Farhad Manjoo has a piece on a Pew US opinion survey on corporate collection of data about ... us. All of us. Online and offline. So, this is not about the actual collection of data — it is surveys about how we think and feel about that data collection.
If you are already feeling a lack of agency, reading this piece might make it worse!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/opinion/privacy-facebook-pew-survey.htmlOK, so, if you read it, here is what I have to say about this.
Long, long ago, when my walking partner, who is now over 30, was still in high school, this country had a really, really awful day. I do not know whether I am in a position, historically, to speak to whether it was the Worst Day this country has ever experienced, but it was right up there, for sure. Worse, the emotional ramifications of that Worst Day led to a horrifying decade that included being lied into two wars because the fear caused us collectively to follow someone as he lied us into those wars, until finally a climate related event led to even further devastation that was so breathtakingly badly managed that we kind of started to wake up from our stupor and say, hey, wait a second. Yeah, shit was bad, but this guy is actually making it worse. We had some elections and while things got worse before they got better, they did get better, and while things are still bad, it remains pretty fucking easy for me to refer back to the memories of my 30s and go, nope, that was definitely worse than now. I am confident the future holds further, greater horrors for me and others; I am not an idiot.
What really stood out for me about the stupor of that time was that really smart, really caring, compassionate, sensible people were walking around believing in the core of their soul that their risk of being a personal victim of the thing that scared them — a terrorist attack designed to frighten them, mind you — was something like 30-50% in the next year.
Young(ish), white people, middle to upper middle demographics, college educated. Living in the Seattle area. They honest to goddess thought someone was going to personally target them. Soon. They were terrified.
Fear of the future is a feeling state about a time that is not now. When the feeling state is associated with coulda beens about the past, it is easier to reality check: hey, person experiencing vicarious terror, it did not happen to you. But when it is about the future, reality checks sort of bounce off a lot of people. Which is sad.
Manjoo’s piece does not have to depress you. You can sit back and think: Self, have I experienced identity theft as a result of corporate poor behavior associated with data collection? Or, government poor behavior associated with data collection? And the answer will be yes! I mean, sure, someone out there is probably still pristine, but I mean I know minors who have PINs on their SSNs with the IRS because people filed fraudulent claims using their SSN. Ditto minors who have credit history problems in part due to other people using their SSN to set up accounts and then not actually pay the balances. You have probably had some component of your identity stolen and experienced actual harm as a result (even if you got all the money back, you are still out whatever time was spent correcting the problem).
And then you can go, how does that compare to other bad shit that has happened in my life?
YES, we should definitely pursue pressure on data collectors (corporate, governmental and other) to get them to use best practices to protect the data they collect and to discourage them from collecting and saving data they do not actually have a use for that we think is a good one.
YES, that pressure should include mockery, tweetstorms, regulation, boycotts, you name it. Go for it (please do not resort to violence. Well, I mean, think long and hard, at a minimum. There are better approaches).
But there is no reason to feel a lack of agency here. We do not feel (generally) a lack of agency because we lock our doors and put our mail on hold and tell our neighbors to keep an eye on our house when we go on vacation. Dealing with data collection can be moved into that zone. We can do it.
We can.
ETA: I know identity theft is just one of the many risks here. I do. Seriously. I have spent a lot of time understanding the ramifications of other regulatory regimes that we have designed, such as FERPA and HIPAA, to deal with people with a lot of data that could really upset people who had very little control over that data. But those make my point even better. We Can Do This. We Can.
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