I started to leave a comment on a blog post, Privacy in an Information Abundant World (thoughts on Christian Heller's Embracing Post-Privacy talk at the 25C3 CCC Congress in Berlin), and it turned into this...The concept of forced full transparency uproots more than two centuries of constitutionally- and otherwise legally-protected rights in the US, and similar (and sometimes greater) protections in many other democratic countries. My personal belief is that it also goes against many elements of human nature, and even in the most "utopian" of societies where everyone would have equal rights and equal technology (worldwide), it wouldn't be desirable.
Most definitions of privacy are vastly oversimplified. Privacy is complex, and contextual. Privacy is not the same as secrecy (and it's not mutually exclusive with security). I'd strongly suggest reading some of Daniel J. Solove's books and articles:
http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/publications.htm
Bruce Schneier also has some interesting observations on privacy:
"Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect"
"Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance."
"Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy"
See especially these Schneier essays:
- Privacy and Power
- Security vs. Privacy
- The Eternal Value of Privacy
It seems that most of the people who espouse the "privacy is dead" mantra have products or services that benefit more from less privacy. I am not about to yield basic human rights for commercial gain (or "security theater" for that matter). If someone wants to live transparently, that's an individual choice rather a unilateral edict to the rest of society.
[image credit: Panopticon]
3 comments: