Privacy Matters

Humans are distinguished from other life forms by their opposable thumbs.  And Americans are distinguished from the subjects of other nations by the Fourth Amendment.  Anyone who watches TV has probably mastered the 4^th amendment fundamentals:  search and seizure without a warrant is unlawful, evidence gathered from an illegal search is “fruit of the poison tree,” and the government requires a court order to tap your phones.  It leaves us with a false sense of security, believing that we have a Constitutional right to our privacy.

Unfortunately, nothing can be further from the truth.  We live in a world where it is nearly impossible to cover our tracks.  If you use a cell phone, email, and Facebook, your every move is already recorded.    It may not be carved in stone, but you are certainly leaving a trail of bytes and cookies, as well as facilitating the rapid evaporation of your personal data, letters, pictures, and preferences into the cloud.  If you are like me, you are already bulging out all over cyberspace, getting thoroughly SPAM’d and phished many times daily.  I have lost count of how much of my life I have signed away by checking the “accept terms and conditions” boxes on various apps and websites.

I remember when the paradigm was to get everything “in writing.” As a child, it was fun to play with those thin shiny sheets of carbon paper.  I got a thrill from stacking alternating layers of paper and carbon, testing which writing implements got the greatest yield of layers.  Nothing made carbons like a Bic ballpoint.  I was excited to work as a temp in college, hoping for the opportunity to create multiple copies of official documents.  Sadly, my early employment years coincided with the mainstream deployment of Xerox machines, an adequate but far less satisfying method for cloning letters and reports.   It was just the first time that technology got out in front of me.

These days, we sign contracts, pay our bills, and file our taxes electronically without ever putting pen to paper.   We think nothing of giving our credit card numbers to any online retailer, along with our name, email address and phone number.  We do not think beyond the transaction, never questioning what happens after we log off.  And the disclosures in these transactions pale by comparison to the personal information that is exchanged by email.  Because emails are one-on-one conversations, we are foolish enough to believe they are private.   Snarky gossip or heartfelt confessions among friends or co-workers have a life well beyond the send button.  No one should make the mistake of expressing their anger or criticizing their bosses by email.   I used to advise the people in my department never to say anything by email they wouldn’t want their mother to see.

Given the recent revelations about David Petraeus and his assorted women friends, new questions about Internet and email privacy are being raised.  Many people, for example, are unaware that the government can access emails left on a server for more than 6 months without a warrant.   We are entering new territory that render our laws obsolete and leave the beloved Constitution sorely in need of updated reinterpretation.  No one wants wiretapping laws from the 1960s to determine whether the government can put GPS trackers on our cell phones!

Government abuse of private information is one thing.  What most online consumers are unaware of is the extent to which private companies, such as Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, collect and deploy our personal information.  It wasn’t until someone saw their neighbor’s photo on a billboard in Europe that we realized that we assigned property rights of our personal photos and other information about us to Facebook.   The games and apps on Facebook actually encourage the spilling of personal information, asking you to give up your friend lists and preferences.   

One of the most suspicious things I have seen is the suggestion that I use my Facebook username and password to tie in to other websites and applications.  While this cleverly masquerades as a convenience, it is nothing more than encouragement to give up my behaviors to Facebook.  Other sites create incentives in the form of large percentage discount coupons just for subscribing or “Like”-ing them.  The subscription is a license to hit you with one of those obtuse “Terms and Conditions” statements.  Buried in those annoying statements (that are conveniently tucked away off screen), they assert their right to put our preferences to use.  The results seem innocuous on our own computers, but we will never know exactly how deeply or widely our information is being used.  Consider those bandwagon teases in the side margins of Facebook and Google products declaring that Anna likes Whoopie Pies or Justin likes Plain Brown Wrapper Adult Products (fiction alert).  I always imagine my own name and picture in that spot.  Do I want my web purchase of undergarments to be advertised to my high school English teacher or former clients? 

We are badly in need of a consumer revolution.  The Internet industrial complex arose so quickly that a few private corporations are setting policies and practices that far exceed our ability to scrutinize or fight them.   I believe that we are being held hostage by unfavorable terms and conditions.  It is an all or nothing game where we are being forced to compromise our standards of privacy in order to play.  For now, these corporations have unchecked monopolistic powers.   In the meantime, I offer the following advice:

·         Do not use employer computers or email for personal communication.  Many employers have policies that state that their emails are not private.  Many websites use cookies to store information on computers that could violate employer guidelines.

·         Do not agree to participate in games and applications on Facebook that grant permission to share your Friends lists and preferences.  Be aware that many applications (Calendar, Spotify, Farmville, Words with Friends) broadcast every more you make to your Friends list.

·         To the extent possible, when you wish to read or access links posted to Facebook, copy the URL to a fresh browser.

·         Check your privacy settings frequently as the features and capabilities change periodically and without notice.

·         To the extent possible, vary your passwords from application to application.

If all this sounds a little pessimistic or cynical, start paying attention to the relationship between where you go on the Internet and the Facebook adds you see, the email SPAM you receive, and the unsolicited phone calls you get (I get several per day despite being on the National Do-Not-Call Registry).  The Internet may be a superhighway, am not giving up trying to keep my hands on the wheel.