From the article: "The average Internet user seems unconcerned about participatory surveillance. He is prepared to give up his privacy to get valuable service for free. As a result there is little or no organized resistance to automated mass surveillance."
This is true and quite depressing, but I also think it's because people aren't fully aware of just how much tracking takes place and how often. It's clearly not in the interests of Google, Facebook and others to reveal what they track and record (hence why their privacy policies are so vaguely worded).
Would people care more about privacy if they were better informed? Maybe (or maybe not).
Consider the following scenario. You buy a Chromebook and use it exclusively for a year as your main computer. You have to be signed in to use ChromeOS, so Google potentially tracks everything you do online. We don't know exactly what Google captures because they don't actually say. But let's assume that after one year of Chromebook use, Google have records of the following:
- Every single website you visited (and the duration and time of day).
- A detailed picture of your online shopping habits, including what you shopped for and maybe even purchased online.
- Every document you printed included number of pages, time of day you printed, number of copies, the printer you sent the print job to. Whether it was colour or B&W.
- Every Google app you use, when you use it and how often etc.
- Details about the order in which you do things on your computer. Always check your email as the first thing when you switch on? Google will undoubtedly know this from analysing your activity.
And let's not forget that Google will stitch together what you though were disparate journeys. Browsing a shopping site for a particular product? Later you go to YouTube to search for a review of the product. Google joins up the connection. (A reminder that this is all speculation on my part but I think it's fairly realistic speculation.)
Now imagine if all this data was presented to you at the end of the year. You might think it's incredibly cool to see so much about yourself - if it was only yourself who saw this data. How would you feel if you knew it was Google that was seeing and keeping this data? You might think it perfectly benign and necessary for the personalisation features you enjoy. Or maybe you might decide that Chromebooks are the biggest privacy hole imaginable and vow to stop using them.
Don't underestimate the number of people who place no value whatsoever on principals and ideals, like privacy and self-autonomy. They will overlook, dismiss, and excuse practically any type of observation and invasion, because they "don't have anything to hide". That is the limit to the thought they put into the subject. Abstract concepts are beyond them, either in capacity to think or, at least, in interest.
As long as there is an abundance of these people undermining fundamental values that benefit all of society, we are profoundly doomed.
And don't underestimate how quickly a person can "discover" such principles as soon as they discover they have been harmed noticeably by these practices, even once.
The main "problem" with the Snowden leaks so far is that we don't have have a highly public, tangible example of a relateable person (or group of similar people) who have lost their jobs, or been blackmailed, or in some other way have been direct victims of the NSA surveillance.
(This is not to say that any of the above hasn't happened - the whole problem is that we just don't have a clear narrative linking the story together).
We all-to-often see people more interested in voting for and supporting things based on "what am I going to get out of this" as opposed to more vital abstract things like "is this right". What's best for me, personally, right this moment, rather than what is better for society and the freedom of the individual in the future.
So, I suspect you may be right about that motivation and I fear what will happen that will finally lead people to care about the issue (because of their own personal impact; rather than giving a damn about it as an issue at large). More, I wonder if whatever causes that will come too late.
People are now old enough to vote, who have no concept of a country that didn't have a TSA, DHS, didn't use the word "Homeland", didn't have razor-wire-fenced-in "free speech pens", and wasn't constantly under some vague threat of terrorism. Their kids are going to grow up in a world where they will not have known a time when everything they did wasn't monitored, archived, and used against them and where they had any expectation of privacy.
I fear that we'll become successively more accustom to each infringement and invasion with no expectation of it being otherwise and will therefore accept those "minor" infringements over our life time, which then become the basis point for the next generation.
Did anyone else find the writing style in this article overly repetitive and awkward?
Somewhat related, I notice a trend where journalists seem to treat Moore's Law as if it were a law in our judicial system, rather than simply an observation that has been clearly stated by someone knowledgeable and prominent in the field and has held true for some time.
Sentences such as "Since that time, his[Moore's] Law has been modified", makes me wonder if the author is envisioning some legislative body voting on a resolution to change the rate at which new transistors shall be added to the next generation of CPUs, or something silly like that.
The solution to this problem is new legislation which limits what can be done with information gathered in this way. E.g. limits on what information polite or the government can subpoena, limits on whether such information can be sold, etc. We can't do anything about the technology itself, but we can decide how it can legally be used.
This is true and quite depressing, but I also think it's because people aren't fully aware of just how much tracking takes place and how often. It's clearly not in the interests of Google, Facebook and others to reveal what they track and record (hence why their privacy policies are so vaguely worded).
Would people care more about privacy if they were better informed? Maybe (or maybe not).
Consider the following scenario. You buy a Chromebook and use it exclusively for a year as your main computer. You have to be signed in to use ChromeOS, so Google potentially tracks everything you do online. We don't know exactly what Google captures because they don't actually say. But let's assume that after one year of Chromebook use, Google have records of the following:
- Every single website you visited (and the duration and time of day).
- A detailed picture of your online shopping habits, including what you shopped for and maybe even purchased online.
- Every document you printed included number of pages, time of day you printed, number of copies, the printer you sent the print job to. Whether it was colour or B&W.
- Every Google app you use, when you use it and how often etc.
- Details about the order in which you do things on your computer. Always check your email as the first thing when you switch on? Google will undoubtedly know this from analysing your activity.
And let's not forget that Google will stitch together what you though were disparate journeys. Browsing a shopping site for a particular product? Later you go to YouTube to search for a review of the product. Google joins up the connection. (A reminder that this is all speculation on my part but I think it's fairly realistic speculation.)
Now imagine if all this data was presented to you at the end of the year. You might think it's incredibly cool to see so much about yourself - if it was only yourself who saw this data. How would you feel if you knew it was Google that was seeing and keeping this data? You might think it perfectly benign and necessary for the personalisation features you enjoy. Or maybe you might decide that Chromebooks are the biggest privacy hole imaginable and vow to stop using them.