{"id":16331,"date":"2014-02-01T11:00:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T19:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=16331"},"modified":"2014-02-01T11:00:59","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T19:00:59","slug":"grant-me-the-serenity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/01\/grant-me-the-serenity\/","title":{"rendered":"… grant me the serenity …"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, a friend sent me this article<\/a>: “You don’t want your privacy: Disney and the meat-space data race.”<\/p>\n

It’s by “data scientist” John Foreman (I put that in quotes only because I’m not sure what all “data science” might encompass), who says a) that the most egregious electronic privacy violations will be in our off-line lives and b) We’re going to cooperate happily and fully. Not going to<\/i> cooperate. But are<\/i> cooperating. Privacy — right now! — is as “over” as bustles and moustache wax.<\/p>\n

Although Foreman recognizes the creepiness of omni-tracking, he embraces it with cheer — heading off to Disney World with his family, every member sporting an RFID bracelet that will know everywhere they’ve been, everything they’ve bought, every food item they’ve ordered — and even how long they’ll spend on one of Mickey’s toilets if something they ate gives them diarrhea. <\/p>\n

My friend said he just couldn’t wait for the great blog I’d make of this. And he asked me to send his regards to Katherine Albrecht. A few years ago when Katherine and her associate Liz McIntyre wrote their book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID<\/i><\/a>, my friend scoffed at their predictions.<\/p>\n

Now? Not so much scoffing going on.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

I’m going to have to disappoint my friend, though. He was probably expecting a rant so passionate it would set BHM’s pixels on fire or maybe a tutorial<\/a> on RFID hacking<\/a> or RFID safety<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nope. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When I read Foreman’s words, my only reaction was to feel tired<\/i>.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t make for barnburning blogitude. But it’s probably a good thing for life.<\/p>\n

The simple fact is that we do<\/i> live in a world where millions of people will happily trade their privacy for a cool phone app or a high-tech trip to Disney’s plastic wonderland. Nothing to be done.<\/p>\n

Someday, maybe (beyond our ability to predict or prevent), those millions may wake up with a terrible shock. But that will be up to them and the corporations and governments they’re selling themselves to so cheaply. Right now, we can wave our arms and shout all we like, but as long as somebody is dangling bright toys in front of them, those millions will pay no attention to us.<\/p>\n

What bothers me much more are the many freedomistas who say they care about privacy, but who don’t take steps to protect themselves. Even there, though, I understand. Privacy protection becomes more complex all the time, and we can never even know if the steps we take are effective (or, if effective now, might be useless in six months).<\/p>\n

We non-technoid privacy lovers just take what steps we can — while hoping serious techies will one day soon dangle bright privacy toys before us. Meanwhile, we’re watchful and we resist the lure of Mickey Mouse.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

So we come back to a place we visit here so very often: The place where we accept reality but are not of<\/i> that reality. The place where we resist evil but don’t necessarily fight<\/i> evil.<\/p>\n

Nock<\/a> still has the best description of this state.<\/p>\n

I don’t believe that privacy is a lost cause. Privacy is always<\/i> going to be necessary to human life. Never mind that only a minority of us know that.<\/p>\n

Privacy will be different<\/i> in the future in ways that we can’t see from here. Technology won’t be undone — except by some disaster that, itself, would be worse than anything Mickey and Walt could ever perpetrate.<\/p>\n

What I believe — what I guess — is that privacy itself will become a pirate activity. Essentially (it’s already happening, of course), private people will slip in and out of society’s cracks. Around us, millions will be happy little narcissists, content to be tracked everywhere they go. At the same time the trackless will move among them, undetected. Unaccepted, too. But then, that’s always been an Outlaw’s lot.<\/p>\n

Some of the trackless will monkeywrench the tracking systems. Some just won’t participate (in either the tracking or, increasingly, in large parts of society). <\/p>\n

Amid the vast, scary new of a surveillance society … really nothing new at all. Ghosts. Pirates. Monkeywrenchers. Rebels. Saboteurs. Moles.<\/p>\n

We’ve always walked among the many without being part of them. We always will.<\/p>\n

Grant us the serenity — and the self-assurance — to know that what we do matters, even when the whole damn blind world and its all-seeing master-wannabes are against us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, a friend sent me this article: “You don’t want your privacy: Disney and the meat-space data race.” It’s by “data scientist” John Foreman (I put that in quotes only because I’m not sure what all “data science” might encompass), who says a) that the most egregious electronic privacy violations will be in our off-line lives and b) We’re going to cooperate happily and fully. Not going to cooperate. But are cooperating. Privacy — right now! — is as “over” as bustles and moustache wax. Although Foreman recognizes the creepiness of omni-tracking, he embraces it with cheer<\/p>\n

Continue reading… grant me the serenity …<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-and-technology","category-privacy-and-self-ownership","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}