The Privacy Myth

Lack of privacy has become a social norm, the creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg once stated. This is relatively true. Privacy or lack thereof is starting to flood our media, and enter our lives in ways we could not have predicted. But did we ever have “privacy” to begin with? Let’s start off with the fundamentals of the issue at hand.

Privacy as defined in the dictionary (dictionary.com): the state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in one's private life or affairs: the right to privacy. I have found it interesting that the dictionary uses the words “the right to privacy” and this is something we hear often, people often perceive privacy as a right. But here in America if you look at the Constitution you will find that out of all of your “rights” of this free country, you do not have the “right” of privacy.

This leaves me with my research question: is privacy real; or just a myth technology has helped expose? My personal theory on this goes as such; privacy is as real as the consequences it creates. When it comes to privacy I agree with Mark Zuckerberg that people have become very comfortable with openly giving information and allowing people to know things about us, even if we don’t know who is finding out the information. It has become a social norm to give out many little details on Facebook.

There are many different ways that people try to make the internet more private, you can load a website up with passwords, and “privacy settings”. You can create a page where only two people can view it if you want. But when it comes to the internet, whatever is uploaded, remains uploaded. It doesn’t matter if you delete a picture, a Facebook status, an entire MySpace account. The foot print of it remains on the internet and can be found and viewed if whoever is looking for it has the knowhow.

So is privacy even real? Or is privacy a myth that we have been living under for so long and we are now waking up and realizing that privacy is just as real the American Dream? After looking at numerous articles on the issue of privacy, not just in regards to the internet but too many different walks of life I am starting to believe that privacy is social construct which has been created to give us a sense of control over our own lives. But the myth of privacy is slowly being revealed a little more every day, with every hacker, every government satellite, and every person who is caught looking out from behind their curtains spying on the neighbor.

So with the frame of mind that privacy is potentially a myth, what are the consequences to promoting that myth? Creating rules that allow the myth of privacy to exist? What sort of detriment will happen to individuals and groups of people if they continue to live a life where they feel they can actually be private with their business when really privacy doesn’t exist?