Privacy Is Much Misunderstood

I haven’t seen a buzzword rise to such stardom so quickly—privacy. It’s all because of the Internet, of course, and all the desktop and mobile applications that are being written to gather location, music that you play, how fast your drive, etc. Writer Evan Schuman, editor of StorefrontBacktalk, takes a whack at privacy after reading Apple’s patent application for certain capabilities that might be built into an iPhone or other mobile device. Schuman says that Apple may have set the privacy movment “way back,” with a patent that “the stuff of nightmares.” Well, let’s get a handle on this privacy thing. First, most of the real paranoia is directed towards citizen privacy from government intrusion. We don’t want some government agency knowing what we eat, where we go, who we see, etc. This privacy right is all completely understandable because typically, the government wants to intrude into areas that we cannot avoid. For example, if the state of California wants to track my car travel so they can charge me highway fees, I’d be worried. I can’t just stop using my car. However, our fears are not usually directed at privacy from private company intrusion, because they usually operate in optional areas of behavior or activity. You can choose to purchase or not purchase the product or service, or to participate in sharing certain information. For example, the iPhone asks you whether you want to share your location with each specific app that requests it, and the “Settings” panel gives you complete control over location sharing. During the 2010 All Things Digital conference, Steve Jobs talked about privacy and noted just that—you have to ask people, and iOS is programmed to require the asking process for all apps that want the user’s location. So, just because Apple has applied for a patent that will gather user information, it doesn’t mean that the final product really will, or that it will do so without asking. And however it works, you’ll still have the option not to purchase the app or even use it. So, before getting too excited over a patent, consider what the privacy issue is really about.