The shocking strangeness of our 25-year-old digital privacy law

The shocking strangeness of our 25-year-old digital privacy law.

-- Tom

 

Actually they are right, the government that is. Once data is made public, there is no "right to privacy". When you upload files to a public place, whether it is Facebook or whatever, you yourself are handing data over with the intention of making it available. It's like taking a photo of the guy you just killed out of your pocket and sitting it on the park bench beside you. If a cop walks up and sees it, you aren't protected by any rights to privacy or against search and seizure.

Your computer is in your house, you own it, whatever is on it is yours. Once it leaves your system, even in copied form, and hits the Internet, you've made a choice to share it with others. Facebook and the companies you, let's say, upload files to, might have those rights still, but you do not. The data is no longer on your property, in your sole possession, therefore unlawful search and seizure and the right to privacy is no longer applies to you personally.

 

Assuring privacy for cloud services is hard. Once unencrypted data leaves your computer, all bets are off. Google profits by reading your email and serving relevant ads. Cloud backup services claim that your data is safe, but how can you count on that? More generally, it's very hard for virtual machines to keep anything from their hosts.

 

Most people would encrypt the data they upload to a cloud service, it still doesn't make it "their" data at that point though. You bring up a good point with Google, that's a great example of data not being "yours" once you've made it public. Google can do whatever it pleases with "your" data (within the law of course). Is it comforting? Not really. But in this particular discussion, the user is SOL. The laws are what they are, right or wrong. I believe in a balance myself. The user is not always right, and the government is not always wrong. For sure, there are major abuses going on and they do want to keep tabs on everyone. I've explained half a million times that more is going on than gets published.

However, if I choose to post something stupid on a public forum, social network, or any other place where others have access to the data I upload, I expect it will be read, I expect it can be used against me. This is where the choice to post or not post comes in, and whether or not to use a service.