If you give your keys to burglars expect them to take your stuff
WE handed our privacy over years ago. It’s wrong and disturbing, but entirely unsurprising the likes of Cambridge Analytica have exploited it, writes Jane Fynes-Clinton.
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Its death was due to attention diverted to so many glittering prizes and away from the virtual gates.
The creep of neglect left privacy fending for itself until it became so faded and forgotten it just conked out.
Few of us even knew it had gone, so busy we were with getting what we wanted and seeing the products we had wished for because we had left the door not only unlocked but ajar.
So why are we suddenly crying over spilt, spread online information sharing?
Political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica is facing claims it used data from 50 million Facebook users to develop controversial political campaigns for Donald Trump and others.
Australians’ Facebook data is likely to have been mined too for purposes that users did not intend or know about.
It is wrong, and it is alarming, but surely we are not surprised.
When the story broke, the world did not like it.
On Monday, Facebook shed more than $60 billion in market value as its stock price tumbled amid calls for tighter regulation.
Facebook’s initial response fuelled the public fury. Its defence was that Cambridge Analytica’s activities did not constitute a true data breach and that made the public feel the social network was sloppy with user data in pursuit of its mammoth profits.
But yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a mea culpa.
The beast he had created had gone quietly rogue and he was working out how to bring it back to heel. There was some begrudging reining in of the upset.
We will watch with interest, but deep down we always knew we were patsies for companies’ income generation.
A precept from the 1970s about television is equally relevant to the freebies that are tied to our internet use: if you are not paying for a product, then you are the product.
We cannot pretend we think our privacy is secure when we post on Facebook, any more than when we take advantage of the free Wi-Fi logins that so often pop up on our phones.
We just agree to the conditions on reflex and surf away, with little thought about which sites are probably best to avoid, such as bank accounts, while using an easy-breezy, insecure network.
We can’t say we weren’t warned but we barely blink, trusting because it suits us to.
So the kerfuffle over forcing Commonwealth Games visitors to cough up their Facebook data in exchange for faster Wi-Fi seems a little disingenuous to me.
It is all about dangling carrots: signing over access will give fans quicker internet than those who decline. Their data will then be collected by the Gold Coast Council for marketing purposes.
We are the product. Nothing is truly free and in exchange for the free Wi-Fi we access, we hand over a wealth of information about our consumer habits, our movements and our views.
It is all just sitting there, waiting to be mined. And we should remember it is there because we put it there.
The more than 100,000 visiting sports fans have a commercial value, and it is naive to think fast, free internet is a local government gift any more than it is from the big supermarkets or fast food joints.
After all, gifts require nothing in return.
No one is suggesting what the Gold Coast Council is doing is outside the rules, but it seems people are surprised that their info will be collated.
Most nations’ airports and many businesses do it, asking where you are from or what the purpose of a visit is. We play along and don’t think about it.
Until we do.
Every time we pose for a photo, we give consent for the photo’s publication.
The consent is implied, but you would be a fool to think the image is not going to be possibly posted on some social media platform somewhere.
In the digital age, privacy died long ago and we have come to like the benefits of leaving the gate open.
Supermarkets email targeted specials for the products we have bought in the past. Ads appear next to our browser homepage for items we almost bought but bailed on before passing through the online checkout.
We feel noticed, like we matter. We are the product.
And while the breaches alleged in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica drama are concerning and the loopholes need plugging, we need to accept that if we paddle in those public, social, ‘free’ waters, there is a high likelihood we will get wet.
Dr Jane Fynes-Clinton is a journalist and journalism lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Originally published as If you give your keys to burglars expect them to take your stuff
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