Privacy in a Global Public Sphere


        While wandering the halls of the Portrait Gallery, a fine Smithsonian museum located for your convenience just off the Gallery Place metro station in DC, the other week, I strayed across an exhibit that fails to appear on the website. It is a series of low-altitude and closer images taken by the artist (unnamed here due to lack of appearance on the website) of places that are blacked out on US satellite imaging. In some circumstances the artist has tracked down some national security-related reason that explains the blackout, which is then posted with the image. Presumably for visiting foreign actors to note down. The exhibit leads into a section dedicated to the rising use of facial recognition software. A young man, visiting the gallery launched into the evils of the software, IDs of protestors etc.
            This vignette floated back across my mind when the global public sphere arose as our class discussion topic. Today more than ever corporations play a massive role in the control of our personal information. Before it was mostly doctors with your healthcare records and various landlords and banks with your social security number and financial information. Now every click we make on an internet-connected device can in theory be tracked. As we have very recently seen with Facebook’s disclosure of the sale of personal information to advertising companies and in particular Cambridge Analytica (since defunct), our personal privacy is no longer personal nor private. Add in online information data collecting with publicly-available facial recognition software and where are we?
            In the past we’ve relied upon our own Supreme Court to make decisions as to what constitutes a right to privacy, but how much sway do they hold over the current international system, let alone a future system in which a ‘meta government’ or even meta corporation is the decider of our privacy fates. Written like this, the possibility seems dreadfully frightening. You hear vague tales of Chinese citizens receiving tickets for crossing a street when the light was against them. Whereas in the US we like to throw fits about traffic cameras infringing on our rights. Is there a happy medium? Or does our future lean more toward the totalitarian?
            If we continue to move toward a more interconnected international system, perhaps not a complete global public sphere, but certainly more borderlessness than we have now, who will have the final vote? Personally, I see the corporate model mentioned above as the most like harbringer of our future. One hopes that they will follow Amazon’s profit-based model and use our personal data and facial recognition as a force for the bottom line. Pointed advertisements and check-out-free stores could be what our futures hold. This doesn’t resolve the problem of privacy though. Will we cede something Americans view as an unimpeachable right for convenience? Or will we spike the proverbial corporate and governmental guns and demand accountability the world over?

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 31, 2018 at 3:53 PM

    Great story and good point. I would agree that corporations, especially giants like Amazon or Google are going to shape the global public sphere in years to come more than governments. They have so much influence, and if Amazon can deliver packages into your house because they have the keys to do it, what does privacy even mean to those seeking simplified life? Where do we want to draw the line between "Alexa, set my thermostat" and "Alexa, drive my car to the store, pickup my monthly grocery list, and deliver it to my kitchen." Instant gratification is leading this wave, and as a powerful nations of responsibility-deferred citizens, we are paving the way for this sort of corporation-controlled future. On a side note, "Alexa, keep better watch on dissidents trekking around the Smithsonian!"

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