The Privacy Chase Is Over

For a long time I have cared about privacy. I have done a lot of the things a privacy consious person does. I have self-hosted. I have bought into the services that promise to protect you: encrypted email, encrypted calendar, cloud password managers, privacy respecting web browsers. You name it I have tried it. All the staples of “the privacy chase”.

If you were to ask me if I felt I had more privacy now vs when I started I would say “No”. This is because of a few things:

These services can’t really provide privacy
They can’t deliver on their promises to protect you and your data.
The approach to privacy is fundamentally wrong.

The first two are easy to address. Simply because by giving them your data you are not being private. Sure, maybe they have end to end encryption, fine. Still you have to trust that they don’t have a backdoor to decrypt your data. Additionally, What happens when the government comes knocking and threatens to throw them in prison? Are the people that run these services going to go to jail for you? Maybe. It is more realistic that the people who would are an exception, not the rule. Recent history will show you most people, when put under pressure, will capitulate. This is no cause to be black pilled or angry, this is the norm.

I hope your take away so far is not: I should never trust humans. That would be a mistake. You should trust humans. Having people you trust is the only way to live a healthy and happy life. You just have the uneviable task of finding those people. This is not a unique task, it’s something we all face. Although admittedly some people handle it with more grace than others (read: than me, the author)

The third point is the place you are going to make the most gains. The approach to privacy is wrong. People seem to treat privacy, or at least I have, as something that exists isolated in different boxes. They have online privacy, then personal privacy, and bedroom privacy. Something like that. This is the wrong way to think about privacy. Privacy is something holistic, and should be embodied as such. Meaning you are a private person or aren’t. I don’t mean to paint it as a binary, it’s probably more of a gradient in truth. The point stands. To stop chasing privacy, you simply must become a more private person, full stop.

How do you do that?

Simply start sharing less in every facet of your life. Keep your opinions to yourself, your breakfast, your job, etc.. Become a good listener instead. Let someone else overshare. There are plenty of people out there who are starved for human connection, especially in the U.S—more broadly the West.

Spoiler alert: It’s because of Moderninty. I will not explain further. If you can’t see that you are, at best, willfully blind.

The things you now more private about, are reserved for people who will actually care what you have to say. Assuming you have a good group of people.

If you start doing these things it becomes easier to do the same online. You don’t have to send emails, tweets, likes, etc. Even if you are “anonymous”, there are tools out there to figure out who you are based off of these things. If you simply don’t give them from the outset, suddenly these vectors are no longer an issue.

Devices like your phone are harder to get away from, I understand. You do need it for some things. But whenever you can, leave them behind. If you are with friends or family, have someone be the designated phone person. Start memorizing the important phone numbers, or keep a paper notebook of them with you. A small one that you can fit in your pocket. You can buy a 20 pack of little memo notebooks for cheap, they’ll last you a while.

And that’s it. It isn’t easy to go back to this, at one point in time it was normal to live the way I am describing. Now you are in direct conflict with organizations and people who have a vested interest in concinvining you that it isn’t. Because they want to milk you for money–like a cow. Or worse. To echo an earlier aside: If you can’t see that you are, at best, willfully blind and nothing you read here will spur you to change.

Make no mistake, however. I wholeheartedly believe any motivated person who reads this, can make these changes.

Thank you for reading.