DragonI

Perhaps the truth is not so much that people don’t care about privacy, but they are being socially engineered not to care by those with a vested interest in getting their hands on the data. Just think of the lengthy T&Cs and EULAs that digital consumers have been encouraged to ignore for years. And which still routinely go unread almost every time a person downloads an app or signs up to a digital service.

Suspending privacy concerns has become the tacit ‘payment’ exacted from consumers for accessing a ‘free’ service. Which of course means the service is not actually free. But that doesn’t mean people don’t care about privacy, more that they are being encouraged to trade it — to think of privacy as a currency which buys them digital access. To engage in a transaction.

The wider problem then is that consumers are also being socially engineered not to scrutinize the exact cost of each of these transactions, given it is almost never made plain to them. (Not to mention that the ‘cost’ is not fixed — it can shift with every service update.) Consumers are encouraged not to ask whether they are getting value for money for trading away their privacy. Nor question how much data they are really handing over, and whether they are comfortable with that particular trade.

So giving up their own privacy also, ironically, requires that consumers do not to pry too deeply into the motivations of the entity asking for that data. To accept the transaction on trust.

This ‘privacy for blind access’ trade is a one way street. And, in many cases, a very bad deal.

First Lavabit, now Silent Circle: Another U.S. secure email service closes to protect users

gigaom.com

Silent Circle, co-founded by email security guru Phil Zimmermann, has pulled out of the secure email business. It was a pre-emptive measure inspired by Lavabit’s self-shuttering, and a worrying sign for the U.S.-hosted secure communications industry.