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Privacy and the Freedom of Choice | | | The swelling rapidity and frequency with which we consume Internet-based services has increased the ease of forgetting that the Internet is a two-way highway; that, as users, we contribute just as much, or perhaps more, information as we consume. | |
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We still haven't really gotten to your idea yet, and we are more than 200 words in. You want your reader to want to read, which means you want to show what you have to offer her sooner.
On the amount of information consumed and produced, isn't it evident that if we're just counting bits, we consume orders of magnitude more than we produce? If that's not what you mean here, and it may well not be, you need to explain.
| | | "Speech" On the Internet
It is uncontroversial to assert that what we say and write is considered speech. It is less universally accepted, but at the least legally recognized, that some of one’s actions can be considered speech. Yet, the Internet’s inherent disparities from traditional mediums of speech test our understanding of these “truths” as they relate to privacy rights. | |
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| | | Speech Through Talk
When you engage in an in-person conversation, your expected audience typically consists of invited parties (and maybe nosy third-party listeners within earshot). Until Snowden proved otherwise, many of us were under the impression, or perhaps, without concrete contravening evidence, chose to believe, that the above even applied to phone calls.
Audience control on the Internet differs immensely. Let’s take e-mails. Generally, we send e-mails expecting their contents to reach the parties addressed in the “To”, “CC”, and/or “BCC” lines. We may even factor in the possibility that some third-party might grab a glimpse. But the companies providing the e-mail services to both the sender and each addressed party? It seems unlikely that very many of us would take no issue with postal services opening, transcribing, and storing said copies of our mail. Yet, the bulk of e-mail senders avoid precautionary measures that might keep the likes of Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. from accumulating a database of searchable transcripts of our private correspondences. | |
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But it is clear that we can not only do so, but also choose not to use these services and to do their work for ourselves, in which case the compiling of the databases will cease.
| | | Speech Through Action
The fraction collected from users’ talk constitutes the miniscule tip of the iceberg of collected information. On the Internet, actions speak more than words. | | | Even inaction is itself an information-laden action. The clicks you didn’t make, the products you didn’t purchase, the content you didn’t chose to propagate, etc. These inactions contribute as much data about a user’s decision-making process as affirmative actions. | |
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No, they don't. Once again, if we're just being literal about it, the number of choices we do not make is infinite, and only the value attached to the choices we do make can be measured. So if you mean something not literal here, you need to explain.
| | | Privacy v. Convenience
So why, with all this considered, do we continue to consume the Internet as we do? When so many of us would consider privacy a right worth protecting, why are we willing to surrender such protection on the Internet? | | | For convenience, the fact that our micro-behaviors are observed and converted into statistics that can be manipulated and utilized to better achieve companies’ commercial goals becomes more palatable. But perhaps it shouldn’t be.
Marketing plans have become so intelligent we can’t always tell when something is being sold to us. By surrendering volumes of information about ourselves, we are surrendering to companies the means to most effectively shape our demands. What we chose to buy, what we chose to read, and eventually, what we chose to think and how we chose to feel. The leap from protecting our privacy on the Internet to protecting freedom of choice may seem gargantuan, but if all decisions stem from a kernel of an idea, perhaps it is worth fighting to ensure that said kernels are not wholly provided for us by profit-seekers. | |
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Reorganizing your next draft to put your idea prominently at the top, and to stay close to it through the development of the essay, will help the ideas implicit in this draft to bloom more, become clearer. You have things to say here, but they are muddled. One more draft and it will be clear how to finish the piece.
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