The privacy dilemma- how to live a private life in a digitally connected world order.

The issue on privacy has recently come into the spotlight with the revelation that the NSA has been listening to calls and collecting internet data. This revelation has also implicated all the major tech companies (ie. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) as providing the NSA "direct" access to their servers for data collection. Although the companies implicated have been unanimous in their denial that they provide "direct" access to their servers. One by one they have issued statements denying the allegations and have even released information to the public about all government related data-requests sent to them. 

So, it turns out, these companies do not provide "direct" access to their servers, but will comply with government requests for information- in "certain" situations. If you ask me, it is all a play of words and a convoluted interpretation of the word "direct". But this is not what this post is about. There are literally hundreds of articles/ blogs out there talking about how the NSA PRISM program is collecting information and how they are getting away with it. 

No, this post is about making sense of our reaction to the leaks. Yes, we are outraged and rightly so. In the middle of all the outrage about the leaks, there is a very serious discussion that needs to take place- and it revolves around two questions: i. Who should we be upset with? and ii. How do we regain control of our data?

Who should we be upset with?

Today, someone is collecting the following information about you and me:

  • Personal Information: Name, Date of Birth, Address, Telephone #, Gender, etc
  • Location Information: Where you are now, Where you were 2 months ago, Where you went to school, Where you work, etc.
  • Preference Information: Your favorite book, Movies you like, Music you listen to, Food you like to it, Your favorite restaurant, etc.
  • Relationship Information: Who you connect with, Who your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend is, who you hang-out with, who you chat with, etc.
  • Third-party information: What others think about you, what other people know about you, what you share with others, the things you have in common with others, etc. 

With the following information, one can easily come up with a very accurate profile of who you are and what your tendencies are. The best part of it all is that the way the information is gathered- it is non-intrusive and we barely know it is happening. 

So who is collecting these information about you and me? Surely only the US government, through the NSA, has the resources to gather this kind of information. Nothing could be further from the truth. The group collecting the information I mentioned above is no other than Facebook and Google (and all other tech giants such as Microsoft, Apple, etc). For the purpose of this post, I will focus on Facebook because it has the most reach.

Facebook has 1 billion Monthly Active Users and approximately 660 million Daily active users- and it is still growing. It has single-handedly started and sustained the  Global Social Media/Network phenomenon. It offers a free service to its over 1 billion users and generated $1.46 Billion in revenue in the first quarter of this year alone. So how does it do this? How does a company providing "free" service generate that much money? By gathering and selling our information. 

Facebook's revenue comes from selling ads to different companies. What sets their ad space apart is the fact that Facebook is very good in matching an ad-content with the audience most likely to buy the product/ service it is advertising. Facebook is able to do this because it has all the right information about you and me. It knows that you love Japanese food so it shows ad-content about a new Sushi place in town, who among your friends have visited it and what they thought about the place. How did Facebook get all this information about us? Simple, by asking us for it. 

Here are excerpts from Facebook's Data Use Policy:
"When you sign up for Facebook, you are required to provide information such as your name, email address, birthday, and gender. In some cases, you may be able to register using other information, like your telephone number."
"It also includes the information you choose to share when you take an action, such as when you add a friend, like a Page or a website, add a place to your story, use our contact importers, or indicate you are in a relationship."
 "We receive information about you from your friends and others, such as when they upload your contact information, post a photo of you, tag you in a photo or status update, or at a location, or add you to a group."
"When people use Facebook, they may store and share information about you and others that they have, such as when they upload and manage their invites and contacts." 
"When you post things like photos or videos on Facebook, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date, and place you took the photo or video."
"We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook, including when multiple users log in from the same device. This may include your IP address and other information about things like your internet service, location, the type (including identifiers) of browser you use, or the pages you visit." 
If you have a Facebook account, you agreed to all these and more. If you are upset about knowing the US government and the NSA are spying on you, then you should be more upset at yourself. PRISM specifically targeted tech companies like Facebook because they have all the necessary information about us. The perversity of it all is that people are so upset and disturbed about knowing the government is spying on them, but are so open and cavalier in providing a private company all their information. 


Going back to the question, who should we be upset with? If you are upset about the fact that anyone (other than yourself) could have access to that much information about you, and you have a Facebook account, then you should be upset about yourself. Yes, you have to blame yourself mainly for one thing- for being naive. 



If you are ok with Facebook gathering terabytes worth of your information as long as they do not share it with the government- then you should be upset about the US government and the kind of power it holds under FISA rules. If you are thinking this way, I have to caution you to be very careful. Facebook's business model- if stripped down to its basic core- is about collecting a product and selling it to a customer. Today, most Facebook users think they are the customer and the website is the product. That mentality is a mirage created by Facebook to make us comfortable with the status quo and blind from the reality that we (and our information) are the product! As a product, there is no limit with what they can do with our information and we have no information who they are selling it to. If you are comfortable with this reality and its implication- then you have nothing to worry about, everything is going as planned.



What I am upset about is the fact that today, I do not have total control over the information I share through Facebook and other companies. None of the companies who collect my information can provide me with an option to delete all my data from their servers. They all have the ability to do this but they simply refuse to do it. People are calling this as the "right to be forgotten" and considering the amount of information being gathered about us online, this should be the next battlefront for our civil liberties. This leads me to our second question.

How do we regain control of our data/information?

The ideal situation would be to push for legislation towards the right to be forgotten, however in the interim controlling our information is going to be a very tedious process. We all have to be selective with the kind of information we share online and before hitting the "like", "share" and "submit" buttons we have to ask ourselves a few simple questions:
  • Will I be able to justify this post 5 years from now? 
  • Will this post involve information about other people? (ie. tags and mentions)
  • If it involves other people, did I get consent from them? (ie. get consent before tagging people or mentioning them in a post)
  • Am I willing to throw this information out there knowing full well I wont be able to take it back?
These are very simple questions to answer but most of us do not take time to ask them before sharing something in social media. Today, the only way to gain control of our information is to control ourselves. We should all take extra steps to secure the information we share online like enabling 2-step authentication on Facebook. As much as Facebook and the other tech giants preach that they value our privacy over anything, those statements will never be more than just rhetoric. They are a business built around collecting and selling our information- the last thing they want to do is be guardians of individual privacy.

The sad reality we live in is that we depend a lot on services offered by Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, etc. We consume the services they provide us and organize our lives around "services" they offer without thinking about what we are giving up in return. We have been blinded for too long with the word "free" because we still have a backward mentality that as long as we are not paying money, the service must be free. We all have to wake up and realize that in the age we live in, our personal information is our most important and valuable currency. As such, we have to spend it with responsibility and frugality. 

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