Above All Do Good

(image credit)

I admit to simplifying a very sensitive, complex issue in our increasingly internet-driven world. I am doing so, because I believe it gives us a measure of calm, control and resolution on this. What is the issue? The Wall Street Journal reports in Secret Order Targets E-mails that as part of the WikiLeaks criminal investigation, the US government requires (required) companies like Google, Sonic and Twitter to release information about a certain volunteer and his activities online, especially e-mails.

We can insist on strict policy adherence and demand sophisticated security tools, and I argue that privacy will remain an essentially elusive, maybe even illusory thing. 

If you’ve watched The Matrix trilogy, you know that you always have someone or something that knows what you’re doing. Your shipmates aboard the Nebuchadnezzar may not know, but the Oracle, the Maker, sentinels and agents do. Google+ has cool circles to segment your friends and colleagues, so one circle isn’t privy to personal information that another circle has access to. Regardless, Google tracks what you’re putting on its site, and it captures what you’re sending and receiving via e-mail if you’re part of this system, too.

Regulators, lawmakers, politicians et al. can hardly keep up with the warp speed of media and technology. 

They’re keen to establish privacy (and access) rules, policies and penalties in this brave new world. While I believe these are all crucial for a civilization such as ours to protect its citizens, I also believe they miss a central point. They often neglect to emphasize a lesson, that is, above all do good, talk good, and BE good! Be as critical, incisive or disagreeable as you want, but keep it constructive, discreet and ethical. Avoid acting criminally. Avoid doing anything that might humiliate you down the road or land you in ‘hot water.’

No one is perfect, of course. 

We all make mistakes, and end up doing something bad. But if we keep these downside things to a minimum and follow my guidance above on this, then privacy isn’t as much of an issue. We can write as many e-mails as we want, upload photos to our heart’s content, tweet from our smart phones etc every minute, and we ought not have any problems. Should the government order the Googles of the world to cough up our information, then we’re clean as a whistle.

Note: I wrote this article on October 13th 2011 for an old Media & Tech blog.