Privacy may have ended forever, but if you’re determined to keep some of what you do and say away from the prying eyes of . . . everyone, there are still options.
In the world that Google (trading in your data and pretending they don’t) and Facebook (open about the fact that there is no such thing as privacy, anyway) have created, I start this discussion by repeating a point I first made here a couple of years ago: privacy is a new idea and you can’t really control yours. Thrash about indignantly as much as you like, but no law will grant you privacy, any more than laws can legislate morality on an issue like equal pay.
Sure, your SmartPhone is ratting out your every move, and for the most part you should just accept that as your new reality and move on. But what if you really, really need to cover some of your tracks?
You’d have to be a super geek, right? There’s no easy, mainstream way to cover your tracks, is there?
Actually, there almost is. A young Lebanese man has created a tool that makes it possible for you to have on-line chats and not leave any trace of them (assuming, of course, that the people you chat with don’t save copies). That tool is Cryptocat, and while it’s currently just a little bit too hard for most people to use you can bet it will get easier.
Cryptocat may not matter all that much here in the USA where the only real privacy concerns we have are embarrassment and lawsuits, but because covering your tracks can be a matter of life and death in so much of the world, being able to communicate without fear of being tracked matters. Cryptocat can ease those fears.
And whether covering your tracks using tools like Cryptocat matters to you or not, the mainstreaming of Cryptocat via open discussion in the New York Times is a game changer, a world changer, and a business changer.
Do you notice when things that were once the domain of small groups go mainstream?
Even such esoterica as Search Engine Optimization has gone mainstream. That’s business change. And it’s what we do here.
Want to talk some more about business change? Me too. And we won’t use Cryptocat. Unless you want to.
