{"id":11843,"date":"2016-10-05T10:32:34","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T05:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/?p=11843"},"modified":"2021-01-31T12:21:09","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T06:51:09","slug":"de-privacy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2016\/10\/05\/de-privacy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"De-privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few\u00a0unrelated\u00a0incidents in the last month or so made me think about privacy, or rather, the lack of it. The first was news coverage on Bangalore Mirror where they skipped the standard blurring of the face of the accused\/victim. I tweeted about it then.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Not a fan of Bangalore Mirror&#8217;s policy of not blurring faces of guilty\/allegedly guilty. Second day in a row!<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 manu prasad (@manuscrypts) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/manuscrypts\/status\/769020653672497157\">August 26, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>A couple of weeks later, I read the agonising <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2016\/sep\/14\/the-harrowing-story-of-the-woman-in-the-brussels-bomb-photograph-nidhi-chaphekar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">story<\/a> of the woman whose picture was all over social media during the Brussels bombing. It wasn&#8217;t just her harrowing experience that bothered me, but the fact that this was an exposure she didn&#8217;t want. She had no say in the matter from the time the first photo was clicked.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It reminded of my culpability in something\u00a0that happened a couple of years ago when I was reviewing a restaurant (I simply can&#8217;t remember which one!) for Mirror. The standard practice is for me to visit the place, review anonymously, and then call the management the next day for details. Though Bangalore Mirror sends the photographer later, I take photos as well, for the blog. In this case, when I spoke to the owner, he said he didn&#8217;t want the review published. I said that there were reviews on\u00a0Zomato and I didn&#8217;t see the point in his resisting. The review did get published, and incidentally, the rating wasn&#8217;t bad.\u00a0But now, it does make me think. While it might be open to the public, does the restaurant have a right to its privacy? Barring the corporation vs individual entity legal fine print, is the situation so different from using a person&#8217;s public photos on FB in mass\/social media irrespective of the person&#8217;s wishes?\u00a0And that also makes me think further, how much has our concept of privacy changed in the recent past?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-11869 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/schmidt.jpg\" alt=\"schmidt\" width=\"600\" height=\"282\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/schmidt.jpg 850w, https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/schmidt-300x141.jpg 300w, https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/schmidt-768x361.jpg 768w, https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/schmidt-600x282.jpg 600w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 600px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 600\/282;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>From the time that Schmidt uttered these (in)famous words all those years ago, I have been conscious of the trade off. The ability to\u00a0have a voice, connect and share with others against actions being monitored, stored, and perhaps manipulated and traded\u00a0by known and unknown entities. As a society, (generalising) we\u00a0are increasingly public by default &#8211; the selfies phenomenon is just another step in exhibitionism. We also appear to have an ever expanding appetite for voyeurism, with seemingly no idea of the potential implications. But more than that, what worries me is the related consequence &#8211; the callousness with which we treat others&#8217; privacy irrespective of their wishes. Almost like driving these days &#8211; it&#8217;s not enough that you drive well, you also have to factor in the idiocy\/ignorance of those who don&#8217;t, because you&#8217;ll be affected anyway! Increasingly reminding me of the plot progression in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Circle<\/a>, a work of fiction, where transparency moves from a choice to a mandate and an ethos of &#8220;privacy is theft&#8221;. I now\u00a0have to wonder if that&#8217;s dystopian fiction or an inevitable reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few\u00a0unrelated\u00a0incidents in the last month or so made me think about privacy, or rather, the lack of it. The first was news coverage on Bangalore Mirror where they skipped the standard blurring of the face of the accused\/victim. I tweeted about it then. Not a fan of Bangalore Mirror&#8217;s policy of not blurring faces <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2016\/10\/05\/de-privacy-2\/\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1479,98,6051,412,6181,6056,6060],"tags":[4957,575,1441,5191],"class_list":["post-11843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughtstream","category-future","category-internet-thoughtstream","category-life","category-social-commentary","category-society-culture","category-technology","tag-bangalore-mirror","tag-privacy","tag-schmidt","tag-the-circle"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11843"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15557,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11843\/revisions\/15557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}