intimate. Love, friendship, and trust are only possible if we enjoy privacy and accord it to each other. One can say that a threat to privacy is a threat to our very integrity as people.
Remember that seemingly funny but lewd comment that you sent during a conversation with your best friend on an instant messaging app? That comment, taken out of context, is a weapon against you. The implications in your life can vary from mild to severe depending on who is coming after you and what is at stake.
In private we bad-mouth our friends and use coarse language; that we act different in private than in public is everyone’s most conspicuous experience, it is the very ground of the life of the individual; curiously, this obvious fact remains unconscious, unacknowledged, forever obscured by lyrical dreams of the transparent glass house, it is rarely understood to be the value one must defend beyond all others. [Kundera, The unbearable lightness of being]
One last thing on this sub-topic: everybody knows what you would probably do in the bathroom, yet you lock your door. Why? It’s not a secret you are protecting, it’s your privacy. Why should that be any different in the digital world?
I don't fear/mind 'them'
“Them”, a generalization on my part where my conversationalists referred to companies or governments. I am fascinated by the amount of trust people have on, as Harari says, imagined realities. For a brief explanation of imagined reality (I highly recommend reading Sapiens), how would you identify Apple Inc.? Do you point at your iPhone and say yes that’s Apple Inc. -> Apple Inc. was existing before they launched the iPhone. Is it their offices around the world -> Apple Inc. would still exist if all their offices closed down. It’s that piece of paper, signed by a bunch of people and some institution (which in itself is an imagined reality) and voila!, we have Apple Inc. Similarly, nations are imagined realities where a constitution was written after fighting battles over decades to decide which part of land belongs to that nation. The validity of trust in these imagined realities is out of scope of this blog. Maybe someday I’ll venture there.
A common denominator among these entities is that they are dynamically changing and will continue to do so. Maybe the current government or the board members of your favorite social networking platform act ethically now, but that might change during the next elections. And as they say, the internet remembers everything! Once data leaves your device, you have no control over it. That’s where law kicks in. Modern men are born in chains, only the law can set them free. Hence, it is imperative that we have strong regulations for entities collecting, distributing, and using our private data.
looking into my private life
Here’s how easy it is to uniquely identify you in the world: Forget about even using the internet, how many cell phones do you think are in the same cellular zone of your home and work for 5 days a week? Combine that with a multitude of tech-savvy techniques to not only identify you but also track you up to an accuracy of few meters. Why do these things matter?
We are living in an attention-based economy where companies are fighting with each other for your attention time on screen. Longer they have your attention, more they can understand you. More they understand you, more personalized ads they can serve you, and that in turn means more money for them. If we talk about governments, replace making money with control over you to stay in power.
When they use all these pieces of information and apply Nudge Theory to it, the results could lead to a dystopian future. Even with current technological advancements, it is possible to change the individual as well as collective behavior. And as we know, it has already happened. The looking has changed to nudging without us realizing it. And here’s the scary part: imagine an entire generation of humans born inside this bubble they create. The illusion of choices they give us is laughable at best while gradually restricting our ability to exercise autonomy.
Knowledge may be transparent; but power rarely is.
Looking Forward
This was my first attempt to make my friends understand “why” privacy is essential. In the upcoming part of this topic, I will talk about “what” is the current scenario with major governments and tech companies and in the final part, I will discuss “how” we can help to push for privacy.
Final note:
I was in a dilemma to address the issue of privacy with respect to COVID-19 pandemic. In my opinion, if we had stricter regulations in place before the pandemic, and if the motto of privacy-by-design was followed religiously, we would not have been even talking about it. But I will stop here with my opinions and direct you to an excellent article by New York Times.
Till next time!
References, Further Reading:
[3] The New York Times’ Privacy Project
[4] Book: Privacy - What everyone needs to know by Francis & Francis