ce-paper/source/sections/goingbeyond.tex

\section{Going Beyond}
But how all this is really connected 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? What is at stake?\\
I think that another suggestive point of view is given by the novel by \textit{Dave Eggers} \textit{The Circle}\cite{thecircle}. In the book the author describes a society in which the company leader in the market of \textbf{social media}, called \textit{The Circle}, 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 readers 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. This is true of course, we are talking of a fiction novel, but how distant we are from that scenario? We can already find examples of companies and governments that collect and use informations in a way similar to what is depicted in the initial setting of the novel.\\
So it may be true that we will never accept to voluntarily wear a camera that streams twenty four hours 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, as recently has happened with the Samsung Smart TV case, were in the terms of use was suggested to not 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 online service that we use is free just because we are paying for it by giving our informations, often in the form of meta-data, like history of researches, pattern of utilization, geo-location informations and so on.\\
This type of culture were we are supposed and encouraged to share everything may be problematic and I think that we may have different types of consequences.
The immediate 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 and who will have access to these information.\\
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 to 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 the 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 online activities and the access to our accounts in order to separate potentially dangerous individuals from the rest of us.\\
There are two objections to this kind of policy: 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 ago 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 really have to ask to ourselves 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. If that information that we naturally share and receive in the context of a more or less intimate relationship can be used to draw a public picture of who we are and influence aspects of our lives completely separated from that relationship.\\
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 on us through data collections programs that do not really need to be regulated in any particular way, without even having first a real discussion 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 is the real risk that we are facing.