No one was much interested in watching a movie about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: After only four weeks in theaters, The Fifth Estate has topped out well below $4 million, generating about as much buzz as a triple-A battery in the Arctic. But the controversy that swirls around Assange and the Americans who’ve dished their government’s deep dark secrets to him has prompted a massive discussion about the ethics of leaking sensitive information.
And in the process, some believe the subject has also raised the public’s level of awareness about our personal Internet privacy.
Says C.J. Radford, vice president of the data security firm Vormetric:
The ongoing persistence of the [Edward] Snowden [WikiLeaks] story with its continuing revelations appears to be reaching people’s consciousness. At the same time, I don’t believe that most U.S. consumers have connected the dots. … The large amount of private information about them exists because it was collected for other purposes, such as advertising, billing, service delivery, etc. … But they are learning, and the level of awareness is rising.
For now, maybe.
Matt Straz of MediaPost posits that the next generation, a group born after 9/11 that he calls Homelanders, won’t even notice. They’ve “been monitored since birth, thanks to crib cams and other devices,” he writes. “Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have helped make this generation the most documented in history. As they grow up, Homelanders will not chafe against surveillance because it’s all they’ve ever known.”
So here are my own private thoughts, the things I’m grappling with: Does the idea that everyone knows everything about you work as a safeguard, a hedge in your life that helps you make better decisions? More moral decisions? Or does the overexposure actually wear down our resolve to live rightly before men, degrading our commitment to letting “your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father”? (Matthew 5:16) After all, it’s hard to keep up appearances when you’re appearing every second of every day.
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