Technology and Privacy

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The above quote is a famous philosophical riddle. It is intended to prompt discussion around the nature of perception and reality.

I suggest updating the riddle a little for the information age:

Imagine an uninhabited forest. Within the forest, there is a recording mechanism connected to a microphone and a storage device. The storage device retains data digitally as it is captured through the microphone. Finally, imagine that there are also strict regulations and governance procedures to ensure that no person can access or play back any of the recordings that are kept on the storage device.

If a tree falls near the recording device, does it make a sound?

What I am getting at here is a scenario where information is captured and handled in the absence of human perception.

More specifically, when private information is handled in this way.

For example, imagine you send a message via Whatsapp. As part of the process of relaying and delivering the message, Meta has algorithms and filters that inspect the metadata of the message and try to detect if it is spam. If the message seems suspicious, an algorithm also looks at the content of the message and inspects links, etc., to further confirm the message is fraudulent. It then blocks the message from being sent.

Within this automated chain, it is unlikely that a human will have to intervene and read the message (although maybe there are times when they will have to due to ambiguity).

In this case, is my user privacy being violated?

Or, think of another scenario. You are walking down the main street of your city or town. At most corners there is a little camera recording activity on the street. These cameras will generate an unwatchable (by a human) level of footage every day. They may record you walking and holding hands with your significant other, lighting and smoking a cigarette, talking with an old acquaintance.

In the event that a crime has been committed, police may examine the footage to help track down a visual image of a suspect. All the CCTV footage of you will likely go unnoticed and unwatched by human viewers (unless, of course, it was you that committed a crime).

Once again we can ask, is your privacy being violated?

I think that most of us would say that the measures outlined above are reasonable, that the trade-off in terms of public safety is worth it. After all, if you were a victim of repeated scam messages, or of a mugging in the street, wouldn’t you expect more from technology when it comes to preventing these kinds of crimes?

However, all of this is based on a fundamental trust that our governments and laws are protecting our privacy by ensuring that the usage of these technologies by powerful authorities (the police, major tech companies) is strictly regulated.

In effect, we are all now on the side of saying that if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound. If I am being recorded and no one can watch it back because of state laws, then there is nothing to worry about.