Google and Facebook almost hint the death of the privacy dead, but is it really and if it is dead then why are they talking about is. Bruce Schneier on Forbes talks about this Google And Facebook’s Privacy Illusion:
In January Facebook Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, declared the age of privacy to be over. A month earlier, Google Chief Eric Schmidt expressed a similar sentiment. Add Scott McNealy’s and Larry Ellison’s comments from a few years earlier, and you’ve got a whole lot of tech CEOs proclaiming the death of privacy–especially when it comes to young people.
It’s just not true. People, including the younger generation, still care about privacy. Yes, they’re far more public on the Internet than their parents: writing personal details on Facebook, posting embarrassing photos on Flickr and having intimate conversations on Twitter. But they take steps to protect their privacy and vociferously complain when they feel it violated. They’re not technically sophisticated about privacy and make mistakes all the time, but that’s mostly the fault of companies and Web sites that try to manipulate them for financial gain.
Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and the Chief Security Technology Officer of BT. You can read more of his writing at www.schneier.com. Recently he gave a talk on on "Security, Privacy, and the Generation Gap", the video of which is available here.
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