So last night, as I was perusing the internet (while watching the San Diego Chargers almost blow a 23 point lead against the Colts), I came across this little tidbit in Ars Technica:
Donald Kerr, a top intelligence official with the US government, says that citizens need to change their definition of privacy to match the government’s definition, the AP reports.
…
Kerr echoes the view that privacy is not synonymous with anonymity. Americans who want to see anonymity at the center of privacy policies need to give up this notion, he says. “Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it’s an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture… but in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity - or the appearance of anonymity - is quickly becoming a thing of the past,” Kerr said according to a PDF transcript of his comments.
The problem, according to Kerr’s line of thought, isn’t that government and businesses may have intricately detailed information about citizens, or that they might be actively working to collect such data as part of an extensive program of electronic surveillance. The concerns, Kerr says, should be focused on how such data is safeguarded and how Americans view the importance of that data.
It might surprise you to learn that I actually agree with Kerr - but not for the reasons you might think. I am extremely disturbed that telecommunications corporations collected data on private citizens and handed it over to the federal government without a warrant (although I’m sure AT&T, which is taking the brunt of this scandal, got paid handsomely by the federal government for their services - funny how that little tidbit hasn’t come up yet). It’s not in the name of national security that privacy should be redefined. In the online world, as Kerr states accurately, there is no such thing as true anonymity for the typical consumer.
However, part of what we pay for, as consumers, is trust. We trust that the massive telecommunications corporations, to which we pay our monthly bill, will secure our own data in our own defense. Much like a lawyer - I assume all conversations will remain confidential unless they are legally obligated otherwise.
What is so disturbing about this case is that lack of trust - and that’s where I think Kerr is skating around the issue. AT&T and the like have sold their own customers to a much larger bidder in the federal government. What’s even more ironic is that we probably paid that bill too - and yet, we’ll never fully know for what we, as citizens, paid AT&T to compromise us while we paid them as consumers.
