Largest issue with privacy is that in my experience generally speaking that the average person does not see privacy as a priority, or worse, questions the need for it.
I use Tor some of the time. I would like to use Tor all the time for everything, but the reality is that using Tor is slow as mud so for 98% of my browsing activities I use Chrome, even though I know I'm giving away a lot of information about myself in the process.
Likewise, I live in a house. I can lock the doors and windows, but the reality is that any determined individual or group could easily kick in the door and enter the house. Do I spend a fortune rebuilding and reinforcing the structure so that I can have a front door like a bank vault, or do I invest a bit of money in simpler security options and cultivate good relationships with my neighbors?
It's not that people don't care about privacy (though not everyone does), but that subconsciously most people realize they can't possibly win an arms race and so opt for greater quality of life at the expense of security.
I agree that this possibility exists but I also think it's a tiny minority of people online. There's enough info out there to demonstrate that people aren't rationally aware of many things (although they may believe they are).
In the current example, I'd bet that most folks don't even understand how much info they reveal online and what can be inferred about them. The very reason the house analogy exists is because it's tangible and 'real-world' but it's not really a fair comparison. If people had the option to live in a fortress, that still had windows and easy access for approved people, and didn't look too different, they'd likely take it. Such options either don't exist or are too expensive.
So my argument is that most people figure it's a lost cause anyway and choose not to invest much effort in learning about computer security, relying instead on the legal/regulatory system to oversee that like any other complex public policy issue.
The earlier comment implied that there was some form of cost/benefit analysis being undertaken, which is is what I was disagreeing with. The current situation reminds me more of learned helplessness [1], in which people are effectively powerless.
That's why no reasonable privacy activists aim at it as if it was an attainable goal!
Also: peer pressure. As a non-Facebook user, I get questioned about why fairly often, and my family makes passive-aggressive noises about missing pictures and whatnot.
And here, any time this comes up, someone thinks they're being clever by pointing out other intrusive systems of surveillance (like cell phones) that I surely must be unaware of or inconsistent about.
My theory regarding some (certainly not all) people in the latter group are well aware of how much they're giving up and don't like the idea that other people are doing better at maintaining privacy, a bit like the drunk pushing a drink on someone trying to get sober. A lot of other people are simply unaware of the power of the data they're giving up, or believe that since "everybody else does", it can't be that important.
Social cues are really important.
In terms of psychology, UI/UX design and engineered content could try to maximize the likelihood of getting a user to post emotionally-charged or revealing content.
Detectives, private or otherwise, are sometimes very skilled at doing the same thing in conversation (of course, this is not automated and very expensive). This isn't news.
What is news is the scope and automation. The surveillance-entertainment complex is unhealthily healthy.
The defensive position for privacy in western psyches are also very correlated to modern history coming from extreme social change around religion, the world wide trauma of the holocaust and WW2, and more generally rapid social change as a whole which threatens our tribal motivations.
Our species ability to closely integrate as a pack is almost as fundamental to our success as is our pattern recognition. If we can survive the rapid breakdown of tribalism(interpret as social association) that we are traveling through now, and arrive out the other side, privacy will certainly then be a hindrance too the species progress in that future. Pattern recognition is the trait that enables us, and the gasoline for that engine is Data.
Privacy is incredibly important today, as it has been forever. Simply looking at how humans learn, change and adapt to different contexts, it would be impossible to imagine our current civilization without privacy. If you take away a specific person's privacy, you would significantly dampen their social and intellectual development. Perhaps you envision a future of perfectly rational beings where nobody would be harmed by killing privacy, but we don't even know how one could get there.
Implying that we can, will or should change our nature in this respect is an idea from the wildest of scifi dreams. Perhaps, some day, but we have achieved so much while being these tribal, silly humans, and we'll probably achieve so much more without/before significantly changing our nature.
I'm not sure why one would even want to give up privacy. Many of our biological features seem useless to us as modern humans, but I don't see how privacy is one, whether from a practical, philosophical or enjoyment standpoint.
It can't be that you decide to have privacy and to do it you have to personally build a moat with your own two hands. It has to be that we as engineers build viable systems that respect privacy -- and then, given the choice between a viable privacy-protecting system and the status quo, it becomes much more practical for regular people to choose privacy.
I also think that some user education is in order, and needed for this choice to be made. I'm not cynical about it, though - I believe that humans can learn a whole lot more about the internet than they have in the decade to two that most of them have been using it in the west.
They may believe this in some cases, but it's based on an incorrect risk assessment. We evolved in a world where nothing persisted forever. Everything faded with time and copying was always imperfect, which limited how far information could spread. Surveillance had both an initial cost to collect data and maintenance costs to store and use it. In that world, the risks are bounded.
Then Shannon invented a way to copy information perfectly, without the cumulative noise that limited the scope and risk of any failure of privacy,
> Do I spend a fortune rebuilding and reinforcing the structure
No, because your door is limited in how many people can attack it simultaneously and how long attacks can continue without being noticed. It would be incredibly foolish to apply the same evaluation to privacy, where data is persistent and risks is unbounded.
edit:
Sorry, I have to cut this a bit short - meds are being annoying today. Maybe see one of my recent comments[1] on this topic?
No, this is at least as old as the written word.
For example, your stereotypical teenager cares quite a bit about privacy from her parents, less so from big corporations and the government. Which is why she might engage in privacy-conscious behaviors like using Incognito Mode or using Snapshot instead of MMS. Neither are a good defense against state-sponsored surveillance, but it mitigates the risk of your tech-illiterate mom stumbling upon an embarrassing search in your browser history.
Rather than inhibit productivity in an attempt to preserve what's left of privacy, shouldn't we instead strive to make transparency more fair?
I'm having trouble understanding those who blindly defend privacy. Do they really think that in 100 years, we won't be collecting massively more information than we are now? Do they somehow think that technological progress will stop? Don't they realize that sensors, cameras and drones keep getting increasingly cheaper? Do they not realize how much we have to gain from collecting and analyzing this kind of data?
Is this whole movement only meant to delay the inevitable by a few years? Why bother?
I blame privacy advocates for sustaining this so-called chilling effect.
In reality, the chilling effect is a consequence of poor judgement. Those who are wired correctly shouldn't fear making mistakes, and should instead embrace the learning opportunity. Only then can a person really be honest and enlightened.
Privacy correlates with intolerance. We should strive to eliminate both.
And regardless, my point was to provide a clearer example: that the secrecy of the password is accidental: the privacy it's protecting is the account.
Take homosexuality for example. Having that information in the open means death in plenty of places. In addition, even in places like the USA it has become accepted only fairly recently but would have gotten you in serious trouble a while back. Culture change can't happen if any event towards this change is immediately punished. The change needs to start small in closed private social circles. Only when a lot of private battles have been won is there hope for a more mainstream acceptance of a new norm.
Take being Jewish for example. In 1920s Germany it wasn't that big of a deal if people knew you were Jewish. However things changed, different people got in power and started to abuse it. What was previously a simple case of "I got nothing to hide" suddenly turned into a question of life & death. It's naive to think that these kind of events will never happen again in any place in the world.
Losing privacy would greatly hurt any cultural change that needs private law breaking, and this includes any future laws.
As for technological progress stopping, of course it isn't going to stop. However this goes both ways. Privacy protecting technology also has progress. Any technology that reduces privacy has a counter-technology that protects privacy. What's more, we can use the same political system that could hurt us with a lack of privacy to instead protect our privacy by prohibiting/limiting privacy breaking activities.
Of course no progress just inherently happens. There are actual driven & talented people working on both sides every day. There is no inevitable victor here, there isn't even a clearly leading side yet, it's very close with strong trends in both privacy-reducing & privacy-increasing directions. Every contribution matters and it's definitely not too late to decisively lead us to a far more private world.
The fancy cyber word for this is "Opsec". If you're living somewhere where your homosexuality will get you killed, STFU. Don't email people about it. That's really tragic and wrong, but it's reality.
In an era where military supremacy has made decisive military action impossible, the reality is that ISIS type people duping the simpleminded to commit horrific acts is a thing. That's makes a vision of privacy that most people Instinctively want a threat in many people's eyes.
Yes, lots of people will need convincing to make political progress towards more privacy. The same holds for less privacy.
This is what's increasingly worrying, they don't even need you to tell it like it this, they can find about it by analyzing your everyday behavior.
It's a tragic state of affairs.
OK, let's make a deal. You permanently eliminate all intolerance from everyone who could possibly have a negative influence on anyone else's life, and I'll accept that eliminating privacy might not be catastrophic for someone. Fair?
In the meantime, the point of advocating privacy/anonymity rights is precisely that there are power imbalances in the world, and some of the people more powerful than you probably do have prejudices that would make your life worse if they acted on them, consciously or otherwise.
You might claim there is nothing in your thoughts or actions that wouldn't mind the world seeing but that would make you either wrong about yourself, or incredibly rare as an individual if true.
Humans might be a social species but there is a colossal rift between social species and the hive-mind you seem to be advocating.
I would also be careful with statements like this;
Those who are wired correctly shouldn't fear making mistakes
Judging what does and doesn't constitute 'wired correctly' has led to some serious atrocities in the past.
Privacy & identity are two sides of the same coin.
All the data about me is me. It's my identity, my self.
I have the right to control what is publicly known about me.
I also have the right to know how any data about me is gathered and how its used.
That's privacy. And identity.
> I also have the right to know how any data about me is gathered and how its used.
Can you explain why you're expecting any of this? Then, can you explain why you think that's feasible?
Here's a few questions that I hope will highlight how ridiculous your expectations are:
- How many times have you shared information about a person without its consent? For example: "I saw John at the bar yesterday".
- How many times have you gathered data about a person without its consent? For example: taking a picture of a crowd.
I designed, implemented, supported 5 regional health information exchanges. I'm also chin deep into protecting the secret ballot. I have more than passing knowledge of the relevant issues, technical and policy.
"Then, can you explain why you think that's feasible?"
So it's feasible to record every waking moment of every single person, but infeasible to disclose that activity and track it?
Have you ever tried to correct your credit report? Had your identity stolen? Been discriminated against, or disenfranchised, because some system some where decided you were the wrong color? Or lived in the wrong zip code? Are you on any watchlists, eg TSA no fly, FBIs inventory of peace marchers?
--
You advocate radical transparency (Brin's Transparent Society), but then profess incredulity when that right is demanded. Nice.
More importantly, it's very important to keep in mind the massive benefits of privacy, be it psychological, philosophical and practical. This is both because of our hard-wiring and the natural importance of information. It's inherently interwoven into our lives, we don't even know how we'd act if we couldn't have any privacy. It could be debilitating for our intellectual development.
Surely this is a thing worth thinking about, and possibly fighting for? Otherwise, someone could simply extrapolate from our use of earlier weapons that we will probably have nuclear war, so all activism about anything is moot. This sort of careless extrapolation is beside the point EVEN if it's true.
I don't think we should stop nuclear weapons either...
Or perhaps you're saying that if you value privacy differently, then you're not a True Scotsman?
For example, some countries require consent to take a picture of a person in both public and private place.