The Privacy Pages
By Jeff Roberts
"The purpose of this information is to educate, inform, and
entertain." This reads the disclaimer at the beginning of The
Privacy Pages, a web site which acts as a central resource for information
regarding the issue of privacy on the internet. The site is hosted
by www.orlandomaildrop.com,
a site which offers confidential e-mail services. From these two pieces
of information, one can assume two things. First, this is an amateur
site and has no official standing whatsoever. Second, the information
on this page is going to be slanted towards arguing for allowing confidential
communications over the web. Both turn out to be correct.
Most of the page is just a list of links to other sites. While I
was not able to visit all of these sites, I was able to determine
the general theme of what they were about. Much of it is information
about encryption methods which can create web anonymity or PGP, Pretty
Good Privacy. There are also links to news items regarding encryption
legislation; however, most of these "news items" present
information in such a way that it would be impossible to argue for
restricting encryption capabilities. Services are also advertised
which offer anonymous e-mail and we surfing through the use of special
servers. There are also links to other privacy sites.
On of the more interesting things I found on the page is that it
includes the hacker community as an ally in the fight for privacy.
That seems a bit inconsistent to me. I had always figured that hackers
were people who illegally broke into sites in order to find information
that others didn't want them to know. One would assume that the initial
reaction of people who desired internet privacy was to fight against
hackers and stop them from uncovering personal information. Apparently
this is not the case, however, from the information on this site,
I could not determine why.
Nowhere on this site (and perhaps I didn't look hard enough) did
I find an explanation of exactly what internet privacy means for those
advocating for it. It seems that the group running the site is advocating
for the ability
for people to send e-mail and surf the internet without anyone else
knowing who is doing the sending or surfing. But it this really privacy?
If so, do we really have a right to it?
I am not an expert on internet privacy, but in a general sense, privacy
means that a person can live their lives without other people being
able to keep track of what they're doing. However, in this sense,
complete privacy is impossible for a person who wants to live and
interact as part of
society. When you walk into a store to make a purchase, or to the
doctor, or to work, you have to interact with people. What would the
real world be like if you could do all these things without anyone
seeing your face or
knowing your name? Should achieving this type of privacy be a goal
of our society? Perhaps people should be allowed an outlet for unrestricted,
anonymous speech, as this site seems to be advocating. But what happens
when people start committing crimes? Should anonymity be secured there?
In this sense, complete privacy is impractical. There are certain
things which the law does not allow you to do in America. How would
the public be able to punish offenders if there were no way at all
to know what people are doing?
This isn't to say that there should be no such thing as privacy.
However, it needs to be made clearer what level of privacy we have
a right to. Complete privacy is impractical and in many ways impossible
within a society of trade and law. But what about privacy in one's
home? Ah, here's the interesting part. When someone is connected to
the internet within one's home, is that person really at home? Are
there laws which should govern behavior in a virtual society, just
as there are laws which govern behavior in real society? After all,
many (but not all) of the crimes which can be committed in real life,
such as fraud, harassment, and conspiracy, can be committed on the
internet just as in the "real world." Theft of intellectual
property does not seem to be an issue for the advocates of this level
of privacy, who see hackers as an ally. What seems to be the opinion
of the advocates of this site is that people should be able to do
whatever they want over the internet without anyone knowing their
identity, including illegal activity. The goal seems to be to protect
individuals from the government, but if we do this, how much will
we sacrifice in terms of protecting the public from individuals?
According to the language used, it seems as if people have a fear
of a "Big Brother" future where the government makes it
its business to spy on everyone and punish those whose behavior is
out of line with government-defined values. This site does not mention
anything about the opposite extreme, a "Unabomber" future
where people can live in isolation, communicating to the world through
threats and violence without any possibility of being tracked. There
are many issues at play here, and at some point we, as a society,
will have to reevaluate our values regarding privacy. As is usually
the case in American society, we'll probably end up meeting somewhere
in the middle of these two extremes.