Life Lessons on Privacy: Privacy is Security

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?)

Seeing someone struggle to climb out of a hole they dug for someone else has to be one of the funniest things. While that’s just an analogy, it perfectly encapsulates the current state of affairs from grocery prices to creeping surveillance.

The Privacy Dispute

For a long time, privacy discussions felt like a dual stalemate:

• On one side: The “nothing to hide” argument (“They can have my information. I have nothing to hide. What are you hiding?”).
• On the other side: Privacy advocates were often labeled as paranoid, with dismissive references to people a step away from wearing tinfoil hats.

It appears the oblivious and anti-privacy crowd has backed themselves into a corner. While some now believe privacy is going extinct, others are increasingly concerned about the massive collection of data by both governments and big tech companies.

The question remains: Are these people simply following trends? Did they only now realize the importance of privacy after being effectively violated? Or do they suddenly have something to hide? Even before the Snowden revelations, privacy advocates consistently warned that existing mandates were either ineffective or being dismantled. Those concerns fell on deaf ears. It usually takes years or decades for public opinion to catch up on certain issues.

Privacy is beginning to be viewed less as “having something to hide” and more as having the right to exist without being watched, monetized, or judged by strangers. Will this recent shift in sentiment last?

Privacy as a Safety Net

Think of privacy as a safety net, your primary defense against intrusion. Even the most public person, with little regard for privacy, can feel exposed when they need private time and simply can’t find any.

The Cost of Data Mining

Profit driven data miners are insatiable and rarely interested in genuine consent. They extract what they can, build walls around themselves, and leave privacy as a costly luxury for everyone else. When pressed or confronted, some defend their stance, engage in deflection, and then ironically retreat into the very privacy they stripped from you if they don’t want to talk.

Clout Chasers & Everyday Violators

The government and big companies aren’t the only ones to worry about. Some of the biggest privacy violators are average individuals. When camera phones became popular, they helped people digitize their personal lives from vlogging and making funny videos to reporting potential crimes. But it also became a nuisance as clout chasers used them to farm for clicks online, and stalkers found new ways to target their victims.

• Many offenders have had to shop for new outfits because they received court summons over privacy violations.
• Some have recoiled or gone into hiding after their attempts to harass or shame others backfired spectacularly.
• Others remain on the radar for self-incriminating voyeurism, they got caught by their victims or good Samaritans who turned the camera back on them to give them a taste of their own medicine.

The Truth

Privacy is security and not entirely extinct, it's just becoming unattainable as rules and public opinions change. Guard yours while you still can before it becomes too expensive, or impossible to reclaim.

Valuable Resources

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): Learn more about digital privacy, legal rights, and advocacy.
European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): A major global standard for data protection. Often regarded as the gold standard, several countries are crafting their own privacy laws to mirror it.
International Standards: Other countries have their own versions of privacy protections, but effectiveness varies widely. Unfortunately, some people simply have no privacy protections at all.