Losing More Than Just Privacy
Revealed in a scrap of paper are three words:
I LOVE YOU
These three words are the turning point in the George Orwell novel 1984 taking the two impassioned protagonists on a journey to defeat the Big Brother surveillance state.
I have been thinking a lot lately about that book and the consequences of losing privacy given the news that China will be expanding their Social Credit System.
The social credit system will track the “trustworthiness” of the citizens. Their every action and behavior will be tracked and analyzed to determine if they have access to credit, jobs, pets, train/plane travel and basic goods that many of us take for granted in western society.
Imagine for a moment if every move you ever made was tracked and you were fully aware of this constant surveillance and what it may mean for you personally. How would your thought process be impacted? Eventually, your every action would unconsciously be filtered through the lens of this system’s preference. Everyone would be incentivized to optimize their lives for the Social Credit System.
Sitting here in San Francisco, I cannot help but think about the long-term impacts of the Social Credit System on free enterprise, risktaking, and innovation.
Exploring something without a known outcome is a core tenet of innovation and progress. For example, no one knew that exploring the ability of multiple computers to communicate via a network would ultimately set the stage for the modern internet. If a system (like the Social Credit System) predetermines the trajectory of an idea, choice, thought or action, what does that mean for free thought and experimentation?
You might think this was a quote from a recent article or book on the dangers of surveillance. But in fact, this is a quote from former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis from 1890. Legal scholars have studied Brandeis’ theory around “intellectual privacy” — “the protection from surveillance or interference when we are engaged in the processes of generating ideas.”
In the book “World Without Mind”, Franklin Foer talks about “the freedom to experiment and discard ideas, without worry about prying eyes.”
“If we believe we’re being watched, we’re far less likely to let our minds roam toward opinions that require courage or might take us beyond the bounds of acceptable opinion. We begin to bend our opinions to please our observer. Without the private space to think freely, the mind deadens — and then so does the Republic.”
While China has a surveillance apparatus sponsored by the State, we in the United States have one that is created and perpetuated by the private sector. Often referred to as “Little Brother”, while there may not be a centralized totalitarian Social Credit System, there is a more decentralized organic one that is affecting us on a daily basis.
Foer writes in his book
Just because Internet surveillance isn’t totalitarian, however, doesn’t mean that it does us no harm. We’re watched so that we can be manipulated…It is the surrender of free will — algorithms make choices for us. This isn’t so terrible, because our submission to manipulation is largely willing. Yet we rightly have a sense that we’re surrendering far more than we intend and that we’re being manipulated far more than we know.
Recently, I caught up with a friend visiting from New York. The topic ended up on some of the challenges he was facing making the next decision in his career. His fear was mainly centered around failure. He had great ideas and ventures he wanted to start but his dreams were being deferred because of his fear of failure. Fear of what the “prying eyes” in his “News Feed” might say or think if things did not go well. Since that conversation, I met many people who feel the same way. While the surveillance we feel in the western world is not Leviathan-esque in nature, it still yields the same results. Creating a sensation that we are being watched at all times and our every thought, pursuit or venture is consciously or unconsciously filtered through those perceptions.
Privacy is a fundamental pillar of a free society. Privacy allows us to test our thoughts and ideas before they are perfect, before they enter the arena of criticism. It allows us to self-correct before others correct it for us. It allows us to be exposed and vulnerable as those are the moments when we truly grow. It allows us to build courage in ourselves to attempt what others might see as foolish, dangerous or impossible.
By being subject to constant surveillance we are losing more than just our privacy.
