Context and the Illusion of Privacy

Image Source: Gemini Nano Banana

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF)

The rise of Artificial Intelligence has made the data we generate—from fitness apps to smart devices—immediately contextualized and weaponized. The traditional idea of privacy is an illusion, as individuals are constantly tracked and monitored by corporations and, increasingly, by powerful open-source intelligence tools accessible to anyone. The core advantage in the age of AI is context, and because that context is built upon our sensitive information, the personal responsibility to learn, understand, and defend against privacy threats has become paramount for every individual.

BLUF Summary created Gemini

It is a bit of a dreary day. It is a cold, energy-zapping, winter day. The scenery out my window reveals the mid-western Winter brand of Monochrome Grey™. 

I’m nearing the end of the work day, you know the time, just after the infamous 2:30 PM crash, right before the evening rush of activities starts. It is approaching my time slot for my workout. I am not feeling like working out today due to the weather, insanity of the day, or a hundred other excuses I could come up with.

I glance at my Apple Watch to do a time check and notice…hmm, that is new. 

There is a new little icon at the bottom that looks like…my Apple Fitness Strength Training button. It is. It is a bit faint, but definitive. 

I haven’t set a reminder or alarm. My Fitness app, presumably Siri-powered, has learned my every-other-day rhythm of strength training around 4:30 PM and is now gently nudging me that it is time! 

Multiple thoughts and feelings flash through my mind…Wow, impressive. Wait what!? I mean, it’s not that hard to recognize patterns, but it’s watching! Of course, it’s watching and tracking, that is what it does! Dang it, that means they are (obviously, but this is in-my-face obvious) tracking everything I do. I mean, I know this, it is essentially my job and what I do, but it’s Apple, it’s private, right? Right!?

The boys and I, even the youngest, have had conversations where even they have noticed that Google is always listening. They had been asking Google Home questions, those always-on eavesdropping devices most of us have littered throughout our house, waiting eagerly for us to chat with - whatever brand. I blew their minds a bit when I told them it wasn’t just the stations but our phones, tablets, even some TVs that listen and monitor. None of them are fans of that idea, though they use them almost constantly. Sound familiar? 

As I am working out, I reflect on my Apple Watch encouraging me to do so. I guess it was helpful, here I am. The little Apple move rings are just the right amount of gamification. I’m not into the badges thing but I do like the Seinfeld approach of not-breaking-the-chain to maintain habits. This little mental bump from Apple was the motivation necessary to get me past the inertia.

This personalized push toward fitness is useful, but it leads to a deeper, more troubling thought. But! Wait! What if they start (if they haven’t already) sharing or selling my information to my insurance company? I mean, obviously, my health insurance company is excited about giving me a “discount” for maintaining my fitness regimen for my own well-being, not their bottom-line. Oh no, what if I stop working out? Will my premiums go up?  

This is absurd. Stop, I tell myself. You are working out to maintain health, yet now stressing over this, which is not healthy. But, it is an increasingly important topic we need to be thoughtful about. 

A journalist, in 2020, went through some extra steps as an exercise, to see if they could avoid all the big tech companies and it was virtually impossible. That was five years ago. They're pervasive.

I'm not picking on big tech, in fact, they have a vested interest in protecting our information over smaller companies. Big tech may sell our data, which is frustrating, but we still have some ability to opt out of that as difficult and limiting as that may be.

We implicitly have greater trust in smaller companies, but they don't have the risk of losing enormous revenue or as stringent contractual obligations to protect our data in a lot of cases. This is even more severe as we consider newer small AI tools. 

Privacy and the illusion of it is such an elusive concept most of us care deeply about. 

When considering who “owns” our personal data and information, it has been said the idea of ownership depends on the country:

  • China - the country owns your data
  • America - the corporations own your data
  • Europe - you own your data (see GDPR, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.)

Even the EU is relaxing what was considered to be the Gold Standard for Privacy and their unwavering dedication to maintaining it. 

The global debate on ownership and regulation sets the stage for the next topic: the core advantage in the age of AI.

Context is King

Google (Gemini) lagged in the AI race for a long time. But! They have such context on people because of the millions of users through their suite of apps, search, and integrations with other apps they propelled to the leaderboard in an instant. 

It is staggering to consider how much information Google has on us. I often joke, which is probably not as much of a joke as I think it is, that Google knows more about me than I know about myself. Even if you don’t use the Google ecosystem as heavily as I have, Google has enveloped us into their world through dominating search for decades. 

For many years now, it has been said that data is the “new oil” when considering potential revenue generation. The OODA blog offers a more aggressive analogy:

Broadly speaking, a weapon is anything that provides an advantage over an adversary. In this context, data is, and always has been, a weapon. This post, part of our Intelligent Enterprise series, focuses on how to take more proactive action in use of data as a weapon.

However, to truly understand data's power, a crucial delineation is necessary. Data, by itself, is not that valuable; it only becomes a 'weapon' when imbued with context by AI.

It is becoming more apparent as AI continues to iterate that context is the ammunition for the weapon. Context is king. Data may be the new oil, but if tools can gain context they become insanely powerful. Unfortunately, the context comes from our sensitive information. While we gain capability, we lose the illusion of privacy.

> Data is the new oil; but knowledge is power

Since the advent of social media and the concept of applications, the way we engage with technology has changed. For years now, we have had “free” apps. It has long been said if you are not paying for the product, you are the product! We are just beginning to see the ramifications of this reality. 

Historically, our personal data was stored in these applications with Big Technology Companies (Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) but it was somewhat difficult for them to contextualize or operationalize that data. There were risks but at the time, it was more a risk of them selling large datasets to data brokers or breaching our data, which did happen numerous times, like with Cambridge Analytica.

With the power of AI, these datasets are now able to be immediately contextualized and that data now becomes information or knowledge and is incredibly powerful and valuable. 

Previously, if I wanted to find something, I had to search or manually filter through datasets. It was doable but cumbersome. With AI, it takes seconds for it to analyze, aggregate, and relate it.

As with any tool, there is always the potential to use it for good or otherwise. There are a lot of positives stemming from our current infantile maturity of AI development around healthcare, business, even empowering individuals to become entrepreneurs when they may have otherwise been prevented, or virtually every other area of life. Unfortunately, there are similar opposite results in threats to privacy, safety, and business. 

I Don’t Have Anything to Hide

1…20, ready-or-not, here [A]I come! 

The days of believing we can simply keep to ourselves, fly under-the-radar, and believe we will be safe, secure, and have an expectation of privacy are long passed. 

Everyone now has something to hide. Well, maybe that is not fair. If you are truly a lone wolf, don’t have family or anyone you care about, live in the middle of the woods on some remote mountain in the middle of a country that has no internet, hunt for food and don’t rely on money or other social resources, maybe you don’t have anything to hide. I would argue the rest of us do. 

If you really do not think you have anything to hide, let me perform an open source intelligence investigation on you where I will likely find things like: your birthday, everywhere you ever lived, most of your relatives - probably some people you didn’t even know were relatives, acquaintances, criminal records, and so much more. Then we can just post that in an upcoming article. Any takers? 

Let’s consider some threats and attacks over the last year and those on the immediate horizon :

  • Not to mention the terrifying concept of brain implants this necessitates an entirely different post

    • We cannot secure our email accounts, but sure, let’s implant a computer in our brain

    • To be fair, it has been amazingly helpful for the initial recipient of Elon Musk’s implant

    • It is an incredibly slippery slope

    • Mitigations:

      • Just don’t! 

There are many, many other things we could look at, but I think you get the idea. The unfortunate reality is most of you won’t do this. You might read this and have the appropriate terrified reaction…for a day or two. Our economic system is designed to create inertia around this type of activity. We call it “stickiness".” We want you to stick around, use the apps, give us all your data, it is revenue generating! 

A few of you might, I hope, set aside 10-15 minutes per week and find a few things to do in the Awesome Privacy checklist, like setting up credit monitoring, lock down privacy settings on your social media, etc. 

A Path Forward

You may be wondering where we go from here. As I mentioned earlier, technology, even AI,  is a tool that has both positive and negative implications. 

Burying our head in the sand has never proved to be an effective option. It is more important than ever to understand this technology to be prepared to navigate our future successfully.

It is imperative we embrace, learn and thoughtfully engage in this new world. Ivaylo Durmonski rightly argues Critical Thinking is fundamental. 

The ability to operationalize information, weaponize Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) findings, and execute Deep Fake and Social Engineering attacks is unprecedented. It is no longer Nation States, though their power increases exponentially, that have the exclusive capability to surveil, track, or exploit individuals, but through Open Source tools, education and AI empowerment, anyone can become their own single-entity “intelligence agency.”    

The responsibility lies within ourselves to become our own defenders. The effort required for a non-technologist, everyday person is going to make Sisyphus’ struggle seem simple.  

There are alternatives like the Fediverse for social media and applications. While I enjoy self-hosting applications and tinkering with technology, the friction is going to prevent adoption from normal, everyday users. 

I do think we can thoughtfully engage , learn, and positively use these tools. The opportunity to learn is unprecedented. We literally have the best tutors in the world at our disposal who can teach us any topic we want to know, probably at an expert level. 

There will certainly be great advances in many areas and improve various aspects of life. 

I think the best thing we can do is learn, understand, and become aware of what is possible and share that information to empower others. 

I’m excited to see what you learn. Let me know in the comments what you are working on. I’ll have more for you soon on things I am doing. 

And, my workout was great, I feel much better. Thanks for the reminder, Apple.