Hi Robin, At 02:31 12-12-2012, Robin Wilton wrote:
There is a general problem with user perceptions of privacy risk, because of the lack of noticeable impact arising out of behaviour that erodes privacy. The human brain is not well adapted to this kind of threat (it's well evolved to deal with immediate threats like a tiger running at youÂ…). When it comes to privacy, the deleterious effects of 'bad' behaviour are so remote from the behaviour that caused them, that we tend not to draw the connection between the two in any way that causes us to change our behaviour.
Agreed.
Similar issues are evident in our attitudes towards the risk of smoking, lack of exercise, poor posture, fatty foods etc.: the risk (and the damage) is incremental and often not apparent until the habit is too well ingrained to change.
Yes.
The threat to privacy from intrusive surveillance technologies may be remote, and the impact may not be noticeable to the average person, but that doesn't mean it should be ignoredÂ… nor does it mean that user perception of the problem is a reliable guide to what should be done about it.
I recently did a presentation related to privacy to an audience in a foreign country. I did not mention intrusive surveillance technology as it might be perceived as inflammatory by the audience.
"What should be done about it" is only doable, in my humble opinion, if the user perceives that there is a problem worth solving. If I used the arguments quoted above I doubt that the users would be convinced. It's not that they are not good arguments; it's more of a matter of audience. Alissa Cooper once wrote a proposal about an IETF privacy policy. The was a discussion about it (see http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg62274.html ). At the time this message was written the IETF did not have a privacy policy.
Coming back to surveillance technologies, if I click on https://www.crowd4privacy.org/page/impressum the HTTPS request might be rerouted if the site is on "the" list. It's not a good idea to complain about that as I might end up on some list. :-)
Regards, -sm _______________________________________________ ietf-privacy mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-privacy
