Privacy Herd Immunity

If this hasn’t happened to you, then you’ve probably had a friend tell you this has happened to them. They were at a party, where they talked about something random like tennis rackets, and then the next day, when they got online, they were shown ads for tennis rackets. How did that happen?

In my personal experience, a lot of people assume that since they never typed the words “tennis racket” into their phone or computer, then somehow the companies that spy on us to sell us stuff must have overheard us speaking. They must be able to turn on our phone’s microphones to listen in on our conversations. It’s not a crazy idea, since devices like Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa exist, and they are able to parse what we say for the purpose of buying things and marketing to us. And anyone who is even vaguely aware of the claims of Edward Snowden will know that governments and corporations can not be trusted to only be listening when they say they’re listening.

On the other hand, with even a little technical knowledge, you’ll know that it’s one thing to get Google Home to understand what you’re saying when you’re speaking directly to it with a clear set of predefined phrases, and another thing for a computer to listen from a microphone in your pocket in a noisy bar and pick out relevant key words. And it’s a whole other level of computing technology to be able to take in what would…