Member-only story
You Have Nothing To Hide?
Delusion or tragedy: you decide.
My spouse and I, one Saturday morning, were talking about the possibility of going to Boston and spending a few days there. We wondered at the cost of hotels in Boston, but neither of us picked up our phones or computers and did a search. We were relaxing, enjoying the soft warm bed and idly chatting. When we finally abandoned the bed, my spouse looked at her phone. Guess what: her Facebook account was saturated with ads for Boston hotels.
So, now we knew that her phone was literally listening to our pillow talk and formulating an ad campaign based upon its content. What else had it heard and recorded? The next hour was spent disabling every Facebook or Twitter system and every phone feature that could allow such a violation of our privacy.
Prior to this, though, we were concerned about lack of privacy knowing that credit card transactions, internet activity and instant messaging were all monitored and metered for the purposes of exploitation. When I would bring up this problem with other people, I was surprised how many times someone would say, “So what? I have nothing to hide.”
I have always been fascinated by that response and I will often respond.
“Really? You have nothing to hide? Are you telling me that you have no plans for an invention…
