7 Chapter 7 – Privacy

Tracking Military Activity

In January 2018, Nathan Ruser, a 20-year-old student in Australia studying International Security heard about a map posted online from a running blog he frequented. This map was created by a social media company called Strava, which was designed to connect people around a love of running. On Strava, you could connect your Fitbit or other workout trackers and save information about your workout routine – miles ran, environmental conditions, and location. The location tracking is most important for this story. On Strava, location tracking was turned on by default. It was possible to turn it off but required each individual user to navigate two to three layers into a menu to actually find the option to turn it off.

Nathan Ruser checked out the map and thought it was interesting. You could see some areas that were extremely bright, like in Europe and coastal United States indicating a lot of people using the fitness tracking devices and the social network. At this point Nathan, being an International Security student, wondered about areas of global tension and war. He began looking at Syria, a country experiencing a great deal of conflict and turmoil at the time. He noticed limited activity, but the activity that was there was confined to relatively small areas and was highly concentrated. Using knowledge and sources gained from his studies in International Security, he began piecing together that many of these areas of concentrated activity were military installations. He could see the outline of the US Special Forces base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He could see the outlines of known or suspected military/ intelligence bases in Syria and Yemen in the Middle East, and Niger and Djibouti in Africa.

The tracings indicated huge amounts of information about the workings of the US and other country’s military operations in these areas. Some branches of the US Military had handed out devices like Fitbits to help soldiers track their workouts and physical activity to monitor fitness goals. Now, through this map published by Strava, they showed the outlines of bases, as many soldiers would jog along the outer perimeter of the base to get the longest workout possible in the space they had available. The map also showed typical routes used to enter and exit the facility, roads that were traveled on to get there, and brighter areas inside the facility that were likely living quarters. An enemy armed with this information could gain a tactical advantage should they want to attack this location. They would know where to ambush supply lines, where people might be caught unware or relaxing, and where gaps in the patrol route might exist.

So, of course, our 20-year-old International Security student did what many young people do in modern times. He posted his findings on social media – in this case Twitter. Very quickly, a portion of Twitter interested in International Security began crowdsourcing the map uncovering potential secret intelligence bases, Patriot missile sites, and military installations still under construction.

Privacy is usually heavily guarded by military institutions. Information about soldiers’ locations, armaments, capabilities, and specializations can change the course of a battle. Keeping such information hidden can be of vital importance to those engaged in combat. Yet here we see high-ranking members of the US military giving their soldiers a device with the capability to reveal all this information and more and not providing the training needed to shut off the collection of that information. Furthermore, we see a single student in Australia connecting with others through a different social media site to crowdsource what the map means and what information could be obtained from it.

Our modern world asks us to think deeply about what privacy means in modern times. Do we still expect privacy to work the same way it worked before everyone carried smartphones connected to a vast, global information network accessible at nearly all times? Do we apply our notions about physical privacy to the digital world? Do we expect privacy in a digital space to work the same way as closing a fence or door works in the physical space? Do the calculations of “the algorithm” count as social interaction and can we control those calculations the same way we control our social spaces?

Privacy Definitions

As a term, privacy has a problem. It is a common word used by many different people, all with slightly different contexts and perspectives about why they are using the term and what they want to use it for. For instance, social scientist Irwin Altman defines privacy as “…the selected control of information regarding oneself or groups…”. This is typically the definition that is used by social scientists to understand the important factors in privacy. However, privacy is an important topic in other fields as well, particularly the law. The legal concept of privacy is used the world over as a philosophical building block undergirding human rights. Legal privacy advocates often argue that basic human rights like freedom of assembly, press, and speech require an element of privacy which the main legal document on privacy written by Westin defines as “…the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others”.

Privacy Functions

Perhaps more than having a fully formed, concrete definition of privacy, we need to understand what privacy does for people. It is important to remember that the theorizing about privacy from both Westin and Altman was done in the 1960s and 70s – a time when privacy was much more about physical, face-to-face interactions than it is today.

When we think about what privacy does for us, we can recognize that most animals, including humans, will seek solitude or very small group social settings from time to time. In animals, these events often correspond to birth and death, but even creatures known to gather in herds choose to be alone from time to time. In animals, this desire to be alone seems to be highly adaptive. For instance, when rats are given spaces in which they can attain some measure of solitude, even if that space is only eight inches square, they seem to thrive just as well as when they have a quarter-acre of open space. Privacy seems to trigger a calming state – reducing aggression and stress responses and increasing long-term adaptive behaviors like nest building.

This is also true for highly social species such as humans. Humans establish privacy in different forms. One of the most important things to keep in mind as we transition from humans to other animals is humans’ ability to think abstractly. We can imagine things that do not exist, and we can think about how things that don’t exist would interact with other things that don’t exist. This is important for privacy because of our ability to think abstractly, we can abstract the notion of privacy as well.

When humans think about privacy, we may think about the physical privacy that animals seek. Generally, humans do this around biological functions such as urinating, defecating, or lovemaking.  However, this is not the only way humans think about privacy. Being highly social creatures, humans of all walks of life are naturally inclined to gather together. And when we come together, people will naturally gain information about who we are and what we believe. In some cases, some of this information will be shared with others in a second-hand way. Some might call this gossip. Others would call this letting good friends know about the community. Regardless, one may become concerned that others know something about them that they wish was not known. Through these concerns, we develop norms about privacy. Each society enters into conversation and constant revision about what information is appropriate to share about others and what is not. In some cultures and contexts, private information can be freely shared within the family unit but not outside it. In others, one can expect that anything shared anywhere will be known to all soon enough.

Finally, privacy can function as an important element of large-scale organization. There are many pieces of information that organizations wish to keep hidden from one another, usually because the organizations are opposed to one another and each fears a tactical imbalance if the other party were to know about plans and strategies being implemented. Military strategy is a good example of this and ties back into our original story. The problem in our original story is not so much our Australian student utilizing a social-media network to report on military installations. The problem is that this information exists at all and could be used by an enemy force to ambush supply shipments, devise attack plans against more poorly defended areas, or simply alert them that an otherwise unknown force is present in the area. These same ideas apply to the business world in which companies are often attempting to outmaneuver one another to achieve greater profits. In both cases, how and with whom information is shared is of critical importance for predicting the success or failure of an operation.

Modern Privacy – Internet

When Irwin Altman was writing his collected thoughts on privacy in the 1970’s, the experience of privacy was much different than it is today. In the 70’s, privacy meant a physical distancing from other people; a way to remove oneself from a situation and gain refuge from the world around. Today’s world does not afford us many of the same luxuries regarding privacy as then. The ubiquity of smartphones, wearable trackers, and the internet have converged to create a bomb of privacy concerns. Most of us experience our lives with a belief that we have a great deal of privacy – much like the calm phase of a bomb’s life. However, every now and again one of our privacy bombs goes off. And when that happens, we understand very quickly how little privacy we have in modern times.

Consider the situation at the beginning of this chapter. The amount of military intelligence that was simply given away to the internet staggers the mind in that case. People’s lives were likely put in danger, for who knows how long. Yet, from a civilian policy standpoint, nothing was done on a wide scale to ensure the same problems would not befall others. Certainly, military policy was adjusted to disallow fitness trackers on Army installations but nothing systematic was extended to the population at large, at least in the United States.

The European Union has extended privacy laws to be more in line with the concerns of the digital age. In 2018 the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation, more commonly known as the GDPR. This large body of legislation applied to any personally identifiable data that was collected about any European Union citizen by any entity on Earth. It doesn’t matter where in the world the data is sent to, if it is about an EU citizen, the company collecting that data must abide by the policies contained in the act. These are things like keeping a log of all the data a company has about a person, making that log available upon request of the person the records pertain to, and ensuring that a person can be “forgotten” – meaning their data can be deleted upon request. And while this is a European Union law that only truly applies to European Union citizens, the global nature of many tech companies means that, even if you are not an EU citizen, you may be able to request and receive this information yourself. If you do, you may be surprised at the amount of information large tech companies have that applies to you.

But there are other open questions about how privacy will connect with new digital technologies. Police departments are already running DNA samples through ancestry databases attempting to find familial matches to narrow down potential suspects. Several high-profile cases have identified suspects in this manner, including the infamous Golden State Killer who committed numerous murders, rapes, and burglaries across California from 1974 to 1986. Because his nephew uploaded a sample of the nephew’s DNA to an ancestry database, police were able to run a sample of blood from the Golden State Killer through the same ancestry database and obtained a familial match. Because of this, we now know the Golden State Killer to be a man named Joseph James DeAngelo.

Even though we cannot exactly predict how digital technology will interact with privacy in specific ways, we can know something about how people will expect privacy to be upheld when the concept is transferred to digital spaces. The question is always whether or not these expectations match the reality of the situation.

In an essay on privacy that was geared toward explaining the importance of privacy to law, Westin argued that privacy has four primary functions for human behavior. The first is to provide protected communication. Some communication needs to be, in legal language, privileged for both professional and social reasons. The law provides many protections for people whose job requires them to keep certain communications confidential such as lawyers and counselors. Without that confidentiality, someone may find it difficult to express themselves freely enough to heal from trauma with a counselor or explain a situation so a lawyer can provide a best defense. Privileged communication is also important for the building of social relationships, both to signal to the potential friend that they have an elevated role in someone’s life and as a way for the potential friend to demonstrate that they have the best interests of the person at heart.

The second way that privacy is important for human behavior according to Westin is establishing a sense of control. Private spaces are places where people can exert their maximum influence over the space. Without that privacy, someone may be concerned that they must consider the opinions and desires of others in the space, which necessarily reduces the amount of control that the person has. Sense of control has been shown to have a profound impact on people’s general well-being. In a famous study of elderly individuals institutionalized in nursing homes, residents that had control over small elements of their lives, like whether or not they would water a plant or which of two scheduled movies they would attend showed markedly better health outcomes, up to and including longer lifespans.

Westin’s third focus on privacy was on Identity Development. Westin argued that social situations demand a lot of our cognitive resources. It takes a lot of thinking to be social and when we are around others, we can spend a lot of attention focusing on them, their reactions, and their needs/desires. However, private spaces allow us the space and additional cognitive resources to reflect on situations and circumstances experienced throughout the day. This helps us to integrate those experience into a coherent, whole person. When attempting to figure out who the “real me” is, very often people will retreat from a situation and seek solitude.

The final element of Westin’s description of privacy is privacy’s importance for emotional release. Many cultures have norms that discourage the release of emotion in public, except in very rare circumstances. Privacy can give people space to express those emotions in a culturally appropriate way that does not feel to the person expressing those emotions that they are losing face with their community.

So how can we apply Westin’s typology to privacy in the digital age. Protected communication has been a place where people have applied expectations of privacy, only to be let down by how digital technology works. People may believe they are expressing themselves to a smaller circle of friends and family when their communications on social media may be broadcast to the entire platform by default. Sense of control may be similarly impacted. Account holders may be expecting that personal information that they have given to the platform is not being used for any purposes that they do not consent to. However, very often, digital media companies are explicitly using information that they know about their users to sell targeted advertising to you and your social network.

So far, our first two elements of privacy show largely misplaced expectations and mishandled hopes of privacy from digital media companies. However, our third and fourth elements, identity development and emotional release, can be argued are afforded too much space on the internet. In terms of identity development, one can find any community one could possibly ever want on the internet. In some cases, this is very helpful for members of marginalized communities to come together and discuss how to help one another in solidarity. However, these same structures can be utilized by people seeking to marginalize others in exactly the same way. Digital spaces can be used to help people express and integrate elements of their sexuality or gender expression just as easily as they can be used by other people to plan and justify violence against another race or social group. How to regulate identity development online is currently an open debate that underlies several current political and social arguments.

Similarly, how to regulate emotional release online is another open question that generates mountains of arguments from many different parties. In a general sense, people interacting in a digital space may feel enough anonymity to express extreme and socially inappropriate emotions in large social spaces. This is well expressed by the webcomic Penny Arcade’s “General Theory of Internet Dick-Wads”  in which a normal person granted anonymity and an audience cannot help but turn into a curse-spewing monstrosity. However, in other contexts, people may feel that the limited human contact generated through text messages or instant messaging apps provides the safety needed to express emotions that they would not otherwise feel comfortable expressing. Once again, much more thought and effort must be placed into our understanding of regulating this element of privacy in digital spaces.

Summary

Theorizing about privacy comes from two distinct areas. Altman’s depiction of privacy as control of social interactions and Westin’s approach that focuses on the legal aspects of information sharing. Privacy provides useful functions for people including protected communication, sense of control, identity development, and emotional expression. Modern digital technology is a minefield of privacy concerns that our norms, policies, and laws are just barely beginning to grapple with.