ce-paper/source/sections/goingbeyond.tex

\section{Going Beyond}
But how all this really connect with the claim that I'm making that we need to take action immediately in order to protect our right to privacy before it is too late?\\
I think that another suggestion point of view is given by the novel by \textit{David Eggers} \textit{The Circle}\cite{thecircle}. In the book the author describe a society in which the company leader in the market of \textbf{social media} is growing at an unstoppable rhythm, expanding its business in basically every sector possible.\\
The main character is a new hire in this company, and through the novel she'll gain roles of major importance, but in doing that she'll sacrifice some of their initial beliefs and values embracing the philosophy of the company, that is basically to try to build a better world by embracing total openness towards the others in any scope possible. Indeed the character at the end will accept to wear a camera accessible always by anyone.\\
I think that after having finished the novel the 99\% of the reader said to themselves that in that situation they would have reacted differently, they would have never accepted those conditions and that the situations depicted by the author is too unrealistic. While I partially agree with this last conclusion that the novel takes to the extreme the consequences of the use of technology, I can't help but noticing that in the last years there have been a huge trend regarding the use of the data provided by the user of IT services, trend that goes under the buzzword \textbf{Big Data}.\\
So it may be true that we will never accept to voluntarily wear a camera that streams 24h per day what we see, but we also often accept conditions of use for products and services without even thinking that we may be giving access to a certain type of information to the supplier of the service or maybe even to a third party entity, as recently has happened with the Samsung Smart TV case were in the terms of use was suggested not to talk about delicate matters in front of the TV because that data could be shared with a third party entity for analysis purposes.
Obviously this is not the only case, and basically every service that we use on-line is free just because we are paying for the use by giving our informations, often in the form of meta-data, like history of research, pattern of utilization, geo-location informations and so on.\\
This type of culture were we are supposed to share everything may be problematic and I think that we may have different types of consequences.
The first problem that arises goes under the name of \textbf{Social Sorting}, that is the idea to categorize people in different groups on the basis of race, education, gender, occupation and so on. The first research in this direction has been made by Professor David Lyon, and his main work on the subject is contained in this book \cite{socialsortingbook}. Obviously we can't discuss here all his vision, but for our purposes a nice recap on his point of view is this TEDx talk \cite{socialsorting}, where he tries to explain the risks of sharing personal information about ourself on social media without having really a clear idea of how this information will be used.\\
What I want to particularly take and underline from Lyon's idea is a way to respond to the major critic when we talk about all those risks and these problems.
An example of counter argument is an article by \textit{Richard Posner} \cite{privacyoverrated}, where he tries to explain that often guaranteeing individual privacy goes against the \textbf{protection} of our society as a whole, because he says that often the need of privacy becomes only the need to conceal bad behaviors of individuals. I completely disagree with this point of view, because what activists and organizations that argue for the right of privacy are discussing today is not to sacrifice the security of our society, because it is obvious that for a rational person the good for a society comes before the good of an individual.\\
But what we are experiencing today, as explained in the section before, is a society that is becoming accustomed to surveillance, and that is taking proactive part in this activity without thinking at the consequences. We are not opposing individuals with society, we are talking of how we want the \textbf{future} of our society to be \textbf{shaped}.\\
In addition what I think that a massive Social Sorting brings is the risk of becoming simply \textbf{shadows} of our \textbf{past}. I try to explain what I mean; let's admit that we, as a society, decide that for example the benefits that a massive campaign of social sorting brings are greater than the possible threats at our freedom. For example we may decide that for opposing to terrorism we may want to give up at the U.S. border the details of our on-line activities and the access to our accounts in order to separate potentially dangerous individuals from the rest of us.\\
There are two problems with this: the immediate counter argument is that there is evidence that the NSA surveillance activities for example never stopped a considerable terrorist attack, and this article \cite{eff} from the\textit{Electronic Frontier Foundation} is a good starting point to debunk all the thesis that surveillance prevented terrorist attacks. But this is not the main point.\\
I think that the main problem is that if we move in this direction, it means that we accept that our society becomes a \textbf{data driven} society, where the information we produce is more important than what we are. And I think that the direct consequence of this is that, on the basis of how the data is used today and plan to be used in the future, we risk to really become \textbf{indivisible} from our \textbf{past}.\\
The immediate risk in this scenario is that an employer may not hire us due to a photo of 10 years before where we are in an inebriated state, a photo that maybe was only representing a moment of happiness with our friends, but that extrapolated from that context tells something completely different about us, something that maybe could damage the reputation of the company we are working for. This is what the discussion on Social sorting mainly tries to evidence.\\
But if we try to go further there is another another possible point of discussion that I think it is really relevant and that is the core of the problem. In a data driven society there is the risk of manipulation of information. It is not difficult to come up with examples as the one above were we can imagine situations were information about us \textbf{extrapolated} from the context in which it is produced can bring to completely biased and dangerous conclusions. There are possible scenarios in which this manipulation could be intentionally, but often we are used to think that since we have nothing to hide this is not really a problem, and it is only a product of paranoia. But there are situations in which this manipulation is not intentionally, but maybe the result of changed moral principles, that in a always evolving society it is something that naturally happens.\\
What I think we have to really ask to ourself is if we want a world where the information on us can \textbf{talk on our behalf} in every situation, if we accept that what we tell to our most intimate friends has to be analyzed and used to define what we are.\\
A possible criticism to this is that we need to take responsibility also for our on-line presence, and that from the anonymity that Internet (seems to) give us may derive bad behaviors and discrimination. I completely agree with this point, in fact what I'm trying to also say is that we need to begin to think that our off-line and on-line lives are becoming a single entity, and that is impossible to think to maintain them separates. So simply technical solutions to this problem are not sufficient, we need to discuss and reason on these issues taking into consideration that we are discussing on how we want our \textbf{future society} to be.\\
Do we really want a \textbf{data double} of ourself that we may not even recognize? Do we really want to give so much power over us through data collections programs that do not really need to be regulated in any particular way, without even having first a real discussing on it? Do we really want to open our lives to the world, share all the intimate informations on ourselves with each other and become overseers of each other in this data driven world?
The last section tries to go even further and to sketch a more deep vision of what I think is the real risk that we are facing.