“Why does it (privacy) matter? What are they going to do, read my messages?!” I get this question a lot and like many things in life, it’s one that’s not quick and simple to understand or answer (otherwise the question would not get asked as much).
It strikes me that the problem is in a way similar to that of the Covid-19 pandemic: if you yourself are not in a risk group (old or very ill, in the case of the virus), you’re likely (although not guaranteed) to come out unscathed and so people are tempted to socialise, as they normally would. The thing is, as a result of you catching it, perhaps the old lady living next door, using the same elevator as you may catch it and be less fortunate.
Now, say that Anita, Boris, Celia, Dominic and Eda constitute a social circle. Everyone except Eda takes the same “I know, but I’ve got nothing to hide: fire up WhatsApp (or Zoom or Facebook or any of a number of other privacy disasters), that’s where everyone is” stance. And they’re there and that’s where everything happens: Eda misses out on a Friday night here, a hiking trip there and so on, because it all happens on WhatsApp.
But why isn’t Eda there? Because she has things to hide… Ominous, isn’t it? Well, possibly, but she might also be a whistleblower. Or an activist. Or a rising political star. And Eda can’t afford to allow an Unknown Someone to know everything about her circle of friends, how and when she interacts with them, what kind of relationship she might have with them, which groups she participates in, what she finds important or interesting, when and where she moves…which is exactly the kind of information most social network operators collect about their users, but if she wants to participate in social life, it’s a privacy-not-included kind of life.
This makes her torn by the need to participate in her social life and the need to not jeopardise her goals and plans. The pressure seems trivial, but we are social animals: it is quite severe and unrelenting, so she may well falter. The thing is, we need Eda and we need it to be easy for her to have guaranteed privacy. Because otherwise, we don’t get to find out about a nation-level under-the-table, private-profit-public-cost kind of deal. Or because if she falters, it may be too easy for an authoritarian regime to silence/suffocate/disperse people like her before they can organise themselves and build up some kind of momentum around…say…more autonomy for their region? Advocing for separation of church and state? Replacing a single-party system with a democratic one? Pick your cause.
Does that sound far fetched? WhatsApp left a(t least one) “back door” in the app, allowing access to arbitrary information on the user’s phone. The same security hole was used to access information about Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world. The government of Spain(!) had a computer virus deployed to monitor private communications of high ranking officials in Catalonia – via WhatsApp. Even traditionally inert public organisations such as the European Commission and the Conservative party in the UK have started not only paying attention, but taking action, instructing their officials and members to replace WhatsApp with Signal.
If that’s not enough, there’s always the ethical swamp one wanders into by using services from (and thus giving more power to) megacorporations with no political legitimacy or oversight whatsoever, but which are clearly capable – and willing! – to control the absolute highest levers of political power, as the example of Twitter and Facebook effectively silencing an acting president of the USA in the middle of a hotly contested election process shows (whatever one might thing about the specific president in question).
As Edward Snowden masterfully puts it, “saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” Words to think about.
The Usual Mix 