Google Dashboard Changes Our Thinking About Privacy

It's About Managing Our Public Profiles, Not Doggedly Keeping Everything Private

Posted by Judy Shapiro on 11.10.09 @ 09:40 AM

Judy Shapiro

This is why I suspect Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on a recent interview with Fox, discussed how Google was not crossing the "creepy" privacy line with its technologies and called Google Dashboard an empowering way for consumers to manage all their Google-related information.

His comments paid homage to our gauzy, romantic notion that privacy means we control our information, but he sidestepped defining what privacy should look like in the digital world. It's a question worthy of serious scrutiny because all the privacy rhetoric has, imprudently, raised consumers' privacy expectations to a level that may not be possible in today's internet world. While Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy's famous quote, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it," is one approach, there are better options that can deliver a reasonable level of personal control of personal information.

In searching for this new definition, a quick retrospective on the history of privacy might inform our thinking. It quickly tells us that our modern notion of privacy was simply not operative for most of civilized history (if you didn't guess by now, my early training was in history).

In virtually every society since ancient times, one's identity was fully transparent because "people" were "public assets" of the prevailing rulers. There was a code for conduct and dress that clearly identified everyone by class and depending on variations of this code, by village or clan or family. By default, you could say everyone was "public."

It wasn't until the middle of the 20th century, with the massive expansion of the middle class after World War II, that our modern sensibility of privacy emerged. The war "democratized" lots of things, like a new openness in dress, for instance, which allowed members of the middle class to pass themselves off as anyone. This budding notion of privacy was buoyed as the newly affluent middle class started living in bigger homes, which increased their appetite for privacy because it became a mark of success. Finally, during the paranoia of the Cold War, when the government had aggressive wiretapping programs and Sen. McCarthy has his blacklists, our current notion of privacy hardened into the near-sacred status enjoyed in our popular imagination.

Which brings us back to today. Our attachment to a definition of privacy that was born in a different time and place seems misaligned to the realities of today's internet world. The confusing, ambiguous and inconsistent set of privacy processes across the digital landscape is ample proof. For example, there are verification companies selling web-privacy trust seals to reassure site visitors that the site has a privacy policy. Unfortunately for the site visitor, this privacy "trust seal" makes no judgment about whether the site has a "good" privacy policy based on any objective standards.

And it gets even more confusing. Cookies are handy for end users but they are quite invasive, despite assurances from cookie crumb collectors that they only collect information, not individual user data. Would end users consider a re-marketing campaign as crossing the "privacy" line? The rise of social networks adds new issues: Should we assume the profiles we post in our social networks are private or public? Who should control where my profile is displayed?

That's why I think the introduction of Google Dashboard is an important step in the right direction. It will help us evolve our thinking about digital privacy to focus our attention on managing what is digitally public about us rather than on doggedly focusing solely on keeping information private. This announcement is another way to reorient us to accept that once we are a participant in the digital, social-networked world, we are in the public domain. Similar to listing our phone number in the phone book, we are "defaulted in" unless we opted out.

This move might be even be called bold (after all Google didn't need to launch Dashboard) and worthy of industry support. For those of us who operate social networks, communities or websites, let's continue this momentum by starting to apply a consistent "default public" set of business rules to reflect the new reality that social network participation is acceptance of a public digital life. This shift in the model that encourages users to manage their public digital information well is one that frees us to take full advantage of our newly expanding digital social lives.

In the history of privacy, everything old is new again -- only better.

9 Comments

  By pocketcorp | Fredericton, NB November 10, 2009 10:44:42 am:

Wow, what a remarkably facile discussion of the notion of privacy this article is. Given your claim of an early training in history, one would expect a little more substance. Instead, after a quick line or two summary of the entire history of privacy, we're treated to the puzzling assertion that privacy is a modern invention.

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  By nickntime | LA, CA November 10, 2009 10:57:54 am:

Great post Judy. And I agree. We have created a myth around privacy that may have outlived its usefulness.

I don't know how I feel about trusting Google with my digital info (I may not have a choice), but I do know that its best to be an active manager of the info rather than to put my head in the sand and worry about how to keep my info pivate.

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  By Melissa Roberts | newark, NJ November 10, 2009 11:07:06 am:

Yup. Privacy today is not the "thing" we grew with. And I know because I see how my children see it differently than me.

But too much still relies on big companies like Google doing the right thing. That has a long, sad history of disappointment and betryal.

What's different in this case?

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  By Robertrbarnet | los angeles, CA November 10, 2009 03:37:38 pm:

Judy - I happen to catch your blog on this .. "Privacy Schmivacy"...funny.

I stand with McNealy on privacy – "Get over it". I would only add that the Internet's ability to gather new information about us is outpacing by FAR any tools we have to manage it.

It's a problem.

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  By HarveyMasser | oakland, CA November 10, 2009 04:31:58 pm:

Your example of the privacy trust seals is spot on. I can not understand what that seal is supposed to mean anyway!!!! Sites are so desperate to make visitors feel safe that they waste their money on silly privacy seals. This speaks to the mess that digital privacy is in today.

While I think Google Dashboard will help – it really will take more than that to come to some consensus on what digital privacy should look like. You are right to say that everyone seems to sidestep with issue (except for McNealy) since there are no easy answers.

Harv.

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  By BrandMan | new york, NY November 10, 2009 04:37:46 pm:

I gotta give you credit. You did not take the concept of privacy at face value but asked some pointed questions that most of us would not have bothered (or dared) to ask.

It's a fair point to wonder how we should evolve privacy nowadays. I, for one, am not ready to abandon my idea of privacy -especially to any company - but I do concede it must evolve.

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  By Martinhealthy | sun vallay, CA November 10, 2009 05:11:11 pm:

Between Google Wave, Voice, gmail and all the rest – one has to be worried that Google needs to introduce a dashboard at all.

We all seem to have too many digital eggs in too few privacy baskets. The Google engine (with Dashboard) wants to be able to better able control you – not the other way around.

I'm not feeling the love yet.

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  By Joseph | Baltimore, MD November 10, 2009 06:59:17 pm:

To wander a bit ... Google's relentless march toward digital domination goes on undeterred.

The privacy issue while important is small potatos to Google's bid to control the digital world. Google Dashboard is meant to keep users quiet as Google can continues to consolidate.

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  By JudyGShapiro | new york, NY November 11, 2009 12:13:36 am:

Hi pocketcorp –

Your observation that my ever too brief treatment of the history of privacy may not have done the subject justice is not without merit. My original version explained how privacy was a luxury only afforded by the ruling classes. I described how scribes and couriers and ambassadors were the soldiers in the privacy wars. I tried to give readers a sense that centuries ago most people had nothing important enough needing to be kept (at an expensive cost) private.

I could have explained all that – but it seemed too diversionary a journey that would weary most other readers.

So I boiled it down to its most crucial essence. But, yes, some color was lost in the distillation process. Sorry 'bout that.

My point, though, is that privacy has evolved over the centuries. Yet, it seems that the current iteration of privacy, which has been with us arguably 50 years, has not evolved in the face of a changing Internet world.

It's time it did.

Judy Shapiro

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