Privacy Isn’t a Right

[Commentary] Privacy isn't your right anymore. We sold it for pictures of cats and the ability to tell anyone in the free world what we had for breakfast. The problem is that "privacy" as a notion was abdicated the instant you clicked "agree" to the online services agreement you didn't read. And yet most consumers haven't yet realized that their date has left the restaurant and they're stuck with the bill.

Part of the reason for that is that Big Data has finally begun to produce some very real, tractable, monetizable techniques. We can opt out entirely, which is increasingly only possible if we want to wrap our heads in tin foil and live in a cave. Or we can throw up our hands and take what we're given, which is the most popular choice. But a better option might be to simply raise our prices. We can limit how our personal information is gathered and utilized, and in doing so we can demand that it be purchased at higher rates than just access to Instagram. It may not mean cold hard cash (at least not at first), but we can certainly expect more premium services, more discreet advertising, or even just better control over who gets our data and for what purposes. And if companies won’t start offering genuine value for your data, then you should consider holding it back.

[Klein is a hacker who writes, speaks, and develops new technologies that hack culture and change people.]