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15 September 2009

What's Wrong with Privacy? (Transparency Matters #1)

Over the past few years, I've become something of a transparency nut. One of the problems with transparency as movement is that very few people even recognize the term, much less know what it is. Once they see an example of transparency, they're often quite supportive.

I'm taking a different tack. I'm going to outline why privacy is bad for you. Bad for you, bad for your health, bad for your family, bad for your economy, bad for your politics, bad for your security, bad for your planet.

Or, at least I'm going to try.

Privacy as a social phenomenon is not terribly old. Indeed, the first taste that most Americans experienced was the privacy of isolation, and then of anonymity, which they got by moving to the American wilderness, and then to cities and suburbs.

Privacy as an activity is not terribly natural. Privacy isn't holy, or even well-defined as a philosophical or legal concept. The US Constitution doesn't explicitly lay out a right to privacy; the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteeth Amendments are often stretched to serve as such. The courts don't recognize privacy except in those cases where citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Privacy is inconvenient. As we see in the social networking phenomenon and online advertising, folks are trading more information about themselves and their habits in exchange for better-tailored goods and services. Though most social networks, e.g., Facebook, have detailed privacy settings, most users leave these settings off for convenience.

"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." - Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems, 1999

Privacy is illusory. Private detectives agree that the most effective way to get information about someone is not through cameras, microphones, wiretaps, or keystroke monitoring. Rather, it's much easier to find all you need to know by using Google, sifting through publicly accessible civil and divorce court records, criminal and driving records, credit histories, physical mail, digging into garbage, and chatting up that gossipy neighbor or brother-in-law.

Privacy is distracting. Privacy is used as a solution to more fundamental social concerns. You shouldn't have to keep your information private to prevent harassment, identity theft, or stalking. Those are already crimes, in and of themselves, and privacy is a flimsy barrier to them, at best.

Privacy is corrosive. Many social movements have their roots in liberating folks who do not fit the stereotype of normal, and bringing the falsity of those stereotypes out into daylight. A short list of relevant issues would include: domestic physical and sexual abuse (privacy of the family); homosexuality (privacy of sexual behavior); as well as alcoholism, drug abuse, dyslexia, AIDS (privacy of medical conditions). In each of these cases, the first step toward dealing with the issue was and is confronting the damage that privacy has done.

Privacy is contagious. Modern corporations and other firms have taken the idea of privacy into the business sphere and we continue to see the repercussions. Untraceable banking transactions are only one example of a practice that facilitates more than just the recent financial crisis. Consider drug-running, gun- and ammunition-smuggling, human trafficking, and terrorist criminal enterprises. If you could trace every dollar that changes hands, you would be a long way toward preventing and prosecuting crimes as well as protecting and providing restitution for victims. If you could open the books of every firm, financial crises like this could be avoided.

Privacy is expensive. Privacy is now a huge industry. Privacy is not insurance, which has the value of increasing your resilience in a measurable way. Rather, privacy purports to increase your protection, with few guarantees. You trade your information, often along with your money, to Company A for goods and services. Then you pay Company B to make sure that Company A doesn't release that same information. And only rarely do you get the opportunity to see the information that has been collected about you – to see how it is being used, for example – even to simply correct the information itself.

Privacy is wrong. You know that your government works for you, but you still see excessive secrecy in all the functions of government. Scandals involving abuse of power, corruption, waste and fraud abound as a direct result of privacy. This privacy has crept into government decision-making, awarding of contracts, evaluation of contractors and the operations of those contractors. You should be able to access any information involving the government or its functions without encumbrance or delay. The only legitimate delay is when the privacy involved is crucial to the security of the nation.

Privacy is insidious. You want to be paid well, and to be paid fairly, for what you do, but you're often told to keep your wages private. This privacy allows you to be paid unfairly, by allowing arbitrary decisions, such as those based on gender, race, age, or hairstyle, to affect your wage. Also, since everyone is quiet about wages, you never know the true value of your work, and are never able to bargain based on that value. This has the net effect of suppressing the wages of truly valuable workers. This stems from the idea that evaluations, especially of individuals, are more accurate if they are private. Private evaluations are a sign of ineffective management. And making them public can even be fun.

Privacy is inefficient. You have to waste time, and you even receive lower-quality of care, because of waste in the medical industry. This waste is due to privacy considerations around the sharing of your medical records, at least in part. This privacy is supported by an absurd system that requires you to keep secrets from your current and future insurance companies, at the risk of your own health. Worse yet, medicine itself suffers from this privacy because researchers cannot access your information, even to find out which medical procedures are most effective for people like you.

Privacy is not necessary. There is an alternative. You can choose differently.

You can choose to create a more transparent society. Imagine a society in which you can voluntarily release information, with the understanding that you can always see what is done with that information, how it's used, how it's changed, and what the benefits and detriments are. Imagine a society where your neighbors don't snoop on you, not because they can't, but just because it's rude and they have better things to do. Imagine a society where you can do good by working hard, paying your taxes, and serving your community with the assurance that you can see just how other people are doing those things, too. Imagine a society where your governments, businesses, and other organizations don't waste precious resources just because they can get away with it. It could be a society where we all dispense with financial privacy to strike a resounding blow against organized crime, world-wide.

At the very least, such a society could be quite interesting.

Is this a society worth striving for? If so, how do we get there from here?

9 comments:

  1. I suggest you post your tax returns, medical records, and genetic information first.

    Too much sunlight results in a sunburn.

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  2. I'm not so sure it's necessary for us to choose all or nothing, here. But, since you asked, finding a safe way to publish these records is a very interesting direction. The Personal Genome Project (http://www.personalgenomes.org/) is one example of an attempt at the genetic side of your suggestion. I plan to profile the project, and would be happy to include my personal approach to PGP, as you suggest.

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  3. You claim that transparency is a cure-all for corruption in government and business, but then extend this to the claim that society will be perfect if there was full transparency for everyone.

    However, corruption is not the only social problem in the world today. There is also bigotry, bias, conflict, and extra-legal actors who don't care if something is a crime, because they are breaking the law already. Just because stalking and rape are crimes does not mean that we can rely on the government to prevent them.

    Furthermore, aside from concerns over our own safety, the primary reason why people want privacy is a non-homogeneous social and moral climate that has arisen as a result of modern society and the fact that you now encounter people other than your local church group on a daily basis.

    Transparency is good for government because government has an implicit contract to serve the interests of all members of that society. Transparency is bad for the individual because the individual does not have a specific contract binding them to the entire union of all social customs and mores throughout the USA and the world.

    For example, imagine a society where:

    1. A cop in Utah pulls you over and sees on his computer terminal that you've purchased drinks at a gay bar in San Francisco in the distant past.

    2. A cop in San Francisco decides to detain you because he doesn't like that you have donated money to the NRA.

    3. An FBI agent (or software they use) begins monitoring your location data because you have purchased books critical of the Iraq War on Amazon, in case you might be attending any protest meetings[1,2].

    The Founding Fathers and the colonial leaders were well aware of human nature and the ability of individual people in positions of power to abuse their authority[4]. (And yes, this abuse will happen in ways that cannot be detected even if the Drug War would allow for full transparency over law enforcement).

    Finally, with respect to tracking every dollar spent: we already have almost no financial privacy, and yet extraordinarily sophisticated criminal operations continue to thrive and are on the rise.

    For instance, identity theft happens precisely because attempts at identity and reporting requirements post-9/11 have made identity a scarce good and thus a valuable commodity for immigrants, scammers and other criminals. Criminals really don't care that we have no financial privacy. They themselves have it by virtue of the fact that the 2 million identities they just stole or purchased for $10 a piece[3] aren't theirs to begin with (at a cost of almost $500 to each affected individual[6]).

    I hope as a policy adviser and not as a career politician you can find the courage to realize that Prohibition, the War on Drugs, Immigration control, and other instances of the legislation of morality will continue to fail at far greater expense to society than just the cost of privacy, precisely because they are in opposition to the will of a large group of people who will pay for a something they want, even in cases like illegal immigration, which put them at risk for being victimized in the human slave trade[5].

    So yes, transparency will solve a lot of problems. But it will not enable us to transcend basic human imperfections, nor is the destruction of privacy a magic bullet to solve all the social problems the world faces.

    1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

    2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/17/AR2005071700889.html

    3. http://news.techworld.com/security/3201603/new-symantec-tool-shows-worth-of-personal-data-on-the-black-market/

    4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Secrets_Privilege#Criticism

    5. http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/05/todays_slave_trade.html

    6. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS219465+09-Mar-2009+PRN20090309

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  4. My claim in this post is that privacy is generally bad, Anonymous, not that personal transparency will solve all ills.

    --However, corruption is not the only social problem …--

    Bad people should not act with impunity.  Transparency allows accountability where none now exists.  Consider local communities demanding the right to know about folks with histories of sexual offenses [a], thereby demanding the opportunity to defend themselves by making more informed choices.

    --Furthermore ... the primary reason why people want privacy is … you now encounter people other than your local church group …--

    Folks want privacy from their own social climate more than from anyone.  This myth that strangers are just waiting to persecute us is just a proxy for this intra-group fear.  But we can agree that the origins of privacy are modern, not biological or holy.

    --Transparency is good for government ... Transparency is bad for the individual …--

    Individuals have a responsibility to their communities to work to adjust the social customs rather than simply violating them in private, while supporting them in public.  We should all stand against hypocrisy.

    --For example … abuse will happen ... even if the Drug War would allow for full transparency over law enforcement--

    The authorities should be more transparent about how they use our information. I should immediately know when and how they access my information.  Consider the recent incidents of passport-record-snooping at the State Department [b, c].  We should rely on the law to enforce our rights, rather than on the myth of privacy.

    --Finally ... we already have almost no financial privacy, and yet extraordinarily sophisticated criminal operations continue to thrive …--

    As individuals, we have voluntarily ceded much our financial privacy already to the finance industry, while more powerful individuals and corporations hide their finances behind legal barriers.  Consider the recent agreement to identify only a small portion of Swiss bank account holders [d, e].  If you’re poor, you have no financial privacy.  But if you’re rich, you have as much as you can afford.  Privacy should be more expensive, and more limited chronologically.  Every secret should have an expiration date. 

    --For instance, identity theft happens precisely because ... reporting requirements post-9/11 …--

    Identity theft didn’t begin with post-9/11 reporting requirements [f]. The cost to the individual is the issue.  I was a victim of i.d. theft less than 2 years ago.  The liability of such theft should be placed squarely on the financial industry, rather than on the individual.  Banks and credit agencies should have large incentives to protect my credit information, since they have the most control over my accounts.

    --I hope … you can find the courage to realize that ... instances of the legislation of morality will continue to fail at far greater expense to society than just the cost of privacy …--

    The hypocritical legislation of morality is allowed to take place because large numbers of people remain silent about their actual behaviors at others’ expense.  Some can continue to buy drugs in private while poorer folks get caught on the street.  Some can continue to hire illegal immigrants in private, while poorer illegal immigrants are busted for soliciting work.  Once we admit how prevalent these behaviors actually are, the hypocrisy of the supporters can be challenged.

    --transparency ... will not enable us to transcend basic human imperfections--

    Absolutely.  Transparency will allow us to admit of these basic imperfections in ourselves and address the underlying issues.

    I can’t wait to address some of our common concerns in more detail in future posts.

    a. http://is.gd/3qLOE
    b. http://is.gd/3qLPS
    c. http://is.gd/3qLQE
    d. http://is.gd/3qLRz
    e. http://is.gd/3qLSh
    f. http://is.gd/3qLT9

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  5. "But we can agree that the origins of privacy are modern, not biological or holy."

    Actually, we can't completely agree on this, mostly because we're both actually referring to many different things when we're talking about privacy. My argument about the modern non-uniform social climate and resulting abuse by authorities applies to dataveilance and other electronic tracking aspects of privacy.

    There are certainly many other aspects of privacy which are very obviously innate and honed by our evolution. Bodily functions, sexual activity, intimate relationships, personal communications, and private journals are just some of the examples of the human biological and psychological need for privacy in the physical, mental and social spheres.

    "We should all stand against hypocrisy."

    Yes, we should. However, a world without privacy requires individuals to do so against their will. For instance, no one should be obligated to out themselves as a homosexual simply because society is better off if we were all tolerant.

    "If you're poor, you have no financial privacy. But if you're rich, you have as much as you can afford."

    This brings up an extremely crucial point about information asymmetry. One of the reasons transparency can work to catch corruption in business and government is because the resources of the entire society of diversely motivated actors can be devoted to sifting through all the data generated by these institutions for the common good.

    However the information processing capabilities of individuals does not match that of large corporations, or even other wealthier individuals. Therefore, the massive publication of individual data greatly tips the scales in favor of
    the wealthy.

    How the stock markets work with information is most informative to this point. The average individual investor cannot hope to process the glut of information needed to make good investment decisions on individual securities, and it is widely accepted that a diversified long-term portfolio, or "Random Walk" is the only reasonable approach for the individual. However, wealthy investment banking firms and market makers can still capitalize on information available to spot price inefficiencies and make profit.

    "Bad people should not act with impunity..."

    I agree with this statement. But your use of it hinges on two assumptions:

    1. People only keep bad things private

    I have pointed out several examples above, but there's also support groups of anonymous communities online, whistleblowers for initial contact with the press, and people who just want to be free of marketing, targeted or otherwise.

    2. The elimination of privacy for good people would stop bad people.

    Even with total tracking of state currency, organized crime and even local drug dealers would deal in surrogate legal currencies (such as gold or high price-density consumer electronics such as iPods) for illegal transactions until they were able to convert these items into sanctioned currency.

    "Sex offender laws.."

    This is an interesting example. Sex offender legislation is another aspect of societal response that has arisen out of the imperfections in our political system and our tendency to inaccurately assess risk. The Economist ran an excellent front page article about this in August, and even the article you link is replete with the warning signs that The Economist recognizes and frames most expertly[1,2].

    [1] http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14165460
    [2] http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164614

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  6. --"But we can agree that the origins of privacy are modern, not biological or holy."

    Actually, we can't completely agree on this, …--

    Fair enough, p5. In the interest of brevity I lumped together many different aspects of privacy.

    --other aspects of privacy which are very obviously innate and honed by our evolution--

    For each of the first two activities, I could provide current cultural counter-examples. The third is vague at best and the latter two are particularly modern activities. Without evidence, I would have to reject your claim here, p5, as dubious at best.

    --a world without privacy requires individuals to do so against their will--

    No, p5, it doesn’t. I hope to elucidate this more in future posts.

    --tips the scales in favor of the wealthy.--

    This is incorrect, for the same reasons that you cited for the efficacy of transparency in combatting corruption. Again, watch this space for examples.

    --However, wealthy investment banking firms and market makers can still capitalize on information available to spot price inefficiencies and make profit.--

    This is exactly my argument for the transparency of all transactions. This advantage is, then, minimized.

    --1. People only keep bad things private--

    I wouldn’t say this. Rather, folks keep all kinds of things private, and in a relatively free, law-governed society, the reasoning behind this privacy is faulty, at best.

    --Even with total tracking of state currency, organized crime and even local drug dealers would deal in surrogate legal currencies--

    Precisely. Modern approaches to law enforcement recognize that preventing all crime is unlikely, but that raising the transaction costs (such as dealing in alternative currencies) and opportunity costs (making sure folks have better things to do than crime) are major tools for reform.

    --Sex offender legislation ... has arisen out of the imperfections in our political system and our tendency to inaccurately assess risk.--

    Absolutely. Such legislation is a great idea, implemented horribly. My major issue with the implementation is that it singles out a single type of offense, somewhat arbitrarily, while not giving the context of other offenses that are almost as damaging (violent assault) or damaging in other ways (white-collar crime).

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  7. --"But we can agree that the origins of privacy are modern, not biological or holy."

    Actually, we can't completely agree on this, …--

    Fair enough, p5. In the interest of brevity I lumped together many different aspects of privacy.

    --other aspects of privacy which are very obviously innate and honed by our evolution--

    For each of the first two activities, I could provide current cultural counter-examples. The third is vague at best and the latter two are particularly modern activities. Without evidence, I would have to reject your claim here, p5, as dubious at best.

    --a world without privacy requires individuals to do so against their will--

    No, p5, it doesn’t. I hope to elucidate this more in future posts.

    --tips the scales in favor of the wealthy.--

    This is incorrect, for the same reasons that you cited for the efficacy of transparency in combatting corruption. Again, watch this space for examples.

    --However, wealthy investment banking firms and market makers can still capitalize on information available to spot price inefficiencies and make profit.--

    This is exactly my argument for the transparency of all transactions. This advantage is, then, minimized.

    --1. People only keep bad things private--

    I wouldn’t say this. Rather, folks keep all kinds of things private, and in a relatively free, law-governed society, the reasoning behind this privacy is faulty, at best.

    --Even with total tracking of state currency, organized crime and even local drug dealers would deal in surrogate legal currencies--

    Precisely. Modern approaches to law enforcement recognize that preventing all crime is unlikely, but that raising the transaction costs (such as dealing in alternative currencies) and opportunity costs (making sure folks have better things to do than crime) are major tools for reform.

    --Sex offender legislation ... has arisen out of the imperfections in our political system and our tendency to inaccurately assess risk.--

    Absolutely. Such legislation is a great idea, implemented horribly. My major issue with the implementation is that it singles out a single type of offense, somewhat arbitrarily, while not giving the context of other offenses that are almost as damaging (violent assault) or damaging in other ways (white-collar crime).

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  8. Your case is compelling, but creates mixed reactions for me. I'll share my unfiltered and unedited thoughts...

    I'm reminded of Gandhi when he said, "My life is an open book." It seems that even in such cases where privacy is willfully shed, it opens the door to great personal controversy-- like Gandhi's experienced with his experiments in brahmacharya.

    Also, privacy seems the basis of intellectual property, upon which much of the profiteering of our economic system is based. Would have welcomed hearing your perspective on IP and the 'hundredth monkey principle'.

    Taking the position further, doesn't the elimination of privacy assume that we all want the public and personal 'corrections' associated with it (if a distinction can be made between public and personal)? So long as we live in a society that maintains moralistic norms that differ from the actual realities of human life and behavior, it feels like the openness of a privacy-free lifestyles is an invitation to be manipulated or martyred by people pretending to be part of the moral majority.

    At any rate, a very provocative piece despite my hesitation and personal reservations about embracing the idea.

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  9. Thanks for the note!

    I think it meshes well with some of Gandhi's thoughts on the free flow of information, and especially culture. But I haven't read much about Gandhi, to be honest.

    I'm not a fan of indefinite IP rights, and think they should decay rapidly, consistent with the pace of innovation. If our pace of innovation should slow for some reason, we could increase the monopoly period of IP. But as this pace is quite rapid and accelerating, I see no reason to stifle innovation with long patent and copyright protections.

    I'm not a fan of the hundredth monkey principle, as I've heard it debunked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_Monkey#The_effect_discredited). I'm also not sure how it relates to IP.

    Regarding moral police: they can only practice hypocrisy if they maintain their own privacy. The privacy, and protection from moral policing, that I'm going after is the same as you have when chatting in a restaurant. Folks throughout the restaurant could eavesdrop on your conversation. Yet, you maintain practical, enforceable privacy, not through flimsy physical or electronic barriers, but through the ability to •watch•the•watchers•. Indeed, you might easily imagine that if a restaurant instituted a system of screens to 'enforce' privacy of patrons, that eavesdropping would be more likely, rather than less. A whole poked in a screen is much more effective for eavesdropping, after all.

    (The restaurant analogy is from Brin's The Transparent Society http://astore.amazon.com/amortrauni-20/detail/0738201448)

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