With all the Facebook and Google+ discussion flying around the Internet, one word keeps popping up over and over again: "privacy".
One phrase in particular keeps slamming my ear-drums: "I know privacy is important, but..."
So here's my question: why is privacy important?
Of course if you're a criminal or something, and you genuinely do have something to hide, privacy would be important to you. But for the rest of us who don't do anything of particular interest to anyone (even our own loved ones), why does privacy matter?
In a world where Twitter and Facebook are flooded with people broadcasting to the world what they had for breakfast, and nobody gives a crap, is privacy relevant at all?
I should point out that in general I'm a pretty private person. I feel a natural inclination towards keeping things private.
But why? What's the benefit to keeping things private? Assuming there is a rational reason for privacy, where does one draw the line between what should be kept private and what shouldn't?
It's a pre-emptive security thing. Bothan spies don't go out looking specifically for the Death Star's small but significant exhaust port weak spot, ignoring all other pieces of information they uncover. They just try to get as much data of any sort about the Death Star as they can, and then sift through all of this afterwards looking for anything they might be able to exploit.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is what your enemies will want to do, if they're sensible: They'll just grab whatever info you let them have and opportunistically attack whatever weaknesses this reveals to them.
Where should you draw the line on personal privacy? Depends entirely on how competent, driven and numerous your enemies are, as well as on how paranoid you are. At the very least, I'd want to protect myself from uninvited spam.
Who are my enemies?
ReplyDeleteHopefully nobody, but realistically there's plenty of anonymous scammers and data-miners who'd have a much easier time if we had no privacy at all. That's the first thing that pops into my head any time privacy standards change: How much spam am I going to get?
ReplyDeleteUnrealistically, cyborg ninjas bred and built by those you once slighted.