I'm the frog

I was struck while reading an article in the Washington Post this morning that we’re being treated to the demonstration of what happens when you put a frog into cold water and heat the water to boiling . . . and we’re the frog.

I enjoy the convenience of today’s technology. When I buy gasoline, I insert my credit card into the reader at the pump and don’t have to walk into the store and pay. There’s a tiny side effect of that – the credit card company knows that I bought gasoline at that location. But I don’t much care; it’s not a particularly useful or sensitive fact and the company probably won’t share it anyway.

But slowly over the past few years the temperature of the water has been rising. My GPS-capable phone can tell me how to reach my destination, but it tells someone where I’ve been. My network-connected electric meter helps save energy but provides the company with a profile of my energy usage. I love the fact that Mayo knows every visit to my doctor and every drug that I take – that knowledge could save my life – but I’m not enthusiastic about it going public. My finance institutions have a very good idea of my preferences based on how I spend my money, and soon my TV will be reporting what I’m watching.

There are two trends here that are converging. First is the amount of information that is being collected about us – when I paid cash for my gasoline, no one knew where and when I purchased it. Second is the merging of all of this disparate data. I don’t much care if a firm knows where I bought my gasoline, but if one entity consolidates all the bits of information that are being collected about me, they know a lot.

So what? If I’ve got nothing to hide, why should I care? There’s this outmoded idea of privacy, much of which went away in the name of fighting terrorism. If the complete electronic dossier doesn’t exist then it won’t be abused. As it becomes more complete the probability for abuse increases.