MAY 19, 2008

Open Up and Say Ahh – Time for Your DNA Sample!

Full disclosure: I am a private person.  I don’t like giving out my phone number or email to strangers. Even posting on this blog can creep me out! A lot of friends have asked me to join LinkedIn or Facebook, but that is just asking too much for me.  I don’t know enough about - or trust, for that matter - the privacy protections these sites have to offer. 

Sometimes I wonder if this is a generational thing – I’m in my early 30s and I work with colleagues of various ages.  Most of the 20-somethings in the office have Facebook and MySpace pages, and think nothing of posting videos or photos of their lives for the world to see.  But then again, many people I know also have Gmail accounts for e-mail and other purposes, despite the fact that Gmail reserves the right to review the data in e-mails sent through or saved on those Gmail accounts.

In recent weeks, I have been floored at some of the headlines I’ve read involving privacy and our rights as citizens of the United States,  from the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report documenting continuing misuse of the Patriot Act powers by the FBI, to the U.S. government collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime (in the past, the policy was collection only upon conviction).  In a recent Time article, Massimo Calabresi asked if Americans cared about Big Brother.  His answer?  A resounding no – “the majority of Americans are ready to trade diminished privacy, and protection from search and seizure, in exchange for the promise of increased protection of their physical security.”   As a society, on a day-to-day basis, are we willing to exchange diminished privacy in return for material convenience?

What do you think? Is diminished privacy – and the lack of attention we pay to it – a generational matter?  Is it a trade-off for national security after 9/11?  Or are we just too tired, too saturated from all the unwanted intrusions in our lives, to fight yet another battle against the overwhelming nature of modern life?