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Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Privacy?

I truly wonder how anyone can expect privacy if they are on the internet. For those of us who grew up pre-interweb, cell/text/ e-mail, we had a certain amount of privacy which is now lost. Lost due to database storage capabilities. Lost due to the ever growing reliance on the electronic format for communications and commerce. Lost due to peoples’ willingness to belch out all the little details of their daily existence without any care who sees it.

I like the idea of privacy (as I’m sure many do). Over the years, I’ve noticed that privacy is often confused with what most might call discretion. Being on the internet and demanding privacy seems incongruent...especially when there is so little use of discretion.

One thing I know about privacy is this: if only you know what you did, then it is private. Otherwise, you have to introduce the idea of trust, along with discretion. When alone with my thoughts, only I know what I’m thinking. If those thoughts spill out on paper or into a computer, they are subject to discovery.

True privacy is a rare animal. I don’t take those all that seriously who clamor about the “right to privacy” as the squabble about it on the web. It is akin to somebody complaining about burning themselves with a lit match.

You want private, stay off the web. Ditch your mobile device. There are other things one can do that go further, that would ultimately lead to living off the grid, so to speak. I don’t think the general population has the desire to live off the grid. There is a certain comfort in knowing those around you and the patterns they keep.

True loners are a rare breed. If one loner pairs up with another, then, of course, they are not loners any more, are they? This elusive thing called privacy, what does it actually mean? Well rest assured it isn’t here. The answer, that is, here on the web. The web reminds me of the old saying... “Those who live in glass houses ought not throw stones.”

There are no secrets on the web. The delete button is great when you work offline on an isolated system not connected to the world. But once the system is connected, the user has invited all the prying eyes to visit, welcomed or not. The once isolated system is forever corrupted. That pesky binary code has a long reach.

Face it: We don’t have privacy now and never actually did. Never underestimate the insidious nature of illusions. They have held nations together for centuries. Alas, illusions are weaker than the truth. As they are stripped away, so will the instability be stripped away.


As L. Frank Baum. wrote... “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”



(c)2013
Chris J Hutchins
DHP
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