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Is digital privacy an illusion?

I think the first thing to establish here, is privacy from whom.

Realistically as consumers, we don’t have much privacy from third party marketers. For example
companies are constantly sending us targeted ads and know our locations.

When it comes to privacy from the government, we certainly don’t have it. The government now
grabs large amounts of information on everyone in order to find the one person who is guilty. In the
past, this was illegal in U.S., but under the FISA warrants this is now allowed, and the previous
concept that there must be a probable cause for the government to issue warrants is falling away.
Now, the government is doing massive surveillance. The use of tools such as the stingray, which is
used by policemen to capture all cellphone signals in the area, is an example of that.

How clear of a picture of someone's life can organizations build with the data available?

It’s difficult to find information that isn’t known by a company. Today, your phone tracks your
location, everything you buy is tracked by the vendor, all your documentation is tracked by
government, so maybe the question is really in reverse. Can you name a piece of information that
isn’t known?

And that’s a trick question, because somewhere some company and some government know it.
What’s stopping companies and people from using these bits of information is the amount of work
that it takes to gather all of it information and make it meaningful. In the past the amount of effort
was so large that it was impractical. What ‘s happening now, is that effort is coming down, down
and down and therefore becoming practical to do so.

Do consumers have more to hide than they think?

The key here is to ask whom do you want to protect what from. That’s the question consumers have
to ask themselves today. Do I want to protect my medical information from anyone but my provider?
Consumers have to answer that question before moving on. This is because security and privacy
today is deciding who gets what, and that comes down to controlling your information.

Right now, we live in a world where the information is controlled by vendors and not the consumers.
Things are starting to change in order to address that, and something like Private.me hands back
this control to the consumers so that they can decide who views their personal information. So for
example with Private.me, users can search the Internet without being tracked whatsoever, and can
use a control panel to decide which vendor views their personal information and for how long.

How can the government strike the right balance between privacy and fighting against
terrorism?

We choose the balance as citizens, and in many ways we get the final say.

40 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – February 2015 Edition
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