Yesterday, the web was buzzing with commentary about Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s dangerous, dismissive response to concerns about search engine users’ privacy. When asked during an interview for CNBC’s recent “Inside the Mind of Google” special about whether users should be sharing information with Google as if it were a “trusted friend,” Schmidt responded, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
Unfortunately, Schmidt’s statement makes it seem as if Google, a company that claims to care about privacy, is not even concerned enough to understand basic lessons about privacy and why it’s important on so many levels — from protection against shallow embarrassments to the preservation of freedom and human rights. In response to Schmidt, Security researcher Bruce Schneier referenced an eloquent piece he wrote in 2006 that makes the case that “[p]rivacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.” Schneier writes:
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.
Privacy, surveillance, totalitarianism
Eric Schmidt misunderstands privacy. It is certainly about more than concealing law-breaking and, as Hannah Arendt argues, the existence of a private realm where we are shielded from the constant glare of others is actually critical for the health of a public realm. But Bruce Schneier on the other hand misunderstands totalitarianism. It is not about the surveillance or the ability of the state to pry into my private life, it is about its willingness to do so. What made Stalinism scary is that you could be arrested if your wife informed on you — not that what you say to your wife cannot be kept secret. So we must guard against the totalitarian impulse of the state, but Google is the wrong focus for that struggle.
via eff.org
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