Privacy matters because one’s identity matters. Who you are is defined and created by you alone, and shouldn’t be defined, distorted or used by other people or entities. Under today’s privacy laws, you cannot assert ownership in your identity. Google, facebook, giant direct marketing and data base companies have taken your consumption habits, likes and dislikes, medical histories, educational backgrounds, IQs – and are continually data mining your identity without your specific knowledge or assent for their and their client’s profit.
So what is the value of your identity? What if they had to pay you to access your identity? Why should you provide them with the raw data to make billions? Why should they know what my job and job title is for free? Why should they know where I live or when I get home at night for free? The argument that you get a lot out of participating is specious. If you don’t participate, they don’t make money. You have no control over, nor can you choose what you give them and on what terms.
The law should change; times have changed. Current legal definitions of privacy are taken from 19th Century ideas. Privacy should include affirmative control – ownership – of one’s identity, and there should be a clear definition of identity in the law that also takes into account technology. So if some entity wants to use information about me as part of a business exercise, they would have to get my permission to do so – and pay me. It’s mine. I own it. What you don’t have my permission to use remains private. As for the government’s control over my identity, agencies should beef up their privacy protection activities based on whatever new law or executive order is passed. As for surveillance, the government is going to do what it wants to do, and no matter how you define it, privacy doesn’t exist.
