The Peeping Tom Effect Makes Us Worry About the Wrong Threats to Our Privacy
How a psychological bias could be keeping us from protecting our data
Most of us know that we’ve become human data production engines, radiating our locations, interests, and associations for the benefit of others. A number of us are deeply concerned about that fact. But it seems that people only get really worked up when they discover that flesh and blood humans are listening to Alexa inputs or that Facebook employees are scoping out private postings. This is the Peeping Tom effect, which is the visceral reaction we have when we think about living, breathing agents observing our private lives, versus how we feel knowing that corporations are collecting the same information and storing it on their computers. There’s a good case to be made that the threat of corporate knowledge — even if it doesn’t involve knowledge by a human — is a greater threat to privacy than the threats we’re more inclined to vilify. Our tendency to fear the Peeping Tom is a psychological bias that will, in the end, do us more harm than good.
The obvious difference between corporations and machines versus humans is that humans are conscious beings, and they have personal opinions, plans, and intentions. Corporate entities and computer networks don’t. Even assuming these…
