Why You Should Care About Internet Privacy?
Online privacy is everyone’s issue (source: Web Hosting Geeks)78% of adults are concerned about internet privacy. In the information age and (neo)liberalised globalisation, our ability to remain truly private is becoming less of a probability. Emerging technologies (like blockchain) and unique lifestyles (think of your minimalist, spiritual types) potentially afford a new way to privatise our lives.
This is not a comprehensive nor personalised primer on online privacy. Think of it more as an expose’ or peep-show on what measures you can take to attain something that resembles privacy.
Now, I looked at the above statistic and thought “really though?” Get out of my face with that nonsense. Anecdotally, (which is as good as empirical evidence, right?) there are so many people I know who give three-eights of fuck-all about their online privacy. If you are audacious and motivated, there is a lot you can find out about people online. If you’re skilled — well, exploiting the unsuspecting and ignorant is a farce.
Why, then, should you care about your online privacy? Well, your online presence is and should be yours to own. Let it be known: the big media monopolies exploit your online presence and sell your data to advertisers. This amounts to billions of dollars funding these social engines that manufacture consent and direct public discourse.
I can hear they naysayers: “yeah but, so what — it doesn’t even affect me bro”.
First of all, I’m not your bro.
Second of all, it does affect you. Let me explain.
It is literally a human right.
Article 12 of the Declaration of Human Rights states the following:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Your right to privacy has been espoused since the Enlightenment period. Classic liberals are pissed (and for good reason.) Kant and Smith would be turning in their graves.
Ceding your privacy has Orwellian consequences.
It’s almost as if the world’s strategic intelligence agencies (such as the NSA and GCHQ) read 1984 and thought “how can we do this and get away with it?” Read anything about the major scandals in US political history or the changes made to British intelligence collection capabilities, and you’ll find an uncanny resemblence to the Ministry of Truth. (I’m not exaggerating — read Australia’s international cyber security engagement strategy and place in context to the supposedly rising threat in international terrorism.)
Your lack of privacy can we weaponised.
Remember, everything you do online can be manipulated, cherry picked and weaponised to attack your reputation. Resumes are becoming an online portfolio, and with that, your personal branding can make or break your employability (or in totalitarian regimes — your life.)
Need I go on?
The state of privacy in the 21st century is a mess. It’s near-impossible to be a functional member of society without a phone. Often, the impetus is on you, the bread winner, to have an online presence and be contactable to some degree.
Additionally, the government and centralised media monopolies care little for your rights. The 24-hour news cycle distorts your perception on the actuality of reality, and things come to fruition with you knowing.
Take for instance, in March 2017, US Congress allowing internet providers to sell your web browsing history. It takes Stephen Colbert, a comedian (not a journalist), to raise awareness of a really sneaky act.
Who said congress could do this? Don’t we live in democracy?
These monopolies we sell our biographies to are the anethema to everything we stand for. This is some Orwellian shit — it’s time for a revolution.
So what can you do about it?
Take this Reddit post:
There is no perfect way. Here is a decent start: Buy a disposable laptop with CD drive — pay with cash and store it on shelf for decent amount of time for cooldown. Remove camera, mic, bluetooth, internal Wi-Fi card, speakers and hard drive. Do not register the laptop. To connect online, use a third party USB Wi-Fi interface together with yagi/cantenna and connect to unsecured AP from safe location far away from home. Randomize MAC and hostname as you do that. Only use the latest Tails liveCD to connect online. Make sure the Tor browser’s noscript add-on is set to block everything globally, and that the browser’s security level is set to max.
Realistic? Maybe.
Unsustainable? You bet.
It’s just not a viable option anymore. Additionally, not everyone is tech savvy nor time rich to be exploring methods of incognito internet usage.
Applications like Touch. allow users to enjoy social media without any exploitative loopholes. Herein lies the strength of Touch.: the distributed nature of the blockchain means that no authority has visibility over your information. In other words, what you post on Touch. is for the people, by the people.
