Sunday, January 5, 2014

Why Privacy is Important to Me

Like many Americans, I read George Orwell's novel "1984" in high school.  The entire book is available here for free.  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.  The surveillance state depicted in the novel was frightening, but seemed so far fetched to my 16 year old self that I dismissed it as impossible.  We would never find ourselves living in such a world.  I still remember vividly the imagery of Winston and Julia, who escaped into the woods to be alone and intimate together out of sight of the cameras.  The whole book was drab and disconcerting, except for the parts when they were out of sight of 'The Party'.

I never really thought much about the book again until the recent Edward Snowden revelations about all of the spying that has been happening by our government.  Even after learning of the spying and thinking about all of the ways that our information is being collected, analyzed, cataloged and stored, I didn't fully appreciate it until I was having lunch with a friend of mine and I found myself eerily content in our mundane conversation.  It wasn't the delicious sandwiches.  I realized that everything that we were saying to each other was totally private.  Nothing I said was being recorded, analyzed or stored.  We were two random people, sitting in a restaurant talking quietly.  It felt free.  And I felt happy.  By the way, this would be an appropriate time to reveal that I am not the criminal type at all.  I don't have a mind for crime and I don't condone any sort of criminal activity.  I have no record except for a few traffic citations over the years.  So my conversations with my friends always revolves around family, politics, money, work and other things that would bore non-stakeholders to tears.

But ever since I felt free having that 'private conversation' over lunch with my friend, I have been paying attention to everything that I do.  Of my daily activities, most everything is tracked, from paying for groceries with a credit card, to buying things at warehouse clubs where they scan your membership card to ATM withdrawals to going through a toll booth on a road.

When I find a little piece of something that isn't trackable, like simply going for a walk or paying cash for something I need, I get that same excited feeling as Winston had when he was out of view of the cameras in 1984 and the feeling I had with my friend at our anonymous lunch.  It nurtures a primal instinct inside of me that longs for freedom.  It makes me smile.

I hope this blog helps you discover and enjoy that feeling as well.

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