The problem with almost every discussion about online privacy is that it starts from a place of assuming that the problem is with the choices of individual Americans ... and not with the system we all HAVE to interact with, daily.
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Data privacy experts told me we need to think about it more like environmental protection. It's great if you recycle, personally. But that doesn't stop climate change. Privacy is a systems problem, not a problem of personal virtue signaling.
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“I don’t even know if we have had our ‘Silent Spring’ yet. Maybe Cambridge Analytica will be our ‘Silent Spring.’” -- @ACLU's Daniel Kahn Gillmor on the need for new ways of thinking about privacy law and policy
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Quick thread of thought:
1. There are very few bits of personal information that only you know about yourself. Like 98% of the time, your personal information is inherently known to others, and without that fact, there's no reason for the information to exist --
1. There are very few bits of personal information that only you know about yourself. Like 98% of the time, your personal information is inherently known to others, and without that fact, there's no reason for the information to exist --
2. Personal information is almost always an interaction, whether that's the government knowing your SSN, your doctor and pharmacy knowing your prescriptions, or your spouse knowing what brand of coffee the two of you like best. Your privacy exists in a commons.
3. Your private information exists in a commons. The issue is who you want to have access to that commons. And whether you have the ability to control who is there. Today, tech and econ incentives make it easier for the gate to that pasture to be opened against your will.
4. That's why @ChadwickMatlin and I started thinking about this as Privacy of the Commons. Privacy of the Commons is how the Golden State Killer gets caught. Privacy of the Commons is how 200k Facebookers downloading an app = 87 million losing data to Cambridge Analytica.
5. Privacy of the Commons is the thread that ties together the Golden State Killer, Cambridge Analytica, Equifax, and your parents' Walgreens loyalty card. And nobody's list of "101 Ways to Protect Your Privacy Online" will save you from that.
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