Hi everyone. I've been wanting to do a short, Planet Money/99% Invisible style episode, no guest, just me talking about a subject thoughtfully.
Thus I give you, NiMhonologue, the first.
20m40s runtime.
Available via iTunes
Available via RSS
Right Click to Download
As I woke up this morning, I was struck by a thought with unusually strong force.
It’s a bit of a catch-22, as I am one who espouses and believes in honesty and openness wherever possible, but obviously depending on the situation. Afterall, if you open up to others, they’re more likely to reciprocate and that leads to real bonds, which is ideal. But you can’t trust everyone.
This broadcast stems from the fact that recently, once again, I discovered that my facebook profile had been set to public without my knowledge or consent. I keep my facebook profile private by choice, not really because I have anything to hide, but more because I have been working a day job in the corporate world and just want to be sure that no one gets the wrong impression.
Facebook is a great tool for promotion, and even for networking. However, many have complained about Facebook’s largely “opt-out” privacy policies, meaning you share by default and have to manually set things to private, rather than being private by default and choosing what you share. This is arguably a backwards way of handling privacy on Facebook’s part, but makes sense given their goals as a company.
Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) says “why whouldn’t you want to share your life and experiences with everyone?”. Facebook was designed to SHARE afterall. Ironically he is one of the most private people in the world himself. If you didn’t know it, we are essentially all just commodities on Facebook, keep that in mind. Our data is their product, which is why they want it all as shared and accessible as possible.
I was just reading an article on Mashable.com yesterday about “Shadow Facebook Profiles”, basically facebook wants to collect ANY information they can about you, even info you don’t actually share with them yourself by choice. You know that friend finder feature? Apparently when you use that and let them scan your phone or email address book to find your friends, they also collect alternate email addresses, phone numbers and other info and store it in a data base. I don’t think I have ever used that function, and I’m glad I haven’t, but I realize that several of my friends have, so Facebook has my data, whether I like it or not.
But getting back to the privacy issue, the thought that struck me this morning was, and I’m certainly not the first person to point this out, that we are being conditioned to accept lack or illusion of privacy as normal. Because if we do, we’re less likely to raise our voices about it. I’ve been thinking alot about the Edward Snowden situation this past week, and how he is now being hunted by his own government for exposing the fact that they are committing war crimes and unjustly spying on people, including their own, and to what end? America is looking less and less free and brave (well, at least the government is), and disappointingly few people have noticed and been upset by it. As Mr. Snowden explains in this short clip, the past no longer stays in the past, your data can be used to build a case against you if so someone with the power chooses to scrutinize it.
I’m scheduled to be interviewing the organization OpenMedia next week, OpenMedia is a grassroots organization that safeguards the possibilities of the open and affordable Internet. They work towards informed & participatory digital policy. This is obviously very important in our current day and age and with what is happening. I plan to ask them about this very subject.
I remember watching a video on google video a few years ago, the speaker was Steve Rambam, the CEO of a licensed investigative agency (so google tells me). His talk was called “Privacy is dead, get over it”. On its face, that’s a statement that I certainly don’t like or agree with, but can’t deny there’s a large degree of truth to it. There are a couple of versions of this talk online, but I recommend setting aside the time to watch the full 3 hour version. He breaks things down in depth and shows you why you should be careful. Steve uses basic technology at the time to spy on and track a friend of his with a frightening degree of accuracy and ease (it was to set an example, the friend was aware and consenting in the exercise). For example, I’ve read several times about how since the iPhone’s battery can’t be removed, it can never be turned off, thus Apple ALWAYS knows where you are.
I have a friend who said he refuses to make his Facebook profile private, because he has “nothing to hide”. He uses his real name on everything online and off, for the same reason. While I wish I could do the same, I simply do not feel comfortable. I use a pseudonym much like authors use a pen name, which started originally because I had written some non-PC lyrics for my music, and I didn’t want to eventually lose a job because someone found those lyrics and didn’t want me associated with their company. I’m far less concerned about that these days because I’m less pursuing jobs at companies where that would even be an issue presently, but the pseudonym stuck and I was able to create an identity for it. It is partly who I am, and partly who I want to be.
The point of this whole monologue was to ask you to think, to look around and consider how private or public are you being, knowingly or otherwise, and do you think perhaps you might want to adjust that? I’m not saying everyone should lock down their digital lives, it’s pretty much impossible anyways in today’s world, but don’t take your privacy for granted. We have no way to know for sure what the consequences of a fully open, digital lifestyle will be in the future, I think that’s a good reason to tread lightly now. Afterall, today’s teens are soon going to have to face the aftermath of the sexting trend, and having their naked pictures living on the internet for the rest of their lives.
If you have not read George Orwell’s novel 1984, it’s obviously an extreme example of what constantly monitoring and controlling a population could be like, but science fiction often becomes reality and we are certainly much closer to that reality now than when I was a kid. I will never fully trust Facebook, or any other site that collects information about me. I’m not wearing a tin-foil hat, BUT the fact is, data is the new currency. Essentially, the only control you have of your privacy now is what you choose to put out there. So just be mindful of that, and try to be mindful of what that might mean in the future.
I can’t stay off the internet because it’s a necessary tool for promotion (and I run a internet radio show!), but I can attempt to control the firehose of information that I spray into the void.
www.adamemanon.com
@AdamEmanon
Music for this episode:
Theme Music - "Noise in my Head" by Clarknova
Bed music - "Dig up the past to bury the future" by Adam Emanon and "Natural Mother" by Adam Emanon
Outro Music - "Shudder" by Finger Eleven
