What Snowden brought to the light in 2013

I just wanted to watch some porn in peace without my parents knowing about it.

When I had reddit (deleted a few years ago), I posted a screenshot of my android launcher, and someone pointed out that I was using google apps, and said “protect your privacy”, he gave me some resources and that’s where it all clicked for me. What a nice guy.

I’m gay and didn’t want people to know when I was younger. I think everybody who says they have nothing to hide has either not thought very deeply about what they may want to keep to themselves or does not understand the principle that people should only ever know about you what you want to share with them.

Also, if being an open book is the norm, everybody with good reasons to not be completely open (like I used to be) will eventually stand out from the crowd. Keeping everybody else’s private stuff private also means you can keep your own stuff private.

There’s a great quote from Snowden about the right to privacy you can look up here. Excerpt from the page:

"people saying they don’t care about rights to privacy because they ‘have nothing to hide’ are no different than people saying ‘I don’t care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say’ "

For me, it was an advertisement in my gmail for something my spouse had searched for on a separate computer that I had never logged on to. I don’t recall what it was, but it was something like a new cookware set. It was odd. I started noticing it happening again with other people whom I correspond with for items I don’t need (dog kennels near you). I wasn’t on any social media except maybe YouTube.

Later, I started reading about the profiles companies keep, how you have no control over what is collected, for how long or if you want it to stop. I found myself using the computer less and less, feeling uncomfortable being watched if I looked up medical symptoms or just shopping around for things.

My family would show how cool it is that Google knows when you have a doctor appointment and where you are and what traffic is doing so that you need to leave in 10 minutes to get there on time. I found it creepy.

I awoke to see cameras everywhere, tracking cookies, apps tracking me for no reason. People willingly putting spy cameras next to their front door, pointing directly at my bedroom window, where I walk, sending data to Amazon. I started reading how it’s their data and they’ll willingly turn it over to anyone who asks or pays for it. I read about a guy who was arrested (and later released after hiring an attorney with his own money) for being near a home where a murder occurred, unbeknownst to him.

I have nothing to hide, but I have everything to hide. Now mind your own business!

Mr. Richard Stallman. I respect him so much. He stays 100% true to his missions and values

Prying parents, I won’t say they were overkill but they would look through my phone weekly and if I left it unlocked they would browse through my private messages and stuff. Now I have a separate password for everything have all of my important files in Knox on my phone a 1tb encrypted partition on Nixos and I plan to replace my phone eventually with a google pixel running graphine. I hated being spyied on and its sad that there’s people who live like this in general. The only plus is I convinced my friends to use signal and that’s how we call and chat now.

Sexting my wife, then reading an article in the 2000s about how the NSA keeps all cell traffic. Privacy is a human right.

The start was wanting to reduce my exposure to recommendation algorithms. That got me thinking about what absurd amounts of very intimate data companies have about us, and how they can use that to influence people.

Seeing how easily extremism can come into political power, and minimize the chance of my data being used against me for some reason.

For me privacy is free speech, no one knows who I am, so I could say whatever I want.

Free speech never happens on Twitter, FB, Insta, cuz they all linked to our identity, or email, phone number…

I think a pretty significant part was moving, kind of by chance, to Linux and then watching videos of the content creators that revolve around it, but even before that I think I started questioning the matter more when I played (please don’t laugh) Watch Dogs 2, I know it’s silly, but it had some themes that were really compelling, the techno dystopia going on is pretty accurate in how bad it can be and playing as characters that go against it made me think a bit more about that, then after getting really into privacy I realized how spot on it was in several instances

Post 911, the “War on Terror”, and the Patriot Act. I was young enough not to have complex political opinions, but it all stank to me.

i somehow stumbled across duckduckgo and ended up reading its write up on why we need to use google search alternatives. The big one that clicked with me was how google can (and likely does) manipulate search results based on race and other factors. it immediately clicked why so many people are so self confirmed in their own biases and how to protect free and rational discourse we need to protect privacy.

I think it’s kind of sad that we need to ask the question of what got you into privacy, as opposed to what caused you to give up your privacy. I understand why we must the question, but it’s still sad to me. This is my answer, by the way. Because we need to ask “why privacy”, is the reason I want privacy.