Monthly archives: May 2010

Privacy is just a sense or a feeling that you are secluded from the presence or view of others or free from unsanctioned intrusion. This post mostly deals with privacy in the digital world but takes examples from real world, where privacy only exists as a concept and too idealistic to be true. At the same time, I am not suggesting that we must not fight for our privacy in the real world or the online world, but the onus is mostly with us and that too with too many fine prints which we can never understand.

Who mostly makes your private life public

For your privacy, you must be more concerned with people around you, the people you know really well – the friends and the relatives. These are the people who are the weak links in your social networks – they make access to your information available outside the circle of trust through – stupidity, casualness, deception, hate, ignorance, etc.  Most of the embarrassing scandals reported in media, doesn’t happen through hacking or any other form of unauthorized access but through one of the parties actually involved in the act.

Is your data safe anywhere ?

The complex answer is blah blah blah and the simple answer in NO !. Any system which is accessible to humans or managed by humans is not yet proved to be 100% safe and trustworthy. Do you know how easily your telephone or mobile bill report is accessible to (some of )the employees of a telecom company. Do you know that your web sites visits, mails, time logs and so many other internet activities can actually be read on the serves of your ISPs datacenter. Do you know there’s a thing called Lawful Inspection & Monitoring which is simply put, your private information on demand by your government from any of these digital communications network.

What is the solution then ?

There’s a little bit of behavioral change required from the users side (as well). Of course we can’t afford to loose all our communication through these social communication networks. But think about it, shouldn’t you bring little bit of mis-trust back again in your life and not (put a blind) trust on the people or the systems around you. Are you aware that you automatically drop the natural hard-coded judgmental & fight or flight response when you are communicating online.

Why do we think it’s our duty to tweet, follow, like, share, comment and fill all the details in the online forms. Has world become really so safe. Don’t we read newspapers.

The corporate world which is buying social media snake oil in tons and gallons doesn’t even know what is the inside information which is being served outside. Every tom, dick and harry who has a twitter account has become the spokes person of the company. Idealistic naked corporation blah blah aside, how many of the workers have an understanding of work / life social presence and communication.

As we consume junk food, we are entering in to the world of speedy junk communication and as we are compromising our health – we are compromising our privacy as well. If we believe in the old ways and the way our parents used to talk to us the simple answer would be – Shut Up and Behave !!!

What we should be doing then ?

We need to slow down and listen to real signals than noises. To stop rushing to social media snake oil vendors and to understand from the academicians, sociologists, researchers, scientists, anthropologists, thinkers and tech geeks ( and very soon they should form an advocacy and activism group together). We can’t trust politicians, policy makers and businessmen to find solution to privacy. We haven’t seen such resolution in education, health care and human rights issues and can’t be expecting it with digital privacy issues.

• Why should we be just talking about Facebook, why no one is talking about standardized privacy protocols across digital communication channels.
• How are we even so easily allowing a legal privacy loophole to a company which has a 5000+ words privacy policy document.
• How can a system exist which allows to change your privacy settings by default on a new feature introduction
• How can a communication network have millions of ways of collecting data from me and not a single way of giving me my data back
• Why no country has a pre-emptive and proactive regulatory framework. We have it for telecom, then why not for the web ?
• Like we have certificates for secure sites, isn’t the time to introduce privacy check points and certifications for digital communication channels.
• Last but not the least – on the public web don’t expect a private environment.

There’s no simple answer yet, but till that time only believe in this thing (however pessimistic it might be) – don’t trust humans and the environments involving human beings. Read your history books again and go through the acts of crimes committed by your very own trustworthy government.

The chances of Mr. Zuckerberg, or some hacker or some marketer reading your data is far far far far less than a weak link within your own social network ready to compromise it with a greater probability 24/7.

[Re-edited, 5/16/2010 1.30 AM]