There are no fire alarms when it comes to privacy
Posts from "Fire Alarms" series:
Table of contents:
Contrary to the belief of people, a fire alarm’s purpose is not just to let you know that there is fire. But also to let you know that it is safe to react or panic about the fire. Bystander effect experiment by Latane and Darley in 1968 states that you are more likely to be inactive or not help when you are in a group of people than when you’re alone. This also means you are more likely to help or react when you are lonely than in a group. So as to avoid embarassment or to be percieved as panicky.
In one of their experiments, Latane and Darley placed students in a room either alone or with 2 or 3 strangers to fill a questionaire while they waited for the experimenter to return. While they were filling out the questionaire, smoke was released to the room. When students were working alone, they immediately recognised the smoke. Within 5 seconds. While it took upto 20 seconds for the students in a group to recognise the smoke. And even though students in groups recognised the smoke has become really thick and have started to obscure their vision or made them cough, they still didn’t report the fire. Only one participant in the group condition reported the smoke within the first four minutes, and by the end of the experiment, no-one from five out of eight groups had reported the smoke at all.
And when it comes to privacy, the same is applicable. There is always an adjustment and acceptance from the consumers or the general public every time there is an intrusion of privacy in our lives. It’s either from governments or from corporates. The reason is always children’s safety, national security or to understand and provide better services to the end-users. And yet, we the people never get to see the promised land. It always ends ups benefitting people who makes these calls.
A couple of weeks ago whatsapp came with their hammer and finally enforced their new privacy policy with no option to reject. New is an exaggeration maybe. AFAIK, this privacy policy update was initially introduced in 2016. This was to send data to facebook and finally start their surveillance for ads. Anybody who joined whatsapp after 2016 is already using the app with this privacy policy. The new update was for us mortals who joined before 2016 and hasn’t accepted it. They initally delayed it by 3 months. Then indefinitely. But I knew they are going to come back once the uproar against it has subsided. And they did.
What was the end result? Now everytime I do any purchase, I get whatsapp message from their business accounts. Without my consent. Making facebook know about most of my purchases. Which was the whole reason why I deleted my facebook and instagram account around a decade ago. To not let them track me.
But Nikhil, why not just delete it? Network effects. There are presonal and professional reasons to use it. And in India, whatsapp is unavoidable. Now I see ads, get surveillance done on me and lose privacy on my purchases and actions. With me having zero control.
The creepy guy
Imagine a guy is behind your loved ones. Your closest ones. Your mother, father, wife, brother or maybe your daughter or son. Going behind them and watching every move they are making. Stalking them wherever they go. Watching and recording what they are doing. Looking into their phone and checking their phones to see what apps they have installed. Going through their contacts and copying all their contacts. Listening to what they talk. Always recording where they are at any given point. And even access your camera to see your faces. And then, imagine that this creepy guy shared this all with 100’s of people who are doing all of these like him. And they share the same to another 100 of them. And them to more and then so on and so forth. Will you be OK with this person? Or are you gonna call the police?
If anyone do any of these in real person, they’ll be in jail. And yet, we let all the apps do these to us. Everyday - 24/7. Just because one thing happen in person where you see a lot of it. While the other happens away from your eyes. Out of our purview.
Digital privacy is a tricky topic to begin with. Because people have varied knowledge about the topic. And they specifically have varied expectations and definitions on what privacy is and what it means for them. This makes it extremely tricky to talk about. Some are not fine with any kind privacy intrusions. They go hardcore. Others? They want privacy but not at the cost of convenience. Then there are people who are fine with some amount of intrusions when it is for “protecting” children or national security. And then there are people who don’t care for it. And when you add the many many ways the world do surveillance or track us digitally, it makes it impossible create an audience to attract and make awareness. I mean for gods sake, people couldn’t even do three basic things - wash hands, 6ft apart and wear mask to keep themselves ALIVE during Covid! Now imagine this privacy situation where there are many many varied permutations and combinations.
And this is what happnes when you do talk to general public about this, the response you get is disbelief, getting ridiculed or telling you that you are over reacting or that you are becoming a tin foil hat. And if you didn’t know what tin foil hat is already, read the Tin foil hat wikipedia page. The bystander effect is really strong on this one. It gets people to say nothing harmful is happening even when they are. The toxic positivity on the subject makes people normalise the intrusions further and further. And the result is us inching towards a surveillance state globe.
The embarassment of being ridiculed is real though. Privacy enthusiasts are lonely creatures most of the time in their local environment (read this in David Attenborough’s voice!). Their friends and family most of the time ignore or ridicule them cos they don’t see enough or dig deeper about it. When the initial frenzy was unwinding about the privacy policy change in whatsapp, my 2 friends out of which one of whom is a Google fanboy, for the first time started talking about privacy seriously. This was a revelation for me. This all started to change when they ended up talking with other people who don’t care for privacy. I saw one being worried about being embarrassed for being a tinfoil hat. And the other, letting all of it go the moment one of my other friend confronted him. This encourages the tech surveillance to intrude in our lives just like the smoke that was released to the room during the experiment.
So who is this privacy for?
Everyone. This doesn’t mean free pass for unfiltered levels of toxicity. Cos that’s the reason why we have laws. To make sure people cannot do whatever they want (kill, hurt etc). But we as people have the right to privacy. If doing certain things is unlawful or illegal in person, there is no reason why we should be treating it any different when it’s done digitally. Especially when it is being done 100 times fold (or maybe 1000 times).
Privacy is about being able to do things in the future and not just the present. And privacy doesn’t have to be about the majority. Because most of people really don’t care. That is the reality. And this is not about whether privacy is a bigger problem to you or not. But about the necessity of the people who would like to exercise their right to privacy. Because they can make our life more private. For the rest of us who don’t care. Irrespective of whether you think it is a serious problem or not, there is no denying:
- Many apps listen to our phone’s microphone.
- Tracking software like Microsoft clarity records screen sessions while you visit websites and apps in it’s entirety. And this can be viewed as a video from Microsoft clarity dashboard. And there are so many alternatives to this as well.
- They sell your data unlimited times eventually ending up with scammers or other data scavangers.
- Websites shows different price for goods based on the data they have on you.
The recent age verification for apps and OS’s are all examples of water boiling further and further for us frogs. It’s either national security or children’s online safety always. But in reality, they just want to make these things mainstream so that they don’t have to go to court for each and every single instances. Avoid due process which makes them accountable before the judiciary (assuming you are living in a democracy that is).
I still remember, me and my roommate intentionally talking about burgers with his facebook open and soon enough it showed McDonald’s ad. And this was back in 2016/17 time period. It effects you directly or indirectly even though you don’t know it yet. Not to mention, if you don’t care about it, it really don’t make sense when you have a strong opinion on the subject against it. You having a strong opinion doesn’t change your world. But it changes things for people who do want it. Privacy is about having the possibility of having another Snowden or Julian Assange. It is about the freedom for you in the future. Having a surveillance state makes it impossible for that to happen. The fear to talk it out makes it an invisible blocker even before you can think about it.
In another recent incident that gave me chilling insight into the power of government surveillance, I met with a sensitive and well-placed source through an intermediary. After the meeting, which occurred a few years ago in Europe, I began to do research on the source. About an hour later, I got a call from the intermediary, who said, “Stop Googling his name.”
My team is divided
Even the privacy enthusiasts are divided on how to solve the privacy issue. And also about the definition of privacy. A lot of people like to use an unpopular piece of software like Signal for their communication. But the moment it became remotely mainstream post Whatsapp’s privacy policy change, they didn’t want to use it anymore. Same way people argue about what the solution should be as well. In my opinion it is very simple. If it’s illegal/unlawful to do in person, it should be the same digitally. If it’s OK for 1000’s of companies to stalk people online, why is it any different when it’s done offline? Both eventually leads to harm. But in varied different ways and scale.
So what can we do?
I think first and foremost, what we can do is make awareness about privacy. Then, acknowledgement that this is a problem and not something we should be tolerating. So that these ridiculisation and toxic positivity nature againts surveillance can be stopped. Then there is the fact about how to take actions. We can start with reducing the sharing of data whereever possible. It is a reality by now that achieving 100% privacy is impossible. But what we can do is reduce the sharing of data. Or creation of data for these surveillance corporations. The data economy sustains itself with the continous stream of data. We can cut the flow. While there are personal identifying information (PII) like address, phone or email which cannot be changed, there are things that are in our control.
Start with basics:
- Disallow location permission for all unnecessary apps.
- Disallow microphone access for all unnecessary apps.
- You bank app doesn’t need contacts permission. Neither does your food delivering app (Why do you need it Zomato?).
- Stop sharing phone numbers with shops and other places. This is a common practice in India.
- It is neither mandatory nor necessary. This is the main way by which your data is shared by local data brokers who sell it endlessly eventually ending up in data breaches or in the hands of threat actions. This is even more worse than big corporations who at least in some cases have to go through compliances and data protection laws/policies.
And we can start from the above and work our way through depending on our comfort levels. Not everyone needs to do things like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange.
How can we protect our digital life?
By using an adblocker would be an obvious good start in your browser. Then there is using privacy friendly software like Firefox browser instead of chrome. Just switching on enhanced tracking protection alone will save a lot of issues. And using better search engines like DuckDuckGo or Kagi. And if you want VPN’s, use Mullvad or Proton VPN. Privacy Guides is also a great resource to get started with. There are software recommendations and guides for learning and getting better at privacy. And move your email from gmail would be another. Why move from gmail? Cos they read all your emails. This means your bank accounts and transactions as well among other things. These are basic steps that you can take for starters. And do let me know if there is an interest from any single person about taking it to the next level. I can write about them as well.
Credits
Super thankful to Eliezer Yudkowsky for allowing me to use the fire alarm example and headline from his article There’s No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence. This article has been the north star for me since before ChatGPT got released and has been after it.