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Re: [projectvrm] Scott Adams: Information is the Cure for Privacy


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Doc Searls < >
  • To: John Havens < >
  • Cc: "T.Rob" < >, Graham Reginald Hill < >, Dele Atanda < >, ProjectVRM list < >
  • Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Scott Adams: Information is the Cure for Privacy
  • Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 08:00:35 -0400
On Aug 15, 2014, at 4:42 PM, John Havens < "> > wrote:

T.Rob, that was an excellent post.

Yes. Please blog it, T.Rob. Not as a response to Graham's post, but as a general set of questions and challenges we all have to wrestle with. 

I also have a half-baked post for the ProjectVRM blog, and I would like to point to a post that says roughly what you say there.

Speaking of which...

Is anyone curating this list to populate a VRM blog?  If I've missed it, my bad/apologies. 

If there is one, I nominate this post.

This whole list is on the Web, if you know where to dig for it. I don't point to it because it seems a little bit, well, private. Far as I know, it doesn't get indexed by the search engines. I suppose it has too few inbound links for the engines to care. I just looked up a word string from T.Rob's post below and neither Google nor Bing found it, and both have pretty short time-to-index latencies.

BTW, if anyone wants to write for the ProjectVRM blog, let me know. For a long time I've been the only one writing there, though a few others have the same editing powers.

Doc

On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 4:19 PM, T.Rob < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Hi Graham,

 

You seem to be conflating a right to privacy with an obligation to it.  There's a huge difference between insisting that the Sentinelese avail themselves of Internet privacy versus creating the conditions to guarantee it is available if they want it. 

 

Furthermore, unless they have a keen sense of mental telepathy, the *do* have what I sincerely hope is privacy of a type that must be considered a universal right.  How about we start there and work outward.  At what point do you disagree?

 

·        You have a right to privacy in the sensations you experience.

·        You have a right to privacy in the sensations you experience through bio-augmentation such as a hearing aid.

·        You have a right to privacy in your own feelings.

·        You have a right to privacy in your own thoughts once articulated into mental words and/or images.

·        You have a right to privacy in your own thoughts once articulated in hand-written form in a journal.

·        You have a right to privacy in your own thoughts articulated in digital form using hardware and software you own.

·        You have a right to privacy in your own thoughts articulated in digital form, deliberately encrypted and transmitted or stored on public infrastructure.

·        You have a right to privacy in your own thoughts articulated digitally and stored in a private cloud database.

 

Now that we are augmenting humans with bionic organs and limbs, using human-machine interfaces that transmit and receive intentionality, are we to take the position that these are never private?  That the real-time location, status, sensiorial and actuation history of these devices is less privacy protected than the natural human instances of the same organs or limbs?  Because that is the result with the policy as you've described it.  Skip forward another decade or two.  Once we have the technology to directly read a person's thoughts are we to abandon privacy altogether? 

 

As technology advances, at what point do you personally plan to finally adopt the position that just because we can doesn't mean we should?  When that day comes where you draw the line, do you expect to implement the supporting technological, policy and legal frameworks from scratch?  Or will you then gratefully acknowledge as necessary all the work that today you disparage and dismiss, and give thanks that someone had the foresight to say "hey, privacy is important" and fight for it back when the problem was still manageable?

 

Or is it your position that that day will never come and no technology is too invasive?

 

Kind regards,

-- T.Rob

 

From: Graham Reginald Hill [mailto: " target="_blank"> ]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 3:32 AM
To: Dele Atanda
Cc: " target="_blank">
Subject: Aw: Re: Re: [projectvrm] Scott Adams: Information is the Cure for Privacy

 

Hi Dele

 

Thanks for your considered response.

 

Like you I agree that there are some things that should remain truly private, some things that I am willing to exchange for something of value and some things that I am happy to have in the public domain. Although I would like to have a degree of control over which things are known about me, I recognise that is not always possible, nor necessarily desirable. As John Donne poetically wrote, 'No man is an island!'. 

 

The problem with privacy as a fundamental human right is a cultural and moral one. Just because we desire a degree of privacy in the West does not mean that it is indeed, a human right applicable to all. Do Westerners have the moral right to insist that their version of moraity is any better in any way than, say the Sentinelese of the Indian Andaman Islands where tribesmen go naked all of the time? Do Westerners have the moral right to insist that the Sentinelese wear clothes, or practice organised religion, or put their children through a Western education. Obviously not. This is the problem with absolute morality and so called universal human rights. Including the so called right to privacy.

 

Best regards from Bishopsgate, London, Graham

 

 

I do think this is a commonly misunderstood and mischievously discussed subject. I think even in the most utopian models of social organisation privacy is a fundamental prerequisite. The merits and failings of surveillance marketing as termed here are a related but separate and different matter. 

 

I would argue that privacy is a fundamental of the human condition and of human decency. A simple example of this is toilets and bathrooms. We are not doing anything wrong when we go to use a toilet but it is not an activity that would benefit from mass transparency or one we wish to share with all. 

 

By this we can see that privacy is a fundamental of human decency. Clothes again are similar. My wearing clothes does not mean I have something to hide it is simply a way for me to keep what is private to me just that. To propose a society where privacy is no longer needed would mean that we would essentially have to redefine the human condition in a fundamental way from our understanding of what it is now. And to what end? To serve what benefit one would have to ask. 

 

I know this is a somewhat base metaphor but I think it's important to look at this matter from such a primal perspective to appropriately contextualise the debate. 

 

A world without privacy is a world of naked people in every context imaginable.  Some might see this as a utopia of sorts but others see it as a dystopia, as a sort of mass concentration camp. I struggle to see how nakedness of such a manner in and of itself represents progress particularly when those calling for such nakedness from the masses are shielded and clothed themselves. 
 

 

Sent from Digitterra

 


On 14 Aug 2014, at 10:02, "Graham Reginald Hill" < /" target="_blank"> > wrote:
 

Hi Doc

 

I owe you and others an email or two in response. Apologies for my slow response. Presssure of work.

 

Adams' post is an unusual exploration of the privacy theme. It would make for a good polemic if a little longer and a little more cogently argued. I find it somewhat disingenuous to describe it as loony. It is certainly no more loony than some of the absurd positions taken by the privacy fundamentalists on this Forum. You know who you are.

 

Adam's suggestion that privacy is only necessary in a world that is not transparently open is an interesting philosophical argument, albeit not one I agree with. From my own perspective I am willing to trade some information about myself, preferably with a degree of control over how it is used, but only to trusted partners and only in exchange for something of value in return. Research by Boston Consulting Group (https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/information_technology_strategy_consumer_products_trust_advantage_win_big_data/),  the Direct Marketing Association (http://dma.org.uk/sites/default/files/tookit_files/data_privacy_-_what_the_consumer_really_thinks_2012.pdf), Aimia (http://www.aimia.com/content/dam/aimiawebsite/CaseStudiesWhitepapersResearch/english/Aimia_Whitepaper_FourFutures_DigitalLoyaltySurvey.pdf) and others suggests that this is a widely help perspective. Privacy isn't the real issue unless you are a fundamentalist; it is the trade-off between dsclosure and value consumers get in return that we should be concerned with.

 

I don't find the need for a high-degree of rationalisation for what you pejoratively called surveillance-based marketing. A stall holder on a Saturday market carefully observes the visitors to his stall before deciding on the best pitch to sell his wares. A manager in a meeting carefully observes his colleagues before adopting the best argument to carry his collagues. And a marketer carefully gather information abdout his target audience before cobstructing the best communications to drive awareness, interest and consideration in consumers. It would be irrational not to observe your market as closely as possible before going to it. The degree to which you can observe the market is driven on the one hand by the persmission that consumers give you to observe them (which as we have seen is determined in part by what they get back in return) and on the other hand by legal restrictions. I have argued before that a minority of marketers are often stupid, short-sighted and even immoral in their behaviour (http://customerthink.com/how_stupidity_short_termism_and_immorality_have_ruined_marketing/). But that doesn't mean that the majority of marketers are. My experience working amongst the highest levels of marketer over the past 25 years is that they are almost as passionate about consumers, value exchange and privacy as you are. They are just more pragmatic about what they do about it.

 

As per usual, "Methinks the Lady doth protest too much". But it does make for a good discussion. Feel free.

 

Best regards from Bristol, Graham
 

 

 

I don't think it's a guise, and it is loony, on purpose.

I think he's working out an angle for Dilbert, which is about the routine absurdities of business.

Note the high degree of rationalization required for surveillance-based advertising. What he's saying in this post isn't far from that.

Doc

On Aug 13, 2014, at 6:49 PM, /" target="_blank"> wrote:

>
> Usually it's the well paid middle class straight white guys that diss privacy. They have no need for it. Go figure.
> But when rich white comedians like Scott Adams provide social commentary on privacy under the guise of running a joke, it's a bit sick.
> He asks people if they'd really need privacy if everyone knew everything about everybody (and, to boot, if we didn't believe in god anymore). Really? It's probably more interesting to survey people if they'd like to get to work by personal flying car.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steve.
>
> Stephen Wilson
> Managing Director
> Lockstep Group
> Phone +61 (0)414 488 851
> http://lockstep.com.au
> Lockstep Consulting provides independent specialist advice and analysis
> on digital identity and privacy. Lockstep Technologies develops unique
> new smart ID solutions that enhance privacy and prevent identity theft.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Adrian Gropper" < /" target="_blank"> >
> Sent: Thursday, 14 August, 2014 8:34am
> To: "Doc Searls" < /" target="_blank"> >
> Cc: "ProjectVRM list" < /" target="_blank"> >
> Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Scott Adams: Information is the Cure for Privacy
>
> This seems loony. Privacy is primarily that which makes innovation and
> invention safer. Trying to categorize it by speculating on the various
> potential domains of innovation one by one seems to miss the point of
> innovation altogether.
>
> Adrian
>
> On Wednesday, August 13, 2014, Doc Searls < /" target="_blank"> >
> wrote:
>
>> Meant to provoke:
>>
>> <http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/information_is_the_cure_for_privacy/>
>>
>>> My larger point is that society should not be looking for ways to
>> maintain privacy. It should be looking for ways to make privacy
>> unnecessary. We will never be free until we lose our unnecessary secrets
>> and discover we are better off without them.
>>
>> But food for thought.
>>
>> Doc
>
>
>
> --
> Adrian Gropper MD
>
>
 




--
"More than at any time in human history, we have access to mountains of data about ourselves.  Hacking H(app)iness is the first book to show us how to leverage this information as a path to happiness, rather than a source of misery."

-Adam Grant, Bestselling author of, Give and Take




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