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An interesting thought exercise is to think about how much of your life is now being spent under surveillance. Not only all the cameras everywhere, but also Gma

An interesting thought exercise is to think about how much of your life is now being spent under surveillance. Not only all the cameras everywhere, but also Gmail, Facebook, and whatever else you might use. Maybe George Orwell's predictions aren't too far off.

Silhouette 9y ago
Not only all the cameras everywhere, but also Gmail, Facebook, and whatever else you might use. Personally, I believe a greater concern is the things other people are using. If I choose to use Google or Facebook services or to carry a smartphone loaded with sensors and networking and spyware, that's down to me. There are plenty of valid concerns about transparency, but at least I have the option to not participate at all. On the other hand, I have no control over whether someone on the next table over at a restaurant chooses to carry a smartphone that has some sort of always-observing technology built in, nor do I get any warning if they are doing so and my dinner conversation that would normally be reasonably private is being picked up by a mic and transmitted to the mothership. Likewise, if I send an email to someone, while it has never been a 100% secure medium, it used to be the case that it was unlikely any third parties would see the message unless it was a system admin dealing with some sort of problem. Today a significant number of recipients are using a service like Google's to handle their mail, but possibly hidden behind their own domains and identity/branding. Consequently, those big mail services may in practice have access to a large amount of the email I have sent and may be processing it for all kinds of reasons without my knowledge or consent. Same goes for services like social networks when they do things like uploading someone's whole address book from their phone after their app is installed. Now it's not just my friend or business contact who has my details, it's a social network, and they can associate those details with everyone else involved as well and start building up a detailed profile about me, again without my having any sort of direct relationship with them and without my knowledge or consent.
matz1 9y ago
As time goes the cost of privacy is increasing. It become more burdensome and costly to maintain privacy. How do we adapt to the society where everything is public ?

Silhouette 9y ago

Not only all the cameras everywhere, but also Gmail, Facebook, and whatever else you might use. Personally, I believe a greater concern is the things other people are using. If I choose to use Google or Facebook services or to carry a smartphone loaded with sensors and networking and spyware, that's down to me. There are plenty of valid concerns about transparency, but at least I have the option to not participate at all. On the other hand, I have no control over whether someone on the next table over at a restaurant chooses to carry a smartphone that has some sort of always-observing technology built in, nor do I get any warning if they are doing so and my dinner conversation that would normally be reasonably private is being picked up by a mic and transmitted to the mothership. Likewise, if I send an email to someone, while it has never been a 100% secure medium, it used to be the case that it was unlikely any third parties would see the message unless it was a system admin dealing with some sort of problem. Today a significant number of recipients are using a service like Google's to handle their mail, but possibly hidden behind their own domains and identity/branding. Consequently, those big mail services may in practice have access to a large amount of the email I have sent and may be processing it for all kinds of reasons without my knowledge or consent. Same goes for services like social networks when they do things like uploading someone's whole address book from their phone after their app is installed. Now it's not just my friend or business contact who has my details, it's a social network, and they can associate those details with everyone else involved as well and start building up a detailed profile about me, again without my having any sort of direct relationship with them and without my knowledge or consent.

matz1 9y ago

As time goes the cost of privacy is increasing. It become more burdensome and costly to maintain privacy. How do we adapt to the society where everything is public ?