Privacy is power.

I assume that people might not have the time to watch this.
But this is a talk from Carisa Veliz. And it's pure gold on understanding why Privacy matters. Much more that you could even anticipate.

Carissa Véliz is an associate professor in philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. She works on privacy, technology, moral and political philosophy, and public policy. Véliz has published articles in media such as the Guardian, the New York Times, New Statesman, and the Independent. Her academic work has been published in The Harvard Business Review, Nature Electronics, Nature Energy, and The American Journal of Bioethics among other journals. She is the author of Privacy Is Power (Bantam Press) and the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics.

This talk essentially ilustrates the dangers to which society is quietly being exposed and overthrown to. By evil companies, careless governments, uninformed parents, data brokers etc.. in whose interest your privacy or life doesn't have any place or relevance.

The problem

While I understand is not our task to educate people on why privacy matters directly, I also feel a lot of times that if we don't do it, who is going to?

People simply don't care about giving their data away through their phones. On every app permission they give, every post they do, ride they take, purchase they make, search they conduct etc…
Almost everyone in society is a major data leak of themseleves and even their closest ones.

This is happenning unnoticed. And people are unaware of the real problem this can become.

Imagine going to an interview. And once you sit there, without having even spoken a single word yet, you're already discarted. You just don't know.
It costs about 100$ to get a set of 1000+ data points of someone.

You might be thinking: Well, so what??

1. Notice if you try now, you can't likely give more than 50 data points about yourself. So imagine how much they know about you already. Things that you can't even come up quickly with.
2. All these data points, aren't the only relevant thing, these might say things about your health, belives, taste, sexual orientation, political ideas, simpathy for certain ideals etc.. But when you correlate this data with other's, that's when things become scary.. They don't just know. They can predict based on collective behaviour

So essentially, nothing prevents a company or interviewer to discard you for reasons that have ABSOLUTELLY NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW YOU'D PERFORM AT YOUR JOB. Rather, the reasons could be the political party you simpathise with. The country you're originally from, your "pirvate" health status etc..

So, while you gave all these permissions and used all these "free" apps like Google. They harvested your data, sold it, and thanks to it, you left yourself without a job opportunity.

This is just a small example. Might not be too important. But do you notice how quickly things can get out of hand? Imagine if the Nazi Germany would've had all this information available in 1939-1943. Lots of prossecuted people would've had a much more hard time escaping, hiding etc..

An informed minority will always win over an uninformed majority

The game of the sheep and the wolves is a great analogy for understanding how an informed minority can dominate an uninformed majority, reflecting the dynamics of power and influence in decision-making.

In this game, the "wolves" represent the informed minority. They possess knowledge, strategy, and often coordination that the "sheep" lack. The "sheep," on the other hand, represent the uninformed majority. They lack the same insights or strategic thinking that would allow them to avoid the influence or control of the wolves. Here’s how this game can illustrate the principle:

1. Strategic Advantage of the Wolves: Wolves, as a metaphor for the informed minority, know how to navigate the game to their advantage. They understand when and how to "strike" or influence outcomes without alerting the "sheep." This parallels how informed minorities can capitalize on their knowledge to achieve objectives quietly and effectively, often going unnoticed by the majority.

2. Coordination among Wolves vs. Disorganization among Sheep: Wolves usually operate with a high degree of coordination. They are synchronized in their actions and objectives, which allows them to control the direction of the game. The sheep, by contrast, tend to be less coordinated and act independently. This lack of coordination makes them vulnerable to being "herded" or influenced by the wolves. In real-life situations, informed minorities similarly exploit the disorganization of the majority to assert influence.

3. Apathy and Lack of Awareness among Sheep: Sheep are often unaware of the wolves' intentions or the threat they pose. This reflects how, in many social or political scenarios, the uninformed majority might lack awareness of the implications of certain policies or decisions. This lack of vigilance makes it easier for the informed minority to pursue their agenda without substantial opposition from the majority.

4. Manipulation of Perception and Actions: Wolves can manipulate the game to influence the movements of the sheep, subtly guiding them toward specific outcomes. This is akin to how informed minorities might shape public narratives, using selective information or persuasive tactics to influence the majority’s actions. The sheep, unaware of this manipulation, follow along, often to their own detriment.

5. Outcome Determined by Information Asymmetry: Ultimately, the game’s outcome hinges on the information and strategic asymmetry between the wolves and the sheep. Since the wolves have a clear understanding of the game’s rules and know how to exploit them, they tend to "win" over the sheep. In broader contexts, this reflects how an informed minority can leverage their knowledge to outmaneuver a less-informed majority.

6. Vulnerability of Sheep Despite Numbers: Even though there are more sheep than wolves, their numerical advantage doesn’t help because they don’t know how to defend against or counter the wolves’ tactics. This mirrors how, in real life, having a large majority is not always enough to safeguard against the influence of a well-informed, well-coordinated minority.

Why this game matters?

This is just the exact mirror of nowadays society.

The lack of privacy is one of the main problems that the sheeps have. They have disclosed so much data about them that they've become exploitable. But by reteining privacy, the informed minority isn't that informed anymore.

What can we do about it?

• Study all the cases mentioned by Carisa. Conduct further research and identify clear problems that we could solve by applying cryptography or any other kind of technology.
• Can we find what's the exact spot where the data leaks start. Where are more frequent? Can we create any tools that help people with that on a regular basis?
• Can we work on any way of mitigating this problem? Can we reverse the damage that is already caused?
• How do we get back the ownership of our data? How do we remove our data from all these brokers? Can we just flood with fake data to make impossible to determine which is the correct one? Can we force them to delete it?
• Can we provide alternatives to users who find themseleves in the situation where "KYC"/"Terrorism"/"WHATEVER BULLSHIT" they make up to make you surrender your data? Where do these situations happen the most? Is there a clear action to take?