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The so-called Guardians of Peace hackers (aka—criminals, terrorists) whose criminal acts showed Sony how vulnerable it was should alert all of us that we could be next. It could be our business or our personal accounts. Your privacy can be invaded (hacked), and information can be extracted to blackmail you to submit to a desired outcome. This should shake you to the core and make you think about buying cyber liability insurance for your business if you don’t have it already.
Really, the loss of privacy is not new news. We’ve been headed down this road for decades. I love technology and all the positive outcomes produced by innovation and invention. However, there is a dark side when you analyze what impact the digital age is having on your ability to keep anything private.
Technology has made identity theft easier. Phishing emails attempt to steal your personal information. Credit card fraud is rampant. Data is stolen, conversations are recorded, emails are hacked, and all are put on the Internet for the world to see.
Remember WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and NSA turncoat Edward Snowden? The information stolen by these two was allegedly secure. Be honest: Did you ever think a supposedly private conversation in a person’s own home would be recorded and shared with the world and that it would result in the loss of a billion-dollar business? Donald Sterling didn’t.
There’s no privacy on the Internet. Surely everyone knows by now that Google tracks your every move. Google employees know what your next move is before you do. Did you do any holiday shopping online this year? You had to notice that every ad on a given Web page had information and pictures of what you just looked at in the last five minutes. And this one always kills me: Let’s say you’re looking at slow cookers on the Williams Sonoma website. The next day, you get an email with pictures and descriptions of the slow cookers you were looking at with a message asking if you’re still interested in purchasing one.
Just know that your every move online is being tracked, recorded and analyzed. And not just online. In the name of public safety, cameras are watching and recording your movements everywhere. It’s good and bad at the same time.
I know social media is loved by millions. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Vine, Snapchat, Reddit, Flickr and hundreds of other social networking sites are used all day long every day. In my humble opinion, the amount of information shared on many of these sites is an invitation to steal your life right out from under you. But, I’m in the demo that is more likely to think that way.
Emails? Forget about it. Your privacy is violated 24 hours a day with thousands of messages. You don’t see most of them if you have a good spam filter. You only get to weed through hundreds to get to the few you really want to read. Also, with emails, always remember not to write anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the paper or on the evening news. Your words matter.
With phones, just assume someone is listening in and recording your conversation. (Refer back to what I said about emails related to your conversation being in the news.) Speaking of phones, I watched one of my favorite movies recently—“Goodfellas.” It’s a great classic mob movie. The character Paulie, the top mob guy, played by actor Paul Sorvino, had the right idea to protect his privacy. I enjoyed the following dialogue from the movie:
“Paulie hated phones. He wouldn’t have one in his house. He used to get all his calls secondhand. Then you’d have to call people back from an outside phone. There were guys, that’s all they did all day long was take care of Paulie’s phone calls. For a guy who moved all day long, Paulie didn’t talk to six people.” A bit extreme? Maybe, but maybe not.
Circling back to Sony—this case has crossed the line of criminal activity to potential terrorist activity. It’s not just about leaked embarrassing emails. The ramifications go well beyond anything we’ve seen before. This is a cause for all of us—individuals, businesses and the government.
We have to draw a line in the sand and fight for our sovereign rights as Americans. And while we’re doing that, let’s think about out how we can reclaim the privacy rights we’ve so freely given up over the past several decades.•
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Morris is publisher of IBJ. His column appears every other week. To comment on this column, send e-mail to gmorris@ibj.com.
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