Privacy, Transparency, and Choice
What do they mean and where is the blurred boundary?
In the 21st century, when we perceive the world as a global village and billions connect through the Internet — privacy and transparency are getting distorted and yet are more important than ever.
Privacy and transparency are two contradicting properties for a particular system. Choosing one over the other in a system is a trade-off. Individuals value privacy over transparency but it is the opposite in groups.
If we categorize the problems for various stakeholders in a system, the scenario will look different and more approachable.
For example, users of a social media platform want privacy. Advertisers, on the same platform, want transparency and an ability to reach specific demography. The governments want backdoor entry to private chats and power to audit the platform whenever requested (for security reasons).
Privacy, security, and transparency also change from platform to platform. Ecommerce, social media, search engine, email client, travel booking apps, food delivery, mobile phones, health platforms, education platforms, etc.
The big questions for everyday Internet users are —
- What privacy and transparency really mean?
- How can I ensure my own privacy?
- And do I get to choose between the two?
Eric Schmidt (former CEO, Google) in 2009 said: “good people have nothing to hide, only those who do something bad have things to hide”. This statement implies that good people don’t need privacy. This is a distorted definition of “who needs privacy”. For the company which benefits from access to our location, emails, search history, personal photos, calendar, work data, etc. The statement was arrogant.
21st-century culture affords a higher level of public transparency than ever before. In some cases makes it mandatory to lose privacy to access certain products, services, professions, and position in society.
Modern technology and associated cultural shifts have changed how government works, what information people can find out about each other. Due to the digital revolution, people no longer have control over what is public information, leading to a tension between the values of transparency and privacy.
Transparency,
as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities, and in other social contexts, is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed.
According to Byung-Chul Han (philosopher and cultural theorist), the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.
Transparency in a system ensures that everyone is playing by the rules and no one is being taken advantage of. For example, all employees in a company would prefer transparency on everyone’s roles, positions, and responsibilities. Some companies would also prefer to keep the promotion/increment policy, salaries, etc public to more accountability. Businesses and governments prefer transparency in each other’s operations to comply and make operations easier for all stakeholders. Families prefer transparency on what’s going on in the personal lives of the other members. Sports prefer transparency on what supplements the athletes are using to ensure fair play.
It means that transparency also helps us maintain a shared truth. Ironically, transparency allows all the stakeholders in a system to easily trust each other and the system. But it comes at the expense of individuality. Let’s take some examples to understand it:
China’s Social Credit System
China is building a complex system to track its citizens. The social credit system in China tracks residents of cities and maintains a social credit for individuals (it is not simple and has much more than that). This is their way of incentivizing good behavior in the citizens. They expect the citizens to adhere to complete transparency because apparently, they also believe that good people have nothing to hide. The system keeps track of personal information like residence address, biometric, occupation, travel history, and online activity. This kind of transparency is one way and the citizens are compromising their freedom in exchange for no personal gain.
Blockchain and Decentralization
The blockchain-powered platforms, although anonymously, have trust inbuilt. Inbuilt trust means in-built privacy. Unlike the example of the social credit system, on Blockchain all the members of the network can have access to the data. This data could be the record of all the transactions (in the case of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies) or could be the record of digital wealth or content posted on blockchain-based social media.
Privacy
is our ability to seclude ourselves, or information about us, and to express it selectively. Privacy can be maintained at the individual level or at a group or organization level. History tells us that privacy is important for our safety and it keeps us from being vulnerable. The boundaries on what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals but share common themes.
Irrespective of cultural and personal boundaries on privacy, we all seem to care about privacy a lot. What we do about it is another thing. But in the recent past, the emphasis and awareness on online privacy have increased. Especially after the Facebook incident, GDPR coming into the picture, and huge fines on tech companies.
Maintaining privacy in the physical world is very different than privacy in the online world. It is not easy for the physical world norms on privacy to exist and extend as it is to the Internet.
As large-scale information systems become more common, there is so much information stored in many databases worldwide that an individual has no practical means of knowing or controlling all of the information about themselves that others may have hold or access.
The threat to individuals is not only that Internet companies have access to our personal information like name, location, personal and professional network, travel history, expense history, personal finance, health records, political ideology, search history, conversations, etc.
The threat lies more in how they can use it. The sole purpose of private companies is to make profits while playing as per the rules set by the regulation and exploiting the loopholes. Since the Internet has no territory, companies can operate in any territory, get registered and follow regulations in a different territory, and do everything in their capacity to benefit financially from the personal data of its users.
At first, on a smaller scale, tech companies use this data to make better services and to improve the user experience. But as the companies grow, they gain more power to exploit loopholes, markets tend to saturate, and they look for more means to capital. In the hindsight, making use of the existing resources to build for new use cases is the best solution. So instead of sticking to their core beliefs and ethical ways of doing things, they tend to cross the line and make use of personal data in ways that lead to tempering in elections, mobilizing people, and the attempt to extract as much gain as they can from their customers.
In such scenarios, what can we do to hold tech companies accountable, to learn what they are doing with the data and how it is affecting us, and what can we at the personal level.
Choice
is the act of picking one thing between the two options. So are we left between the choice of Transparency vs. Privacy?
Do I really need to share my personal life on the Internet? Can I use technology without giving up my information? How do I make sure that I do not fall prey to data theft and not left vulnerable? These are hard questions and have no straight answers.
One way, and it is quite hard but often recommended way is to switch to paid or privacy-focused alternatives of the Internet services. For example, this article here has all the alternatives for Google services. Similarly, people recommend quitting Facebook ecosystem and switching to privacy-focused communication platforms at the expense of smaller network and bad user experiences. Another way is to switch to the iOS ecosystem as Apply highly boasts its privacy policies and commitment to privacy.
But how far can an individual go to ensure his/her online privacy when the threat isn’t evident and on the face. When the threat isn’t affecting them on the daily basis. Also, when the awareness on the treat is low. Even for someone like me who works in tech and keeps using all the tech platforms with privacy settings in the favour of the company.
So it is clear that our choices depend on our understanding of a subject. Choices depend on how much they directly impact us. And it depends on our awareness. For now, the Internet ecosystem has forced the users to play by their rules and create an illusion of choices for us.
Privacy and Transparency are thin ropes to walk on
The thing is that some systems need transparency: markets, investment, the food industry, pharma industry, etc. There are places where transparency holds importance for both, the consumer and producer. But then there are systems where there’s a tradeoff between the two when we try to make it favorable to either the consumer or producer.
Companies and platforms try to walk this thin rope by creating a perception that their products are safe to use. While at the same time they make use of the private data in ways that harm the users and benefit their causes. This works fine as long as the impact remains low. But when the impact is on national and global politics, on the citizens of an entire nation, or on particular groups and communities, ensuring privacy becomes a responsible thing to do.
The policies by governments will not necessarily work to ensure privacy and transparency where it is required. We’ll need technical solutions. There are many solutions that are available and are being implemented. But will those solutions become as big as the platforms that go the other way remains to be seen. Until then, all we can do is be mindful of our Internet usage.
