Is privacy even the point?

Hi,

A few weeks ago, just before coronavirus became front page news in the Netherlands, I had an email exchange with Maxim Februari. He’s one of the most important Dutch thinkers on technology and, well, everything really.

I wrote to Februari because I’d made a reconstruction Read, ‘How a small group of activists put Big Brother on trial – and won’. of the lawsuit against SyRI – a Dutch government system that links all kinds of data with the intention to detect benefit fraud.

Februari was a co-claimant in that lawsuit, which is why I sent him my piece for review. He did have some objections: he thought the piece focused far too much on privacy. I should have known, since he had previously written in a column NRC: ‘Die totale fraudeaanpak is niet veilig voor de burgers’ (in Dutch). about SyRI: "In 1989, I never heard anyone say that the citizens of East Germany revolted because they had so little privacy."

Privacy is not the point, Februari has been emphasising for ages. For me, the penny really dropped when reading the column NRC: ‘Gruwelijk misverstand: "privacy" is het punt niet’ (in Dutch). he wrote last week, about "corona apps" designed to help with the lockdown exit strategy in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

According to Februari, privacy is not the biggest problem; it’s about the rule of law. Privacy sounds like a private thing, a luxury, but that doesn’t describe that area at all. The general interest is at stake.

"We’re not going to abolish the rules because we have data now, are we? We’re not going to abolish the rule of law because we’re sick, are we?"

Food for thought.

Help wanted

Meanwhile, citizens in an increasing number of countries are being digitally monitored as part of the fight against coronavirus. Measures range from asking people in India and Poland to take selfies as proof that they stick to the quarantine rules, to a complicated scoring system in China.

My colleague Dimitri Tokmetzis will be following these developments in the coming period together with British journalist Morgan Meaker. They will keep an eye on what’s happening in relation to new measures, laws and technologies.

But they can’t do this alone: they’re looking for people all over the world who want to keep them up to date with how the situation evolves in their respective countries; experts who can provide legal, technical or policy explanations and who’d like to read along with articles for publication; and journalists to join the project.

In their callout ‘Keeping watch: help us track coronavirus surveillance around the world’. you can read more about the initiative and how to apply. Thank you in advance!

#coronafree

Let’s play a game. Take a grid, for example a checkerboard or a sheet of paper on which you’ve drawn a number of horizontal and vertical lines. Now choose a few squares and place a game piece, a coin or some other small object, on top of them.

The filled squares are "alive"; the empty squares are "dead". You can imagine them as organisms trying to survive.

Now there are three rules:

1. Overpopulation. Does a living square touch 4 or more living squares? Remove the object. This square has "died" because the area around it is too crowded.
2. Isolation. Does a living square only touch 0 or 1 living squares? Then the square will also die, this time because it is too isolated.
3. Birth. Does a dead square touch exactly 3 living squares? Then you can put something on it and that square becomes alive – it’s "born".

The rules are pretty simple – you can easily play the game with your kids – but the result is not. Depending on how you start, complicated patterns can quickly emerge.

The "Game of Life" was conceived by mathematician John Horton Conway, who died on 11 April 2020. Below he explains how he sometimes got tired of being associated with the game, after which he gladly goes on to demonstrate his "no-player never-ending" game, using almonds.

YouTube

If you want to read more about Conway and his work, I can recommend the profile Guardian: ‘John Horton Conway: the world’s most charismatic mathematician | Siobhan Roberts’. that Siobhan Roberts published in 2015. She also wrote the book, Genius at Play, about Conway.

Not yet convinced? Roberts describes him as a mix of Archimedes, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dalí and Richard Feynman. Wikipedia: ‘Richard Feynman’. You certainly can’t say that about every mathematician.

Before you go...

...Nina Polak’s latest article Read, ‘The Pandemic Century: what we can learn from a hundred years of virus outbreaks’. on a hundred years of epidemics was as interesting as it was exciting. "Epidemics are sometimes like operas in which people, animals and microbes all play leading roles."

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