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what would planet earth be like if we had no privacy, whatsoever?
whether we like it or not, privacy is slowly becoming something of the past, even if by illegal means such as hackers hacking into private databases or mobile phones, or by social networking where we actually voluntarily give out our personal information.
not to mention advertising agencies on the internet tracking every website we go to via cookies.
let me say, most people would agree that we are entitled to privacy. in fact there are laws that ensure we have privacy.
however, consider what the benefits would be for having no privacy.
would illegal activities stop, for fear of being caught?
or, would we just become more accepting that illegal activities occur, and not do anything about it?
how do you imagine a world where everything we do is on for show?
Nathan Cook
Nathan Cook
Nathan Cook
Nathan Cook
Pace Ellsworth
It seems to me that technology will police itself fairly well on the design and business side. What I really think we are concerned about is bureaucratic abuse of technology. As long the power to abuse is distributed in a free market, it is subject to the checks and balances of consumer choice. Remove the power to the bureaucracy and you have a situation where a consumer's vote doesn't matter on a day-to-day basis. Any subjective argument by someone with sufficient resources at their command will be enough justification for the total digital subjugation of the public, even without their knowing, or at least by maintaining some fraction of that power through propaganda.
As soon as somebody develops a personal EMF shield on Kickstarter, I'm buying it. It would prohibit all signals except those white-listed or only transmit signals when the shield is all or partially down. Then again, I might just be able to move to Titan by then.
I'm not a hermit, I promise. Not paranoid, either. ;)
griffin tucker 10+
the most paranoid person i know once told me, "if you think you're paranoid enough, you're not."
a simple pair of microphones can determine pictures by measures of sonar like what you're talking about, by measuring distances of walls and people via delays.
it's usually only the people who have something to hide that tend to get paranoid - or the mentally ill. but i digress, the topic is about privacy.
cybernetic implants are being trialled by the u.s. military in snipers' brains for faster reaction time. soon this technology will reach the computer games market, although not so popular in the u.s. or australia, would be worth literally millions to south korea.
i've heard of people paying for cab rides by swiping their mobile phone over the electronic card swiper machine. i think the technology originally came from finland in the early 90s in public phone systems.
it will only take someone bright enough to have a popular app for one reason or another to install a camera monitoring service on a mobile phone, and it be buried in the EULA that it does so. people simply won't care.
i would suggest however, that, that someone install zones to only record in public places or 'zones' and leave private household zones alone. maybe the patent for it already exists.
trolls and illegal videos will always be more popular than what can be kept up with via control mechanisms. it's just how it goes. however, it's getting easier and easier to stop automatically.
black mirror was a fine example, but not extremely realistic. if such a case that a video went viral and it were constantly being uploaded, it could easily have been removed via the same technology that facebook uses to block nudity.
Pace Ellsworth
I'm sure there would be a lot of freakonomics answers, but one thing is for certain: I would hope that an open rebellion would trample a government that monopolized control over access to all private information.
Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Absolute knowledge is absolute power.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
griffin tucker 10+
Pace Ellsworth
I wonder if there will be any way to anonymize oneself. I would like to believe that disruptive forces will work on the cell-phone industry and people will soon be able to somehow disable their cell phone cameras until they are operated manually by the user, but by that time, self-powered insect spy drones will no doubt number in the billions, whizzing this way and that, tailing every human. :) The only saving grace will be is people are able to destroy such bugs with impunity by invoking rights to privacy.
Oh the times we live in. I suppose we shouldn't be afraid of complete and utter transparency. I think that once that day comes, I'll become a sollipsist, so I won't care.
griffin tucker 10+
i'd like to not have to walk to a soda machine to get a coke, but that's just me.
as far as i know the only security company in australia that has looked at using mobile phone cameras for security purposes was Chubb, and they pretty much dropped the idea due to privacy concerns.
in the pentagon, to enter, you have to get a sticker cover to cover the mobile phone's cameras before you can enter the building!
these sorts of measures will become commonplace too.
Nathan Cook
Lee Miller 10+
No. Believe it or not, there are still ways to communicate that don't involve technology.
Don Wesley 50+
the more systems of corruption there will be.
Corruption works in the open!
W. Ying 10+
No privacy means:
(1) For good persons,
. . a. Loosing defense against villains.
. . b. Gaining symbiosis.
(2) For bad persons,
. . a. Gaining chances to do evils.
. . b. Loosing some defense against policemen, etc.
So, “we just become more accepting that illegal activities occur, and not do anything about it.”
The advanced new technology is a kind of invalid (ineffective) happiness, leading us to self-extinction.
Our evolution can never catch up with it.
(For INVALID (ineffective) happiness, see the 1st article, points 1-3, 14, at https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=D24D89AE8B1E2E0D&id=D24D89AE8B1E2E0D%21283&sc=documents)
Ken brown 30+
Scott Armstrong 50+
Feyisayo Anjorin 50+
Robert Winner 50+
All the best. Bob.
Paul Redling
Leo Taylor
There seems to be a mindset that while this information is out in the world it is not being watched, or that other people do not care about it. I would tend to agree in most cases. Who reads everything on someone else's facebook page?
While some may become averse to reveal information I am amazed at how much they freely give on facebook or other sites. For the moment, I see that our culture is becoming used to it and like the camera analogy they are initially upset but then it is a shoulder shrug and business as usual.
Gail . 50+
griffin tucker 10+
if i can quote the simpsons movie:
(NSA Worker) Hey everybody, I found one! The government actually found someone we're looking for! YEAH, BABY, YEAH!
it only took the better part of 10 years to find osama bin laden.
my point is, what would life be like if _everyone_ had access to such surveillance?
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
I think sense of privacy is a marker of state of enlightenment of a society and also of a diminished requirement of social dependence for survival. So if the planet earth had no privacy whatsoever we would have evolved in a much different way than how we are now socially and probably much closer to natural cycles of earth.
I am not sure though if it would have been worse than how we are today.
Nathan Cook
Zdenek Smith 100+
What I think we do need is complete transparency and no privacy within government institutions in order to prevent corruption and wasteful spending. However current undercover operations that government needs to conduct against threats like terrorism might need to be kept private at some point.
Fritzie Reisner 100+
People might become a lot less productive, because they would be distracted by all the information available about everyone, with the "juiciest" parts being shoved forward the most continuously and aggressively by any person or form of media that wants attention.