Uneasy Rhetoric

“Privacy” is the big word these days. As the world becomes more interconnected, identity theft increases, and the ability to find or track anyone, anywhere in cyber- or meatspace grows, we are becoming more concerned about privacy. And yet, as our voices over privacy violations grow louder, so does out willingness to put “it” all out there in blogs, online journals, social networking sites, and on Flickr.

What is the difference? Choice. Permission. I can expose myself or not. I can choose to be as exhibitionist or narcissistic as I want to be. I have power over when and how I relinquish my privacy. But we remain powerless to so many invasions of our privacy.

For most of us, privacy invasion is often just a nuisance. We have to deal with junk mailers who bought our names off of a list or with political campaigns who use election data (public record) to get our phone numbers or addresses.

Sometimes, though, privacy invasion is a bit more insidious. Almost from the moment we step out of our door, we are potentially in the lens of a camera. Our web footprints can be followed like footprints in slowly melting snow. Suspicion can be leveled on us at the airline counter just because our names are the same as the names of other suspicious characters.

Remember the saying “cop didn’t see it, I didn’t do it”? Define “see.” In the olden days (like 1990), “see” meant visual contact. Now it can mean someone reviewing the photos from a red light camera.

Recently, as Boing Boing linked, a Koren woman became infamous because a net-savvy guy with a camera took pictures of the little drama that unfolded when this woman refused to clean up after her dog when it shit on a train. Now, you might be thinking she deserved this, but, did the punishment really fit the crime? Ultimately, it may not even have been punishment. She is now famous, and in this postmodern world, as a friend reminds me I used to say all the time, “any press is good press.”

In countless ways, small and large, our so-called “right to privacy” is being eroded and we are collectively crying “foul!” We are cracking down on telemarketers and spammers. We are telling junk mailers to cease and desist (with little success in my case). We are using anonymizers to surf the web. And when Google announces that their brand-new email system will deliver context-sensitive advertising we go ballistic.

And yet every day, the growing ranks of netizens voluntarily invade their own privacy. Do a random search of LiveJournal and you’ll find out more than you every wanted to know about teen angst among people who live half a world away. And one of the biggest sources of angst on LiveJournal is whether to make one’s journal “friends only.” People worry themselves sick over this because they just don’t want to have to “lock down” their journal. How things have changed from the diary with lock and key.

We build massive social networks and expose countless details about who we are and who our friends are in the strange hope that we will be connected with even more people exactly like us.

My favorite voluntary privacy invader, though, is Flickr. People voluntarily post pictures of their puppies, their children, their proms, their cars, their houses, their vacations, their clothes, their breasts, the contents of their bags, their girlfriends, and themselves. Every day, people are exposing intimate details about themselves to perfect strangers.

Ultimately, we are a gregarious people. We want to notice and be noticed. We don’t really care so much about privacy, but we want control. We want to be able to say where, when, how, and why the walls can come down.