Why I’m not paranoid about privacy
Imagining a way to a transparent future for all
It was in the beginning of 2014 when Facebook made the decision to not let users opt-out* of “seen” receipts on text messages or to turn off their “last seen” timestamp. At least that was when I first became aware of it, after googling “How to turn off ‘last seen’ on Facebook”. Finding this out bewildered me because I realised that while it may appear to be a subtle thing which wasn’t even mentioned in the tech world, it had some serious implications. This was the first time there was no opt-out for read receipts if not ever, then at least it was a first such move of any major messaging player. This did not seem to be some “move fast, break things” kind of decision made by a mid-level product manager. This smelled like a calculated move by Facebook, most probably as part of a well thought out strategy. I found it interesting to ponder- why?
The first thought that came to mind was that perhaps it aims to raise user engagement. Users are more likely to go in multiple times and check if their messages were read, and therefore spend more time on Facebook. But even if this is true I find it hard to believe that this was a driving factor for this decision, given that the same move can just as easily result in much less engagement. For example, people who value their privacy might choose to SMS instead of using Messenger, or avoid to logging in to Facebook at all. As it happens, my young sister sometimes ask me to text-message her to get in contact instead of using Whatsapp or Messenger on days when she is trying to avoid someone seeing her being online. I can only imagine all the anxiety that this move by Facebook has caused; all the communication mishaps, the relationship fights, the disappointments of a million messages “seen” and never answered. A million a day, probably.
So why would Facebook go and do such a thing? I believe that Facebook has realised that we are in the midst of a historic transition which will change humanity forever. A fundamental change which like many other current monumental changes is driven by technology, and which will permeate across all levels of society. The transformation I am talking about is the shift from privacy to transparency. From secrecy to authenticity. The fact that our privacy is eroding is nothing new. It started slowly centuries ago with the population census and record keeping, and has exploded in the past few decades like so many other things in this exponential age. This issue is a common topic which is discussed often and with much concern these days. However, the more I read about issues of privacy, government spying and corporations selling personal information, I feel that the discussion too often tend to end up with the same conclusion — we have to protect our right to privacy from governments and corporations lest we end up in an Orwellian dystopia. I generally agree with the concern, but I think that what many fail to see is that it is only a small part of a bigger picture. The first thing we need to understand is that the shift is total and inevitable, mainly due to two factors:
1) Anything that can be digitalised- will be.
2) Anything in digital form is never completely secure from exposure.
I don’t think that there is need to elaborate much on number 1. Recent history suggests that even the things we can’t ever imagine to be digitalised, sooner or later probably will be. The second point is more interesting to debate. Yes, we still have darknet around which is considered relatively secure and today even mainstream messaging services cut their own access to information to ensure the privacy of their users from government warrants. But while sending a Whatsapp message is surely more secure today than it was last week, who knows about next week? One day we are led to believe that iPhones are a brick wall for the FBI, but a few days later we find out that it isn’t really true. With the rapid development of technology it is impossible to know if what we send through the internet really is secure, wether it is stored or deleted and if it will remain so. Another important factor to remember is that encryption is only a technical shield, not factoring in human error. The back-to-back super encryption of iCloud didn’t help much in preventing the leak of the most private pictures of a long list of celebrities. Truth is, nobody knows where this tango dance between privacy and transparency will end up. However, despite whatever the latest news may say, the trend is clearly continuing- the private aspects of our lives are diminishing for every year that goes by.
We shouldn’t fool ourselves and think that we are getting our privacy back. The best thing that we can do is start realising that the very concept of privacy is going to change a whole lot, and that we will keep moving into a new age of transparency, for better or worse. Thus, the discussion we should be having is not only about how to fight it, but also how to manage this transition to increase the chances that we end up in an open and honest future rather than a dystopian one.
The executive team at Facebook has been impressively consistent in being on top of social trends. Their move to win over social media on mobile was impressive, with the only blunder being missing to snap up snapchat, as I wrote about in my last post. So I am comfortable assuming that they are not missing out on this development. What I hope, is that Facebook has decided that aside from fighting the governments desire to encroach on their data, to also lead the way and try help shape a non-dystopian future in which openness and transparency is celebrated, not feared. One way to do that is to educate people on a massive scale about how to think around digital privacy, take them by the hand and train them in transparent communication. Amazingly, as it wields the power to influence a pretty significant chunk of the human race directly and on a personal level, Facebook can actually do that. So they start off with a cute blue “privacy dinosaur” that helps us get used to this new concept of digital privacy- and they kill our “seen” opt-out. The next step by the way, is teaching us to be transparent about where we are.
The problem with transparency
To be transparent is to communicate your beliefs and actions authentically, timely, and with the honest intention to reflect reality as you perceive it. This in turn means a willingness to accept accountability for what you do and believe in. While practicing transparency in a consistent way is not an easy task and often even counterintuitive, it is commonly believed that being transparent is highly beneficial for both personal relationships and business prosperity. I recently read a recommended book called “Lying” by Sam Harris, in which he talks about the many benefits of telling the truth.
“A wasteland of embarrassment and social upheaval can be neatly avoided by following a single precept in life: Do not lie”
- Sam Harris, Lying
I’ve heard claims that lying is an inherent trait of humans, something that you can’t just train away. That small kids start to lie not much after they learn to talk, even without being taught to do so. But this also holds true to violence, something that people often claim is part of ‘human nature’. But while violence used to be a ubiquitous part of everyday life today we are living in the most peaceful times ever. Dishonesty, to a degree is also a form of violence, as it is used as a tool for defense and even abuse. So if it’s possible to teach kids not to beat each other, it should proabably also be possible to teach them not to lie. Real authenticity is still quite rare today, but when it’s found we appreciate it, so even if it’s not reciprocal the benefits of being honest still outweigh the downsides most of the times.
Transparency typically works wonderfully when practiced between people. The problem with being transparent however, is when a non-human factor enters the equation- the organisation. It is hard to advise someone to be completely honest with an organisation which cannot be trusted. Being completely honest with the police for example can get you in a lot of trouble. Like Harris explains: “One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behaviour that is ethically blameless.” Having to deal with an indeterminate number of people is one of the consequences of bureaucracy, where often the people making the rules are not the people who are enforcing them. This can leave you futilely reasoning with the executioner over the ruling of an abscent judge.
This issue, many privacy advocates would say is the danger of transparency, but it’s not true. The danger is not transparency in itself, the danger arises from the unequal transparency between people and organisations. When the organisation knows your secrets, but its operations and interests are opaque to you, is where you’re at a disadvantage. The reason that the NSA is dangerous is not because it knows everything about everyone- it is dangerous because it is not transparent about what it knows, and what it does with said knowledge. If the NSA decides to target you they can quickly dig up some dirt, for example a comment or message taken out of context, a dubious association to a suspicious person or hot location, and then they take you down for it. They can do that to anyone, because there is dirt on everyone. But imagine for a minute that the NSA was transparent. If their records and actions were public, then comments couldn’t as easily be taken out of context and dirt- well, there is some dirt on everyone, and when everyone is dirty no one is guilty. Ever wondered why Barack Obama could admit to have used cocaine and smoked weed and get away with it? Because everyone has. As this goes, it is not unreasonable to expect a future president with a bunch of leaked nudes. Heck, it might even help their campaign.
The NSA is of course far from transparent. But what makes Facebook so different from the NSA? The NSA is a governmental organisation, officially working to ensure the security of the American people, and is subjected to the democratically elected United States government. Facebook is a commercial corporation which is not subjected to work in anyones interests but to benefit their shareholders under the premise of the law. Yet people are seemingly willing to give their information to Facebook, but angry if they find that the government is getting in on the action. Something like this:
The logical conclusion is that it would be even more dangerous to trust Facebook, or Google, or Apple with your privacy than the NSA, as Facebook owes you nothing, and can change its policies tomorrow. But it is not. The reason we trust Facebook is because our intuition tells us that their incentives are aligned with ours, and our intuition is not all that off. That intuition is there because there is one important factor missing in this picture. This factor is that the shift from privacy (or secrecy) to transparency is affecting organisations at least as much as it is affecting you and me.
As hard as it is for people to keep their information private, the same is just as true for organisations. While people are relatively short lived and usually don’t keep records of everything they do, most big organisations are quite old and have a lot of records. People, relative to organisations also adapt much faster. While a person can switch from one messaging app to another instantaneously, organisations are not as flexible. The bigger they are the clumsier they get, and being a clumsy dinosaur puts you at a great disadvantage in times of rapid change. With information flowing freely and sometimes virally to unprecedented numbers of people through social media, secrets are getting a lot harder to keep. It is no coincidence that both the Republican and the Democratic parties are shitting their pants right now. The people have finally called their bluff. What’s going on in the American primaries today is a direct effect of the government and big money losing total control of the media to the internet. But not only dinosaurs are having a hard time keeping their skeletons in the closet. Social recommendation p2p platforms like Yelp and TripAdvisor, helps people sharing information and make both small and large companies involuntarily transparent. While social media has completely changed the game of keeping secrets from the public, organisations have yet another major achilles heel; organisations are made up of people, and the thing with people is that they are hard to predict and nearly impossible to control.
As the NSA increasingly gains more control over more sensitive information, as an organisation it might be tempted to put its strategic needs over what most people value as “right”. Stretching people’s values used to be much easier for the intelligence agencies. Let alone the risk of copying a large amount of documents and walking out the gates, or transmitting secrets over radio, unless you were a high ranking executive or passing the information directly to the enemy, it wouldn’t even be easy to find a listening ear. People generally see it as an ill-advised move to piss off your own government. Now though, anyone in the organisation who has access to sensitive information has a new weapon- the digital whistle. It is not by chance that the biggest leak in the history of US intelligence occurred when it did, nor that it wasn’t the work of a Russian spy, or a Chinese hacker. It makes perfect sense that it was an inside job- by an American with a conscience and a whistle. This is far from an isolated incident, and there is no good way to mitigate it, as it is impossible to know who will be the next whistle blower. Yesterday it was an NSA contractor, today it is someone in a law firm in Panama. This weeks leak is still only marking the pre-beginning of a new era of transparency in organisations. The way things go, as the privacy of the common citizens erodes, so does it for the secretary of state, the investment banker and the mafia boss.
“ Whistleblowers are elected by circumstance. More critical than who you are is what you see. “
- Edward Snowden
The reason we can trust Facebook and Google more than the NSA is that they cannot afford to screw us. Imagine what would happen if it was revealed that Google knowingly skewed search results to favour a political candidate? What if Facebook was secretly listening in to our conversations in order to improve ad targeting? The latter one, though only a rumour, still sparked a huge outrage. Facebook and Google feed off our trust in them, and they know that in today you cannot keep a secret for long, no matter how well you encrypt it. They have to be proactive about this as their users and customers powers them every day with their attention and wallets. They know that today’s big picture looks something more like this:
Traditional businesses and organisations like the government and its many subsidiaries take longer time to adapt to change. As they are living on 4 year cycles, and so not immediately dependant on peoples trust, they will act more reactively than proactively. They will kick and they will fight but only to delay the inevitable. The Sanders and Snowdens will keep coming, and sooner or later there will be no more ways for them to opt-out of transparency.
*Opt-out: (option-out) an option to turn off a feature. iMessage allows you to opt-out of sending read reciepts. This means that if you opt-out, anyone sending you texts to will not be able to see whether you have read them or not.
