Back in 1999, almost fifteen years ago, Sun Microsystems then Gadfly-in-Chief Scott McNealy made his infamous statement that “you have zero privacy anyway, get over, it.” There was a kerfuffle at the time, mostly that he had the nerve to say such a thing. Imagine, someone telling the truth. The fact is he was right then, and all the debate from time to time, about terms of service for Google or Facebook, has resulted in very little change in the private sector, with respect to online privacy. In the public realm, the Snowden revelations really only confirmed what many have suspected for a long. We have not privacy.
So the question now is, should we just get over it, or actually try to do something about and if so what? Will some people opt to become a digital recluse, or is all of this just the price of progress?
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Julia Angwin looks inside the world of privacy today in Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance
.My conversation with Julia Angwin:
