Privacy is often defined as the right of an individual to keep his/her individual information from being disclosed. This is typically achieved through policies and procedures. Privacy encompasses controlling who is authorized to access your information; and under what conditions information may be accessed, used and/or disclosed to a third party.Security is defined as the mechanism in place to protect the privacy of information. This includes the ability to control access to information, as well as to safeguard information from unauthorized disclosure, alteration, loss or destruction. Security is typically accomplished through operational and technical controls. source
Doug Belshaw visually represents this to get the point home:
Mike Caulfield discusses the future of privacy and suggests that there is work that needs to be done in regards to participatory culture:
I’m sure that the powers that be in Silicon Valley believe in “the end of privacy”, just like they believe in technocratic meritocracy. The most attractive thing for any programmer to believe is that new technologies will render the messiness of social relations obsolete. But this idea, that privacy is antiquated, will lead to institutional and organizational collapse on a massive scale, which is why a transparency organization like Wikileaks is the favorite tool of dictators.source
Lizzie O’Shea explains how Mark Zuckerberg’s call for increase in privacy fails to capture the agency associated with it all:
A better understanding of privacy will not be limited to design concepts generated by highly profitable social media platforms. It needs to encompass how privacy is an essential component of our agency as human beings. Agency, to be explored and expressed fully, requires that we have space outside the influence of capitalism—to have freedom from market forces seeking to manipulate our unconscious. Privacy demands that human emotions like shame, joy, guilt, and desire be explored without someone seeking to profit from the process without us noticing.source
Manoush Zomorodi leads an exploration of what we mean by privacy by taking a dive into privacy policies. Charlie Warzel, the editor behind the New York Times’ Privacy Project, argues that Privacy has become an impoverished word. Another option for this is a ‘hyperobject’, as James Bridle explains in the New Dark Age,
The argument in the end is that with the rise of surveillance capitalism, we have moved over time from ‘we might use’ your data to ‘we will’ use your data, therefore making privacy policies seemingly null and void.
For more on privacy policies, Bill Fitzgerald argues that we need to move beyond compliance to focus on privacy:
Alternatively, Amy Collier provides the follow list to consider:
In regards to privacy policies associated with third-party vendors, Fitzgerald suggests looking for the following search words associated with consent: third party, affiliatuons, change, update and modify.
For a different approach, Amy Wang reports on the terms of services associated with Instagram. She also includes extracts from a lawyer, Jenny Afia, who rewrote the document in plain English. This is similar to Terms of Service, Didn’t Read, a site designed to not only summarise Terms of Services, but also highlight aspects to consider.
Jordan Erica Webber unpacks the push by some governments to limit end-to-end encryption and the impact this would have on privacy and security. Cory Doctorow also discusses this on the Bitcoin Podcast, while Edwina Stott explores this topic on the Future Tense Podcast.