Privacy 2020…
What is meant by the word ‘privacy’ has never been more confusing, misunderstood or manipulated. What does it really mean?
I’m writing this in July 2020 and, if I were writing a piece on privacy at the start of this year, it may well have been structured in a very different way. I’m sure the focus and tone would have been the same but maybe, the narrative would have taken a slightly different route.
Covid-19 has had a permanent effect on the world, society, Governments, individuals, economies, relationships, actually you can add anything to that list you want. Go on try it — here’s some examples — trees, shoes, hair, cushions — seriously they have all been affected — everything, but everything is connected.
And that leads into the privacy matter at hand. Since the beginning of — let’s call it the ‘realisation’ of Covid-19 — there have been a considerable number of articles, tweets, podcasts, webinars, smoke signals, Morse code messages (you get my point) — all debating the future of privacy in a post-Covid-19 age.
Many of them have been well considered and persuasive — looking at the wider implications of privacy from both a technological and societal perspective. Many of them have been lazy, clickbait. It was ever thus, hey?
But with very few exceptions I wonder if this tsunami of articles has actually looked at what actually privacy ‘is’ and if it has changed as society, technology and cultures have developed in different and confusing ways.
So before we look at Privacy 2020 let’s maybe consider privacy itself. What is it?
Like any nebulous subject (because I believe privacy is nebulous) it is all in the individual (or a shared collective) interpretation:
· According to the UN it’s a fundamental human right and over the last 3–4 years they have been building a series of resolutions on individual privacy that all countries, businesses and individuals should follow.
· According to the OED privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
· According to my mother privacy is what goes on behind closed doors — “You don’t wash your dirty linen in public”.
· According to Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon it’s what we give them to access their services. I’ll very much come back to this point in terms of Privacy 2020.
It’s all of those and none of them. Right? Wrong? Depends on your interpretation.
So these articles have in effect, been making opinion driven statements based on a nebulous and interpretive subject — nothing wrong with that indeed, its where every discovery, piece of learning and innovation begin — but none have looked at the layers, aspects and conditions of privacy that make it such a nebulous subject, and there I think is the underlying condition of Privacy 2020.
For those interested (if you are still with me) aspects of privacy are topics such as;
· Self-Identity — Allowing us all to develop our own individual personalities and boundaries.
· Secrecy — The ability for us to have our own secrets that we do not want others knowing.
· Right to be left alone — self-explanatory I hope.
· Intimacy — again, self-explanatory…
· Physical — one’s personal space
· Organisational — corporate stuff, you know?
· States of privacy — physical barriers such as walls, rooms etc, behavioural — the language we use to maintain privacy and normative — the laws and social norms that we adhere (or not) to.
In the main these are very human (and humane) aspects — in many ways they feed into what makes each of us well, us I suppose.
Then there are some privacy aspects that, I think, have become the ‘prime’ privacy aspects — the ones that have been at the forefront of discussions due to the way in which technology companies and service providers have reshaped the narrative on what privacy is — to ultimately serve their own commercial goals.
· Control over information — The control we have over information about ourselves.
· Limited Access — Being able to participate in society without information being gathered on us.
· Autonomy — Our individual rights to be, an individual, with our own moral judgements and ‘code’.
Now, you don’t need to be a privacy expert to see the way in which each of these three states have been (and I choose this word carefully) exploited by technology companies and service providers to provide (in many cases) free access to products and services.
In effect parts of our privacy has become currency, a commodity — one used in which we transact with companies that we wish to engage with. In many cases we also pay money plus our privacy to gain access to personalised services — Spotify, Netflix etc. Quite beautiful. And of course, those data points are collected, analysed, ‘annoymised’ and traded.
So, privacy in 2020 — in the eyes of Big Tech — is in many ways a series of data points with which they can analyse behaviour, plot trends, and design more privacy ‘releasing’ services and solutions. You may well say “nothing wrong with that, it’s the way it is and I’m more than comfortable with it”, and that my friends is absolutely fine — a black and white answer to the question of privacy which has been turned into a binary discussion by big tech and now (in the UK) Governments turning our privacy into data points.
So in effect the following summary outlines where we stand with privacy in 2020:
· Parts of our Privacy = Data Points
· Data Points = Insight
· Insight = Income/Ad Revenue/Data trading etc..
You will note throughout this piece that I have not mentioned one very crucial component of privacy perception — trust — you are going to be more likely to release parts of your privacy to those that you trust, those that have earned it. If I were to include an analysis of the trust/privacy balance in this piece it would be considerably longer — and you do not want that.
However, in the commoditisation of privacy, trust has also been turned into data points and statements — “Your data is securely stored”, “Your emails are never shared”, “We respect your privacy (so accept these cookies in your browser)” — again the true strength and connection created through trust has been reduced to no more than a tick box or button.
You’ll be glad to know that I’m close to my overall point now… Covid-19 has magnified some of the challenges and opportunities that more intrusive/personalised (depending on your view) access to our privacy (or as I hope I’ve managed to convince you data points) will bring. Some aspects of our privacy have been commoditised to an extent that it is unlikely that we will ever truly reclaim them — the black and white transactions that we complete everyday to get access to services are embedded in our society now.
If we understand and are comfortable with the components of privacy that we have ‘handed over’ — do we understand truly how these can be used for the collective good? I don’t think so — I think binary arguments blind us to what we’ve already made available — we should understand this, make our peace with it and work together to address Covid-19 and future challenges we will all face as a species and society.
But, we are not black and white thinking creatures (well the majority of us are not) — we live in the grey, in the uncertainty of our own thinking and our own decisions. There are still some aspects of privacy that we should at least consider how deeply we hold them, before we, us, open these up to others. We need to think individually and collectively how comfortable we are to allow other aspects of privacy such as self-identity and secrecy (which have not yet been turned into data points) to be shared, to be monitored and analysed either for the individual or greater good.
We need to understand what privacy is to us, not to others. We need to understand it’s a complex, nebulous and contradictory subject — if we learn what it is and what it means to us as individuals we can decide what to do with it — before we hand it over for good.
