{"id":957,"date":"2010-02-23T17:00:53","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T17:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chocobeam.me\/playground\/2010\/02\/privacy\/"},"modified":"2010-02-23T17:00:53","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T17:00:53","slug":"privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2010\/02\/privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of discussion about privacy these days: Facebook<\/a>\/Google<\/a> takes on that subject, Foursquare geo-loc, Buzz, PleaseRobMe<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

I believe it\u2019s better to control your own digital life and share or not share what you want than trying not to be on the internet and end up on it anyway, thanks to a friend\u2019s picture of you on FB or worse. I prefer to post a picture of my ass and let\u2019s say that someone wants to put one to embarass me, well it\u2019s going to be hard. I\u2019m in control.<\/p>\n

There is no such thing as too much transparency I guess. The world is going toward open<\/a>, not close. If we open things, transparency has to be here. It\u2019s embedded in the openness.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the two data giants of the internet are not fair and somehow scaring people: they know an awful lot about us (just think about it every time you use this search box, brr) but we don\u2019t about them. Well if we want to know more about Google\u2019s CEO private life, we can<\/a> but I heard his house is not on Google Earth. Oh, and his lawyers put his mistress\u2019 blog down last week-end<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Microsoft is providing Hotmail to 270 million users, it\u2019s not as big as a problem. MS business is selling software, operating systems and development tools. Google and Facebook business is to know you better to sell more ads to sell you more stuff. I know, we can\u2019t really say to them to stop it. Actually they know that selling ads is a really poor income model in the digital age: Google is heading to become a network provider<\/a> while starting selling electricity<\/a> and Facebook is all about being a ubiquitous dev platform (for games of course).<\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t forget about what\u2019s great about being connected: you meet people, crazy interesting people. You filter so much faster than in real life. Like was saying someone, for stuff posted on Facebook that got some people fired, how many of them have found work, friends, relationship with social networks? The balance is in favor of the positive I guess.<\/p>\n

\"Life<\/a>
True.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also it\u2019s worth to point out that we benefit this amazing and exhaustive source of knowledge everyday. When we find on an obscure personal web page some really interesting information, or the exact answer we were searching for, we\u2019re generally not really concerned about privacy in these moments.<\/p>\n

Of course it\u2019s a bit scary. But you don\u2019t have to be active on the internet to have serious problems with people. Remember the cartoons making fun of Islam published in a local newspaper in Denmark in 2005<\/a>? Well after years of death treats, assassination plots, one of the author faced someone wanting to kill him January 1st, 2010 with an axe and a knife in his own house. I\u2019m pretty sure the cartoonist is not on Facebook doing RSVPs. He was under police protection since two years though. And he\u2019s only a cartoonist using Freedom of Speech, you know. In a national newspaper, not on a blog.<\/p>\n

The world is wild, online or offline doesn\u2019t matter: privacy is pretty much dead since internet, GPS and mobile phones exist (you can know where the cartoonist lives just in a few seconds on Wikipedia). What you do, think does matter. And I\u2019d rather know what you do, think than knowing nothing about your intentions. Online or offline.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the cool part about staying closed: you don\u2019t have to argue with anybody. It\u2019s easier and as humanity, that\u2019s what we did for now. It brought us WWI and WWII amongst other awful things like slavery. It\u2019s harder to actively spread the positive mental attitude and keep an eye on everyone at the same time. The benefit of real freedom should overcome fear and laziness.<\/p>\n

This is where the world collides. I know which way to go to avoid disasters in the future. Openness. Right now.<\/p>\n

That being said, if someone wants to provide an email service as good as Google (keyword: spam filter) or a rss service providing privacy and sync with as many clients as I want, please go ahead<\/strong>. I would probably sign up immediately and even pay for it<\/strong>. (ala Flickr, no monthly fees kthxbye)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not because I have nothing to hide that I want everybody to know it all almost by default.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a lot of discussion about privacy these days: Facebook\/Google takes on that subject, Foursquare geo-loc, Buzz, PleaseRobMe\u2026 I believe it\u2019s better to control your own digital life and share or not share what you want than trying not to be on the internet and end up on it anyway, thanks to a friend\u2019s picture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}