Privacy and the Freedom of Choice

-- By EstherLukman - 06 Mar 2015

The Two-Way Highway

The Internet is often nicknamed the world’s “information highway”, a phenomenon capable not only of connecting far-flung users to one another but of granting each said user access to the near-whole of human knowledge and pursuit. In the space of two decades, we have seen previously unfathomable innovations become commonplace. As the Internet has grown faster and more accessible- by smartphones, by tablets, by laptops, by personal Wi-Fi hotspots, etc., it has fused itself with the backbone of our daily behaviors.

On any given day, many of us will use it to stay current on whatever segment of news most interests us, to navigate ourselves, to find answers, to purchase goods and services, to entertain ourselves, to chart our schedules, and of course, to communicate. Knowingly, we use the Internet to correspond with other individuals through e-mails. With some awareness, we broadcast through social media platforms to the global public. But what about the “speech” we unknowingly speak? The information we unwittingly donate? The “listeners” we didn’t intend to reach?

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.

"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.

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.

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.

Browsing history reveals critical data about users’ viewing preferences. The seemingly innocent act of online shopping betrays, among other things, answers to the following: when, why, and how one choses to purchase certain items, what links successfully convert to click-throughs and purchases, and how the purchasing decision was arrived at. And location information can be pulled explicitly from social media updates or culled implicitly as a result of authorizing applications to access one’s mobile device’s location services.

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.

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?

One answer: the convenience tradeoff. When the benefits of accessing and participating in Internet-based services are so great, privacy for privacy’s sake pales as a priority. We accept that Gmail collates searchable archives of our correspondences, because that means we have access to searchable archives of our past correspondences. We accept that Amazon tracks how we interact with its product offerings, because they come back to us with better suggested purchases. We accept that Google Maps, Uber, and Yelp all track our location, because it makes it that much easier for them to help help ourselves.

So valuable is the information gathered from user’s Internet activities that the information alone is a commercial asset. For example, Birchbox, a subscription service that sends users monthly bundles of beauty, makeup, and fragrance samples and allows users to easily buy full-sized products through their website, serves as a crucial middleman for the beauty, makeup, and fragrance industries. Industry giants vie to have their samples distributed through Birchbox, because through Birchbox, they’re able to effectively test their products on a targeted focus group.

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.