(h/t to G2geek and Wader for inspiration, duhban for better terminology than I had, and serendipityisabitch for proofreading)
I've been commenting a lot in Steven D's excellent diary, and there's been a lot of great discussion about how data can be used, the value of data, how entities gather data on us, and our expectations about how normal the idea that an entity can determine if you're pregnant then inadvertently inform your dad before you is.
It got me thinking. What really were the issues in play here? What spurs me to think that Snowden's a hero despite the fact he has unarguably given the country a foreign policy black eye along with his domestic revelations and certainly hasn't made President Obama and the Democratic Party look good?
I mean, I don't much like the guy. I like Greenwald's work, but I think he's an asshole, and as a widely recognized and accredited asshole myself, trust me, we can recognize our own kind. Then I realized why that was, and shortly after that, realized why I didn't feel the personalities involved were important.
The game is changing thanks to how finely data can be analyzed now, and we as a society need to decide the rules before they get chosen for us. The arguments about the NSA leaks revolve far too much around disagreements over the personalities involved, or how such data collection fine/not fine only in the context of the NSA/Big Brother Uncle Sam doing it. It's missing the bigger conversation that we need to have rather than having it revolve around highly politicized topics, and they miss one big truth:
Our society, or more specifically, our ideas of privacy and property, hasn't caught up to the power of data mining, and what we're seeing is a fine example of the market deciding that for us as public and private entities decide to just start learning everything about you and store it on machines that don't forget.
I base that thesis on these four core ideas:
1. We are only going to get more interconnected as technology advances. No putting this Pandora back in its box.
2. Data collection and processing is sophisticated enough to build data bundles on/about you without an identity attached and reliably identify that unique bundle of data as where more things about you or that you've done should go, and there's plenty of breadcrumbs that allow identities to be attached to said bundle, never mind basic security flaws. Did I mention this bundle of data lives on forever? It does.
3. While it is still quite possible to minimize or obscure your data footprint, it increasingly reduces the functionality of the Internet and increasingly isolates you from society. It's getting woven into the core software that make our devices run.
4. For better or for worse, data is property, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
So, what makes me think society hasn't caught up yet? If I leave my tablet, or a phone, or a piece of jewelry in a Starbucks or something, one of three things will happen:
1. Someone will turn it in.
2. Someone will steal it.
3. I'll remember that I forgot something before either happens.
Now, some blame, rightly or wrongly, will be placed on me for number two happening. After all, if I hadn't left something of value out and didn't guard it, it wouldn't have gotten stolen. I do have a responsibility to recognize that these things happen and take care of my stuff accordingly, or at least, I'd be naive if I didn't think that.
And no, that doesn't apply to the victims of all crimes, and I'm not implying that or victim blaming. Just scenarios like the one I'm describing.
This doesn't change the fact that said property is regarded as stolen, socially if not legally without there being a long waiting period or proven abandonment. We even still regard it as stolen, even if we think "Well, duh, this is what happens when you leave things of value behind, unguarded, or otherwise abandoned."
Well, your data is a valuable property that gets actively traded, bought, sold, and collected because it's being left out in the open unguarded. Nobody's grabbing your data and going "Is this yours? You dropped it." When someone complains about it, they get the same response as in my scenario above: "Well, that's what happens when you're on the Internet. You should expect it."
Society needs to be treating personal data like the device you're reading this on -- if someone takes it from you without you explicitly giving them permission or providing it as part of a trade, it's theft, and should be treated as such by society at large, at least socially if not criminally.
Law enforcement and government should only be able to seize it when they are legally able to seize your computer/device and compel you to provide the password -- it's data they're seizing there, not its value in parts.
We need to regulate commerce using data as currency.
We need to know what the data we're paying for services with is actually worth so that we can decide that we're getting a fair deal.
We need to be able to decide what data is off-limits.
We should have laws that force information brokers and their clients to have us opt-in to data collection, rather than it happening by default and us having to opt-out of it.
Dollars are still legal tender for all debts public and private. We should have the option as consumers to choose which currency we pay in, dollars or data.
Because let's face it -- if we've all learned one thing since the Snowden leaks, it's that we all have different tolerances on data collection. It seems to me that the most pragmatic solution is to recognize that, and choose to create and advocate for law and regulation to give us, whose data is powering all this commerce and all of this security and law enforcement, the protections we deserve as citizens, consumers, and above all else human beings, that are extended to every other piece of property we own.
If nothing else, we should be arguing about that instead of if a person is a traitor or a hero. We should be recognizing that whether or not we approve of what we've learned, how we learned about it, or the people involved doing what they've done, we've learned about what's being done or is realistically possible in the next few years, and starting figuring out if that's the society we want to live in. It might be. You can't have perfect security and perfect liberty at the same time. We need to start discussing where we should balance that out as a society rather than ignore it while fighting turf wars in the comments section.
Because like I said in point #1, no matter what we think or feel about the knowledge we have now and confirmation of "what everyone already knew", data harvesting and processing isn't going back in the box. Let's figure it out rather than accepting the status quo and letting the market and the security portion of the government run wild and determine how we interact with each other.