Future Network Technology Outlook 2009: Privacy as a moral issue - why do we want the right to lie?

Trust and privacy were a big topic at the 2009 Future Network conference in Zuerich. It was not on the agenda, but it was a point the discussion came to again and again from many different angles. Those different angles helped to find some different, new views, to touch some ideas that maybe have not been obvious before.

Trust, privacy and User Generated Content
We know this topic from a creator's perspectiv. We publish content - and the morning after, we wish we hadn't. Sometimes we are just the object - and then we wish again, that our friend had not brought the camera. That's the legends we discuss.
What about us as users of user generated content? Services like qype and wikitude.me collect userrecommendations (bars, restaurants, sights,...) and display them on a map, surrounded and spiced with additional information. Great - that's an ad-free tourist guide, we think. But how to we know? These applications are great for advertisers too - promote your own bar, your own restaurant, and its even free. But even if its really a user who wrote the recommendation: How do we know if we will like it, if we can trust this user, if he is a person whose recommendations we would care about at all in real life? We don't know anything; there is no relevant context. Printed tourist guides tell us whom they address, sometimes we can even tell just from the publishing company, if this tip addresses us, our grandparents or our gay friend. This context is missing in online application. Rating systems, user profiles, crosschecks with other recommendations are supposed to help - but it won't work unless the recommendation creates it's own context. That the common phenomenon in modern online media: You have to say who you are and what you're up to again and again, because you never know, what your readers know about you. Content quality matters - especially as the codes to decode media environments are not as established with online media yet as they are established with traditional media. This is still a field for open experiments, where the users and the serviceproviders both have to deliver their part.

Privacy is also an issue of morality
We've all heard this: We publish something in a friendship- and party-context, and if this is transferred into a business context (because colleagues discovered our facebook profile or because we are checked by a recruiter), we regret it. we think of this as stalking and offense - others should respect our privacy.
Why? Why should they?
They want to know whom they are dealing with, they have a right to know who this person who is really close to them on their everyday lives, is.
I would like to turn the question in another direction? Why should we have the right to do thinghs that others should not know? Why do we think that we can request the right to lie?
Why can't we live up to our lives, be who we are and behave in a way that we don't have to hide?
Of course there are borders that must not be crossed. But most privacy violations don't deals with spys, private eyes or surveillance data - in most cases, the seemingly offensive data have been published by someone on purpose. We are responsible for our publications, and in the meantime, we should already know where this can take us. We are not (only) the victims: We are the active part in this scenarios.

The lives of all of us are open and transparent. - Who cares?
The easier it is to get an information, the less valuable it is.
It's ridicilously simple to find out really a lot about almost everybody who uses the web - so ist it anything special? Do we discover something we should not know? Do we gain any more information by that？Do we discover something, that our "object" actually tried to hide? Probably not. We don't see anything we were not supposed to see. We don't have any advantage from that, because it just takes everybody only a few minutes to get the same information.
This may change our fears, our habits - and the value of information. And - opposed to common views on privacy issues - we may also consider it as a contribution to our personal freedom and as an increase of our personal reach and impact: we don't have to give everybody our business card with one personal email address and one personal phone number on it (that changes with every job - or even with every interesting offer of another mobile carrier). We are easy to finsd, it's easy for us to keep people up to date. All we have to do is work - once we set up our networks well, things will spread on their own.
Is this what we fear? - We can still control how we want to start it, and where we want to take it.
The second aspect of this topic to me is: If we don't want to be found - how and why do we assume, that our colleagues, bosses, friends should get a more accurate impression of who we are, if they have less information? We expect them not to do any research and stalking - that's like talking to someone but not listening to what he says. It does not mean that they have the rigght to ask all questions or that we are obliged to answer everything. But if we talk - I at least assume the others to listen. Listening, to me, is the far more accurate analogy then spying.

These are just a few views on trust and privacy issues. To me, it's important to keep in mind that viewpoints may change. We are used to be scared if our privacy is endangered. But we have to take care, to take a closer look to find out, if this is really an issue, if it´s still a question that should be asked. - Or if changes in values, communication, media and socialising have led to scenarios, where our usual privacy concers are just not relevant anymore...
However, even if there are real privacy-threats: It at our hands as users to deal with that; potentially, we are in control - it's just a matter of education.