4 words on your electronic “privacy”, you don’t have any.

I had a conversation the other day with a close friend.  We were talking about the new iPhone 5s and it’s fingerprint sensor.  He is suspicious.  He figures if the NSA can crack phones so easily then your fingerprints are as good as in their hands as soon as you buy an iPhone 5s.  I’m not worried about that, when I applied for a NJ firearms purchaser permit years and years ago, mine went on file.

He further relayed a story about being stopped by a policeman and reminded to renew his license.  It seems that your license is associated with all your cars, so, before a patrol car pulls you over they can check little things like that.  I’m afraid I wasn’t horrified enough for my buddy.  I’m used to it.  I have never thought of myself as having any electronic privacy.

When you send an email, register for an account or text a friend over a open service like the Internet you should expect that all the parties involved are paying attention.  You may have clicked “I Agree” on a “contract” claiming that the provider will never sell your information.  That might even be true, but it didn’t say they wont give it away, did it?  Even if it did, does obeying a court order count as “Sharing?”  None of those contracts say “We will fight to the death before releasing anything and everything about you to the government, or Walmart (which is scarier?)”, do they?

The fact is we have given up some privacy for convenience.  Even that “privacy” was mostly illusion.  We assumed that emails were private, never to be passed before they eyes of the unintended.  But no one actually said email was private,  and if they did they were wrong.  Texting does not guarantee privacy of any kind, either.  Purchasing over the Internet isn’t private.  The vendors take reasonable precautions to protect your credit card number, but the fact that you just bought a new camera is going direct to  your permanent record.

Remember teachers and school administrators talking about “Your permanent record?”  Well, that’s one of the inventions of the fabulous 20th century.  Now we all have one.  It probably doesn’t mention putting gum in a classmate’s hair but it’s pretty comprehensive concerning your buying and living habits.  Combine that with real estate records, tax records, criminal records and any social media you’ve ever posted on and there you are, preserved forever.  Ready to be analyzed and puzzled over by marketers, behavioral scientists and historians from now to the end of time.  Google yourself, or better yet find yourself on PIPL, and you’ll see what I mean.

However, you won’t see what you just bought on Amazon, you have to pay for that information.  It’s marketing “gold” and merchants don’t give that away for free. Some things are more secret than others.  They have spent years investing in systems that collect and process customer information, not because they’re out to get you, rather, it’s because they’re out to get you to buy something.  Republicans and Democrats collect your information because they want your vote, merchants collect your information because they want your business and the government collects your information just because it’s there.  But they promise not to look at it without a “court” order.  The rest don’t limit themselves so unmercifully.

So, is that bad news?  It’s a question I’ve wrestled with quite a bit.  If B&H photo alerts me every time theres a price drop in a camera I’m eyeing, I don’t really have a problem with that.  (I already bought the camera in St. Maarten, so guys, take a break.)  If the fingerprint sensor in the new iPhone makes it a lot harder to sell after it’s stolen, I don’t have a problem with that either.  If American Express calls me up in Morristown and asks me if I just bought an RV in Texas, that’s a good thing right? If the NSA reads all my mail, tracks all my calls and regards every one of my Tweets with a suspicious eye, I’d have to say “Dudes, you’re wasting money!  Go catch a bad guy, or something.”

It’s a good thing that Edward Snowden is alerting us to what the NSA has been doing, but a lot of people aren’t very surprised.  I’m interested in just how much money was spent doing it and I find it fascinating just how much information was shared with our “allies.”  Although, I sometimes like to think of myself as “Interesting” to the Brits or Israelis, so if you know better please don’t burst my bubble. It’s too bad there isn’t a Snowden at Amazon, Google or Walmart, but I hear they pay a lot better.

We tend to focus on the negative side of this obvious lack of privacy, but there’s lots of upside as well.  The convenience of not having to enter your information over and over, and over, like we do at the doctor’s office.  Please, just scan me already!  Of course, there is an entirely different way to look at the compilation of all our information, it’s being collected because we matter.  Think of all the people who lived and died before our time who are gone and lost forever.  All those lives that have disappeared into the mists of time.  That won’t be our problem. By the way, all this collected information makes it very hard for someone to “disappear.”  Kidnap a person and their Facebook pictures will be all over the net in seconds.  Use their credit cards and you're as good as caught.  It must be getting harder and harder to find a John or Jane Doe when everyone is leaving a wide electronic trail behind them.  I know of at least 7 online vendors (not to mention AMEX) who will be asking the hard questions if I ever suddenly vanish.