Vulnerability Assessment: The Terminological Problem of "Privacy" Within The Privacy Community
I guess I may reveal how ancient I am, but the issue of privacy and what is commonly labelled as "privacy concerns" was rightfully labelled throughout the 80s and in the early 90s. During that era is when privacy was being attacked heavily by one arm, the governmental sector.
During that time, when we learned that the entire net system was a developmental product of DARPA, we understood back then, that it was a tool for the slow incremental preparation of the panopticon for a surveillance state apparatus. Although I was a teenager back then, society in those days were able to use the old noggin up there to put 2 and 2 together and weren't as much of a lobotomized public as we are currently. It was more common to come across people randomly on the street who realized the con of what was going on and openly discuss privacy concerns and preparations against what seemed to be the inevitable end of a free and open society and the rising surveillance state panopticon.
I would say the evolution of this panopticon began to bear a more structured and solidified fruition for people who use their minds first and foremost post 9/11 with the Patriot Act, and then a few years later after the growth of the F.A.G.M.A.N. construct. What is this F.A.G.M.A.N. you ask?
Meet F.A.G.M.A.N.
With the rise of leftist totalitarian fascism in America post 9/11, it became extremely clear where the sovereign independent respect of human individuality was headed towards and the herd mentality quickly being developed. Some people are lucky enough to have woken up after a catastrophe. So many people slightly woke up during 9/11. Others woke up a bit later with the market crash of 06-08. Others were not able to wake up from these events and were fortunate enough to smell the coffee during what is known as the Snowden Revelations. And yet many others failed to smell the coffee. And now currently, more people have seemed to have woken up during the response of what many call the Scamdemic, or even Plandemic, in reference to the trial run of this very ordeal in 2019 with event 201.
Privacy Is The Wrong Word
I am enthused that many folk have entered the sphere of actually caring for their privacy. It is nice to see that there is growth in the movement, I think Mike over at Intel Techniques was pivotal for that awareness campaign to the normies of the public, which then spawned off other sectors of the community, which I believe is a good thing.
So what am I blabbering about? In my honest opinion, I believe that the usage of the term "privacy" in relation to the global order we have now is illogical and makes no sense especially under this post F.A.G.M.A.N. world. Why? Privacy is a pre-emptive task. It is something one secures prior to an exploit. Allow me to explain it in a technical sense. When a network operator hardens their internal network, this is a pre-emptive measure to ensure privacy is retained. In other words, privacy is NOT a reactive construct. If that same network operator gets hacked, and his/her private data held within that network is exposed to the hack, then that privacy has been comprised and lost.
So what I am saying is that privacy is a wrong term applied to our endeavors currently, because the public have been exploited, exposed, and hacked since post 9/11, and especially post Snowden leaks. The attack surfaces of human populaces have not only increased, but widened in scope. I remember my own mother extremely adamant in properly training me how to secure my SSN in the early 90s as a young teenager, and not to divulge what it is. In todays world, and I would argue since the rise of the mobile revolution brought about by Apple's iPhone, the same security vulnerability that a leakage of your SSN had prior to the mobile revolution, the same vulnerability occurs with the leakage of a person's phone number and email address. Not only is the same threat there, but the scope has expanded. In the early days, an exploited SSN could mean typically one of two things
-Identity theft -unauthorized credit usage
Now, these are merely two branches among a tree full of other branches of vulnerability concerns for the leakage of your cell phone in relation to its mobile device tracking and your email. There is a plethora of threats that could happen with the exposure of these two attack vectors.
Hence, the issue is not one about privacy as almost everyone has been pwned. The issue is much more accurately portrayed as a vulnerability assessment. When we speak to the oblivious in response to their typical "I don't have nothing to hide"/"Everything is tracked", I believe it to be a fundamental error in presentation to discuss these matters as an issue of privacy. I'd posit to argue that it is much more accurate to regard the issue at hand is a matter of vulnerabilities. Where are your vulnerable parts of your life that open you up to an attacker? That is how the argument should be framed. Not about "I want to be private", but because "I don't want to be harmed".
It should not be framed as privacy because as I said above, the exploitation has already happened. We are in a post exploitation world and now we are reactively mitigating the vulnerabilities we have. Moreover, privacy is/was supposed to be an intrinsic attribute of a sovereign independent individual. If privacy is nullified, so is security. If you don't have it, you've effectively lost what was supposed to be your intrinsic inalienable right of being a sovereign independent where you have the auto-determination of your own destiny. If that is stripped, one looses that position and enters the state of a slave. Well I guess this would explain the herd mentality and group think we have currently but I digress.
Ultimately, we are at the state of vulnerability assessments and mitigating vulnerabilities, and this is how the entire dialectic should be constructed and framed on, not about mere privacy. Actions towards hardening privacy are actions that are performed prior to a breach, not necessarily after.