THE REAL PRIVACY
PROBLEM
Author: Evgeny Morozov (MIT Tech. Review, 22/10/2013)
Presenter: Lin Yuan
Computational Social Media – Reading session
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520426/the-real-privacy-problem/
28/05/14
CSM reading session: The Real Privacy Problem
Outline
•  Background
•  Privacy and Democracy
•  “Invisible Barbed Wire”
•  Think of Privacy in Ethical Terms
•  Provoke More Questions
•  Summary
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Background
•  In “The Future Computer Utility” (Paul Baran, 1967):
•  A centralized computers would provide “information processing…
the same way one now buys electricity.”
•  “Our home computer will be used to send and receive messages –
like telegrams. …”
•  “The information would be up-to-minute and accurate. …”
•  “offer maximum protection to the preservation of the right of
privacy…”
•  Data collection is pervasive.
•  Right to privacy is needed.
•  All the privacy solutions you hear about
are on the wrong track!
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Background
•  Most of Baran’s visions are purely commercial: shopping,
entertainment, research, etc.
•  Baran did not imagine that it would upend the foundations
of capitalism and bureaucratic administration.
•  People claim to have stricter laws, more control, better
encryption tools, etc.
•  However, laws, markets, technologies
will not stop or redirect demand for
data, because the three play essential
role in sustaining capitalism and
bureaucratic administration.
•  Something else is needed: politics.
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Privacy and Democracy
•  Even programs that seem good can undermine democracy.
•  Technology companies (commercial interests) and
Governments (policy interests) are both interested in our
data. Examples:
•  Italian government, Redditometro, check tax cheater.
•  “Nanny statecraft”: nudge people to do right things. Solve
problems like obesity, climate change, drunk driving by steering our
behavior.
•  This preemption logic is similar to NSA
fighting against terror: prevent rather
than deal with consequences.
•  Even if we have stronger control and
stricter rules, data hunger remains.
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Privacy and Democracy
•  Deficit of democracy:
•  New digital infrastructures allows technocrats to take politics (with
noise, friction, discontent, etc.) out of political process.
•  Replace messy political stuff with clean and efficient data-powered
administration.
•  Also called “Algorithmic regulation” (Tim O’Reilly):
•  Info-rich democracies reach a point, where they want to try to solve
public problems without having to explain or justify themselves.
•  Instead, they can simply appeal to
our self-interests, and they know
enough about us to build a perfect,
highly personalized, and irresistable
nudge.
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Privacy and Democracy
•  Privacy is not an end in itself. “Privacy is a means of
achieving a certain ideal of democratic politics, where citizens
are trusted to be more than just self-contented suppliers of
information to all-seeing and all-optimizing technocrats.” (S.
Simitis, 1985)
•  Three technical trends:
1.  Intensive retrieval of personal data.
2.  New technologies are not only able to record
and reconstruct individual activities, but also
normalizing surveillance.
3.  Recorded personal information was allowing
social institutions to enforce standards of
behavior, to mold and adjust individual
conduct.
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CSM reading session: The Real Privacy Problem
Privacy and Democracy
•  Modern institutions gain:
•  Insurance company: better programs
•  Police: identify potential criminals and locate suspects
•  Welfare agencies: unearth fraudulent behavior
•  We citizens lose:
•  Less knowledge of context for decisions
•  More confusion about the logics
•  Example - Data mining:
•  Non-interpretable;
•  Difficult to explain.
•  Consequence: everything
works well but we do not
know how and why.
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Privacy and Democracy
•  Privacy can both support and undermine democracy.
•  “The Right to Privacy” (Brandeis and
Warren, 1890) sought a right to be let
alone – desire to live an undisturbed
life.
•  However, if all citizens fully exercise
their right to privacy, society would be
deprived of transparent and available
data that is needed for technocrats’
sake, and also good for citizens:
•  Citizens can evaluate issues, form opinions,
debate or even fire the technocrats.
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Privacy and Democracy
•  When all citizens demand their rights but are unaware of
their responsibilities, democratic political questions:
How should we live together? What is in the public interest? How do
I balance my own interest with it? Etc.
go into legal, economic or administrative domains.
•  Laws, markets and technologies replace
debate and contestation with preferred
and less messy solutions.
•  However, democracy without engaged
citizens does not sound like democracy.
•  Thus the balance between privacy and
transparency should be adjusted and
reconsidered continuously.
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“Invisible Barbed Wire”
•  We citizens disclose data for our self-interest, not for
public good. It is cheap enough to use free services that
are good for us.
•  Simitis: “Habits, activities, and preferences are compiled, registered,
and retrieved to facilitate better adjustment, not to improve the
individual’s capacity to act and to decide. … processing as means to
adapt an individual to a predetermined, standardized behavior…aims
at highest possible degree of compliance with the model patient,
consumer, taxpayer, employee, etc.”
•  It is an “Invisible Barbed Wire”
•  Everyone is trapped with it.
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“Invisible Barbed Wire”
•  Consequences of “Invisible barbed wire”:
•  Limits our lives to a space that looks good and quiet, but is not our
own choice and that we cannot rebuilt and expend.
•  Worse, there’s no one to blame.
•  The more information revealed, the denser but more invisible the
barbed wire becomes.
•  Revolutionary insight from Simitis:
•  As long as privacy is more or less
equated with an individual’s right to
access control of data, there will be
NO progress, and “invisible barbed
wire” will NOT disappear.
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Think of Privacy in Ethical Terms
•  From commercial perspective, we can build a property
regime by turning our data into a tradable asset; We can
use an “electronic butler” to negotiate with webs and
make decisions for us:
•  More control over access of data;
•  Strengthen privacy;
•  More efficient;
•  Beneficial for entrepreneurs and technocrats;
•  Everyone wins! So who loses here???
•  Answer: democracy
•  Reason:
1)  “Invisible barbed wire” still remains;
2)  Concerns about justice and equality.
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Think of Privacy in Ethical Terms
•  Ethical concerns:
•  Sharing our data may impact others.
•  “Electronic butler” is unaware of ethics.
•  Exchanges of information – the
oxygen of democratic life, should
NOT be delegated to an “electronic
butler”.
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Provoke more questions
•  We have to confront the questions in both
-  economic and legal dimensions
-  political dimensions
linking the future of privacy with the future of democracy in a way
that will not reduce privacy either to markets or to laws.
•  In practice, we must:
1) 
2) 
3) 
4) 
Politicize the debate about privacy and
information sharing.
Learn how to sabotage the system - perhaps by
refusing to self-track at all.
Need more provocative digital services:
“electronic provocateur” instead of “butler”.
Abandon fixed preconceptions about how our
digital services work and interconnect.
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CSM reading session: The Real Privacy Problem
Summary
•  Laws, market mechanisms and
technologies are insufficient
solutions for privacy.
•  “Electronic butler” or nudge
undermines democracy.
•  Civic solution is also needed,
because democracy is at risk.
•  Ethical issues should also be
carefully considered.
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