To expand on last week's post on control of information a bit, let's talk about Internet privacy. The
need for privacy is a bit of an extreme on the data control spectrum.
The really adamant privacy advocates want absolute control over any
information about them. Nobody sees any part of their information
without them giving the go-ahead. Personally, I find expectations
like that to be rather silly. After all, even before the Internet,
people still took an inherent risk of losing control over their
information any time they allowed it to leave their heads. Someone
could still read your handwritten journal, or the friend you confided in could
still blab to anyone they wanted. Sure, the Internet changes the
landscape of information exchange significantly, but thanks to encryption (among other factors), I'm inclined to believe that things
average out. Privacy is a right worth protecting, but let's not go so far as to forget that life involves sharing information, and sharing
information means giving up some control of it.
Encryption gives us a decent level of expected privacy. What bothers me is things like where the NSA is breaking encryption by bludgeoning companies like Lavabit over the head for their SSL keys. Things like Google auto-reading your emails are fine, but I want my encryption to be reliable.
ReplyDeleteThings haven't quite averaged out. The internet has made sensitive information more readily available to malicious outsiders than ever before. This information might have always been available to others through devious means but never has it been quite so vulnerable.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably one of the most interesting questions of our age, how much should we be willing to give up and let be public. I know that my daughter's entire life will be completely documented by us and by her own volition on Facebook and whatever other social media sites pop up over her lifetime. How willing should we be to allow that to happen? What should be private? Interacting on the internet is inherently without privacy, not to mention the fact that as long as HDDs keep spinning, the internet will never forget what you've posted either. How interesting will it be to have a future prophet's Facebook page mined for inspirational material?
ReplyDeleteOn the internet, we should be able to expect that things that we're told will be kept private will be kept private. On the other hand, though, if we aren't given that guarantee, we have no reasonable right to expect it to be.
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