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AlexXinruiLiSecondEssay 3 - 04 Dec 2019 - Main.AlexXinruiLi
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondEssay" |
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| | | Privacy v. Secrecy | |
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< | First, there is a fundamental difference between privacy and secrecy. (https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide-why-should-i-care-about-my-privacy-f488281b8f1d) Your average John Smith does not need to be plotting a crime to need privacy. Whether or not you are law-abiding citizen, you always put locks on your doors and close the curtains behind your windows. You may or may not enjoy recording tapes of your sexual intercourse, but chances are you would never want to publish them for the world to see. American journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose team published reports based on Edward Snowden’s findings on NSA mass surveillance, did a little social experiment to explain this difference. (https://www.mic.com/articles/188563/who-cares-i-have-nothing-to-hide-why-the-popular-response-to-online-privacy-is-so-flawed) He had asked people to email him all their email and social media passwords, and said that he would look through them and publish whatever that’s interesting. Not surprisingly, no one has yet to take on this offer. Why is it that we claim we have nothing to hide yet we still don’t want to let a stranger on the street scroll through our text messages? This is because we do value privacy, a right that allows us to share different levels of personal information with different people around us. We felt comfortable being vulnerable in front of the people that love and care about us, but the next morning we still “suit up” to face the scary outside world. Yet why are we willing to let more strangers we’ve never met get access to so much of our personal information. | >
> | First, there is a fundamental difference between privacy and secrecy. (https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide-why-should-i-care-about-my-privacy-f488281b8f1d) Your average John Smith does not need to be plotting a crime to need privacy. Whether or not you are a law-abiding citizen, you always put locks on your doors and close the curtains behind your windows. You may or may not enjoy recording tapes of your sexual intercourse, but chances are you would never want to publish them for the world to see. American journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose team published reports based on Edward Snowden’s findings on NSA mass surveillance, did a little social experiment to explain this difference. (https://www.mic.com/articles/188563/who-cares-i-have-nothing-to-hide-why-the-popular-response-to-online-privacy-is-so-flawed) He had asked people to email him all their email and social media passwords, and said that he would look through them and publish whatever that’s interesting. Not surprisingly, no one has yet to take on this offer. Why is it that we claim we have nothing to hide yet we still don’t want to let a stranger on the street scroll through our text messages? This is because we do value privacy, a right that allows us to share different levels of personal information with different people around us. We felt comfortable being vulnerable in front of the people that love and care about us, but the next morning we still “suit up” to face the scary outside world. Yet why are we willing to let more strangers we’ve never met get access to so much of our personal information. | | | Who's Listening? | | | Slippery Slope | |
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< | Third, agreeing to mass surveillance today might be a slippery slope for the future. One might argue that today it’s just the government who listens to us to “protect” our security and the big internet companies who listens to us to gain financial benefit from targeted ads. However, in future, the governments and the big internet companies can engage in internet censorship, and even move us into a “totally monitored world.” (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rule-privacy-vs-data-collection-20150427-story.html) But what’s wrong with a totally monitored world if you are not a criminal? Glenn Greenwald says internet mass surveillance creates a “prison of the mind.” This is similar to Bentham and Foucault's concept of building a Panopticon in the prison, where the prisoners can be monitored from the tower in the center, but they can’t see when and who is monitoring them. As a result, the prisoners would have to behave as if there are people monitoring them the entire time. But in a society where mass surveillance is implemented, we will be these “prisoners.” | >
> | Third, agreeing to mass surveillance today might be a slippery slope for the future. One might argue that today it’s just the government who listens to us to “protect” our security and the big internet companies who listens to us to gain financial benefit from targeted ads. However, in reality, they have already been using our personal data to manipulate our decisions in the democratic process (The Great Hack). Moreover, in future, the governments and the big internet companies can further engage in internet censorship, and even move us into a “totally monitored world.” (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rule-privacy-vs-data-collection-20150427-story.html) But what’s wrong with a totally monitored world if you are not a criminal? Glenn Greenwald says internet mass surveillance creates a “prison of the mind.” This is similar to Bentham and Foucault's concept of building a Panopticon in the prison, where the prisoners can be monitored from the tower in the center, but they can’t see when and who is monitoring them. As a result, the prisoners would have to behave as if there are people monitoring them the entire time. But in a society where mass surveillance is implemented, we will be these “prisoners.” | | |
Lastly, I will end with a quote from Edward Snowden: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." (https://www.mic.com/articles/119602/in-one-quote-edward-snowden-summed-up-why-our-privacy-is-worth-fighting-for) So whether or not you feel like you have something to hide at this moment, we should put our legitimate right to internet privacy close and dear to our hearts. |
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