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You have no privacy

Graeme Philipson, Information Age

17/04/2003 16:42:08

A couple of years ago Scott McNealy, head of Sun Microsystems, famously said:"You have no privacy - get over it." In his typically overstated manner, he was pointing out that traditional concepts of privacy are under challenge in the digital age, and we need to rethink the way we approach the subject.

Many people seem to think that privacy is some universal norm that should by right be protected. This is not the case. Privacy is a comparatively recent invention. There was no privacy in the ancient world or in medieval villages, and nor is there any in most crowded third-world societies. People live, die, fornicate and procreate in full view of their multitudinous peers.

Privacy is a luxury of the well-to-do, and has existed as a concept in law for barely a hundred years. Those privacy advocates railing against intrusions upon their seclusion are not defending a law of nature, they are defending a privilege available to only a small proportion of people who have ever lived. Privacy may or may not be a good thing, but it cannot be defended on the basis that it is part of the natural order of things.

It is certainly the case that we have become socially conditioned to regard privacy as a good thing. In recent years governments throughout the Western world have passed laws to protect privacy, and it is hard to get away from discussions about the subject. But it increasingly looks like privacy is an outmoded concept that will be as unknown in the future as it was in the not too distant past.

When McNealy made his comments he was widely condemned. "Out of line." "A declaration of war." "Completely irresponsible." These were just some of the reactions published in the Wired article that appeared shortly after he made his prescient remarks. It's interesting that no one said he was wrong.

In fact, McNealy was doing nothing other than stating the bleeding obvious. Our privacy is being eroded from all quarters, and it is difficult to see the trend being reversed. The eminently sensible Australia Card idea was defeated by the privacy lobby in the 1980s, leaving us with an inefficient mishmash of Medibank numbers, tax file numbers, ABNs and the like. The government can still track us, it's just more difficult and more expensive than it could have been.

In the modern world our lives revolve around systems that rely on a collection of PINs and passwords and user names. Surveillance cameras watch our movements on the streets and in shopping centres, tollbooths note when we pass through them, telecommunications carriers know where our mobile phones are at any time.

Banks and insurance companies know our intimate financial details. Telstra alone has about 200 megabytes of data in disk storage for every person in Australia. Some aspect of your personal details are stored in dozens, even hundreds, of different places. Now, with the so-called War on Terror, our "traditional liberties" are being eroded even further in the name of national security.

We can pass all the laws we like, but they will do little to reverse this inexorable trend. Privacy advocates will win the odd battle, but they will lose the war. The real question is not how we maintain our privacy, but how we best manage our lack of it.

How do you define "privacy"? Go on, think about it for a minute. At one level, privacy about being able to physically get away from people, so they can't see you when you don't want them to. Most of us would agree that we should be able to do really personal things, like you know what, in private. But what about the next level, say eating and drinking and travelling about? What about what we do at work? Our financial transactions?

Most of us would say that we are happy to share this information with others, but that the sharing should be limited to only those individuals and organisations to whom that information is relevant, and whose possession of it is useful to us. It is obviously very useful to us that the bank knows how much money we have, because they are looking after it for us. Our employers need to know a fair bit about us, for mutually beneficial reasons. We're happy that the doctor has our patient records, so she knows our medical history. Most of us make our addresses feely available, in the phone book and the electoral roll, because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Then we move a little further. To what extent are we happy having this information shared with others? Should a bank be able to share its customer list with its insurance subsidiary? Maybe. But should they sell it to a wine club? A car company? Then we move beyond that, to the other extreme of all information about everybody being made freely available to everyone. It becomes a question of degrees.

Who should know what about whom? Few would argue that all information should be universally available, but that is no less natural a state of affairs than total privacy, which is the same as total ignorance.

Neither extreme is desirable, but that means there will always be debates over where we draw the line. I think we should extend the argument a fair way beyond where it's currently at. There are many advantages in less privacy: better and more personalised service, heightened security, and vastly improved efficiency in everything from supply chain management to the provision of government services.

I am a product of my times, and I value my privacy as much as the next man. But I am not foolish enough to believe it is a right, and nor am I blind to its disadvantages. I believe the current fashion for privacy will turn out to be a transitory phase in human development. As Scott McNealy says, "get over it".graeme@philipson.info