The Problem With Privacy
By Ian Scott
Google maps! Who today lives without them when they are going to be traveling to a destination that they’ve never driven before? I use google maps all the time and have found it to be a very accurate way to plan my trip by shortest distance or shortest time, and Google will also provide me with alternate routes if there are any available.
Google “Street View” is causing all sorts of consternation however, in regard to privacy. And here’s part of the problem: Privacy is not a right as many seem to believe. Once you go outside of your house and share any information with anyone, you’ve just given up some amount of “privacy.” You may not want anyone to know how much money is in your wallet, but once you go into a store and pull out a ten dollar bill, the cashier knows you had at least ten bucks in your wallet before you pulled it out.
A Toronto Star article describes a concern some might have with Google Street View, the Google project that entails photographing all the streets of major municipal areas. In the article, the author writes:
“Imagine this scenario: A friend presents you with a large painting at your birthday party, a work of art best described as ghastly.
Being extra polite, you gush about how much you love the painting and how you will treasure it. Your friend is overjoyed, recounting how long he searched for the perfect gift.
Everyone is happy.
Then imagine that friend checking homes of friends and relatives through Google Street View and seeing the painting that you had gushed about out on the curb for garbage pickup.
Needless to say, the next get-together will be awkward.
Do you have a valid complaint against Google for providing photographic evidence of what you really thought about your friend’s present?”
No, there is no valid complaint. If you didn’t want anyone to know that you threw out the gift, wouldn’t you wrap it up before you took it the curb for garbage pickup? And even then, how can you be sure that someone at the dump isn’t going to see the gift and know it was given to you by a mutual friend? It is possible, even if unlikely. You can’t control those things.
The problem with Privacy is that it is not really a right. Some have tried to make it a “legislated” right by enforcing and regulating what others can do with information they receive, but even then, this doesn’t stop an employee of a data gathering place to whisper about some document they saw at work. Sure, perhaps there may be repercussions for the whispers, but your privacy has not been protected.
No matter what is legislated, you as an individual need to be aware of your own privacy concerns and act accordingly, in balance with how you wish to live your life. You’ll never have complete and utter privacy unless you move into a cave a thousand miles away from any other person – and even then, you can’t guarantee that another person wanting privacy and solitude isn’t going to wander into that same cave.
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