What is privacy and where does our need for it come from?
To answer that question we need to go way back in history. In the medieval times there has been no privacy for you unless you were rich. This statement seems bold, but consider the way people lived in those days. Families were uniting several generations under one roof and on extremely little space. Often they shared one bed - all together. In case you were rich at that time life was easier. You would have more space and quite some separation from the common folks. On the other hand you needed to protect your money. This is as well reflected by the movement of justifying ones position as given by God. However during the enlightenment area that changed. And the French Revolution took the monarch’s head. A good description of those days is given by Charles Dickens in “A Tale of Two Cities”

Let’s jump into life as it is today. How much privacy do we feel needing? In a world where we replaced phone booths with cell phones it is nearly impossible to not listen to a stranger’s conversation. Most people seem to be fine with that. They even use an extra loud voice to let us participate in their lives. Other try to protect their words by hiding their mouth with one hand while the other one holds the cell phone. If lip reading such a threat to you - so why do have this conversation in public? There’s a quite similar behavior when it comes to instant messaging and shoulder surfing. Especially in public transportation it gets really hard to protect what you’re writing to whom. But we can’t wait and text away anyway. Hmm, all that looks like a misguided understanding of privacy.

When do you need privacy? In most cases you like to keep things private that would otherwise have a negative impact on your life or career. In today’s world this may be deceases, sexual preferences, financial status, drug addiction and so on. Do these things really need to be protected - or would we be better of by legalizing and de-tabooing them? Although these two approaches may not be as applicable to the digital world as they seem at they seem. Currently most privacy decisions in the digital world are forced onto the user or customer. But, as pointed out above, these people may not be willing or be able to make a proper decision.

But getting to the real dilemma first: How much privacy do we really need? Unfortunately the answer to this question does not only depend on us. It is also determined by our environment like family, friends, neighbors or the government that rules the country we live in. Two years ago, as the Snowden leak became public everyone was very upset about the secret services recording nearly every imaginable private moment of your life just to prevent a possible terrorist attack. OK, and what got prevented? Think about the shooting in Denmark this year. Now many European politicians scream for more surveillance and way less privacy for everyone. So far it is only surveillance. But the consequence of more transparency into everyone’s daily life could also be that certain hobbies or behaviors get labeled hostile and people practicing these will be imprisoned. Think about it, this is just one example…

Well, this also raises the question if privacy belongs into it-security. According to Forrester privacy becomes more and more part of the daily business of it-security professionals. I don’t align with Forrester on this. It is not the responsibility of the IT-Sec professional to make sure every John Doe is safe and secure online by removing software bugs as well as possible misuse cases. Imagine as a telecommunications provider you could offer a very limited access to the internet for a high price because you would ban all /bin/bash: 9: command not found on. But does this protect your customers against social engineering? Does this really solve the privacy issue?

One final question remains: What will happen in the future? Assuming everyone is responsible for her own privacy. Will the society split into two groups - one with the knowledge and sensitivity for their personal privacy and doing everything to protect it while the other remains transparent and unable / unwilling to do the same? This means back to medieval times? - Let me know what you think!