Coming Soon. How Surveillance and Privacy will Overlap in 2025

When living a public life becomes the new default, what does privacy even mean?
That’s one of the central questions in a new report about the future of privacy from Pew Research Center, which collected the opinions of more than 2,500 experts in computer programming, engineering, publishing, data science, and related fields.

Some respondents told Pew they are confident that policymakers will, in the next decade, establish privacy rights that protect individuals from government and corporate surveillance. (In the United States, there are practically no protections for individuals against the companies and governments that track them.) But many others are pessimistic about the possibility that such a framework might come about in the next 10 years ago—or ever.

Experts agreed, though, that our expectations about personal privacy are changing dramatically. While privacy once generally meant, “I assume no one is looking,” as one respondent put it, the public is beginning to accept the opposite: that someone usually is. And whether or not people accept it, that new normal—public life and mass surveillance as a default—will become a component of the ever-widening socioeconomic divide. Privacy as we know it today will become a luxury commodity. Opting out will be for the rich. To some extent that’s already true. Consider the supermarkets that require you to fill out an application—including your name, address, phone number, and so on—in order to get a rewards card that unlocks coupons. Here’s what Kate Crawford, a researcher who focuses on ethics in the age of big data, told Pew:

‘In the next 10 years, I would expect to see the development of more encryption technologies and boutique services for people prepared to pay a premium for greater control over their data. This is the creation of privacy as a luxury good. It also has the unfortunate effect of establishing a new divide: the privacy rich and the privacy poor. Whether genuine control over your information will be extended to the majority of people—and for free—seems very unlikely, without a much stronger policy commitment.’

And there’s little incentive for the entities that benefit from a breakdown in privacy to change the way they operate. In order to get more robust privacy protections—like terms of service agreements that are actually readable to non-lawyers, or rules that let people review the personal information that data brokers collect about them—many experts agree that individuals will have to demand them. But even that may not work.

Where there’s tension between convenience and privacy, individuals are already primed to give up their right to be left alone. For instance, consider the Facebook user who feels uneasy about the site’s interest in her personal data but determines quitting isn’t an option because she’d be giving up the easiest way to stay in touch with friends and family.

That mentality is changing the way people think about their rights in the first place.

“By 2025, many of the issues, behaviors, and information we consider to be private today will not be so,” said Homero Gil de Zuniga, director of the Digital Media Research Program at the University of Texas-Austin, in the Pew report. “Information will be even more pervasive, even more liquid, and portable. The digital private sphere, as well as the digital public sphere, will most likely completely overlap.”

In other words, the conveniences of the modern world will likely dictate privacy norms. This is already happening all around us. As the media critic Mark Andrejevic points out to Pew, many people today treat email as though it’s equivalent to a private face-to-face conversation. It is not.

“We will continue to act as if we have what we once called ‘privacy,’” Andrejevic told Pew, “but we will know, on some level, that much of what we do is recorded, captured, and retrievable, and even further, that this information will provide comprehensive clues about aspects of our lives that we imagined to be somehow exempt from data collection.”

“We are embarked, irreversibly, I suspect, upon a trajectory toward a world in which those spaces, times, and spheres of activity free from data collection and monitoring will, for all practical purposes, disappear.”

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/12/how-surveillance

« Sony has a $60 million Cyber Insurance policy
Android Apps Collect Personal Data – But just how much may surprise you »

CyberSecurity Jobsite
Perimeter 81

Directory of Suppliers

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout enables cyber security professionals to reduce cyber risk to their organization with proactive security solutions, providing immediate improvement in security posture and ROI.

CSI Consulting Services

CSI Consulting Services

Get Advice From The Experts: * Training * Penetration Testing * Data Governance * GDPR Compliance. Connecting you to the best in the business.

CYRIN

CYRIN

CYRIN® Cyber Range. Real Tools, Real Attacks, Real Scenarios. See why leading educational institutions and companies in the U.S. have begun to adopt the CYRIN® system.

Chatham House Cyber Conference

Chatham House Cyber Conference

14 June 2023 - Connect with cyber security experts and senior policymakers to explore the role of cyber security in the global economy and how to deliver an open and secure internet.

Perimeter 81 / How to Select the Right ZTNA Solution

Perimeter 81 / How to Select the Right ZTNA Solution

Gartner insights into How to Select the Right ZTNA offering. Download this FREE report for a limited time only.

Ionic Security

Ionic Security

Ionic provide a high-assurance data protection and control platform built on strong encryption, fine-grain control and contextual analytics.

My Data Recovery Lab

My Data Recovery Lab

We recover data from: HDDs, RAIDs, NAS, SSDs, USB Flash Devices, Desktop Computers, Mobile devices and other data storage media.

National Intelligence Service (NIS) - South Korea

National Intelligence Service (NIS) - South Korea

The NIS oversees policy on cyber security in South Korea by formulating and coordinating the execution of such policy and devising necessary schemes and guidelines.

Exabeam

Exabeam

Exabeam provides security intelligence and management solutions to help organizations of any size protect their most valuable information.

National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NUKIB) - Czech Republic

National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NUKIB) - Czech Republic

NUKIB is the central Czech government body for cyber security, the protection of classified information in the area of information and communication systems and cryptographic protection.

Windscribe

Windscribe

Windscribe is a Virtual Private Network services provider offering secure encrypted access to the internet.

Assac Networks

Assac Networks

Assac Networks ShieldIT is an app that completely protects any BYOD smartphone from both tapping and hacking.

Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA)

Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA)

IDSA is a group of identity and security vendors, solution providers and practitioners that acts as an independent source of education and information on identity-centric security strategies.

CUJO AI

CUJO AI

CUJO AI is the global leader in the development and application of artificial intelligence to improve the security, control and privacy of connected devices in homes and businesses.

SOSA

SOSA

SOSA facilitates new growth opportunities by connecting the dots between industry verticals and innovation ecosystems around the world.

Microchip Technology

Microchip Technology

Microchip Technology Inc. is a leading provider of smart, connected and secure embedded control solutions.

Voodoo Security

Voodoo Security

Voodoo Security is a specialized information security consulting firm focused on security assessments, risk and compliance analysis, and cloud security.

Munio

Munio

Munio's mission is to ensure businesses and organizations of every size business continuity from cyber risks, beginning with a cyber risk management solution comprising of security and risk transfer.

Hackuity

Hackuity

Hackuity is a breakthrough technology solution that rethinks the way of managing IT vulnerabilities in enterprises.

Narf Industries

Narf Industries

Narf Industries are a small group of reverse engineers, vulnerability researchers and tool developers that specialize in tailored solutions for government and large enterprises.

Protecto

Protecto

Make privacy and governance effortless. Brakes allow you to drive faster. Stronger data privacy and security enable companies to unlock the full potential of the data.