Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Ayn Rand The Fountainhead (1943)

You have no privacy. Get over it

Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems (1999)

In a world where the presumption to privacy leads to the assumption that you are a terrorist or criminal, you still have a right to privacy. Perhaps not a right that is demonstrated in law, but a right nevertheless.

Privacy is all about having a world of your own. It is being able to say to a bureaucrat or nosey corporation “Back off – that’s none of your business”, and your statement being one of fact, not just talk.

There are lots of things that are not secret, but are private. A personal conversation is understood to be just that. Your personal emails are to be read only by the person you sent them to. Privacy describes any information that is not intended to be pored over by the world at large. Ayn Rand correctly identifies it as the hallmark of an advanced culture where the individual is respected and able to live their own life.

Once we lose privacy, we lose spontaneity and end up always worrying about how people who don’t know us will perceive our actions and statements.

If you do nothing and live life as usual, Scott McNealy’s comment will be true for you. You will be endlessly profiled by the government and particularly large corporations. Your address and private details will be readily obtainable.

You can complain to your local politician (who is the one who is voting to reduce your privacy), or you can take your privacy into your own hands. I recommend the latter. If you want a private life, you’ll need to do some different things and adopt the mindset that privacy is a right, and something to zealously protect.

Why can this be a problem? Well, how about if someone is stalking you. If your address is readily available, then it makes it that much easier. Don’t be too quick to give any more information than is absolutely necessary to the government either – can you rely on the absolute confidentiality of ALL of the thousands of people who will access it?

I’ve found one book to be particularly useful – How To Be Invisible: The essential guide to protecting your personal privacy, your assets and your life, by JJ Luna. His most important advice is to ensure that your residential address is no longer connected with your name.

One way that you can do this is by getting a post office box for all your mail and using it for your address. For other deliveries, he recommends a “ghost address”. This is an address that looks like an ordinary address, but is one that you don’t live at.

Similarly, don’t go and post details of yourself all over the Internet, and be especially cautious about sites such as MySpace.

Whilst not everything he suggests can be done easily, it is a goldmine of information on how to make a private life for yourself.

I would also recommend against using “Frequent Flyer Points” or similar reward cards at retailers. Using that card allows them to build up a complete profile on everything that you buy. Don’t put down your address on lottery ticket stubs or petitions – they often get sold to a marketing company. You need to think ahead at all times.

If you get junk mail, don’t even open it. I mark it “return to sender” and put it straight back in the post.

Obviously, you should have an unlisted telephone number and only give it out to the absolute minimum number of people. For everyone else, get a phone number that records the message and emails it to you and give them that number. That preserves your confidentiality.

You need to be especially careful of medical records. I avoid giving my home address wherever possible. Recently medical records from a local doctor were found at the local rubbish dump, available for anyone to peruse.

The question to ask any nosey person is “Why do you want to know?” In most cases, there is no good answer, some people just want to invade the privacy of others. It is a form of power. It always pays to keep your mouth shut – why should anyone know the private details of your life. Protect your individuality by protecting your privacy.

Tags: Privacy

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.