Privacy Advocacy Theater
Ed Felten recently used the very nice term Privacy Theater in describing the insanity of 6,000-word privacy agreements that we pretend to understand. The term, inspired by Bruce Schneier’s “security theater” description of US airport security, may have been introduced by Rohit Khare in December 2009 on TechCrunch, where he described how “social networks only pretend to protect your privacy.” These are real issues, and I wholeheartedly agree that long privacy policies and generally consumer-directed fine-print are all theater. I want to focus on a related problem that I’ll call privacy advocacy theater. This is a problem that my friends … Continue reading Privacy Advocacy Theater