2010 Prediction One: Privacy Makes the Frontpage
I have been working for a few months on a Radar post titled “Anonymity is the Fifth Estate” –I have been buried in work and haven’t been able to pay it the attention I believe that it deserves.
The core premise around Anonymity as the Fifth Estate is this:
Journalism, as the fourth estate ensures that the actions of the powerful are made transparent to the public. As its counterpart, the ability to organize, communicate and coordinate political group action with anonymity is critical to maintaining a free society. In other words, anonymity is crucial to having a public willing or able to do anything about what journalism uncovers.
While we have been wringing our hands over the loss of newspapers this year, I fundamentally believe that journalism will come out OK… I can’t say the same for the prospects of remaining anonymous in civic life.
The mix of sensor tracking, facial recognition technology, GPS in every mobile phone, the increasing ubiquity of surveillance cameras in urban centers, and the massive consolidation of identity brokers such as Facebook and Google make anonymity increasingly difficult – online or off.
Corporations from Sprint (who gave away customer data 8 million times in one year) to Facebook, (whose new privacy policies have been roundly criticized) are in it for business – not high-minded civics.
The convergence of online consumer tools that trade off of identity and location doesn’t bode well for privacy and anonymity in civic life. These tools encourage sharing as a core part of their model. Sharing and making your information public encourages network effects which are core to Web 2.o business models. Network effects lead to winner-takes-most markets (aka monopolies) in a market (the internet) that has 1.7 billion members and growing.
I predict that in 2010 privacy will come into its own as a uniquely 21st century concern. What will it take for that to happen? Two things:
First, a first class Tiger Woodsian privacy breach. Not sure what that means yet – but I would imagine it to involve Facebook, third party holders of your publicly identifiable information (every quiz you ever took knows just about everything about you and your friends) and some cross-hack into a financial services firm. Call it identity theft 2.0. Mi
Second, the emergence of a clearer language to describe privacy. Just as the Eskimos famously have seven words for snow – we need a more refined language to speak about this issue. Privacy is vague and means different things to different people. Law follows language. I once read an essay that until “date rape” was in the common vernacular it was hardly a prosecutable crime.
What do you think about Privacy? Is it overrated? Am I an alarmist?
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