Privacy Problems
In anticipation of privacy day on Tuesday, I thought I’d post a link to a recent article I read in which the author attempts to live entirely anonymously for a week. She had to go to great lengths to obtain a pay-as-you-go cell phone, to send anonymous email, to travel anonymously around the Bay Area, and even to take a yoga class without her name being recorded. In some ways, her story is quite amusing, but it also is somewhat concerning from a privacy standpoint. Despite her best efforts, the author was unable to live fully anonymously even for one week. I think many ordinary people are not fully aware of the truly voluminous amount of information collected from them as they simply go about their day-to-day life, and many others who are aware simply do not have the time or energy to go through the laborious processes employed by the author in order to protect their privacy.
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
dweinberger
February 19, 2008 @ 8:01 pm
At the same time, an enormous portion of our day is spent in anonymity, typically. At least in larger cities; Ethan Zuckerman is fond of pointing out that when he walks down the street in North Adams, MA, the default is not anonymity but a friendly nod of recognition.
nikae
February 19, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
I certainly believe that this default of recognition in more rural areas can be true, but, just to push back for a minute, I don’t know how much longer it will *stay* true.
As digital cameras and camcorders become more and more commonplace and as facial recognition technology improves, the people in Boston may find their images captured — and tagged — more often than the people in North Adams. Ultimately, because of this digitization, the record of a Bostonian’s actions may be more persistent and more searchable.
Thus, while urban areas can certainly provide more anonymity than rural and suburban areas at the moment, there could be a serious shift in this balance as “digital dossiers” become larger and more complex.