The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data

by Kevin D. Mitnick

I explained how I’ve spent the last twenty-five years working with Internet security and privacy. My friend let out a chuckle when I mentioned online privacy. “That sounds all fine and dandy,” he said, “but I’m not really worried. After all, I’m not a criminal, and I’m not doing anything bad. I don’t care if somebody looks at what I’m doing online.” Listening to my old friend, and his explanation on why privacy does not matter to him, I was saddened. I was saddened because I’ve heard these arguments before, many times. I hear them from people who think they have nothing to hide. I hear them from people who think only criminals need to protect themselves. I hear them from people who think only terrorists use encryption. I hear them from people who think we don’t need to protect our rights. But we do need to protect our rights. And privacy does not just affect our rights, it is a human right. In fact, privacy is recognized as a fundamental human right in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

online monitoring knows if you are sick, or sad, or horny.

Privacy is complex. It is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. We all have different reasons for sharing some information about ourselves freely with strangers and keeping other parts of our lives private.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has said, “no logs are good logs.”