The knotty tale of security and privacy

The battle between security and privacy has always been unsettling. With the advent of modern technology and escalated levels of data breaches, privacy has become a buzzword in the cyber world. There is a constant argument between the cluster that says they have ‘nothing’ to hide against the group that doesn’t want others to know their ‘secret’. What adds to the disconcert is that the term security and privacy are sometimes used cohesively and are sometimes conflicting to each other. To understand the problem truly we need to surf through the core principals and scope of the terms.
Privacy can be considered as control over informational determination — the ability to decide what about you go where. Of course, we don’t want anyone to know the screenshots of the conversations that we saved (hush hush). It is surely important that every citizen should have the power over their data but should that be given as a right is what triggers the debate. This brings us to the second term — security. Security is a tool or a means to achieve privacy. It provides us with the confidence to assume that what is private remains private. This perspective leads people into thinking that security and privacy complement each other but what I defined above is a very myopic way of looking at the terms. Let us take an example of an application called “TrueCaller”. It is a caller presentation software that lets a receiver know who is calling (even if the caller is not saved in the contact list). It is useful to detect and flag spam calls and block numbers making your calling secure. But at the same time, anyone can get access to your phone number simply by typing in your name!
Another suitable example in this context will be the FBI-Apple encryption dispute. Apple has always been at the forefront when it comes to advocating data privacy. During the investigation of San Bernardino attack of 2016 FBI recovered the iPhone of Syed Farook (one of the terrorists) which contained sensitive information that would provide a significant lead to capture the third shooter. Due to the advanced encryption of iOS FBI had to take help from Apple for which the latter firmly denied. This case was taken to court as what came to be known as the famous Apple vs FBI case. Even though Apple resisted the case initially it had to share the information after firm pressure from the judiciary. These incidences show that security is a very broad term and it’s scope ranges from the security of private data of an individual to the security of a nation as a whole. And thus privacy and security start to conflict when we see data as part of the society rather than that of an individual.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and there can be very interesting arguments from both sides of the pillars but I don’t want this article to end on an incomplete note by not crowning who the winner is. I value privacy and I would really not want anyone to know the intimate details of my life. But If I take off my short-sighted spectacles and see whom I am protecting my data from I find myself feeling really stupid. I am fine with giving my personal details to companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple who have the legal authority to sell that information to other organizations for money and at the same time, I have a problem with sharing that information with the organization that has sworn to protect me! It won’t really matter to me if an unknown chap sitting in Washington goes through my chat for suspicious content. It would be impractical to think that they would even retain my details for a long time otherwise with the amount of data being generated each day the US would have to spend most of its budget buying storage devices! What I stated in this article is solely my opinion and I would love to hear the counter-arguments that would trigger my food for thought!