High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
Talk at the Oxford Libertarian SocietyChristchurch college, OxfordThursday 3rd June 2010
Fed up with people claiming privacy is dead? Privacy is to identity what freedomis to morality - one can't exist without the other. Adriana Lukas describes how recent developments on the Internet have destroyed our ability to maintain private information and how we can get it back.
Privacy - why is it good?
It's been said for a long time that sharing is good for humans as we are socialanimals. And online sharing is the activity de jour with benefits often describedwith complicated neologisms - synchronicity, ambient intimacy, in otherwords 'speculative' or 'broadcast sharing' - giving us ability to connect withpeople beyond the usual physical social boundaries.
Apart from the human nature, this explosion of sharing is based on the ability topublish, which I argue is one of the most powerful social functionalities to dateavailable to an individual.
Despite that I believe the current online web 'architecture' is heading for adisaster, where privacy has become a binary choice, often regarded as a more orless acceptable trade-off that 'consumers' are only too willing to make in returnfor some benefits to them.I tend to think it is an issue of choice. If there is no meaningful choice andpeople understand this, they might just as well forgo a bit of privacy in exchangefor what appears tangible benefit to them - a discount, a better deal etc, butas tools arise to help people to take charge of their own data, their mindset willshift too.
So on the practical level - online privacy is about creating tools that help theindividual to control access to data to the point where he/she decides directlywho gets to see what - without reliance upon a third party or an intermediary.
But let's first look at why privacy is good or necessary. As Mr Zuckerberg argueswhen defending Facebook's latest encroachment on users' privacy: the socialnorms are changing, people are sharing openly, and more than they'd admitto if asked beforehand, and Facebook is merely following the social norm.Apart from its utter unwholesomeness - most people are interested in breadand games so let's make that the norm and yes, I am aware I just comparedFacebook users to a mob - this defence undermines any choice in the matter.Facebook likes to describe itself as a social utility, which is a dangerouscomparison. It is claiming the place of an infrastructure in an environmentwhere the infrastructure is based on autonomy and peerage - the internet.But I digress. Let's swap Mr Zuckerberg for Mr Jeremy Bentham, anotherarchitect of an environment where privacy was used for social engineering
experimentation. Panopticon
1
was designed to change behaviour, though thiswas seen as a feature not a bug, a part of a social reform of prisoners. InBentham's time, privacy was inherent in human dignity and identity, at least forsome people. It wasn't even defined as a right - at least for some people! "Youwatched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It'sintrinsic to the concept of liberty."
Let's look at another privacy-eliminating dystopia, the Big Brother in Orwell's1984. Lack of privacy on the political level amounts to greater control overindividuals by the state. It makes us open to abuses of power, compounding thepolitical power with the "information is power" dictum.During communism, privacy was non-existent or seen as undesirable. Anyonewas allowed and encouraged to report on you. Sometimes they wanted you toknow - the Panopticon approach. But often not, especially once they realisedpeople will look for new ways of communicating and gathering. There was away of recognising a certain click on the phone, which meant it was tapped.Various coded ways of communicating to confuse the enemy were devised,but ultimately, lack of privacy and constant surveillance made the dissidentmovement pretty ineffectual.
On the social level, loss of privacy leads to being open to judgement by others,misinterpretations and ostracism by the group. It deprives one of the ability toshare discriminately or not share at all. It also leads to self-censorship, which isanother way of saying loss of freedom of expression.It's at this level I argue that privacy is to identity, what free will (or at leastillusion of it) is to morality. Without going into intricacies of moral theory, it isfair to say that without the ability to choose right and wrong action, moralitywouldn't have much meaning. Similarly, without the ability to keep things tooneself, share them with some people and not others, present oneself to theworld, there is no meaningful identity. Perhaps I should preface all of these withthe word 'autonomous'…A few words from others on privacy. Mark Pesce in his recent blog post explainswhy he deleted his Facebook account:
"Privacy is the foundation of freedom. Without private space to think, toreflect, and yes, to share, we can have no private action, no individual agency.Privacy is dangerous, but privacy is not criminal. It is necessary for the healthy functioning of a democracy. We should resist anyone who proclaims 'the deathof privacy', because they are a proxy for interests who would seek to control us,to corral us by our needs, or separate us by whom we choose to conspire with.
The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher andsocial theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allowan observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarceratedbeing able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what onearchitect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience."
Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Panopticon
I don't expect many of you will leave today. There's almost nowhere else to go.But a few of you will do the sums, and understand, as I do, that no website, nomatter how useful, is worth this. We need to start over, with some important lessons learned about privacy and the intrinsic value of human connections. I take heart in the fact that every one of the Internet's 'walled gardens' - of whichFacebook is merely the latest incarnation - have eventually collapsed. Facebook is having its day, but memento mori."
Bruce Schneier's post on Value of Privacy from 2006 still stands:
"If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no causeto watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the humancondition with dignity and respect.
Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches thewatchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone longenough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep,to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen tobe at the time.
So, privacy is good. I am pretty sure most of you came here with that view butit doesn't hurt to run through the reason why this is so.
In fact, last week I had a dinner with a friend who is a well known name in thefield of cryptography (he is credited with coming up with the concepts for publickey cryptography that together with others’ contributions made it possible for usto communicate privately online today). I asked him about his views on privacyand his answer surprised me a bit until I realised that his reaction was based onhis experience with authorities and institutions hiding behind 'privacy' at timeswhen disclosure was needed. His view is that institutions and public figuresshouldn't hide behind a veil of privacy. Also, his experience online is ratherdifferent to mine. He doesn't generate or share any 'social data', at least not tomy knowledge, and I am not sure about his view or awareness of the explosionof private data online shared by individuals.I re-calibrated my question and we most vehemently agreed that privacy isessential to individual's autonomy…
Here it may be relevant to talk about personal data. In short, personal data ain'twhat it used to be. There are now at least two types of data that could be calledpersonal.
Add a Comment