No More Hide in Plain Sight

A video recently posted to the Atlantic’s web site caught my attention.

Entitled, “Visualizing your Personal Data Online,” I posted the video to a couple of my social media channels along with a comment about the implied privacy implications. Shortly thereafter a follower commented that the narrator made no mention of any privacy implications in the video.

That got me thinking… although there was no specific reference, the implications were abundantly clear to me.

First, if you haven’t seen it, the video is a 3 minute visual rendering of a host of connections that can be made about you and me as we move along in the digital world. Shapes and images morph in and out of frame as the narrative flows.

I don’t know what the maker’s inspiration was, but the message I took away after watching was that the abundance of data we generate represent a constant torrent of puzzle pieces that can be collected and assembled into an ultra-high definition picture of who we are as citizen consumers. We have control over some of those pieces, but much of it is the result of doing things we take for granted: cell phone calls, email correspondence, television watching, web browsing, credit/debit card transactions, and all modes of modern travel.

Industry and consumer watchdogs have been warning of the dangers of this volume of digital detritus for years, but it wasn’t that long ago that some could credibly counter that there was simply too much information for anyone to make sense of it all. In effect, we could hide in plain sight as our personal digital deluges were creating a digital fog that was all but impenetrable.

Today, however, with the growing capabilities of Big Data analytics, that argument is obsolete. Instead of obfuscation, these puzzle pieces are coming into sharper and sharper focus, offering public and private entities remarkable (and remarkably troubling) ways to understand our behavior and profile individuals with pinpoint precision.

Law enforcement agencies are already testing the limits of these new capabilities, and marketers are fairly crowing about how much more effective they can be on behalf of their clients with access to this data.

And so I’ll say it again: Check out the video -- and its abundant privacy implications.

Privacy Needs an Iron Eyes Cody

Yes, I play in the privacy sandbox less since moving over to cloud-focused EMC, but I still have regular conversations and keep track of the major issues.

In one such recent conversation I felt compelled to preface the discussion with a disclaimer: “I am not a technologist, and I am not a lawyer, but I also don’t believe that privacy issues can be solved with technology or regulations.” A bit smug, perhaps, but it’s the truth. The major privacy issues facing businesses today have very little to do with too much or too little technology, too many or too few laws. The issues are rooted in human behavior – employees who have habits that are not privacy or security friendly, individuals who are not privacy-aware, and miscreants who don’t give a fig about your privacy or mine.

When you begin with that premise, I don’t think you have much choice but to view technology and law as tools that are part of a bigger solution to the problem rather than the pillar upon which the solution must be perched. You also have to take a long view toward arriving at anything resembling a solution.

Changing human behavior across an entire culture takes time – usually a lot of time – but with persistence, patience, and the right strategy it can be done. I think of our national attitude toward pollution as an example of a successful shift in human behavior. As a kid growing up in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I saw the American landscape at a time when it was shockingly dirty. Trash, pollution, and urban blight were everywhere. The medians on every highway in land were garbage dumps; our rivers were open cesspools; and the sky was dark with industrial exhaust.

It didn’t happen overnight, but when we decided to do something about it, things started to change. After years of work to raise awareness of the problem, the advent of the 1970s brought about things like Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency and Iron Eyes Cody’s famous tear. As the Keep America Beautiful campaign said, “People start pollution. People can stop pollution.” Were laws passed? Of course, but laws didn’t clean up the environment and pick up the trash, nor did the millions of new trash receptacles fill themselves. People’s attitudes and habits had to change, and, with our collective eyes opened and consciences shocked, we did.

I believe the same approach can work with privacy. Help consumers understand that they can and should expect more from their digital experience. Make them aware of their situation and their risk; educate them and equip them with the information they need to respond to organizations; give them a voice and a way to amplify it and things will change. Consumers will also take this newfound attitude and information into the workplace where their awareness will translate into greater responsibility with the sensitive information entrusted to them, helping to curb the instances of human error leading to the compromise of personally identifiable information and other valuable data.

It won’t happen overnight, but it can happen.