Personal privacy and security are a quintessential piece of my everyday life. Privacy ensures  freedom. Privacy on the Internet, for example, allows me to talk about something frankly online, without revealing my identity. An example of this would be a debate online with someone about the importance of privacy.  Most people would say that I’m a hacker, so I have no respect for privacy anyway. This is untrue.  My knowledge of security and how it can be exploited has shown me time and time again that privacy is important, particularly to protect yourself. Privacy and security go hand-in-hand. For example, I cannot have a private conversation if that conversation lacks security. If there is no security, anyone can listen in and interact with the conversation. This is synonymous with  having a private conversation over the intercom.
           

The right to privacy is the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. That is because the forefathers valued privacy, as should we. I get dressed in private, don’t like people listening in on my phone calls, reading my diary entries, or perusing my medical records. Privacy is a basic human right that gives me the right to control how much of me a person sees. It allows me  to manage my reputation, to counteract harsh  judgments against me and to make sure people hear the whole story. Privacy helps to protect me from unfair judgments.
           

This in turn allows me to share ideas that aren’t necessarily complete, and assurance that I, the writer, will not be tarnished by public condemnation of my ideas. To quote Cory Doctorow, “For me privacy is the right to think ideas that aren’t fully formed, to say things aloud without having everybody know what I’ve said, to go to a place and try a thing without having to commit to it being part of my record forever." An example of this is this very opinion piece.  I know that there are times when privacy can be a barrier, such as when I am conducting a cyber crime investigation.  Despite this, I should have the ability to remain anonymous, even if it hinders those, legally or illegally, from spying on me. My privacy is my choice.
           

Some people say that privacy is only important to those who have something to hide. However, privacy and secrecy are not the same things. Privacy is about exercising our individual freedoms to choose what we want to share, and with whom we want to share it.  I have had the secrecy argument repeated to me time and time again.  All I say is this: if you truly have nothing to hide, please type and send me an email with all of your usernames and passwords so that I can publish what I want from them at will. As of yet, no one has taken me up on my offer.
           

And there are a number of other reasons why those with “nothing” to hide should care about privacy. For example, as the Internet becomes a larger and larger part of our everyday life, what you do is recorded and shared. When all of this data is amassed and compiled, it can be analyzed in order to exploit very personal things.

Back in 2012, the New York Times reported about how Target was able to determine with 90% accuracy whether or not any of their female customers were newly pregnant, just by analyzing the purchases within the store. These purchases included things like unscented soaps, cotton balls, and mineral supplements when a customer was likely to be newly pregnant. A particular example of this was when an unknowingly pregnant teenage girl and her father started receiving congratulatory coupons for baby clothing and cribs. The girl’s father was beside himself with anger with Target for, in essence, stating that his sixteen-year-old daughter was pregnant. However, two weeks later the daughter did indeed find out that she was pregnant and was forced to admit it to her father.  I do not think that a teenage pregnancy is good for either the mother or child in most situations, but it should still be the daughter’s choice whether or not to admit to her father whether or not she is pregnant.
           

The use of sales data is a flagrant blow to personal privacy. Another example of this would be if I was to apply for a security clearance.  If I was someone that let Google collect information about me, those conducting the background check would see that from ages 14-17, I have been really into penetration testing. This would raise red flags for any governmental agency or employer and possibly cost me my clearance since it could not be seen in the right light without background information.

The slogan for Google is “do no evil,” but in practice they go to the limit of the law without crossing it. The company’s main source of revenue (90%) is from selling its customers information to third parties, usually without the informed consent of the customer. This information is stored indefinitely, and could eventually be used in unexpected and unwelcome ways. To quote Khaliah Barnes, “Increasingly, it's becoming harder to control and own our data because privacy policies, as everyone knows, are constantly changing. Your consent today may not be your consent tomorrow."
           

Due to the emergence of today’s Cloud technology, a huge amount of your personal and business information is no longer stored on your personal device. It is stored on remote servers owned and managed by third-party companies. It is important to remember that many of the privacy protections that we have in the offline world, detailed in the Fourth Amendment, do not apply in the digital one. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act is the main law governing online privacy in the US. It was created in 1968 and, due to the shift in the way that we use computers, is very outdated. For instance, it states that any email that is stored on a server for more than six months is considered abandoned, and thus attainable without a warrant. This may have made sense in the 1990s when users downloaded their emails on to databases on their personal computers. However, it’s completely outdated in the age of Cloud computing, where almost everything is on a server. The ECPA also places almost no restrictions on those who provide those servers. As a result, companies have almost unlimited ability to review their users’ personal behavior and sell this information. The reason that most things online are free is because you are the product.
           

This is where security comes in. Although companies should respect your privacy, many don’t, so you need to take steps in order to secure your information from even them. An excellent example of this is the use of PGP encryption. This allows for end-to-end encryption, so only the sender and receiver are able to view the message.
           

Why do we lock our doors or close our shades? It is because privacy in that sense is basic and instinctual. We would feel pretty creeped out if we noticed somebody next to our window, taking pictures of us in the inside of our houses. That, unfortunately, is very similar to our online lives. I, even with my limited technological skills, can find out almost anything about anyone, with only a name and the Internet. To give an example, I worked with the NSA over the summer, and during one of our class sessions we were instructed to find out as much as we could about our instructor, without using any hacking or social engineering. Were able to find all her online pseudonyms, a lot of information, most of it so specific that we were able to identify the date on which she got her braces removed more than eight years after the fact.
           

We trust companies with our data and our personal information. For instance, as I was writing this on online, a sponsored post about the Patriot Act (which is the main law behind mass NSA collection of data) and online privacy arrived at the top of my Facebook wall, as well as my Google one. This goes to show that nothing is private, there is no place to hide.