They’re listening to us too much, and watching too. We’re not happy about it. The feeling is appropriate but we’ve been unclear about why we feel it.
[Note: This is adapted from a piece called Privacy Primer that I published on Medium in 2013. I did this mostly because Medium was new and shiny then and I wanted to try it out. But I’ve repeatedly wanted to refer to it and then when I looked, wanted to fix it up a little, so I’ve migrated it back to its natural home on the blog.]
This causes two problems: First, people worry that they’re being unreasonable or paranoid or something (they’re not). Second, we lack the right rhetoric (in the formal sense; language aimed at convincing others) for the occasions when we find ourselves talking to the unworried, or to law-enforcement officials, or to the public servants minding the legal framework that empowers the watchers.
The reason I’m writing this is to shoot holes in the “If you haven’t done anything wrong, don’t worry” story. Because it’s deeply broken and we need to refute it efficiently if we’re going to make any progress.
Privacy is a gift of civilization · Living in a civilized country means you don’t have to poop in a ditch, you don’t have to fetch water from the well or firewood from the forest, and you don’t have to share details of your personal life. It is a huge gift of civilization that behind your front door you need not care what people think about how you dress, how you sleep, or how you cook. And that when communicating with friends and colleagues and loved ones, you need not care what anyone thinks unless you’ve invited them to the conversation.
Photo credit: Beyond My Ken, via Wikimedia Commons
Privacy doesn’t need any more justification. It’s a quality-of-life thing and needs no further defense. We and generations of ancestors have worked hard to build a civilized society and one of the rewards is that often, we can relax and just be our private selves. So we should resist anyone who wants to take that away.
Bad people · The public servants and private surveillance-capitalists who are doing the watching are, at the end of the day, people. Mostly honorable and honest; but some proportion will always be crooked or insane or just bad people; no higher than in the general population, but never zero. I don’t think Canada, where I live, is worse than anywhere else, but we see a pretty steady flow of police brutality and corruption stories. And advertising is not a profession built around integrity. These are facts of life.
Given this, it’s unreasonable to give people the ability to spy on us without factoring in checks and balances to keep the rogues among them from wreaking havoc.
“But this stuff isn’t controversial” · You might think that your communications are definitely not suspicious or sketchy, and in fact boring, and so why should you want privacy or take any effort to have it?
Because you’re forgetting about the people who do need privacy. If only the “suspicious” stuff is made private, then our adversaries will assume that anything that’s private must be suspicious. That endangers our basic civilizational privacy privilege and isn’t a place we want to be.
Talking points for everyday use · First, it’s OK to say “I don’t want to be watched”; no justification is necessary. Second, as a matter of civic hygiene, we need to be regulating our watchers, watching out for individual rogues and corrupt cultures.
So it’s OK to demand privacy by default; to fight back against those who would commandeer the Internet; and (especially) to use politics to empower the watchers’ watchers; make their political regulators at least as frightened of the voters as of the enemy.
That’s the reasonable point of view. It’s the surveillance-culture people who want to abridge your privacy who are being unreasonable.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Mark Nottingham (Nov 15 2024, at 10:24)
Along these lines, legal theory on privacy generally revolves around 1) control over one’s data, and 2) human dignity.
See eg Warren and Brandeis, “The right to privacy.”
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From: Don Marti (Nov 16 2024, at 07:46)
I agree. I personally have "nothing to hide" but I believe that comes with the obligation to help protect others.
The more people who do the privacy tips from "how to protect your privacy when you're [sensitive activity redacted]" the better off the people actually doing the sensitive activity are. https://blog.zgp.org/effective-privacy-tips/
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From: Empty Palace (Jan 24 2025, at 00:56)
> Because you’re forgetting about the people who do need privacy. If only the “suspicious” stuff is made private, then our adversaries will assume that anything that’s private must be suspicious. That endangers our basic civilizational privacy privilege and isn’t a place we want to be.
Remember ... uhm... last month, when being trans was celebrated across the corporsphere? I know, I know. It's hard to believe *this week*. Back then, the privacy of trans people was guaranteed by the Holy Terms Of Service. The Knights of Community Safety were always at the ready to serve and protect.
This week? Not so much.
(Amazon under Bezos has just deleted references to supporting LGBTQ rights. Zuckerberg, in his mania for a return to masculinity in tech, has signed off on calling trans people 'mentally ill'. Elon Musk has been railing against the 'woke mind virus' while giving Nazi salutes. Google CEO Pichai was at the inauguration, too, to ceremonially lay the world's surveillance engine at Trump's feet.)
Turns out the corporate guarantees were more or less empty. They did what they had to do to remain profitable. Now they're doing something else. In 4 years, they'll be doing a new thing.
And as the corporations and governments change like ever shifting weather patterns, with many dark and stormy clouds on the horizon, who is protected and who is exposed -- indeed, who is *hunted* -- shifts.
Today they are hunting *them* -- the ones you don't like. Tomorrow you. Oops.
That is why you want privacy.
The privacy argument fell on so many deaf ears for so long because the exploitative nature of big tech was wrapped behind a comfy UI/UX. Now that the Dumpster has torn off that bandaid, we can see the mega corps for what they are: not only stealing our information, exploiting us at every turn, but *dangerous* in and of themselves. They are arming the brown shirts of all brands of political crazy. Mis-kiss a girl 20 years ago? Cancelled by mobs of feminists. Wear the clothes of the other gender? Cancelled by mobs of neo-fascists. All thanks to the unblinking totalitarian eye that drains our personal lives into sensational tidbits, one twart at a time. We did it to ourselves.
Privacy is something each of us has to win, at great expense, and not something to be found in the promises of corporations or governments. You will not find privacy in a checkbox in your favorite app. If you have to check a 'privacy settings' button, you've already signed up for exploitation and fear. They've already tricked and entranced and trapped you. Your only hope now? That you're actually as boring and uninteresting as you think you are. Unfortunately, under exploitation capitalism, even corpses can be rendered into fat and sold back to the rich as artisanal soap. Good luck with being boring.
Privacy means, at bottom, refusing technology into our lives, and being very cautious about what we give up.
The Amish are instructive here. Even if you think they go too far, they provide a baseline for responsibility around technology. Start there and open a few doors. You'll be surprised how quickly your privacy is swept away, but at least you'll know.
Right now, you don't have a clue and don't care. And that's why powerful exploiters have won, and will continue winning, until they've won everything.
A modest proposal: start using Whonix over Qubes as your *default* interface with the Internet.
=> https://qubes-os.org
And throw away your smartphone. It is nothing but spyware designed by scientists to addict you. It is a telescreen imposed upon you not by any government or corporation, but by your own ignorance and weakness. A smartphone is a humiliation ritual imposed upon slaves who think they have never been more free, because they're billionaire overlords tell them so. "I need the new one" and "my job requires it" are the two most oft heard refrains of the slaves.
Just wait until AI really takes off. The Dumpster has just announced a 500 billion investment in what Ellison has gleefully described sketched as a totalitarian spying nightmare following the tech gulag of communist China. With this new AI, spying will become universal and permanent, so everyone will be on their "best behavior". For "national security" of course? And to "protect the children".
Apple is already embedding such 'features' onto its phones, spying and prying into the supposed sanctity of the smartphone.
It was never private. It will never be private. You are a fool to believe their lies. And now someone said it to you plainly and clearly, and when the trap has finally been set, you can remember when you read this and didn't lift a finger or change anything and let the powerful have their way, while you silently mumble platitudes that no longer mean anything under the new regime. And all the while you cheered, or laughed, or turned your eyes away when others fell before you:
- "It was against the law."
- "They deserved it."
- "They were foolish."
- "They didn't understand the technology like I do."
- "They shouldn't have made mistakes."
- "It's consequence culture, dear, not cancel culture."
- "BUT MASTADON IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE IT'S NOT TWITTER EXCEPT IT'S EXACTLY THE SAME UX SPACE AS TWITTER BUT IT HAS PEOPLE I LIKE ON IT NOT THOSE DUMPSTERS SO IT'S RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND NOTHING BAD CAN HAPPEN AND I'M GOING TO CONTINUE TO USE MY SMARTPHONE TO TWART MY PALS WITH MY AMAZING THOUGHTS 10 TIMES A DAY BECAUSE I'M ADDICTED TO THE ATTENTION, WHICH I WHY I'LL PROBABLY SWITCH TO BLUESKY IF IT GETS A DECENTRALIZED UI!"
Practically every conversation in this space involves crack addicts arguing about the shape of rocks and the style of pipes. This is what privacy is up against, and why it always loses.
Privacy is only for the strong.
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