Thanks Dana for spelling out the argument. Re-reading my post, I realized I hadn't actually said what the argument is, only what barriers there are to convincing people. The argument that ends up resonating with me is the same one that resonates with Dana; however, as she implies, it is pretty hit or miss as a persuasive argument to convince those with differing moral frameworks.

Andre: I agree a basket of arguments is probably what we are left with - an argument from authoritarianism runs into the same problem as the argument from economics: it makes the whole thing contingent on (what most would consider to be) a hypothetical. Indeed, the people that are willing to grant this particular hypothetical are most likely going to be the ones that already see a value in privacy.

-- TheodoreSmith - 20 May 2009

Andrei, You're almost certainly right about the fact that all we can do is muster as many arguments and ideas as we can; you never know what will resonate with someone. I do want to say though that I wasn’t trying to advance a primarily libertarian argument, though I recognize it also rings that way. I was hoping to point out to Matt that there is also an intuitive, gut-level reaction to privacy invasion; I happen to think that these reactions are not necessarily the ones that you, Justin and Ted point out. For example, I’m not sure that most people feel the specter of possible government oppression when their grocery store knows they drink a dozen Diet Cokes a day; what good could that information possibly be to the government? But those same people, I think, may feel, intuitively, that it is no one’s business how much Diet Coke they drink. That feeling may lead them to the broader truth of your and others’ arguments about the government, aggregation, etc. You may disagree, since it seems you don’t share that feeling, but that is at least what I was trying to point out.

Also, I’m not sure there can be free markets and personhood, but that’s a different paper, entirely. It’s probably a hopelessly Marxist (and thus outmoded) sentiment to espouse, but I do believe commoditizing labor commodotizes people, a fact which surely does as much or more damage to “personhood” as the loss of privacy does. Like I said, that’s a whole nother kettle of fish, so I will simply leave it at that.

-- DanaDelger - 19 May 2009

Dana, you raise a good point: each of us sees different dangers posed by surveillance and data mining based on the normative frameworks we start with. Personally, for instance, I'm not entirely convinced by the 'it's none of your damn business' libertarian argument for protecting privacy, even though I agree that some degree of privacy is essential to allow people to develop meaningful individuality or 'personhood.' My reservation? In a society as interconnected as ours is, many things that people would rather keep private are my business because they ultimately effect others. Is the con man who would rather suppress his long criminal history, or the compulsive gambler who can hide his addiction from a credit card issuer, thus raising everyone's rates really none of my business? Is there no way to have efficient markets and protect personhood at the same time?

I think we all agree that norms-based defenses of privacy aren't likely to sway those who emphasize values other then personhood and autonomy. My intent in raising the threat of coercive governmental action was two-fold. First, as Ted mentions, the spring semester seems geared towards examining the balance of power between the state and its citizens, while the fall semester LawNetSoc? focused on private actors. But the other reason was to see if we can't come up with a compelling argument for protecting privacy that cuts across traditional ideological divides. I'm not claiming the specter of authoritarianism necessarily does that, though. Perhaps the best we can do is offer a basket of arguments in support of privacy and hope that one or another happens to resonate with the skeptic's moral compass.

-- AndreiVoinigescu - 19 May 2009

Matt,

I think Andrei, Justin and Ted have done a nice job of presenting a more academic response to your paper, and while I generally agree with their premises, I still found them a bit unsatisfactory in addressing the problem I have with your paper. I’ve given a great deal of thought to the question you pose and also why I find the academic response unsatisfactory, and I think that perhaps it’s that these responses to you lack, well, perhaps a certain Wyoming-ness that seems to me essential in these debates. Why is it a problem the grocery store tracks my purchases or my rental company my car? It could be as, Andrei suggests, because the government, too, could access this information and use it coercively, or as Justin does, that in aggregate, this data gives its holder a great deal of power over its over its originators. But there’s something else crucial underlying people’s reactions, which I think, very deeply, is this: it’s just none of their goddamn business. It’s no one else’s business where I go or what I do when I go there, and it is this intrinsic violation that I, at least, am railing against when I talk about privacy invasion.

In his comment, Ted hinted at something that I think needs to be stated more explicitly, which is that we are clearly coming from entirely different normative systems, a fact which is probably obvious, but not unimportant to recognize openly. The competing paradigms make having a discussion about this topic extremely difficult, because the paradigm acts as a filter which alters everything we see. In this case, as long as you remain locked in a capitalist framework, you will not be able to recognize or understand the problem we are talking about, because your overriding value is efficient markets (though, as Ted points out, even that value may not be served by the current system) and not, what I will unsatisfactorily call “personhood” values, which would be served by a different system. These personhood values are what underlie and inform my “none of your goddamn business” response. People resist the notion that “perfect information [is] necessary for a well-functioning market” because you aren’t talking about “information” in a vacuum--- you’re talking about information about people, about their inner recesses and intimate lives, their garbage cans and diaries.

To this you say, so what? Don’t we want to be sold things we like? I’m aware there’s a value difference between us that may make this answer difficult or even impossible for you to hear, but I will say it anyway: I am not a machine that exists merely to be sold things. Again: I am not a machine that exists merely to be sold things. My values, dreams, beliefs, ideas, thoughts, hopes, fears, anguishes, nightmares--- the things that make up my very soul, if you want to call it that--- do not exist for the benefit of becoming commodities in your perfect market. I resist your resistance because I see a person's place in the world you yearn for, and it is a place of valuelessness and waste, of your human worth being reduced to nothing more than the dollar that an advertiser will pay to get a good look at you. It is a place I don’t want to go, and neither should you, though your essay supposes that you do indeed want go there, that having the perfect shampoo for your hair advertised to you is worth the price of giving up on personhood, because aren’t well-functioning markets just so great? But, Matt, there should be, and is, much, much more to life than that, and if we say in the name of capitalism that all is well, I fear we’ve lost something essential to our being men at all: a precious and private soul.

I realize that it’s perhaps a fool’s errand to counter normative statements with normative statements, but I felt that, important and logical as the other comments were, we are, at heart, having a discussion about what we value, and so it seemed necessary to use the language of values with you. I hope you find what you value in the world you seem to be arguing for, because I’m quite sure I won’t…

-- DanaDelger - 19 May 2009

Hey Matthew: the issue of Google knowing enough about you to target detailed advertising was a topic that we looked at in "Law and the Internet Society." I think it is much easier to see the dangers of this information existing in a context of easily obtainable subpoenas and the like, but I agree, the commercial point (that Google's intimate knowledge of your life is a negative force) strikes many people as absurd. I personally do see Google's possession of this information as problematic; however, (in my opinion) we never developed an argument capable of swaying those who did not already intuitively see the situation as dangerous.

Although I still don't have the perfect argument, I think I see to some degree where the weakness/points of contention lie in the arguments that are usually made against information/identity collection by google and its kin.

1) The argument is often going to be primarily moral. Although you could make an non-moral argument, I don't think it would be convincing to someone who entered the discussion with a strong belief in capitalist economics (as discussed later). Because the argument is likely going to revolve around considerations of human dignity and the like, I think is almost necessarily going to be intuitive to a certain degree.

2) People will take issue with the effectiveness of the information in driving demand and causing sales. Part of the argument that people usually make against Google ads assumes that they are, or have the potential to be, extremely effective. This argument depends on a contention that, even if the ads are not effective right now, some future iteration of advertising will be: the information in Google's hands will be saved forever, and waits only for an advance in behavioral psychology to become an unstoppable instrument of economic demand generation. As far as I can see, the argument against information collection will always rest on this assertion to some degree, and although it does not seem to me like an overly controversial assumption, it is difficult to actually prove to a skeptic.

3) Similar to #1, a consequentialist argument is probably not going to work out, so long as we are basing the discussion within the framework of capitalist economic doctrine. As you said in your essay, it doesn't seem (at least superficially) that Google being able to drive demand with targeted messages is a negative thing. Even if we assume #2 to be true (that Google can learn enough about you to present ads in such a context and with such timing as to be basically irresistible), it is not clear why this is a bad thing. If Google leveraged this hypothetical irresistible ad technology, at its worst it would create a marketplace where demand was ratcheted up to the maximum. While one could argue that this could possibly cause negative economic effects (for example people over-leveraging themselves to purchase advertised goods), many people approaching from a free-market perspective are going to fail to see anything wrong with this state of affairs - the argument will turn into a debate over hypothetical effects and economic doctrine: the argument against information collection will be tied to the old, familiar, and generally unwinnable conflict between different economic ideologies.

4) Peoples' belief in personal autonomy generally prevents them from seeing the group autonomy problem as affecting themselves. Even if we imagine a google capable of turning the great host of people into predictable and behaviorally transparent purchasing machines, this does not strike home as a moral issue for many people. If one believes that this state of affairs (ramped up demand creation) is not economically problematic, it is typically difficult to see it as morally or otherwise problematic. Although I imagine that most people would have a problem seeing themselves as autonomy-less purchasing machines driven by Google's deep and intimate knowledge of their psychology, people generally refuse to think such a thing is possible for them personally. Even if one is able to see a lack of autonomy in others, it is difficult (maybe impossible) to truly believe that you are capable of being played in the same manner as those around you. People will often accept, from a behavioral perspective, that it is possible to know others "better than they know themselves." People believe in the efficacy of advertising and the possibility of a weakened autonomy in others, but every individual will insist that they are the exception. The difficulty of seeing yourself as a behavioral machine, and the assumption that you are making choices to some degree independent of context, makes it very hard to present the information/identity gathering of google as a personal threat.

Wow. Too much writing - I should have made that my paper! These are the problems I have come across when trying to make the argument you address in your paper, and why I think it is such a hard argument to make to someone who does not have an intuitive belief in the problematic nature of information collection on the internet. The constitutional and criminal problems raised by Justin and Andre should not be understated; however, the pure economic autonomy argument is often very unconvincing to someone skeptical to the basic assumptions of the claim.

-- TheodoreSmith - 18 May 2009