The Pink Cover — Impact on PRIVACY
I have been practicing privacy for a few years now. It’s a subject that has gained a lot of traction in recent time. People are concerned about privacy more than ever and the ratio of concern is constantly growing.
This write up is not about what privacy is or how it applies to information systems. Which is something I usually write?
This is about the privacy impact that I observed in a movie. Yes, In a movie. It sought to made me think about how simple things we use in life can impact our privacy. Also, privacy is no more about (PII)personally identifiable information.
Let me take you through the script instead of explaining myself. This is a story of Pink Cover (Garbage bag).
The story starts by dramatizing the junkyard of Chennai city (in palikaranai) where few kids play and collect broken toys, leftovers and anything that they find interesting.
The camera turns and shows a young teenager who collects similar items from the junkyard. One fine day he finds a pink garbage bag which is usually unique; who does buys or prefers garbage bags in pink?
Our hero of the story finds it pretty interesting with the items found in it, which also includes a teenage girl’s cropped picture. He treasures the picture and some items from the pink garbage bag.
He goes every day to find the pink garbage bag in the huge junkyard daily to check what comes as a surprise for him today. He found an old walkman (cassette player) with earphones.
One fine day he finds a diamond ring in the pink garbage cover and decides to return it to the owner. He plans to identify the owner’s house of the pink garbage cover. First, he finds which garbage collector truck brings the pink garbage cover. The next day he travels with the garbage collector to identify the garbage bin where the pink garbage bag is disposed of.
The next day he waits near the garbage bin early in the morning to see if the young girl comes out of her house. Days go on, one fine day he found the girl walking in the street.
The young teenager guy shabbily dressed; goes to the girl who is the owner of the diamond ring found in the pink garbage bag. He returns the ring to her. No harm or ill intention. Just pure good-hearted kindness.
This story made me think; We privacy experts, lawyers, regulators, and even regulations speak a lot about private information of an individual to be secure and safeguarded. We emphasize various controls and methodologies to ensure information about the data subject (individual) is stored and processed privately.
But what about the physical world? This calls in for a better privacy model. A model which not only considers the information privacy but also the environmental privacy.
Do I conclude that people should not use unique stuff like the one in this story (pink garbage cover)? As humans, we always wanted to be noticed uniquely. Its an inert feeling we have built within us. But, how do we define policy regulation from avoiding people from using unique stuff?
