People devote only 5% of their time online on search engines. The rest is spent on social networks and browsing other sites.
If marketing could follow us without actually eavesdropping they would be able to compile comprehensive dossiers based on the type of sites we visit, the things we read, the videos we watch and products we shop for. It sounds spooky, of course and people claim they do care about the lack of privacy.
A UPI-Zogby International poll from 2007 found that 85% of respondents claimed privacy of their personal information was important to them as consumers, and 91% said they were worried about identity theft. In another UPI-Zogby poll, 50% expressed concern over the privacy of their medical records. Most, however, aren’t concerned enough to do anything about it.
If privacy, is as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis proposed 80 years ago, is “the right to be left alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilian men,” which he included as part of a set of conditions “favorable to the pursuit of happiness” laid down by the founding fathers in the constitution, how would he view our current surveillance society? Over the course of a day the typical American is caught on camera 200 times: at traffic lights, paying highway tolls, walking the dogs, taking money from ATMs, shopping in convenience stores, and a tiny fraction are caught committing crimes.
Within a 20 block radius of New York University, there are more than 500 surveillance cameras, which catch students and professors doing everything from buying Falafel, racing past the iconic fountain in Washington Square Park, on the way to class, or purchasing allergy medicine like Claritin D for which they are required by law to show their ID, because it contains a common substance used in meth.
It’s not just New York’s Greenwich Village, where NYU is located with its own 24-7 reality show starring… everybody. Dozens of states have set up traffic light cameras that ticket drivers for running red lights or speeding. Casinos in Las Vegas zoom in on player’s hands at the black jack table. Cameras are mounted on police cars, they hand from trees in public parks, they are affixed to the walls in sports stadiums and shopping malls. David Brin, author of the transparent society, postulates a Moore’s law of cameras.” He sees them roughly “halving in size, doubling in acuity and movement capability and sheer numbers, every year or two” Look out a decade and nano cameras as small as grains of sand may create a world in which the wind has eyes.
If privacy, is the state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion,” which is the American Heritage Dictionary definition, what about the Department of Motor Vehicles, famous for peddling information to anyone who will buy it? Or the credit rating agencies like TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian, which profit by selling access to our financial histories? Or the most brazen of all the government, which stiff armed companies such as AT&T to record our phone calls and sniff our email, all in the name of fighting terrorism? Or if privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world, a view tendered in the essay ” a Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” what’s the deal with Gmail which keeps carbon copies of our email correspondence for ever, so google can birrage us with more ads? Or American Express which collects the details of billions of customer transactions, weaves them into models of behavior then sells this data to junk mailers of all stripes and sizes?
The truth is, the battle over privacy, no matter how defined has already been lost. As Sun CEO Scott McNealy infamously put it, “you have no privacy. Get over it.”
In all sincerity, we consumers have been complicit in this post privacy smack down. However, it’s not necessarily bad. In fact, it could be good, and not just for the corporations that profit from it or the government that taps into it to control it’s citizenry.
Information wants to be free is the hacker’s credo. In reality information has a price in the form of convenience, cash or security. It’s why we shop with credit cards even though they lead to mailbox-cramming junk mail, and sign up for loyalty cards with Barnes & Noble or CVS’s Extra Care Program, which has enrolled tens of millions of Americans who receive 2% back on every purchase and additional dollar for every prescription they fill in exchange for tracking every purchase. It’s the reason we use cell phones when we are out of the office, GPS when we are on the road, and Onstar for the few who buy GM cars, all of which can pin point our location. We still surf the web, despite our internet service provider (ISP) knowing what sites we visit and how long we search with google which maintains lists of the terms we’ve queried.
Remember that late night tequila binge and that curiously odd sexual… never mind. None of these are spy technologies, but they might as well be.
Donald Kerr, Principle deputy director of national intelligence, said in a speech in October 2007 that Americans would have to change their view of privacy which no longer can mean anonymity, he said. Instead it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.”
He added, “Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won,” which is creepy coming from one of our nation’s tops spies. No surprise that the blogsphere squealed. After all, a staggering 127 million sensitive electronic and paper records were lost and pierced by hackers in 2008, while identify theft runs rampant affecting one in eight Americans, and growing every year. The idea of the government safe guarding our information is laughable. Naturally we can blame technology and the greater interconnectedness of our world since it replicates our personal information and spews it far and wide in cyberspace, stashing it in far-flung databases outside of our control. We don’t just have Big Brother to content with, we have a series of little brothers – your googles, Double clicks and ISPs, the credit rating agencies, social networks like myspace and Facebook, and marketers who want to know everything about you.
With advanced data sifting techniques, the rise of massive databases and the permanence thereof, once your information is out there it can never be taken back, out deepest darkest secrets instantly available to anyone with the desire and know-how to learn them.
If Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, can’t keep secret his home address, the value of his house, date of birth, net worth, value of Google Stock, hobbies, quotes he’s just as soon take back (like Evil is what Sergey says is evil) what chance do the rest of us have? With Google Earth it’s even possible to view his home and property (it’s amazing what $3 million will get you). If you recall, in 2005 Google briefly blacklisted CNET because a reporter Googled Schmidt, then published what she found (things like he wandered the desert at Burning Man and earned $140 million dumping google stock). The company didn’t like the fact that CNET published the Google CEO’s private information, which the reporter found using the company’s own product.
It’s easy to find people to gripe about privacy, laying blame at the feet of big business and government, but what to do about it? Talk to the privacy hawks at the Electronic Privacy information Center and they’ll tell you what the problem is, decrying the actions of the credit agencies, Google and the government, but not how to fix things, other than to offer consumer bromides like “pay with cash where possible,” don’t share any personal information with businesses unless it’s absolutely necessary, and choose supermarkets that don’t use loyalty cards. But companies have a powerful profit motive. Our information, the more personal the better, is worth billions. The better they know us, our likes and dislikes, the easier it is for them to induce us to buy, buy, buy and the the more money they’ll make.
The only way to keep our personal information personal is to unplug from the grid; pay with cash, don’t surf the web from home or your job, don’t go out in public without a mask, don’t drive a car, don’t maintain a checking or saving account, don’t use a cell phone or PDA and under no circumstances take out a mortgage. Good luck.
Yet this doesn’t mean we are heading toward some William Gibson-esque techno-dystopia. Since we can’t parry the privacy hounds, we need to embrace the idea of a more transparent world. Realize for all the brouhaha surrounding this issue, there’s little tangible harm that arises from your personal information being used to target more relevant advertising at you. Google knows you have a taste for mud wrestling or middget tossing, so what. They’re not talking unless the government subpoenas them. Facebook told your friends you rented a slasher flick from Block buster? They might simply ask which one? Yahoo has proof you’ve been using webmail to conduct a hot, tawdry affair? Yahoo is the lest of your worries.
Looking on the bright side the wide dissemination of our personal information – that’s the unintended byproduct of social networks – could lead to a more tolerant less judgmental society.
Leave a Reply