Barbelith Underground > Laboratory

Grant and Axolotl ask "What kinds of things do you think are important to keep private and why?" - a good question. I suppose this rubs out to personal lifestyle and preference. As Axolotl says, "unless you are discussing business critical details or planning a revolution I'm just not certain crypto is always necessary." This is true, but the operative word in this sentence is always. For most, it isn't practical or necessary to incur the burden of ensuring data privacy all of the time. I would, however, put to you that if you've got the sort of lifestyle or occupation that makes this less of a pain for you than it is for most, you might view this as a sort of protest. A deliberate "time-suck" used to reduce the cost-effectiveness of mass surveillance programs.

I like to assess my privacy by few tiers -

i. Retroactive societal punishment: Are the views you profess today going to be tolerated tomorrow? Do you care? How do you wish to be represented, should someone review all of your online communications in the last ten years? Do you want all of what you've said to be available for review? Some of it? None of it?

ii. Capitulation to surveillance society: Do you approve of mass surveillance? If not, are you interested in gumming up the gears? Would you rather leave it alone? Do you not care, since you've "nothing to hide"?

iii. Consumer's rights: Is it acceptable to you that you're helping to feed the development of ever-more-clever guerilla marketing techniques? That predictive profiles are built regarding your preferences and activities? That this data can be and is shared between distinct entities, and that the line between this tier and the first is indistinct? In the U.S. in particular it requires little more than hand-waving on the part of the government to requisition data maintained by corporate entities, who themselves are required to do very little in terms of protecting your privacy. Identity theft would also fall into this category.

It seems to me that most people, after asking themselves these questions, find themselves wishing they'd done more to protect their privacy.

Last but not least, Lula -

"I was under the impression that Google was one of the 'good guys'"

Indeed - again, the blurry lines. Their motto is "don't be evil", but they are notoriously vague about privacy concerns, they reserve the right to retain any and all data they gather from you for an indefinite period, and finally - the kicker - it's not always a question of what Google (or the Google of today) may or may not do with your data. They may lose control of it. Their corporate philosophy could change. They could be disingenuous. They could be honestly telling you that they won't be evil, but they might sell your data to someone with entirely different motivations and policies.

It is difficult to change habits once you've become entrenched, there's no doubt that. However, you might find yourself pleased with the alternatives (at least in terms of using something like Word Press over something like Blogger).

Privacy Repository