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/

Outline

• Background

• Privacy and Democracy

•  “Invisible Barbed Wire”

•  Think of Privacy in Ethical Terms

• Provoke More Questions

• Summary

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Background

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•  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!

Background

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• 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.

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.

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•  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.

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.

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•  Instead, they can simply appeal to our self-interests, and they know enough about us to build a perfect, highly personalized, and irresistable nudge.

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)

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•  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.

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

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• Example - Data mining: •  Non-interpretable; •  Difficult to explain.

• Consequence: everything works well but we do not know how and why.

Privacy and Democracy • Privacy can both support and undermine democracy.

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•  “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.

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.

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•  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.

“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.”

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•  It is an “Invisible Barbed Wire” •  Everyone is trapped with it.

“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.

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• 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.

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;

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•  Everyone wins! So who loses here??? •  Answer: democracy •  Reason:

1)  “Invisible barbed wire” still remains; 2)  Concerns about justice and equality.

Think of Privacy in Ethical Terms • Ethical concerns:

•  Sharing our data may impact others. •  “Electronic butler” is unaware of ethics.

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• Exchanges of information – the oxygen of democratic life, should NOT be delegated to an “electronic butler”.

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.

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•  In practice, we must: 1)  Politicize the debate about privacy and

information sharing. 2)  Learn how to sabotage the system - perhaps by

refusing to self-track at all. 3)  Need more provocative digital services:

“electronic provocateur” instead of “butler”. 4)  Abandon fixed preconceptions about how our

digital services work and interconnect.

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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