Privacy - How is it Flawed?

By Jason M. Pittman, Sc. D.

Well, we did it. We've covered two important aspects of modern information privacy- why privacy is in demand and what privacy is. Along the way, I pointed out where I suspect there are cracks, flaws in privacy itself and flaws in how we conceptualize it. We can now begin a more precise inquest into how privacy is flawed.

First, let us consider that the modern human demand for privacy is a goal-seeking behavior. In other words, we have information that we deem to be of some value; therefore we work towards maintaining exclusive dominion over that information. Meanwhile, we also work to gain access to information that is not ours. Thus, the demand for privacy is a one-way valve: information can always flow inward but we do not want information flowing outward. Well, such is true in the sense that outward information flow is not without our willful and purposeful permission.

There is an interesting twist there that I hope gives us reason to pause and consider the strangeness of this realization. In privacy, information flow is unidirectional. We have seen this kind of information behavior before during our discussion of what privacy is. Ring some bells? If the answers to such questions are not well formed, don’t worry. We will revisit these exact points later in this conversation. For now, let us consider an example.

Imagine sitting in your seat on a plane. You’re traveling alone and therefore do not know the person next to you. Should the person ask you a question - common chitchat includes asking about professions, itinerary, and such - it would be rude to ignore that person, no? Likewise, it would soundly be considered obnoxious to blurt out such information without prompting. The release of information is a type of information Goldilocks equilibrium, then. We want to give away just enough to appear social and polite while not giving away so much that we either (a) fracture our on privacy or (b) come across as obnoxious or over-sharing.

On the other hand, collectively we appear to be quite reserved about engaging in information exchange in other contexts. I might clarify this point: we purport to be reserved or private in other contexts. I have serious doubts that most of us actually refrain from information exchange. In fact, we know that quite often individuals will violate their own privacy rules in specific social situations despite proclamations of the opposite. There is a special form of dissonance at play there.

Thus, the privacy demand gives me cause to wonder if privacy is altogether flawed. To that end, I contend that all of the existing notions of privacy are flawed in four ways. What is more, the flaws I will be discussing are catastrophic weaknesses. That is, these flaws are so ingrained into our concept of privacy, so universally attached to how we express privacy, that the only reasonable outcome is to abandon privacy, to utterly end privacy.