Sacha Molitorisz - Net Privacy

Net Privacy

SACHA MOLITORISZ is an academic in media, law and ethics at the University of Technology Sydney. He has a PhD from Macquarie University. A former journalist, he worked for the Sydney Morning Herald for two decades. His previous books include From Here To Paternity.

If you undress in front of an open window, its your own fault. Sacha Molitorisz makes you realise that youre undressing in a glasshouse and your clothes are made of cellophane.

Shaun Micallef, satirist

Incisive, thoughtful, compelling in arguing that the fight to protect privacy must be a common one, rooted in mutual respect, Molitorisz reminds us of what it is we share: humanity.

Julia Baird, ABC TV/New York Times

Sacha Molitorisz lays out a compelling case for why privacy matters. Its not just part of everything we do online, its every place we go and everyone we know. More importantly, he helps us understand that now is not the time to panic about privacy, but instead to get pragmatic and political.

Jason M. Schultz, New York University School of Law

In the digital age, privacy has never been more important. Trouble is, its tricky. The great thing is Sacha Molitorisz not only makes the issues comprehensible, he makes them fascinating too. Read it, and you might just help save democracy.

Peter FitzSimons, author and commentator

In the struggle to understand what it means to be human in todays world, Sacha Molitorisz helps us see these are issues societys greatest thinkers have been wrestling with for centuries. The wisdom of the ages can help us here: to product our freedom, to preserve each others dignity, to ensure a civil, democratic society and to prepare our children for the technologically dominant world they will inherit. Net Privacy compels us to pay attention to what surrounds us. And it compels us to do the hard work to protect privacy as a fundamental human value. The right book at the right time.

Mark Scott, Secretary NSW Department of Education/ Chair Sydney Writers Festival

A book as terrifying as it is brilliant treat it as your personal home security system. Because youre being robbed right now. Net Privacy isnt just about your privacy. Its about who we want to be as humans in the very near future. Read it.

Robbie Buck, ABC Radio

A comprehensive analysis that offers a much needed guide to, and thereby hope for, preserving and enhancing privacy, and with it, human dignity and democracy that are otherwise profoundly threatened on numerous fronts, beginning with surveillance capitalism and the Chinese Social Credit System.

Charles Ess, University of Oslo

Net Privacy is a must-read for regulators, scholars and anyone else grappling with issues around online privacy. It concisely explains how technological innovation has fundamentally reshaped privacy and provides a compelling alternative vision for privacy law and regulation.

James Meese, RMIT University

Molitoriszs book is both learned and a joy to read, reflecting at the same time his scholarly credentials and his stellar writing skills. Net Privacy delivers both a call to action, and an action plan, on one of the most important and complex issues of our time. This book provides both a clear ethical basis for, and a useful tool to implement, what should be an urgent commitment to move fast and fix things.

Kayleen Manwaring, UNSW

Written in a highly readable style, and drawing on a rich set of allusions to popular culture and cross-country comparisons, Molitorisz draws on Kantian ethics as a universal measuring stick, providing a prescription for privacy that would shore up our individual and relational autonomy. A much-needed account in troubled digital times.

Sara Bannerman, McMaster University, Ontario

Few topics are more pressing and call out for clearer analysis than privacy and surveillance. In Net Privacy Sacha Molitorisz lays bare the real privacy risks and wider ethical impacts for all of us living with the algorithmically mediated architectures of tech media platforms. Molitorisz brings an engaging philosophical discussion to the networked complexities of internet privacy threats and abuses in a way that is both attractive and accessible for his readers.

Tim Dwyer, University of Sydney

Molitoriszs academic approach to the material marks him out as an importantly unparanoid voice, but one still imbued with the passion and urgency that this subject demands.

Chris Taylor,The Chaser

Net Privacy

HOW WE CAN BE FREE IN AN AGE OF SURVEILLANCE

SACHA MOLITORISZ

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

Sacha Molitorisz

First published 2020

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

ISBN 9781742236063 (paperback)

9781742244822 (ebook)

9781742249322 (ePDF)

Internal design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover design Peter Long

Printer Griffin Press

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: MY PRIVACY CAN SET YOU FREE

On Sunday 14 April 2019, my nine-year-old set up a fish tank, my 13-year-old took me to the movies and the New York Times told me to panic.

Its time to panic about privacy, wrote columnist Farhad Manjoo. Each time you buy some new device or service that trades in private information your DNA, your location, your online activity you are gambling on an uncertain and unprotected future. Here is the stark truth: we in the West are building a surveillance state no less totalitarian than the one the Chinese government is rigging up.

The newspaper then published a series of investigative reports. One revealed how US law enforcement is using Googles Sensorvault to find criminal suspects (and witnesses) by drawing on location data, often without users knowing. Another showed how China is using facial recognition software and public cameras to monitor and control the minority Uighur population, even when they leave their home province.

Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was performing an abrupt about-face. Having built a business model on the strategic extraction of personal data, Zuckerberg outlined, in a blog post of 3000 words, his vision and principles around building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform. Of course, he knew people would be sceptical. I understand that many people dont think Facebook can or would even want to build this kind of privacy-focused platform, Zuckerberg wrote, because frankly we dont currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services, and weve historically focused on tools for more open sharing.

What happened? Until recently, privacy lurked in the shadows. Suddenly its stumbled into the light to become a defining issue of our time.