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| | | Privacy v. Secrecy | |
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< | First, there is a fundamental difference between privacy and secrecy.
Why are you putting the URLs of your links in the text? I fixed this one. Please fix the rest. Writing for the wiki is not a difficult skill, but it's one you need.
I spent three classes on the relationship between secrecy and privacy. Perhaps you think Fabio A Esteves, whoever he is, is more perceptive on this matter than I am, which for all I know is true. But engaging with the material of the course is not a mistake even so.
Your average John Smith does not need to be plotting a crime to need privacy. Whether or not you are a law-abiding citizen, you always put locks on your doors and close the curtains behind your windows. You may or may not enjoy recording tapes of your sexual intercourse, but chances are you would never want to publish them for the world to see. American journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose team published reports based on Edward Snowden’s findings on NSA mass surveillance, did a little social experiment to explain this difference. (https://www.mic.com/articles/188563/who-cares-i-have-nothing-to-hide-why-the-popular-response-to-online-privacy-is-so-flawed) He had asked people to email him all their email and social media passwords, and said that he would look through them and publish whatever that’s interesting. Not surprisingly, no one has yet to take on this offer. Why is it that we claim we have nothing to hide yet we still don’t want to let a stranger on the street scroll through our text messages? This is because we do value privacy, a right that allows us to share different levels of personal information with different people around us. We felt comfortable being vulnerable in front of the people that love and care about us, but the next morning we still “suit up” to face the scary outside world. Yet why are we willing to let more strangers we’ve never met get access to so much of our personal information. | >
> | First, there is a fundamental difference between privacy and secrecy. In class, Professor Moglen discussed that the concept of "privacy" is actually composed of three distinct components: secrecy, anonymity, and autonomy, in which secrecy is our desire to keep the content data of our communications to ourselves. Your average John Smith does not need to be plotting a crime to need privacy. Whether or not you are a law-abiding citizen, you always put locks on your doors and close the curtains behind your windows. You may or may not enjoy recording tapes of your sexual intercourse, but chances are you would never want to publish them for the world to see. American journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose team published reports based on Edward Snowden’s findings on NSA mass surveillance, did a little social experiment to explain this difference. He had asked people to email him all their email and social media passwords, and said that he would look through them and publish whatever that’s interesting. Not surprisingly, no one has yet to take on this offer. Why is it that we claim we have nothing to hide yet we still don’t want to let a stranger on the street scroll through our text messages? This is because we do value privacy, a right that allows us to share different levels of personal information with different people around us. We felt comfortable being vulnerable in front of the people that love and care about us, but the next morning we still “suit up” to face the scary outside world. Yet why are we willing to let more strangers we’ve never met get access to so much of our personal information. | | | Who's Listening? | |
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< | Second, we don’t know who is listening to us. Most people think it’s okay that social media and our technology devices are listening to us because we felt like there is not a particular person listening. But what if I put a face to this “person?” Do you want creepy Joe to spy on every move you make at home? Probably not. In reality, there could just be a real person listening to what happens at your house. Google, for example, records and uploads your conversations to be listened to and analyzed by their claimed “language experts.” (https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/google-is-absolutely-listening-to-your-conversations-it-just-confirms-why-people-dont-trust-big-tech.html) Moreover, while companies claim that these smart speakers don’t record you unless they hear the “wake word,” this is simply not true. A group of researchers at Northwestern tested an Amazon Echo device by playing an audio book. In a span of 21 hours, the device recorded the audio book 63 times even without hearing the wake word. (https://www.consumerreports.org/smart-speakers/smart-speakers-that-listen-when-they-shouldnt/) Buying a smart speaker home is basically the same as voluntarily installing a bug at your house that you also happily paid for. Moreover, it’s not just the large internet companies who are listening to you. You might “trust” Google, Amazon and Facebook but they can easily sell your data to others. More frightening, allowing home devices like smart speakers and security cameras and using apps that track your location could expose yourself to criminals of cybercrimes. | >
> | Second, we don’t know who is listening to us. Most people think it’s okay that social media and our technology devices are listening to us because we felt like there is not a particular person listening. But what if I put a face to this “person?” Do you want creepy Joe to spy on every move you make at home? Probably not. In reality, there could just be a real person listening to what happens at your house. Google, for example, records and uploads your conversations to be listened to and analyzed by their claimed “language experts.” Moreover, while companies claim that these smart speakers don’t record you unless they hear the “wake word,” this is simply not true. A group of researchers at Northwestern tested an Amazon Echo device by playing an audio book. In a span of 21 hours, the device recorded the audio book 63 times even without hearing the wake word. Buying a smart speaker home is basically the same as voluntarily installing a bug at your house that you also happily paid for. Moreover, it’s not just the large internet companies who are listening to you. You might “trust” Google, Amazon and Facebook but they can easily sell your data to others. More frightening, allowing home devices like smart speakers and security cameras and using apps that track your location could expose yourself to criminals of cybercrimes. | | | Slippery Slope | |
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< | Third, agreeing to mass surveillance today might be a slippery slope for the future. One might argue that today it’s just the government who listens to us to “protect” our security and the big internet companies who listens to us to gain financial benefit from targeted ads. However, in reality, they have already been using our personal data to manipulate our decisions in the democratic process (The Great Hack). Moreover, in future, the governments and the big internet companies can further engage in internet censorship, and even move us into a “totally monitored world.” (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rule-privacy-vs-data-collection-20150427-story.html) But what’s wrong with a totally monitored world if you are not a criminal? Glenn Greenwald says internet mass surveillance creates a “prison of the mind.” This is similar to Bentham and Foucault's concept of building a Panopticon in the prison, where the prisoners can be monitored from the tower in the center, but they can’t see when and who is monitoring them. As a result, the prisoners would have to behave as if there are people monitoring them the entire time. But in a society where mass surveillance is implemented, we will be these “prisoners.” | >
> | Third, agreeing to mass surveillance today might be a slippery slope for the future. One might argue that today it’s just the government who listens to us to “protect” our security and the big internet companies who listens to us to gain financial benefit from targeted ads. However, in reality, they have already been using our personal data to manipulate our decisions in the democratic process (The Great Hack). Moreover, in future, the governments and the big internet companies can further engage in internet censorship, and even move us into a “totally monitored world.” But what’s wrong with a totally monitored world if you are not a criminal? Glenn Greenwald says internet mass surveillance creates a “prison of the mind.” This is similar to Bentham and Foucault's concept of building a Panopticon in the prison, where the prisoners can be monitored from the tower in the center, but they can’t see when and who is monitoring them. As a result, the prisoners would have to behave as if there are people monitoring them the entire time. But in a society where mass surveillance is implemented, we will be these “prisoners.” | | | | |
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< | Lastly, I will end with a quote from Edward Snowden: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." (https://www.mic.com/articles/119602/in-one-quote-edward-snowden-summed-up-why-our-privacy-is-worth-fighting-for) So whether or not you feel like you have something to hide at this moment, we should put our legitimate right to internet privacy close and dear to our hearts. | | | | |
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> | Lastly, I will end with a quote from Edward Snowden: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." He argues that right to privacy should be valued the same as all other rights fundamental to the human race. In class, we discussed how consent to waiving your individual right to privacy has no legitimate role in the analysis of privacy, because every time privacy is invaded, more than one human being is affected. This is because violation of privacy always involves third parties and externalities. Similarly, Snowden believes that one cannot "give away the rights of others" simply because that right does not appear to be useful for him/her. So whether or not you feel like you have something to hide at this moment, we should put our legitimate right to internet privacy close and dear to our hearts. | | | | |
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< | It might be at least worth considering the point of my teaching on this subject, which is that despotism doesn't care whether you are law-abiding. I spent quite a bit of time on the relationship between 20th century history and the subject of your essay. It may have been that I was wrong, and that Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Indian Content Monitoring System don't exist. It may be that there will never be another police state in the history of the human race. But if that's your argument, you should say so. If it's not your argument, why are you leaving this point undiscussed. If you are going to quote Edward Snowden, should it not be worth asking why he says what he says? | | | | |
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