Not nearly as much as we’d like….

I frankly don’t believe I have electronic privacy. The government could look at anything with a potential internet connection and power. The program providers, in many cases, could do the same. Any camera that isn’t physically blocked, any microphone that might have power, that’s a potential surveillance vector. Probably I could do a lot of work and patch up a lot of the holes, make myself much harder to surveil and possibly even remove whole vectors. But I don’t. Why?

First, I don’t think I’m being assessed as a singular individual, right now. Of course I’m definitely analyzed as an individual in some contexts- in databases, in commercial data, etc. I don’t think, however, that I’ve been particularly singled out for surveillance in ways I care about. I don’t care that I’m a datapoint on a spreadsheet (well, save as how I’ll discuss in a moment). I could be de-anonymized in the government data, but I’ve no reason to think I have been. Yet. More likely, my data has been fed through a hundred different programs, AI or traditional, and I’ve become part of the sociological analyses governments and corporations/ interest groups use in working to shape the world. I’m a set of numbers, not a person, and I’m being looked at by bots, not people.

Second, I don’t believe I could end the surveillance, if it really were personalized. I could inconvenience it, but I know just enough about tech and espionage to know there’s always a way for the government or a sufficiently interested private group to watch or listen.

Third, I don’t care about hiding what I’m doing. I’ve given no permission and give no permission to watch me, but so long as it is merely watching, I don’t have the time or worry to deal with it. Let the bots watch. God will take care of it; if I need to get involved more directly, He’ll guide me.

Fourth, I absolutely do want the privacy invasion to end. If I don’t have to give up information, I prefer not to. If I could bring an end to the mass privacy invasion undertaken by corporations and the government, I would. But I can’t, not now. I could worry, but worry does nothing. Sufficient for each day is its worry (Matt. 6:34).

Somebody could use that stolen information against me. Somebody could break into my computer and steal it. Somebody could just use the backdoors probably built into the OS in order to filch all the data (such as for AI training or government surveillance). All those somebodies would be malicious. But I don’t worry about that. I take what precautions I can without harming my pursuit of good stewardship over my talents, and I move on. Not always perfectly (and perhaps I could do with a little more care), but I move on.

I don’t have privacy. My information has been leaked to entities I consider foes. Theft, robber, and stealing are the modus operandi of electronic life- of data, data, and more data. Plenty of that data gets misused. God, however, is in control, and so I continue, doing what I ought to, by His grace.

God bless.