How We Killed Privacy
foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com
I honestly thought that was the article, until I saw the "click here for the actually article" button.
1. Decades-old Privacy Laws: All of the laws and cases cited were passed or occurred before I was born. Starting a few years after I reached a voting age I have been involved: showing up for elections, writing my representatives about these laws and laws like them, communicated that how they voted on these laws would directly affect how I vote in the next election. What effect has that had? Tell me what else I realistically can do within the current framework to change these obsolete laws. Tell me how I can influence the judgements of a secret court like the FISA court, or have any effect as a private citizen on the modern interpretation of decades-old cases like Smith vs. Maryland.
2. Our Evolving Use of Technology: in general, yes, people have been very quick to jump on Facebook, Twitter, etc. and share all the details of their private life. Again though, people like me who are in the industry (and the type to read HN) have warned people over and over and over again that anything they put on the internet is basically in the public record. Every misuse of volunteered information that this article is hemming and hawing about was foretold by someone like me and by me in conversation with people I know. For goodness sake, the AOL Search Query leak happened 7 years ago and even then it was old news that the aggregate data that people give to search engines and social media could be used to unmask and identify them. We were hoping news of that leak would be a wake-up call to the public about an issue we had been raising for years. So again, tell me what more I could have done.
3. Our Consent to Being Tracked Online: My thoughts on this "point" mirror those of the previous one. I have done everything I can to influence people I know to be more careful with how they allow themselves to be tracked. We collectively have written blog posts, articles, comments, and tried to create technical solutions around this issue, but we are ignored. What else can we do?
4. Our Response to Terrorism: Haha, yeah. I sure had a big role in this. /sarcasm When 9/11 first happened, people like me were urging caution domestically. We wrote letters to representatives, blog posts, talked to people, etc. warning them against losing our freedom in pursuit of security. When the illegal wiretapping was exposed under Bush we protested. We warned that this was just the tip of the iceberg, as we clearly see now. When the TSA started pushing out the body scanners, we protested, the public protested, but the agency continued on with impunity. I have argued against the Department of Homeland Security since its inception. Against the ever-expanding scope of the NSA, the TSA, the executive branch in general through it's ever-growing list of agencies. What good has all that done me?
Don't you dare say that I had anything to do with the erosion of our privacy. I have fought it every step of the way. At this point I am re-evaluating how much our family needs to be online at all. I will readily admit that we face none of the physical brutality and oppression that were present in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, but the information machinery is already past that point in America. My heart hopes that it is not too late to correct, but fears that we are just waiting for the physical to catch up with the digital. My family stays in America for the same reason people stay anywhere: this is our home. I love my country, but I feel helpless to fix it. The people do not have power in the United States.