Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

(Note: this post is not about the US Government trolling the internet and spying on law-abiding citizens. This post is about Americans and their expectations of privacy on the internet. Okay. Off we go.)

If there’s one good thing to come out of this NSA-snoopery debacle, it’s this: Americans will finally be disabused of their long-held belief that there is privacy on the internet.

(And if any of you still believe that there is privacy on the internet, drop on by; I’ve got some genuine Louis Vuitton bags I’m letting go at a great price.)

For a decade or more, Americans have been completely unreasonable in their expectations about the internet. We think that, because we use it in our homes, anything we do there is as private as anything else we do in our homes.

This is utter rubbish.

Let’s say that…

• You go down to the coffee shop and, while there, you chat up the other patrons (you’re a very genial person). You ask if they have any recommendations about where to buy a good blade for your Craftsman circular saw. A bunch of them answer. Do you think these people, once they answer, don’t remember what you asked them? (Well, maybe that guy in the corner…) Do you think that the coffee shop employees have forgotten what you asked everyone?

Now…

• On the recommendation of a coffee shop patron (not the guy in the corner…), you drive down to Sears and purchase a blade for your Craftsman circular saw. Do you think Sears has no record of the sale? If you used your Sears card, do you think they don’t know that you purchased that blade? If you used your VISA card, do you think that Sears and the VISA card company are unaware of your purchase?

Naturally, you would reasonably expect that the coffee shop employees, the coffee shop patrons, the Sears employees, and the Sears or VISA card companies would all have full recollection of your interactions with them. The patrons might tell someone else about it. Sears might use the record of your transaction to send you information on other Craftsman accessories you might find of interest.

Now, replace your trip to the stores with logging onto the internet via your ISP. Replace the coffee shop with Google or Bing. Replace Sears with Amazon. Why do Americans expect that these entities don’t have the same interest in your internet traffic as the brick-and-mortar places would have in your real-world interaction?

When you tap into the internet, you’re using a service provided by a corporation. When you search for something, you’re using a service provided by a corporation. When you send a private message to one of your Facebook peeps, you’re using your machine, your ISP’s machines, Facebook’s machines, and your friend’s ISP’s machines, all before your friend even knows you’ve sent the message. Do we reasonably think that these corporations don’t keep an image of our interaction? Is it reasonable to be surprised when information about our interactions is mined by these corporations?

Yes, there are levels of expected privacy on the internet. Emails, chats, IMs, and Skypes all come with a higher expected level of privacy–we do not expect our personal mail to be mined for sales opportunities, and we would have a legitimate gripe should we find that the corporations providing these private services were doing so.

But the information is still out there, sitting there on corporate servers. And they’re hackable. The only reason they’re save is because, for the most part, our emails and IMs and Skypes are totally and utterly devoid of any revenue-building information. In short, they’re boring and not worth the trouble.

Americans, though, have proven to be even more naïve than that. We post our location on Facebook. We tweet, “hey, hdg down to SFO for a Hawaiian vaca; c u in 2 wks!”

Yeah. Might as well add “Don’t boost my stuff while I’m gone!”

Back in 2001, I was researching The Spirit of Thunder, Book II of The Fallen Cloud Saga. I was trying to find information on two things: how do high-explosives work, and what was the floor plan for the White House. Am I a terrorist? No. Did I intend on bringing explosives into the White House? No. (I didn’t even do that in the novel.)

But I was fully aware–and I knew it was reasonable to expect–that because of my search terms and queries, someone, somewhere, was going to get a ping.

The internet is not your living room extended out into the world.

The internet is the world, reaching into your living room.

Let’s be careful out there.

k