Prism

Why Are We Surprised?

A few weeks ago it came out that the federal government is watching us. Or more specifically they're watching the meta data about us. For those that don't work in the IT field what this means is that the government is collecting the data about what we do at a very high level. They could find for instance that I emailed my wife 3 times on Friday. But without reasonable cause they cannot open up those emails to see what we said to each other. 

My first reaction to leaking of this classified information was, 'Meh...'. You see, web development is my job. I'm aware of how big data is used for decision making. At my company we use every available asset we have to make sure that we are making our product more effective for those who use it. And yes, that sometimes means we collect meta data about our customers to see what the trends are and how we can improve things. And when I surf the web I am constantly reminded that every other site is doing the exact same thing. We live in a world where we prefer free sites that sell us stuff to sites that we pay for that are ad free. Facebook and Google have perfected this concept of free to us, costly to business. It's great. I wouldn't have it any other way. But with that there comes a certain loss of privacy. In order for these companies to be competitive and make money they have to advertise to the right people. And to get to the right people they have to collect data about your browsing habits.

So our meta data is being collected and distributed widely amongst the corporations that make up the internet. And we deal with it. Cause it's free and it's convenient. As a company that uses Facebook, Google and Twitter to attract athletes to our network it's a great resource. To return to the point, why are we surprised that the government wants in on this action? And why do we trust our government less than we trust these corporations? We elect our government, the corporations are made up of the people who do the best job taking our money from us. 

Finally, why are we angry about this? I know about the slippery slope arguments for privacy. And I suppose they hold potential water. However, I hate slippery slope arguments. Every slippery slope arguments is really the fear of change. If we let them do this then they might want to do that. At some point we have to move with the times as a government. Our government should be encouraged to keep up with the pace of our corporations. This data is used for protection. It is not used for political gain, it's not used to keep the proletariat down. This is not 1984. If you're angry about it elect people who voted against the Patriot Act. Twice!

I believe in checks and balances. I think it's good that we talk about privacy as an important issue. But let's not pretend to be surprised by all this.