RE: Internet Privacy; The Case for Deliberate Apathy

-- By AnilMotwani - 08 Dec 2011

The last couple months have taught me that very little is secure on the Internet. It has also taught me this this outcome is not inevitable. Rather, with a little bit of care and discipline, we can enjoy the vast resources of the Internet and we can do so without exposing ourselves. And yet I feel, personally, that I’m probably going to continue doing what I’ve always been doing. It’s not laziness, but rather a value decision. I think that the logic behind my decision may be shared by others, and as such, it’s worth examining whether this logic is good.

Nudity is the norm

For my part, having a sanitized or inaccessible online history is bad. I don’t trust people with a totally clean record. It’s not because I suspect they’ve been hiding something, but that on balance, I find these people tend also to be super uptight. It makes sense: do you really want to elect, hire, or -- generally speaking -- entrust someone who has spent their entire post-adolescent life carefully nurturing their Internet persona so that it conforms to shared conceptions of good taste and morality? Having an online footprint, blemishes and all, is good because it indicates that you are who say you are, and you’re relaxed enough to let that broadcast to the world.

On the flipside, working for someone or befriending someone who has a prejudiced view of you because of something you said or did on the Internet raises questions about the enviability of that employment or friendship situation to begin with. I’d much rather surround myself with people that search for deeper, more reliable indicators of who I am rather than abstractions from bits of often out-of-context information culled from the Internet.

Abiding by the rules of the matrix = fewer legal citations

Further, without obsessing over technical details, assuming that nothing you ever do is totally private functions as an excellent internal safeguard. Instead of taking measures to secure my computer so that I can Google “child pornography” with impunity, I just won’t Google “child pornography.” I won’t Google a lot of things. I’ll grant that many so-called “taboos” are the product of social construction and should be eradicated. But in my worldview, most taboos are okay. And any fear that the government is watching is just added incentive for me to be a well and good law-abiding citizen.

Paranoia is bad for your skin

Finally, there’s the mental health side of things. Facebook is fun if you just let yourself go wild, but it’s not fun if you start fretting over privacy concerns and then, accordingly, make painstaking adjustments in how you publish your posts so that they only reach your desired audience. It’s good to be critical of flawed institutions - and to be sure, there are many in America. At its best, critical thought both leads to progressive change and constitutes a healthy brain exercise. But there’s a point at which critical thought becomes corrosive and self-destructive, and limits your enjoyment of life. I’d rather spend my 20s blissfully ignorant than scared of Big Brother.

Damage Control - if things get out of hand

There are, to be sure, safety options – lest we change our mind and suddenly morph into privacy nuts:

Move to Costa Rica and become a scuba instructor

I don't think they do background checks - at least not extensive ones. Labor mobility is fantastic in America (as in, from America). We can switch our locations and careers with ease. Allowing your online persona to become gradually polluted can function as a powerful change agent by forcing you to pack your baggage, literally and figuratively, and go somewhere else in pursuit of a new, clean start.

Pseudonymity: reconstructing YOU and YOUR MANY personalities

Further, there’s so much digitized information these days that profiles of individual identities could easily enmesh and get lost in the mix. Programs exist that help facilitate the process of shrouding your online identity (see Reputation.com). There are typically two paths to doing this: burying your online persona, or obscuring it through the injection of false information. The latter strategy can actually be quite fun. You can create fake names for yourself – and then develop wonderfully elaborate backstories to match.

In conclusion...

Full online anonymity is so ellusive in the 21st century as to cast doubt on whether it’s even worth the time and headache. I’d argue that it’s easy for people to recognize our precarious situation, its consequences, and then decide on a best advised route of simply not caring; and as far as I can tell, I think that’s me.

Call me philistine; say that I'm ruinous for democracy. But I suspect that others think like me, and as such, it's worth addressing these arguments on their own turf, however anti-intellectual that turf may be colored. There gets a point at which information gathering systems become so highly networked and tightly integrated that one feels a need to just say "Forget it all!" and throw his hands in the air; to do so, I'd argue, isn't a sign of frustration or resignation, but rather, a tremendously powerful act of emancipation.

And for what it's worth - judging by their public Facebook albums, those emancipated souls seem okay with letting the whole universe know how much fun they're having.

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