With modern surveillance, no longer can the watched watch the watchers.<p>Being under <i>reciprocal</i> social surveillance may have been the norm for humans, meaning living in tight-knit villages or open floor-plan, multi-generation homes—situations where there's always someone else around to see or hear what you do. But so too do you hear and see what <i>they</i> do, meaning you (or the community) can enact social and sometimes physical consequences for snooping, spying, snitching, and gossiping.<p>Cameras, even one-way glass, and especially mass communication snooping makes that surveillance unilateral—an expression of bureaucratic power over the individual. We can't tell what the corp or agency is doing with our data, how it will be used for good or ill, and we have little recourse (i.e. standing in court).<p>If, as they claim, these new forms of surveillance are essential for national security, protecting the children, and robust economic growth, then perhaps what's missing is the ability of ordinary citizen(-journalists) to likewise watch these faceless voyeurs and powerful officials to the same degree, returning to that "norm" of reciprocal surveillance.
>If we really care about our privacy, though, why do we share so much?<p>In my experience, for many it has nothing to do with choice of sharing - it's about lack of education and understanding of the internet and/or technology in general. People aren't aware of just how much data is being collected by companies (especially tech companies), who it's shared with, for what purpose it's used or that they really have no control over removing or 'deleting' it.<p>So I don't believe it's entirely correct to blame consumers. It's more the tech industry exploiting the lack of knowledge of consumers while hiding behind opaque policies.<p>> the panoptic gaze of CCTV captures our movements; social media companies scan masses of our public and private messages; and smart speakers record clips of our speech<p>If privacy was important to recent generations of people the NSA revelations from Snowden leaks would have caused an uprising. Whether good or bad, there seems to be a certain level of apathy or acceptance around the loss of privacy of personal data.<p>> Sometimes we have little choice<p>The bottom line. Tech companies already know everything about everyone who uses their platforms. In fact, building AI and serving advertisements relies on them collecting it.
My own thinking around this is quite simple. We want to keep secrets from people who are sufficiently close in our social circles so that the consequences of them knowing and spreading it to the people with the most obvious power over our lives.<p>The consequences of data collection don't relate to people within our social circles so it is much harder to be viscerally affected by it. Without that emotional drive, it's one of those things that gets pushed down the priority list in our lives.
Most people have no idea the amount of data available about them. They may suspect in an abstract way, but this is entirely different to being confronted with the extent of your own data and understanding how it can be used against your own interests. They're also looking to how others are reacting, to see whether they should be concerned or not.<p>I think many Social Media Co.s have mistaken their customers' distraction and obliviousness for consent.<p>It reminds me of an acquaintance who made questionable tax claims one year, and didn't get audited so went a bit further each year, growing on the confidence and feeling of a forming 'norm' that came from getting away with more each year.
Tax office audits in my country are pretty random, but I will always remember his ashen face when the audit finally did come.<p>(I have a feeling this is a known psychological effect, but I can't remember the name of it.)<p>So too, I'm guessing social media businesses feel that with each passing year they are accruing more implicit consent by virtue of seeing no real kickback from their users.<p>I feel when kickback finally comes, it will be a tipping point and their business model will be difficult to continue with, in the regulatory landscape that follows.
This author is pretending agency, self determination and power don't exist and it makes this one of the most slimy articles I've read in a minute.<p>> If we really care about our privacy, though, why do we share so much?<p>Can someone explain to me a charitable motive that could possibly be behind this article? Naivety is the best I've got but it strains credulity.<p>The author is posing a question that's hitting my brain like they're asking why I deserve safety and security when I dress the way that I do.
Being under social surveillance was and is the norm for humans.
The privacy of the individual is a historical exception that lastet for a few hundred years and just for parts of the population.<p>It once served a purpose, now its obsolete.
And obviously people don't really care as long as they can imbed it and its outcomes in their personal world model or even profit from it.
Which is and will be manipulated by the same agents that skim off the vastly bigger profits of that game.
The author completely underestimates the ability of the human brain to adapt. Brains have changed very little, if at all, during written history yet the way of life, daily habits and attention have changed wholesale multiple times. Brain is in fact too adaptive for history to catch up with it.<p>> Our concern for privacy has its evolutionary roots in the need to maintain boundaries between the self and others, for safety and security.<p>Safety distance from conspecifics is not privacy, most animals don't hide from view when having sex etc. In fact being out of view is anxiety-inducing since it means danger - they 're too far from the herd. Humans too, dont live like hermits, but they form tight villages. Privacy had more to do with protecting one's property (which for most of history included his family). The modern idea of privacy as independence-from-others was wholly enabled by technology which allows people to be independent from each other<p>Sharing is social signaling, it's what we ve done since forever
To me the issues of privacy do not come from the public information we decide to put out there, but with the difference in power between the user and the platform.<p>It's okay to have an Instagram page, for most it is not different than a photo album that can be easily shared. It's really cool and beautiful... the problem comes in that what I put on Instagram is not just the analog experience I believe it is but it is secretly filled with data I am probably not aware of that is then used by the company to manipulate me! And not manipulate me in a small way, Facebook has published countless articles boasting their capabilities of changing people's moods.<p>Our legal institutions, and our societies, are incapable of controlling the private interest of these mega-corporations and authoritarian government solutions are not much better (like Chine). And we are letting all this wealth that we generate be used not to improve our lives, not to make us happier, but to manipulate us into whatever the private sector wants!<p>It is impossible for us, as individuals, to fight corporations. What people want when they say they want privacy is not to shy away from others but to hide from corporations (and governments) which we know are not human, these are institutions that we fear because we see what they do with what we give them. They misuse it, time and time again. So in a way I agree with the article when it talks about our primal needs for privacy, we hide from danger, but now a days danger is represented in governments and private corporations. We don't trust these, they are dangerous bodies with interests that oppose ours.<p>We need more sane institutions, governments as well as a complete re-construction of the private sector so that it can optimize what we truly value and need as a society. Instead of them being optimized on a proxy that is dis embedded from the well being of society (money). Privacy is about hiding, but not hiding from the fellow but the stranger.
My god - if we can't even see that we have been engineered to give up all sense of privacy - that perhaps that was a massive factor in the drive to ensure we adopt technology - we really are in trouble!<p>We didn't realise what we were heading into, but it is becoming clearer. We are moving into a fascistic (corporate owned) technocratic governance system - everything we do will be monitored in the minutiae. Privacy is certainly under attack - in fact it is very close to the point that you will not be able interact with 'society' unless you agree to concede all your information. We have medical 'passports' on the way in order to enter shops, ffs.<p>Its a dystopian future that we have coded ourselves into. The death of privacy, sure, and also the death of individuality.