How Much Privacy do we Really Have?

 "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about." This remark is often heard right before someone's privacy is violated. B

ut is there any validity to it? Well, no. For one simple reason: we're human! It's part of our nature to want some privacy, even if we have nothing to hide. Personally, when I'm in the car alone, I'll sing to myself. This is nothing incriminating or worth hiding, but that does not mean I'm okay with everyone hearing my car karaoke! I value my privacy.

But when I'm in the car "alone," are there truly no ears listening? Unfortunately the answer is no. I have my devices with me in the car and they always have an active microphone, and truthfully, I do not know exactly where the microphone recording is going. If I were naive I could say that the microphone is only active so my phone can detect when I say "Hey Siri!" But I know that it's much more than that.

The other day I decided to watch a show with some friends over a voice call. I had never seen this show before, and it was a fun time. The next day I wake up and check YouTube, and I suddenly have a ton of recommendations of clips and moments from that show. I never typed anything about the show into Google or anywhere online, it was my first time ever seeing it! All I did was watch it in a voice call with my friends, but YouTube somehow knew.

Privacy in the Modern Age

So this made me think; what even is privacy anymore? In 1965, the right to privacy was officially recognized by the supreme court. I have wondered: what did privacy mean back then? Because the word has much different connotations now. Ever since Edward Snowden revealed the U.S. government's gargantuan system of mass surveillance in 2013, privacy has not been looked at the same.

Maybe in the late 1900's privacy just meant the times when you are alone and no one's listening, but now, it feels like that time just does not exist. As someone who grew up in this age of privacy falling apart, I have viewed privacy in a very pessimistic way; I view it as something we pretend to have.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of one of the
largest data collection companies,
shown with tape over his laptop webcam.

To me, and many other Americans, our lack of privacy is something we choose to look over. We're not naive, we know we do not truly have privacy, but it's just easier to act as if we do have it. Because at the end of the day, those who are spying on us and collecting our data are robotic algorithms who cannot judge us, or some worker who we will never meet just looking through a giant database. It's much like the way I could choose to constantly think about my inevitable death, but I choose not to because it's something I do not really have control over. I view privacy in the same way.

I do what I can to be as private as possible, I put tape over my webcam, I use a VPN, I put fake birthdays and names for websites I sign up for, but I've accepted that only does so much and there's nothing I can do to truly be private in the same way people in 1965 were when the court first recognized privacy.

Privacy Going Forward

New technology which allows people
to be seen through walls using Wi-Fi.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tech-see-people-through-walls-wifi 

This nihilistic way me and many others view privacy, is sad. It's terrible that we're forced to accept this. And in the future, it will only get worse. New technology is coming out that is just making spying on us easier and easier. At what point will we say we have had enough? At what point will it have gone too far, if it has not already.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. In 2018 the California legislature unanimously passed a bill that require big tech companies to allow people to know what data has been collected from then in the past 12 months, and allows people to say no to these companies selling their data. (AB 375) This is a huge step forward and I'm cautiously optimistic about new laws that will be passed in the future.