{"id":25903,"date":"2014-05-23T08:58:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T13:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25903"},"modified":"2014-05-23T09:00:10","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T14:00:10","slug":"mammals-dont-respond-well-to-surveillance-we-consider-it-a-threat-it-makes-us-paranoid-and-aggressive-and-vengeful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/23\/mammals-dont-respond-well-to-surveillance-we-consider-it-a-threat-it-makes-us-paranoid-and-aggressive-and-vengeful\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Mammals don\u2019t respond well to surveillance. We consider it a threat. It makes us paranoid, and aggressive and vengeful&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.privacyassociation.org\/publications\/if_you_cant_protect_the_data_burn_it_to_the_ground\" target=\"_blank\">Angelique Carson<\/a> reports on a recent IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium presentation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If marine biologist-turned-best-selling author Peter Watts is an expert on anything, it\u2019s mammals. Speaking to 400 or so privacy pros and regulators gathered last week at the IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium to talk privacy and data protection, he used that experience to send a rather jarring \u2014 and anything but conventional \u2014 message:<\/p>\n<p>Mammals don\u2019t respond well to surveillance. We consider it a threat. It makes us paranoid, and aggressive and vengeful. But we\u2019ll never win against the giant corporations and governments that watch us, Watts argued, so all we can develop is a surefire defense.<\/p>\n<p>Think \u201cscorched earth.\u201d If we can\u2019t protect the data, Watts posited, maybe we should burn it to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Hear him out: Mammals will always respond to the surveillance threat as they would any threat \u2014 with aggression, in the same way the natural selection process has shaped every other life form on this planet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnybody who thinks their own behavior isn\u2019t at least partly informed by those legacy circuits has not been paying attention,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Watts pointed to author David Brin\u2019s assertion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.privacyassociation.org\/publications\/how_do_we_stop_big_brother_we_look_back\" target=\"_blank\">during his keynote recently<\/a> at the IAPP\u2019s Global Privacy Summit that while our instinct is to pass a law aimed at telling governments and corporations to \u201cstop looking\u201d at us,  we should instead turn our gaze to them in the name of reciprocity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not telling them do not look,\u201d Brin said during his speech. \u201cIt\u2019s looking back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Edward Snowden is currently living in Russia after he tried to \u201clook back.\u201d And as someone who\u2019s worked a lot in the past with mammals, Watts knows that, biologically, looking back is a bad idea: \u201cTo get into a staring contest with a large, aggressive, territorial mammal primed to think of eye contact as a threat display \u2026 I can\u2019t recommend it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNatural selection favors the paranoid,\u201d Watts said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>H\/T to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.schneier.com\/blog\/archives\/2014\/05\/alan_watts_on_t.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bruce Schneier<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Angelique Carson reports on a recent IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium presentation: If marine biologist-turned-best-selling author Peter Watts is an expert on anything, it\u2019s mammals. Speaking to 400 or so privacy pros and regulators gathered last week at the IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium to talk privacy and data protection, he used that experience to send a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,10],"tags":[713,130,154,911],"class_list":["post-25903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-liberty","tag-biology","tag-evolution","tag-privacy","tag-surveillance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6JN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25903"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25905,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25903\/revisions\/25905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}