Privacy means different things to different people. To some, it’s secrecy. To others, it means anonymity. To some others, it’s associated with criminality.
But privacy is really about power.
When the web was invented, its openness was key. “The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information,” Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, wrote in 1997. “Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished.”
That openness encouraged people around the world to move their lives, in part, online. And with it, their data, identity, financial information and other key components of their lives. The global pandemic has only increased that data inertia. Now, that information has leaked from our grasp, and is under the purview of…