Analyze the listed ideas and discuss their relation to the United States Legal System. Reflect on how this subject matter may relate to your life and the life of others as well as popu

8/21/2021 The Erosion Of Privacy As We Know It

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Innovation

POST WRITTEN BY

Reg Harnish

CEO of GreyCastle Security, a cybersecurity consulting firm dedicated to the practical management of

cybersecurity risks.

The Erosion Of Privacy As We

Know It

Jun 21, 2017, 09:00am EDT

Reg Harnish Forbes Councils Member

Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)

A decade ago, who would have thought an electronic heart device could be connected to the internet? Or that the data from that same device could lead to an arson and insurance fraud conviction of the very man it was placed in?

If our own bodily functions can’t be kept private, what makes us think that everything else isn’t already waiting to be exposed? As technology makes its way into every aspect of our lives, we are increasingly trading our privacy for convenience, whether we know it or not. But based on the example above, and assuming you are a law-abiding citizen, this might not be a bad thing.

8/21/2021 The Erosion Of Privacy As We Know It

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In today’s world, we are never alone.

Most people don’t realize they will be photographed roughly 15 times, on average, during a simple drive to the supermarket. On that same trip, they’ll typically end up on about 90 seconds of video without ever knowing about it. The texts and the calls they made on the way could also be tracked. The metadata will be sent instantly to databases around the world and into the cloud, where it will be immediately available to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people and organizations. Our smartphones are broadcasting our exact locations at every moment, possibly sending the information to our friends, governments around the world, certainly to the National Security Agency (NSA) and to many others we are not aware of.

Let’s face it: Privacy as we know it is gone. But is that such a bad thing?

Some argue that privacy is an intrinsic value and shouldn’t be treated as a dispensable commodity. They argue that privacy is essential for self- development, and without that, we would all conform to each other and lose our individuality.

Today, however, most Americans have unwittingly opted out of privacy for the convenience of surfing the web, monitoring their fitness activity with health trackers or receiving digital discounts at the grocery store, just to name a few. Our texts, medical records and credit card information all have been entered online and provided at our consent through terms and conditions. In fact, if we actually read through all of the terms and conditions each one of us is subjected to each year, it would take about 76 work days to complete.

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8/21/2021 The Erosion Of Privacy As We Know It

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By spending so much time online or opting in to terms and conditions, we are essentially allowing third parties not only to create digital copies of ourselves but also to predict our behaviors before we even know how we will behave ourselves.

Again, is that such a bad thing?

Maybe it’s time we embrace this change. Here are three benefits that I believe will come from the erosion of privacy as we know it today:

Less Cybercrime

The mere fact that we assign value to privacy makes it worth stealing. Take social security numbers, for example. SSNs were never intended to be anything more than a means for tracking the earnings histories of U.S. workers to determine their benefit entitlements. Now, someone can use your social security number to open a bank account under your name, receive benefits and ultimately steal your identity — all because we put so much value on a previously worthless nine-digit number. We as a society created a need to keep social security numbers private, and now it’s coming back to haunt us.

Like our SSNs, information — including NSA records, the security cameras that line our city streets and corporate databases — should be made public. The more public our information is, the less it’s worth, therefore limiting any real value for cybercriminals.

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Improved Health

A world without privacy has many benefits that extend far beyond receiving tailored advertisements and discounts showing up on your social media

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feed. It can also save lives. Currently, our health data is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which limits disclosure of patient data and mandates secure storage and transmission of electronic records.

But what patients don’t realize is their health data may provide the next big breakthrough in medicine. By freely sharing our information — such as the state of our own health, medications we’re taking, side effects we are experiencing and our lifestyle habits — we can help medical providers, entrepreneurs and companies make new medical discoveries that would not be possible without access to the large amounts of data that is currently being protected.

If we truly want answers to the world’s biggest health mysteries, we must be willing to share our most personal health information. We’ll not only save lives, but we may just all live a little bit longer.

Transparency

Privacy as we know it has only existed for a short time. If we continue to fight it, we are doing ourselves a disservice, because the more we continue to keep our information hidden from the masses, the longer our governments and a select few will be the only entities with access to it. Having large sums of data and metadata in the hands of only a few, allowing them to dictate the flow of information, could set the stage for societal peril.

Our information should be shared democratically like it was in simpler times, when everyone knew everything about you. Your favorite color. Your favorite food. What made you laugh. Your kids’ names. Where is the harm in that? Once information flows freely, governments will be forced to follow suit with transparency.

If we can’t stop the erosion of privacy as we know it, let’s embrace a society without it. Maybe we just might make the world a better place.

8/21/2021 The Erosion Of Privacy As We Know It

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Reg Harnish

Reg Harnish is the CEO of GreyCastle Security, a cybersecurity consulting firm

dedicated to the practical management of cybersecurity risks.… Read More

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