Dark Google [Shoshana Zuboff, 2014]

Privacy, in the sense of "freedom from prying by your immediate neighbours" is somewhat modern. At least in the sense that before around 1500 multiple members (and animals) of a household would typically sleep within a single room, in Western Europe, and separate bedchambers, indoor bathing, etc., arrived in the 19th and 20th century for many.

But the invasions of privacy were direct and overt -- if someone wanted to spy on you, they pretty much had to be there for it. Your private actions weren't subject to tracking from any point on Earth. The personal observation of your actions couldn't be instantaneously transmitted to another party. Information passed slowly, directly, in conversation, very occasionally (literacy was limited) through writing. Because literacy was limited, people didn't have years of accumulated records of their innermost thoughts and writings, for the most part.

21st century surveillance -- by governments, corporations, criminal organisations, insurgent or terrorist actors, etc., -- obeys few or none of these conditions.

It's instantaneous, it's covert, it's bulk, it subsumes location, metadata, writings, speech, and video. It is getting cheaper all the time. It can be transmitted around the world in seconds. The quantity of available information has expanded tremendously.

And the very state of having ubiquitous, comprehensive surveillance means that an assertion of record is likely to be met by a presumption of that record's authenticity. Bruce Schneier has recently realised that a problem of ubiquitous data leaks is that leakers can slip fabricated or subtly altered documents into the leaks themselves. There's no need to massively generate data when a few (manufactured) "smoking guns" are sufficient.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/hackin...

I've had the distinctly unpleasent experience of having false (or misconstrued) claims laid against me. It's all kinds of crazy-making, and if the matter is one involving employment or legal processes, exceptionally expensive and risky.

There's a considerable downside here.