Writing on the NYT edit page, Adam Cohen today opines about privacy in a connected world. There is nothing shatteringly new about the observations (facebook updates can be used to glean unexpected understanding about people who are more acquaintances than true friends, web sites have a vested interest in being able to share data/monetize data, etc.) Still, because it's on the pages of the Gray Lady, it's worth considering.
Cohen's main point is that the privacy challenges today are unregulated, and that government intervention and rules are urgently needed. He says:
What Web sites need to do — and what the government should require them to do — is give users as much control over their identities online as they have offline. Users should be asked if they want information to be viewable by others, and by whom: Their friends? Everyone in the world? Privacy settings, which allow for this kind of screening, should be prominent, clear and easily managed.
He concludes my noting:
In a visit to the editorial board not long ago, a top Google lawyer made the often-heard claim that in the Internet age, people — especially young people — do not care about privacy the way they once did. It is a convenient argument for companies that make money compiling and selling personal data, but it’s not true. Protests forced Facebook to modify Beacon and to ease its policies on deleting information. Push-back of this sort is becoming more common.
First, if you accept his closing point, it tends to negate his regulatory point. If the market is working, why add regulation? Second, the key piece of his second point (that there is some difference between the way young/old people think about privacy "do not care the way they once did") is just flatly wrong. People of all ages have been conclusively proven to be willing to trade their privacy for almost anything of perceived value -- shopping cards, access to web sites, money, etc. Privacy is an issue that is not defined, not understood, not a driver of behavior for the vast number of people in the world, and not something that seems to know demographic boundaries.
Hey, I care about my privacy, and so will anyone who gets asked. The question is what behavior supports this care -- and in the real world it appears to be not so much.