My partner Albert has long been arguing on his blog (which you should be reading) that technology is bringing massive changes to society and we are going to have to change the way we think about things in reaction to these changes. One of those areas is privacy and the “post privacy world” that we are entering.
Last week he wrote this about the Ashley Madison hack and argued that society needs to be accepting of and forgiving of transgressions like using a website to arrange extramarital affairs. When I read that post, I thought “oh my, that’s pretty out there.” Mind you, I don’t disagree with Albert’s point at all, I just thought most people aren’t going to see it that way.
So I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see Farhad Manjoo make essentially the same argument in the New York Times.
Farhad quotes a security expert at the end of his post:
True online security is not just defending against compromise, it’s operating under the assumption that compromise will happen.
And of course that is true for the technologists who work in the teams that strive to keep our systems secure. But if you, like Albert and Farhad did, take that point to its logical conclusion, then all of us will have are in for having our deepest darkest secrets outed at some point. So let’s hope society becomes more forgiving over time. It’s going to have to.
