WebMink
Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Privacy is dead - long live privacy!

James Governor unjustly takes Scott McNealy to task in a piece that perpetuates the misunderstanding of Scott's original statement that "Privacy is dead". What I have always taken Scott to have been talking about is that privacy in the sense of being able to completely withhold all information about oneself from any arbitrary party is already dead. Credit cards, loyalty schemes, video rentals, library cards, travel itineraries and more have already taken everything we could have wanted to withhold and put it in the hands of corporations. We neglected it and the time to protect that right, if it ever was one, is long passed. Get over it.

However, we do tenuously retain another freedom, which is also described with that same word. In "Database Nation" [US|UK] Simpson Garfinkle highlighted the paradox where the loss of effective privacy that all US citizens experience in their postal mail every morning was caused by a reluctance to allow large centralised databases for reasons of privacy (the first interpretation, above). When he points out that "technology is not privacy neutral" he's not suggesting we become hermits in Montana. Instead, we are at a key policy turning-point where we can and must demand control over our own personal information.

It's this latter interpretation of 'privacy' that Scott is referring to. In the context of maintaining security and also of of maintaining auditability, privacy (the second one, control of personal information already disclosed) must be made an absolute priority. Personally I advocate extending so-called intellectual property rules so that they give individuals the same rights over their personal information as corporations want over their patents and copyrights.

So I'd suggest, James, that actually it's the same song all along, no-one has changed their mind (just like no-one was advocating against privacy in the first place). This was exactly the point of the Liberty Alliance - allowing exchange of personal information in a way that was secure and protected the privacy of the data subjects. Privacy is no longer about the freedom to withhold information, if it ever was - it's now about the freedom to control the information already disclosed.

posted at 1:17 AM (UK) | |