Why Privacy is Important
Privacy is a huge topic in this modern day and age but many seem to be unable to understand the importance of it because it has become common practice to trade user privacy for a free service. This article will summarize why privacy is important and why we should fight for the right to opt out of constant surveillance.
When talking about privacy one is often asked why it even matters. “I have nothing to hide” many people say as an objection to the importance of privacy but that is not the point of privacy.
The point of privacy is not to protect those who have something to hide but to protect other human rights such as freedom of speech. If you can’t be sure that you are not being listened to how can you be fully free to say what you really want to? Privacy is not only an important right on its own it also protects other human rights and if we fully loose the right to privacy we endanger other rights too.
Another common argument against privacy is that when it comes to national security the security of everyone is more important than privacy. If mass surveillance catches criminals than its a net win. This might seem logical at first but if you think about it its like saying you should arrest everyone in a certain area just because one person committed a crime.
Privacy on its own may not seem that important at first but if you think about what people can do with the data that’s when it truly becomes frightening. The reason many services are free and accept your personal data as payment is because data can be more valuable than money. Data can and is being used to influence people not only with ads to buy things but also in political matters. This makes a lack of privacy a serious threat to democracy and it is also likely the reason for a lot of polarization in political opinions.
The risk of data being used to manipulate political opinion is not that high because not many people have access to such data right? No. There’s a reason why the most valuable companies on this planet are tech companies. They are the company’s that collect the most personal data and therefore people with money and power want to have access to that data to manipulate opinions. Many news organizations are owned by billionaires because they want to influence opinions as much as they can and that’s the same reason why data is so valuable.
A lack of proper data protection legislation and the exploitation of data that is provided by tech companies as already caused a lot of polarization and other damage to our society which shows that privacy is indeed important and proper legislation has to be implemented as soon as possible. The only problem with the implementation of data protection legislation is that it would not be in the interests of politicians and is therefore unlikely to happen.
I hope this article helped explain why privacy and data protection is important. If you were previously of the opinion that privacy isn’t important I hope I changed your mind and if you already knew the importance of privacy and enjoyed this article consider sending it to someone who thinks privacy isn’t important. Thanks for reading to the end and if you enjoyed the article consider liking and following.
