Does Privacy Matter Anymore?

Author: Brian Wynne Williams

27 Aug

After catching up on my tweet reading, I caught up on my blog reading, and enjoyed Scott’s post about a camera + GPS + purchase history + face recognition auto scrapbook generator product idea. First, I thought how much I like the trend of people blogging product requests like this. Second, I thought “does anyone care about privacy anymore?”

The idea of Microsoft / LinkedIn knowing everything about every email I send had privacy on my brain, but the thought of everyone knowing exactly where I am, what I’m doing (or at least buying), who I’m with, and when it’s all happening is just spooky — largely because it’s not far off from reality today. Sure, you could argue that I could control who has access and it’s all historical data anyway, but access can be abused and if it’s being tracked at all it’s only a matter of time before it’s broadcast real-time.

Twitter is bad enough. Want to know what I’ve been up to? I’m a light user, but just look at my tweets from the past week:

goodbye tiny hybrid, hello giant minivan. i guess we’re all grown up now. about 5 hours ago
heading out to a brunch that will feature a high % of small children … trying to remember my ear plugs and extra strong coffee about 15 hours ago
mulling over a minivan purchase decision for tomorrow 09:38 PM August 25, 2007
just learned a lot about django from djackson … couldn’t resist 01:33 PM August 24, 2007
using email to coordinate calls from india to a crappy mobile phone is a bad idea 08:58 AM August 24, 2007
meeting in the city near the capitol … brings back memories from my days consulting at FEMA 08:57 AM August 24, 2007
coffee good. suits on friday not as much. 05:10 AM August 24, 2007
taking a breath between meetings 01:46 PM August 23, 2007
looking forward to reuniting with my family in t-minus 30 minutes 01:39 PM August 21, 2007
shocked by how smelly trains (both amtrak and metro) can be 01:36 PM August 21, 2007
choo choo! chuga-chuga chuga-chuga choo choooooo! 11:07 AM August 21, 2007
check that - train is 1 hr late departing. lucky me. thank you amtrak. 05:37 AM August 21, 2007
off to bed — train departs in about 5 hours 12:11 AM August 21, 2007
wrapping up a day of meeting new folks in durham — lots going on here, and lots more potential too 07:45 PM August 20, 2007

All of the sudden you know a lot about me. You know I used to drive a hybrid, so I’m probably somewhat eco-friendly (or maybe I just like to drive on 66 by myself during HOV hours). You know I now drive a minivan, so I probably have several kids. You know I don’t own an iPhone, and that I have either friends or business in India. You know that I had a meeting near the Capitol last Friday which required I wear a suit, and that I used to consult for FEMA. You know that I traveled by train from Durham to DC on Amtrak, departing an hour late around 6:30 am last Monday.

But I wanted you to know all that stuff. Should I? I’m not sure yet. I still might get bored with Twitter.

People have always worried about other people knowing too much about what they’re up to. It’s a healthy concern to harbor. It’s clear now, though, that tracking everyone’s every move isn’t technically all that difficult (or at least it won’t be much longer). I’m not sure anyone predicted that we’d bring the moment-by-moment monitoring so overtly upon ourselves.

It’s all in good fun amongst the techies for now, but I would expect a backlash at some point. The question is, will anyone announce when they decide to detach from the monitoring machine, or will you just have to figure it out?

Filed under: Products, Random

2 Responses for "Does Privacy Matter Anymore?"

Emily August 27th, 2007 at 5:13 pm 1
Brian, interesting post on privacy. When I lived in a very rural place, people in the community would comment, “saw you were working late last night,” or “what were buying at Piggly Wiggly on Saturday?” or “who was visiting you from Florida this weekend?” That, to me, was a real (and uncomfortable) loss in privacy. I didn’t know when people knew what I was doing and I didn’t have much control over it. I was “exposed” just because my car, home, and place of employment were public knowledge. What you are doing when you tweet and blog seems very different because of how proactively you are sharing the information with the audience. Are you lifestreaming? Like you said, it’s interesting how eager some people are to bring the minute-to-minute coverage upon themselves. And I agree, privacy is going to be a big issue in the near future, but I don’t think we’re there yet. What do you think will be the technology or circumstance that will take us from the kind of self-exposure (or even reputation building) you’re engaged in to the more frightening kind of exposure that we can’t control? And do you think your kids’ generation will have an expectation of privacy the way we do? I think about all these kids whose lives are so thoroughly documented on mommy blogs… will they accept such public knowledge as normal, or will it just embarrass the heck out of them?
Brian Wynne Williams August 29th, 2007 at 12:57 am 2
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

I think the circumstances that will lead to a lack of control will be largely self-inflicted. There are lots of benefits to tracking, sharing, and analyzing all kinds of data about what we do. I’m not overly concerned about abuse of such data, but once it’s all being collected it just seems like abuse will be too tempting for some people.

Example: if cost weren’t an issue, would I put some kind of tracking device on my kids? If I didn’t and they were lost, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. But if I did and I could check an app on my mobile phone that would show me their exact location at all times — is that a good thing? I don’t think so.

In terms of their expectations, I do think that kids growing up now will be less generally sensitive to some degree of “publicity” and possibly aspects of their life being more public, but I think human nature has some desire for privacy hard-wired, regardless of what technology makes possible. So, I don’t think they’ll be all that different after all.

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