Reverse Privatisation
Making public what ought to be private
The issue of privacy has been a contentious issue of late. It's not simply a straightforward question of to what extent our personal lives remain under our own private control, but also who will safeguard our privacy. The answer to these questions will have implications that extend far beyond the realms of computer networking, affecting the very foundations of democracy. George Orwell's dytopian vision of the future may be closer than we think; indeed, Big Brother is waiting just around the corner.
As Felix Stalder noted in his brilliant article "The End of Privacy as Triumph of Neoliberalism", we are approaching a point where not only do we take our privacy for granted, but we are beginning to rationalise our lack of it as an obvious and natural outcome of the "information revolution". Consequently, it's commonly surmised that individual privacy can no longer be protected, as opposed to corporate privacy which is enforced through legislation and police intimidation.
Thus, as corporate interests try to protect themselves by building fortresses made of stone, we are being made to live in a world of glass walls, and told to simply get used to it. This was aptly summed up by Sun's Scott McNealy, who wrote in the February 1999 issue of PCWeek: "You have zero privacy now. Get over it."
Some have gone even further than this, noting that on the Internet not only is absolute privacy impossible, it's even dangerous. Joe Burns, of the HTML Goodies site, justifies this warped logic through the example of Donald Townsend, a 26-year-old who posed as a 13-year-old girl in order to lure young girls to meet with him. Kathleen O'Connor, a judge for Spokane Country Superior Court (Washington State, US) had subsequently ruled it legal to record email and private online chats without the people involved knowing it. This ruling came after Townsend's lawyers tried to get the records suppressed by claiming privacy rights.
"Is trading off some of your privacy worth it if it means giving authorities the ability to catch people like Townsend?" asked Burns. "I would suggest that it is." His decision was based on the premise that we have to sacrifice some of our privacy in order to protect society at large, for there is no way of knowing who is a law-abiding citizen and who is not.
In essence, what the likes of Burns are saying is that in order to try and catch the very small number of perverts that are out there, we are all to be regarded as potential criminals. Ironically, this was the modus operandi within the Communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe, in which extensive police surveillance was justified so as to catch "enemies of the state". It looks as though we have taken a wrong turn somewhere and are heading back to the 20th century.
There are those, however, who recognise that some sort of safeguard for privacy is needed. Still, the question remains of who is to safeguard our privacy. Here again, warped logic is employed to justify an invasion of our privacy under the guise of expediency -- only this time it has nothing to do with protecting society but with market efficiency. In other words, the issue of privacy should be left in the hands of "the market" as opposed to government regulation.
"Aside from the threat to freedom that it poses," explains Esther Dyson, interim chairperson of ICANN, "government regulation will always be a step behind developments in technology." For this reason, she concludes, "the solution lies with financial markets, which already [pays] attention [to the issue]: proper data policies will over time mean consumer satisfaction and commercial success." Dyson adds: "in the world of the internet, there are a million ways to breach security: but the market can foster a million and one ways to protect it."
As with those who feel we must all be looked upon as potential criminals in order to catch a handful of pedophiles, those in favour of the market approach to ensure our privacy likewise don't offer us much in terms of respect. Dyson even admits as much: "let's face it, consumers are lazy and careless with their data; to put it politely, they have other priorities."
What Dyson fails to consider here is this laziness and carelessness on the part of consumers is actually a direct result of "the market" she cherishes so much, for one of the tenets of corporate capitalism is to have consumers as submissive as possible. God forbid if we have thinking and conscientious consumers; indeed, one wonders where ICANN would be at present if Internet users were more aware of such things as Internet privatisation.
Fortunately, not everyone is in agreement with Dyson on this matter. Steve Carlson, in many ways a net entrepreneur himself, takes an opposing view. "It's not that I like having the government interfering in the marketplace," he wrote recently to the Online Europe list he moderates, "but I just don't trust private industry to police themselves. Where is the economic incentive for businesses to behave?"
To answer his question, there is none. The overall data gathering and online measurement market exceeds 4 billion US dollars annually. When joined with the online advertising market and with the amount of eCommerce that relies on it, it is clear there is an enormous amount of money involved. In fact, so much money is involved that not only isn't there an economic incentive for businesses to behave, there are more than plenty of incentives for them to misbehave. What is more, this is what actually fuels the bubble economy in the US. This, in conjunction with the gold rush in intellectual property rights, have become so vital to US domestic and foreign policy that privacy issues need to be set aside for the sake of economic growth.
Hence, the rejection of government regulation (which, in the US, the government itself is in favour of) has more to do with laissez-faire economics than social policy. The reason given by Dyson for favouring "market forces" over government regulation, therefore, is too simplistic and idealistic.
Christopher Modzelewski of Global eMarketing S.A., contributing to the Online Europe thread on privacy, gets to the heart of it all: "the key issue in the US with the FTC and the watchdog groups is the lack of punishment." As he sees it, the problem with government regulation is not because rules are established to regulate behaviour, but how the rules themselves are structured and enforced. "Rules can be set as guidelines or rules can be set as limitations," notes Modzelewski. "Guidelines can help because improvement comes by evolution into new areas not previously regulated." At the same time, he is not blind to the fact that "limitation can destroy a huge market."
Given the public has more chance of direct input through government than a corporation (at least, so the theory of democracy goes), our privacycan only be ensured through proper legislation and, more importantly, rigorous enforcement and the effective punishment of offenders. What is needed at this point, therefore, is to put the privacy issue back into proper perspective. We need to reinvigorate the adage of "your home is your castle" whilst pushing for more transparency in the way companies (and government) go about their business. It is individuals who should be allowed to live within their tiny little fortresses; corporations, on the other hand, are the ones that should be made to inhabit glass walls.