The Death of Privacy

Several of my recent posts have been about the Bush Administration's, in my view, obsession with trampling civil liberties in its quest to increase national security.

On reflection, I don't think President Bush is the biggest threat to privacy that we face. To paraphrase Pogo (because I'm too lazy to look it up): we have met the enemy and it is us.

Being relatively ancient, I didn't get a social security card until I was sixteen. Now they are passed out with the birth certificate. My first driver's license was filled out on a typewriter. My current driver's license has a digital representation of my thumbprint on the back.

Kroger knows what I eat and drink because I let them swipe the little key-chain card so I get the "discounts." Kroger also knows that I didn't completely fill out the form to get the card because the register periodically spits out a note to me saying that I could get even more savings by mail and Email if I would give my addresses. If I use a coupon, the register spits out another coupon for me tailored to my purchases.

Netflix knows that I have rented Naughty Nurses: Vol. 23, six times (ah, poor old Judge Bork, who got "borked" in part because the clerk at his local video rental place gave out his rental list). Netflix also knows if I am, in its view, a rental hog and slows down delivery if I am. DIRECTV and Tivo know what I've watched on television and when I watched it. (When I went to DIRECTV's website to confirm how its name is spelled, at the top of the screen, it greeted me with "Welcome back, David.")

I go to a restaurant here in Atlanta on fairly regular basis. It uses a POS (point of sale) computer system. Even if the person at the podium has worked there for an hour, when I give my name, he or she knows where I like to sit and what I have eaten in the past. The screen has a code on it, giving me a customer rating (though I'm sure they call it something else).

In the good old days, Joe, the VP at the bank, was happy to give a signature loan. He knew where you lived and worked, he passed them every day on his way to work. Now, HAL the computer, in the server room at Ditech or ELoan, whirs for a second or two and says yea or nay to your loan request.

Microsoft knows everything about you. What it doesn't know, Google does. Microsoft over the years gained a reputation as the Evil Empire. Google, though slipping, still engenders warm feelings among the populous. Both have "privacy policies" that I am willing to bet are very similar and which don't protect you against any of the stuff talked about above.

Each of these "invasions" of my privacy (except the social security card and thumbprint) was agreed to by me. I gave "them" the information. No one was pointing a gun at me. For the most part, I knew that these companies were keeping track of me. I submitted anyway.

My point? We the people have given up our privacy. It isn't coming back. We have come to rely on the benefits of transparancy of lives and habits. President Bush is only taking our complacency over the past few decades and using it to his (he would say our) benefit just like all of the companies mentioned above.

Privacy is on its deathbed and you and I will be found complicit in its murder.