At two privacy conferences -- one in New York, the other right now in Victoria, B.C. -- I've watched the growth of privacy's regulatory/industrial complex and seen its strategy in action: Scare, then sell.
Yesterday, before I spoke at the Reboot conference, the privacy commissioner for the province, Elizabeth Denham, got up to demonize the social net and its leaders. She said that Google's Eric Schmidt believes privacy is not relevant anymore, citing his jokes about changing our names at age 21. She belittled Mark Zuckerberg, too. She bragged about helping to bring Facebook to accounts when she was in the federal privacy office. And she gloated about the fizzle of Google Buzz. Then she boasted about adding more regulators to her office and getting more resources. Scare and spend.
At a later panel, I saw a vendor go through his PowerPoint showing the growth of so many outlets of social media. He said 500 million people were using Facebook. Then he paused... dramatically. Then he said, "Scary." Why is that scary? He didn't say. He talked about watching YouTube videos as if that could be harmful in and of itself. How? He didn't say. That's how the discussion of the social web has advanced in this industry: All you have to do is say people are using these mysterious tools, and the fear is assumed. But then he sold his service. Scare, then sell.
I spoke with the head of an association of chief privacy officers. Boy, I said, I'll bet your membership is growing. In increments of a thousand, he said. He also noted how the growth in the U.S. is in privacy officers while in Europe it's in privacy regulators.
I saw the two come together at the other conference, MediaBistro's in New York, when the head of a privacy advocacy organization issued his fearsome specters for the crowd of companies and regulators. It becomes a self-powering machine: The privacy advocate feeds the regulators arguments to be scared and regulate more, then companies think they need more privacy services, and more companies are born to provide them -- companies that set up booths here in Victoria. One handed out a slick magazine with the big cover billing: "Social Media RISKS: Four Areas You Must Examine At Your Company."
In the draft of my book Public Parts -- which I'm furiously editing now -- I had not gone after privacy's regulatory/industrial complex. I'm trying hard not to pit privacy and publicness against each other as they are not binary; one depends upon the other in a continuum of choices we all make.
But the emergence of Privacy, Inc., as a industry built on scaring people is beginning to scare me.
In my talk yesterday, I warned of unintended consequences of too much regulation enacted too quickly. I cited Germany's Verpixelungsrecht, its blurring of images in Google Street View and the precedent that sets for others taking pictures in public of public views.
I also worry that efforts to bring in a "Do Not Track" list and other demonization of ad targeting could cripple the revenue of the media and news industries even as they struggle to find sustainability; it could kill news outlets and reduce journalism.
At the final panel I attended, moderated by Denham, I saw execs from trade groups and Yahoo as well as a reasonable friend from Ottawa's privacy office talk about meaningful efforts that are being made to be more transparent about advertising, which -- lord knows -- is needed.
The ad and media industries have been damned fools, not being open enough about what they do and how they do it and the value that comes to them -- in higher ad rates -- and much more importantly to the public -- in relevance (and less noise). But Yahoo showed off a good tool to see and change how you are being targeted. The Canadian Interactive Advertising Bureau put forward a good framework for self-regulation. FutureOfPrivacy.org gave good advice about seeing past tools and disclosures and making advertising actually worthwhile for consumers.
Denham, to her credit, asked the panel to define bad regulation. They said it's taking a narrow issue and using broad strokes to regulate it, doing collateral damage. She came to the view of regulation I've learned from danah boyd: that we need to concentrate on controlling use of data more than the gathering of it. (It's illogical, indeed impossible, to tell people what they may not know; it's logical and feasible to tell them what they may not do with what they know.)
So at the end of the day, I felt a bit better. But I fear that the reasonable and necessary moves to protect privacy -- and it does need protection -- won't be able to outrun the fear strategy. For fear is building a new industry, a very fast-growing industry.
Here's Mathew Ingram's GigaOm report on my talk with a brief chat. I hope to be able to post the talk itself soon.
Follow Jeff Jarvis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffjarvis
http://www.rationalpublicradio.com/big-brother-does-more-than-mere-watching.html
People harped and griped about privacy 'back in the day' even before all these people had personal computers. They had the Privacy Act of 1974, which was supposed to stop government from misusing or selling your personal information to advertisers and so forth. Today? No such thing as privacy. But, there are still people to guard against, people that would gladly take that last $50 out of your bank account if they could get the password, people that have other purposes in mind, no, the only real 'security' there is on the internet, anymore, is not to connect to it at all, period. As for your personal information? Do we even want to know, how many striped and mirrored and archived databases contain the names and information of every man, woman, and child in America, nevermind foreign countries? Welcome to the Information Age.
Question: Do the software security people really moonlight as hackers? Which is more lucrative, protecting data, or stealing it?
The meaning of privacy is getting lost in all this. Isn't it time to respect privacy first, and ad revenues later?
All financial details of all should be public.
Yet given how many corporations and other business entities engage in the business ethics equivalent of teen binge drinking or s$xting, it's easy to see why they would reach for these services.
something or someone, in today's paranoid world, that's a model for a good business plan. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were right on when they contrasted each other's comedy style to parody
fear. As a society we need to ask ourselves what purpose do these fear mongering businesses serve?
Are we so gullible as to put a fear factor on everything we do? And has the habit become so ingrained
that we now apply it not only to invasion of privacy issues, but to political thought and religion? There is a big difference between Ralph Nader's attack on the lack of seat belts in cars in the early 60's, and the explosion of irrational religious intolerance in our culture today.
Mr. Jarvis's book, we hope, will also discuss the growing role data collection and profiled-based targeting is playing in the creation of editorial content; how this system threatens both editorial integrity and privacy. If it does not, he's missing one of the most important stories on the real future of serious news and journalism.
As for privacy on the internet, there's a reason why all your favorite sites and applications are free. If GMAIL or Facebook changed their business model tomorrow, eliminating ads but charging $4.95/mo, people would just flock to another free info-collecting service.
If the masses don't have the common sense to protect information they would rather be private information (who knows if this is true) then how would they adopt any new privatization technology en masse, pay for it, and use it effectively? Especially when such technology already exists, often times open source.
Finally, Facebook is probably the most transparent internet media company in its lengthy ToS about what exactly it collects from you (EVERYTHING!). But why do other companies get such a pass from the media and blogosphere, like monster.com or the Google pantheon?
Jeff, you are joking right?
How about because almost NONE bothered to read the privacy policy and T&C before they joined?
Or that Facebook is profiling them by invading their privacy with no controls in place to regulate them an what they do with that info?
Or that Facebook CEO is a THIEF with no morals that is precisely the wrong sort of person to be trusting with private data?
Need I go on?
If you are too ignorant to understand why that is scary, don't bother us with your opinions please and earn you AOL $95 blog-fee elsewhere :)
...just like Pets.com
...just like Webvan
Maybe people who are so loyal to Facebook think they will be saved like Amazon where they don't have to ever make a profit, just constantly promoted freely on corporate mass-media so pension fund managers readily keep stuffing their stocks into those accounts.
In the end Amazon and Facebook investors will lose their shirt.
People's tastes in internet business are just as fickle as Boston Markets going bankrupt or even McDonald's receiving bail outs from Ben Bernanke.
Most big business already knows this, and there are plenty of those who are learning:
http://blog.mises.org/15370/gao-financial-planners-dont-need-more-regulating/
If you don't want your business at permanent risk from competition and changing consumer preferences then ask the government to help. And look for crises that occur or someone who is legitimately pissed off about some event that happened to them and encourage them to demand a law to create licensing/etc. to supposedly prevent x problem.
When you have no discretionary spending to do, it's ALL just noise.