Is privacy an illusion?

You know all the various Do we care too much about privacy? Yeah? Yeah, Um And yet Oscar, a longtime listener, brought this up, and he sent us a really very thought provoking long email about this. So we won't read the entire email, but just to kind of get this conversation kick started. Um and for a context, we'll just read a little bit. Um. His email says, I just listened to the Eat Popcorn podcast and I was glad of how it moved from the subliminal messaging to the

private see issue. Um. In the podcast, July expresses concern of how she feels that she is giving away too much of her personal information to vendors and in general, to the world out there. That makes me ask, why are people so paranoid about sharing information? I understand that in the past, the security and responsibility of your information

lied with the individuals. If I moved across the scene upon arrival said my name was John Doe, they would have no choice, no other choice than to believe that I was John Doe and start gathering information from there. But and this is a big butt, I mean font size one plus, we are living in this so called era of information. Information is not only power, it is

becoming part of the basic structure of our civilization. I'll admit that as a civilization we are still learning how to deal with it, how to process it, how to use this new power we just got. But that is the whole point. We need to admit to the fact that we need training in the upgrade, if you will.

I love the point about crossing an ocean and changing your name, because I that's one thing that instantly comes to mind with all these more or we're we're you know, logged into these different accounts, and we have all these you know, we have identification numbers, and the government knows where we are and the state government knows where we are that you can't just you know, do pull a Don Draper and just back up somewhere else and to clear yourself a new person, which is which is an

attractive idea. Everybody loves the idea of being able to start over, to be able, the idea of just getting in your vehicle and like just driving and just wherever it takes you, you're gonna wind up. Well, think about our ancestors to um many of nsistors here in the United States have that experience. I mean, I can I can tell you two different relatives that change their name upon arrival to the United States, um, you know, for political um reasons, so on and so forth. So yeah,

I mean we don't have that. I guess you could call it a lecture, even though that this were pretty hard times and people are escaping very um horrible circumstances in order to to attain a new identity. Yeah, because I mean we're we're broadcasting from Georgia, where you know, all the really you know, hardcore Georgians you know, descended from people who came over in the sex criminal boats. So and I know we have Australian listeners out there. You know, it's it's like I imagine it's the same

thing there. There's there's this sense of going to a new any kind of frontier colony environment. You know, people went there and they might have had kind of a crappy past, but they were able to start over and then if they screwed up again, they just needed to

move further out into the wilds. And uh and just as many start doovers as you need till you get it right right, they didn't have all this looming information out there, but what they just eight or what they just spent money on or uh, yeah, they're they're criminal records essentially. Um. So it made me, I think, it's just a very intriguing question. Made me think, is it

really just an illusion, this privacy? Um? And is it a is it some sort of remnant of our past, particularly Americans, this idea of rugged individualism that just doesn't exist anymore. Because it's worth noting that the word privacy is uh. Some linguists consider it untranslatable into various tongues. Um. Many languages lack a specific word for it. Uh. And and you end up with complex descriptions like I believe in Russian Uh. It ends up meaning something about like

basically solitude. Um. And the the original our word, our English word privacy comes from the Latin privatus. Does that sound right? That sounds good? Separated from means, separated from the rest, deprived of something um and uh and often

ends up having a legal or governmental use right. And and when we live in communities, we always know that there's some sort of trade off for living in a community and being supported in a community, right, Like you're not just no, no man is an island unto himself, and if he is, he might be the UNI bomber, right well, yeah, and it it goes in, it spills over into the whole issue of like libel suits and slander. You know, who can be slandered, who can be liabel?

Like different different laws, different rules apply. Uh, you know, if you're a private citizen or if you're a public servant, or if you're a you know, I you know, I'm a top tier celebrity. So um, it varies greatly depending on who you are and how how out there you are in the world. Yeah, and I wanted to read just a little bit more to um concerning this illusion

of privacy. He talks about a worldwide civilization when the borders are gone, which I think is very interesting, right, because so much of our lives are being played out online. So more on that. On another email, he says, but uh, in your everyday life, you're the car you drive, the gadgets you use, the clothes you wear, the way that you dress your kids, what you do for a living, even the way that you walk, the way you comb your hair. They all give away the story of who

you are. But that's fine. It is the way that information is supposed to be free. Information is valuable, but it's not a physical thing. It baffles me why people want to treat it as if it was building vaults for it, restricting access to it, when the fact is that the more information those, the easier it is to keep it safe. Well, one could make that argument, yeah, yeah, um, and he does. He goes onto the argument and talk

talking about the sort of transparency in society. I mean even surveillance, right, um, cameras that if if we know that we're being taped, if we know we're being looked at, that we're not necessarily going to do things, um, outside of the law. So again, interesting interesting fodder here because I understand what he's saying. There's so much of ourselves

that we're already revealing. Um. And yet and yet it feels like for me personally that if it's being used for consumption purposes, for for businesses, that it doesn't feel like uh maybe part of the bargain that that I

was hoping for. I can't help but think of like old you know, the old Biblical and uh, you know accounts of say like Adam and Eve where it's like they live in this perfect society when they're naked, and then when you introduce uh, you know, sin and all, they suddenly they have to cover up, they have to use leaves, they have to It's like the birth of

privacy and uh. And so there's this I can definitely understand the idea of you know, if there are no you know, if everybody's naked in you know, an informational sense, then there wouldn't be any issues, you know, because what are you gonna what are you gonna hide? Right? How are someone going to use it against you? You know, you can't be blackmailed, right. That's the like any movie about blackmail, it's like that's always seems to be one

of the options on the table. It's like, well, I'm just gonna come clean about this political scandal before someone can blackmail me or you know, and it robs the blackmailer of their power. Well and even wiki leaks right right, um, which has its been pretty illuminating information. Um. And and so many people would argue with that this is necessary, right. A lot of people do make that argument. Yeah, um so and I just to to bring up the naked

analogy too. I was sort of thinking myself, well, why do I have a problem with with privacy or what I perceive of is the lack of privacy right in our technological days. Um, because I don't have anything to have to have a I'll lead a pretty mundane life. But I think it's still that's exactly what a person with a dark history would say on a podcast. Sure they would, Yeah, I'm just talking about my name is

Julie Douglas, okay, um. But you know, it is that idea again and and and so for me, it's this question of is it just like this antiquated American idea of individualism that you know that is melting away. As Oscar talks about civilization, a worldwide one where the borders are gone, right, well, I mean then there there are also plenty of issues like like like how far do

you take privacy? It's like, uh, you know, there's that old adage, which is thankfully disappearing in the United States, But the whole, the whole thing of like, well, what a person does in the privacy their their own bedroom is their business, and generally that brings with it the assumption that that that whatever is going on doesn't need to be known, and that if it were known there might be uh some sort of repercussions for it, you know. So, um,

I guess like the mystery has gone. Yeah. But but it's also it's like the idea that privacy like Oscar's argument that the more the less privacy there is and the more the information is free flowing, the safer we are. But clearly history and even in modern times, there are plenty of situations where privacy saves human lives and makes human lives safe in uh, in societies or under governments that are less tolerant or it is completely intolerant of

different ways of life, different political ideologies. Um, you know, it becomes necessary for us to hide from one another because sometimes the eyes that are looking you know, are are powered by nefarious brains. Okay, So that is I think a really interesting point and a good way to talk about the Patriot Act. Right. We sort of debated about whether or not we talk about it at the end of the today, this is a really good example

of of why privacy matters. Um, and just for everybody. UM, just a little reminder about the Patriot Act that you know, after none eleven, it brought sweeping changes to the way the government accesses and utilizes information about private citizens. Um. It's been criticized as undermining civil liberties, particularly parts of the counter surveillance law. Right. How easy it is to get wire taps in this sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, and you know you don't have to get a quarter

or um. FBI can also search telephone, email and financial records without a court order. Um. And the problem here is that it can those that that sort of wide latitude can be used outside of the context in which

it was originally meant for. Right. I mean it supposed to be to go after terrorists, but um, and then you know you do have FBI saying up until two thousand and five, no, it's never been abused Okay, So now you have other reports that have surfaced, um from this is from first Amint Mint Center dot org, New

York Times, and Business Week. They all reported on this that it's that actually the Patriot Act has been used outside of its original context to remove homeless people from trained stations, to pursue drug rings, and to collect financial data on random visitors to Las Vegas. Yeah, so that

is random there. Um, so you know already and you know, um, have a human mind works and historically how we have behaved and when you have that sort of what I think in this case is is an unbalanced here right of power, but it can be used very readily against people. And as you say, if you know, thankfully we live in the United States, and at least we we think that we live in a society in which our privacy

and our individual rights are respected. But you know, still there's gray area there, and certainly there are other countries in which people are not treated as fairly right. And you know, like the period of McCarthyism wasn't that long ago when digging around to find the evidence of communism and people's past and people becoming blacklisted, Yeah, and um, and at risk of sounding like you know, some sort of a radical. It's it's any time a government is

given power, any time people hand over power to a government. Uh, generally it's a little naive to expect the government and to hand that power back over when they're done with one particular gold or another, especially if that goal is something say like defeating terrorism or you know, or or winning the war on drugs or something that is it's largely unattainable anyway. Yeah, and so you know, you got that's the things that we need to consider when looking

at privacy. UM. And I do like Oscar's idea that it's it's beneficial, you know that there's we are going to obey the better angels of our nature and use it the right ways. Um. I do think there's that possibility. But we have already seen as a as I talked about, that it's been used outside of its contact at least the Patriot Act has. And uh, we will never know the far ranging effects of the Patriot Act until much later.

A lot of that is because even the reports have been filed, much of it has been redacted, so you can if you're if you go to look at that report, you might be able to see that the subject was a female or a male, but pretty much everything else is going to be blacked out. So it's hard to say when you have a government that's not being fully transparent itself. And of course they will say, you know, we need to do that for security reasons, and you

know there's an angle there that that is relevant. Um. But I think what is interesting to me about the Patriot Act and uh, where we as a society sort of came into our technological Uh I don't know, what would you say, like our maturity maybe. Um, these things seem to have dovetailed at the same time. Right, So after None eleven, Uh, you have the Patriot Act, and you also have people using the Internet and unprecedented numbers

and sharing information, our personal lives flowing onto it. Um. Like I mean, I remember when I first got on my Space. Um, you young listeners may not remember my Space, but but it existed and I think still does. If

you're a band or something, you can still visit it. Yeah. Uh, but but I remember it felt like this frontier where it was like it was just a whole bunch of young people who wanted to hang out or date each other, you know, So you didn't really think about, well, you know, who all this information you're putting out there, and and then uh, and then later you realize, wow, that was really stupid of me, you know, like the like the we we we just talked in another podcast, The Cyber

Immortality about how we're different people. The person I was a year ago as and who I am now. The person a year from now isn't who I am now. Certainly you're my Space person isn't definitely not the same

person or now. Yeah, and so it's you know, it's like the MySpace you from ten years ago wasn't concerned with how about getting a job somewhere necessarily or or you know, or or or what his or her you know, political opinions or social opinions at the time, we're compared to what they might be at, you know, a decade later. So um so so so it's interesting to see how

that's changed. Like I feel like a lot of us are like that, where the Internet, what the Internet is, has has changed in that time, and then who we are has has changed. But to a certain extent, a lot of the data we put out there, they say, it's like putting information in the in on the Internet is like putting p in a swimming pool. There's no not really a good way to get it out again. You can delete anything. This presensation is brought to you

by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. Well, and what I was thinking too, is because of the Patriot devetailing with our increased involvement with the Internet, is is it on a subconscious level? Of course, we don't have any scientific data to back this up, but so this is just a question. But is it on some levels? Was that sort of when we lost our privacy virginity? You know, like we had a lot of us were very fearful at the time, and um, certainly we know that the government was able

to pass the Act because of that. Um there was a juggernaut of emotion. Yeah, following not eleven um and so, and we all know that we act irrationally, and when we're controlled by fear of our brain makes different decisions.

So once we sort of handed over the reins that way, at least symbolically, if not everybody was affected by the Patriot Act, did we then sort of say okay, and then we're on this thing called the Internet and we're exchanging all of this information and it's really neat, you know. It's it's it's okay for me because I feel like

I'm getting something in return. I'm getting this instant gratification. Yeah, it's like it's so it's like the you know, the the revelation that, oh, the government's off in my business. You know, you get used to that idea and then uh, you know, it comes along the phone companies like, hey, we want to know where you are at all times, and You're like, all right, I mean the phone's pretty cool.

I can play a scrapple on it and and used the map system to figure out where I am in Austin, Texas, because I don't know if we would have made it to the live recording. You. No, we wouldn't have made it to the coffee shop and back had it not. Yeah, we literally took out your iPhone and we're following the dot as we were. Yeah, so maybe I you know, I take that as the comforting bribe, but I'm giving

up something in the process. Well it's interesting to you that that you're talking about the iPhone because there, um there's a German Green Party politician his name is mult Disputes and he went to court to find out what his cell phone company, Deutsche Telecom, knew about his comings and goings, because he was just sort of interested about

what sort of information they were amassing. He found out that in a six month period from August thirty one, two thousand and nine to February eight, two thousand and ten, Deutsch Telecom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than thirty five thousand times UM. It traced him from a train on the way to turn Langan at the start of the day and then through the following night when he was back home in Berlin. So

oftentimes this will happen. They'll they'll take the coordinates just because they're the signal is sort of being rebooted. But when they looked at this case that that wasn't it. It was just randomly sort of tracking his coordinates um, which begs the question, what do they want with all that data? You know? What was Obviously they can say, well, maybe he went here and there, and we can give this to marketing firms and better pinpoint his interests and

translates to bigger dollars. That's a possibility, but it's it's still sort of interesting how and all the legalis that we sign off on with our contracts for cell phones or even you know, for downloading application. There there's um what we're sort of giving away that right to our privacy when it comes to that, Yeah, that giant wall of text that comes with any uh system contract or

device contracting. I mean who reads that? I think I heard one, like one NPR story about a guy who read or maybe as a woman who read the contract. But it's because if for a living they write those contracts, but the normal people actually you know, leaf through. Does it seems like you reach a fatigue point about one paragraph? Well, I mean that's that's the whole point of legal ease, I think, right, is to to fatigue you to the point you're like, oh fine, I'll just just sign off

by paragraph six. It's talking about like the river of the soul and and uh and bounding the spirit to opjects and things like that, right yeah, And you're like, I kept rivers so I just want this application. Um. So, I mean it comes down to that sort of idea

of who does own our identity? Then? Um, and particularly is we begin to store more and more data about ourselves cloud computing and otherwise, Uh, you know, how is that going to be played out in twenty years or you know, we forever going to be tethered to a company that owns our online uh projection of ourselves? Yeah, because I mean typically these companies have to sort of play pr our niceties when when talking about this about who owns the information or they kind of skirt around

the issue. But in the end, like take something like Flicker. You know, you put a lot of your life onto a Flicker account. Uh. I mean to the point where like if you if you own a Flicker account and you were to die, like the Flicker account would kind of be an online um memorial too, you know only need you might want that to live on, or you might want that to live on for someone that you you knew, and uh you know who owns that? Who owns your your profile with all your your your thoughts

or bails and correspondences. And if you are deceased, do you uh any longer have rights to those photos? Can they be used by someone else? Yeah? Yeah, Um, so sort of brings up some good questions about that. I wanted to talk a little bit too about when you're talking about my space and and you know who who you were then, who you are now, and these different

iterations of yourself that exist. Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijiink stored on their friends and social media sites. Uh so here you go. I mean this, this idea that you know, companies might sprout up to actually whitewash your identity is very possible. It has been

talked about in the industry. Yeah, it's kind of kind of like this idea that just like, all right, the thirty year old me needs to get this new job. I need to hire somebody to kill the twenty year old me. We're still out there on the Internet looking like a total goof is well, and think about the

fifteen year old today. Think about the sort of information the fifteen year old has, and assume that the fifteen year old is very open with with whatever information going to share, because that's the thing for a lot of us, Like you said, I was talking about when suddenly the internet was here and like for a for a for a large number obviously, when we remember that time. We didn't grow up with the Internet. It just came into our lives like this mysterious piper with a bunch of

rats following him, you know. And uh and we followed him, uh and uh and it's been a weird experience ever since. But other people have have been born and grown up um in the Piper's under the Piper's spell. So so they have a totally different idea of what privacy is and what it should be. Yeah, and and that makes me think about Sherry Turkle, who has written a lot about technology and our relationship to it. And she makes

that point. She says, just because we grew up in the Internet does not mean that it is growing up, does not mean that it it is fully formed now. Um. And it's still the wild West in many ways, in terms of legalities, uh and in even sort of the way that we interacted psychologically. But again, this fifteen year old, I mean five years from now, what might we know about her? You know? I mean think about all the different ways that we can collect data on or we

google Earth, we can see where she lives. Um, we know her Facebook status, UM, Twitter, four Square, her blog, missives, we have access to her thoughts you know, possibly uh, you know, maybe what she just purchased and where her coordinates her I Q her sa T scores her grades for does she have a criminal record? I don't know her medical record? Which X man she would be according to? Right right right? And think about that. I mean that

is this a lot of layer of detail? Um? And you know, would what kind of control would she have in five years over that or in like, you know, thirty years from now she's running for public office and someone's like she was on Team Edward back in the Twilight Days. Do you want to vote for somebody who's on Team Edward? Right? I know, because that is how fickle us human beings are, right, we might look at

that and go, oh god, no, totally not Team Edward. Um. So that kind of makes me think about the future of data mining, especially for for younger generations who have been accused of over sharing. Um. And again to go back to Google CEO Eric Schmidt Um. This is from an article Google and the Search for the Future from the Wall Street Journal. He says, I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. He elaborates, they want Google to tell them what they should be

doing next, And then he gives a scenario. Let's say you're walking down the street walking here we are because of the info Google has collected about you, we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, who your friends are. Google also knows, too, within a foot where you are. And uh. Mr Schmidt then leaves it to a listener to imagine the possibilities. If you need milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google

will will remind you to get milk. Google knows you need milk before you know that you need milk from your list right. Um, it will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse racing posters that you like. Uh, that the nineteenth century murder that you've been reading about took place on the next block. So uh, are these the things that really come up for you? Like? No, I mean, I know you have Jack the Ripper fascinations. No, this is just in Mr Schmidt's this this scenario, I

thought it was from the article. No, no, no, no, I don't have any more spacing poster fetish Um. But Mr Schmidt says that a generation of powerful handheld devices is just around the corner that can fulfill this need, and they can be adept at surprising you with information that you didn't even know that you wanted. So this is the point where maybe you cease to actually think about things and are told or suggested about what to do.

So Google comes in. Basically they say, not only was free will an illusion before, we're gonna go ahead and completely dispel it and uh and just take over all your decision making free will and privacy our illusion. Sorry about that, but hey, here's you need some bread, so you might as well pick that up with your milk. Yeah, so, I mean it does. It's we still can't answer the question is is it a fair trade off what we're

doing right now, the information that we're sharing. Um, but it does make me wonder if we're sort of opening our digital veins a bit too much and letting an information flow. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how privacy evolved of their changes, uh in the years ahead. I mean, maybe it reaches the point where we just we had we end up having to have a different view of it.

From a very early age, you know, where your mom takes you aside and says, all right, this is the kind of stuff you blog about or whatever it is by that point and this is the kind of stuff that is that is completely private. Maybe that becomes this just more of an emphasis on the separation. I don't know, And I mean we've already absorbed much of this mindset anyway, right, so it maybe it's not too big of a deal. Um.

Maybe we aren't necessarily eroding our civil liberties or our privacy. Um. But again, I think the Oscar brings up a really good point about that, and especially the point about how since we're in the middle of this, we we actually need to look at it um and know that it's not actually fully formed and think about it. So thank you, Oscar. Yeah. Well, hey, I have us an email from another couple of individuals whose last names will be with health for privacy reasons.

First we have one from Mark Anthony and Mark Anthony. How is it y'all? Uh? They wrote it wrote out y'all alright, like the podcast lots of food for thought. Just like to comment on your podcast about audio hallucinations. I used to live in Alaska after my parents dragged me up there as a child. I would chop wood and watch the Aurora borealis in the extremely long winters and that super quiet environment. Laying back in the snow, I would I would hear music often as I gazed

up at the sky. I've heard that this is a common occurrence among people who have seen the Aurora. Can you set some light on this or did I just have a bad case of cabin fever? Oh? The music was always some symphonic classical stuff, which I enjoy. But I listened to metal uh at the time, a lot of thrash strange, So that's interesting. Well, I kind of wondered, too, is that during a period of twenty four hour daylight

in Alaska? Because everything I ever learned about Alaska is from al Pacino in the movie in which he went nuts or someone went nuts? Because there is that? What it is I saw me it's a remake of of a European film, which is, in my opinion, are superior. The original starts stolen scarce guard and has a lot more shades of gray in terms of the characters. Don't even get me started on the fem Nikita and then

the astradization of that and in the American version. But yes, so I don't know that that's the question I have. You know, what were the what were the other circumstances surrounding that, But I do think it's very interesting. But well, I have seen the Aurora bore alice, if I remember. I'm told I've seen the Aurora boor alice as the thing because I was a child in Newfoundland and uh and I think it was when my mom was in

the hospital to give birth to my youngest sibling. Um, some friends of theirs like took us out and supposedly show the siger roar about bore alice. But the only thing I remember is reading a dinosaur booklet in which one dinosaur like is this rated? Another one? So that is that sounds like you probably as a small child. But yeah, I totally missed out on this, or totally it didn't make an impression on me, which you were

like dinosaurs evisceration high pretty lights you pale in comparison. Well, maybe maybe a listener will out there will will share their similar experiences or or just you know, get a straight on the whole Aurora borealis and use it thing. Um. I have another one here from j J j J says, Hi, I'm listening to the Does Your Dog Love You? Podcast? I was wondering why it is that we like to watch dogs and other animals play so much. For that matter, why do human beings will love to have fun or

other animals? I see my dog playing all the time, and she never seems happier. She even seems to be using some type of imagination while doing it. Where does fun come from? From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, fund should serve some kind of function to pass on one's genes. In that sense, it's hard to imagine fun being beneficial for us because I don't see where it accomplishes this. What do you think? Maybe this would be a good podcast? Keep up the great work. Pretty cool. Yeah, well that's

some interesting food for thought. We may have to explore that later. I know that. You know, as we discussed in that particular podcast, Um, it's fun to watch our dogs play because we have that connection with them, and it actually releases um oxytocin in the brain's right and so we get this feel good mother infant uh drug coursing through our brain when we're interacting with this dog that we find adorable because it kind of sort of

looks like an infant. Well, also, I was thinking too about little kids and when they play and they have you know, fun I guess and air quotes. But um, you know a lot of people have said that that's the way that they're working out their own creativity and also working out there's their social roles. So we have that whole podcast on creativity. Yeah. I just think about that too. So it's it's maybe another way to come

at problems, we know through play. Yeah, well, it intantly comes to mind little boys playing um you know, sword fights and whatever on the playground. They're they're kind of learning to fight in the same way that a kitten wrestles with things, because it's kind of learning to kill small animals. Yeah. Yeah, I actually remember getting that. I mean my brother and I were no, no, no, no no, no, no play play fight. It's like an episode of Dexter childhood.

Um well cool, cool, that's that's some some awesome food for out there. And if you haven't listened to that episode and or a dog owner to check it out and give us your feedback. And if you have some feedback on this particular episode, um, and and and and oh by the way, if you happen to be um Georgian or Australian I don't mean any offense about the whole sex criminal boat thing, but yeah, no, he's a segment with the way back, way way back, and we

all have a touch of that note. I'll like debtors, colonies and so on and sap. But yeah, if you have any any cool feedback on the whole privacy thing, let us know. I'd love to I'd love to hear even just some amusing anecdotes about how your previous online self has interfered or in some way affected your current online self. Um. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook is blow the Mind, and you can also drop us a note at blew the Mind, at how stuff worst dot com and more on this and thousands of

other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes