OMNIVOROUS READER

When my mother was a teenager, she was the only all-night operator in a town of about 2,000 souls. The hours were long, so she eavesdropped on private conversations. When she got home, she shared the latest gossip with my grandmother, and within a few hours, everyone in town knew everyone else’s business.

In theory, it still works that way, except, of course, that our personal data is managed by computers — our iPhones, laptops, tablets and the clandestine eavesdropping monsters that lurk in the mystical ether — which speed up and amplify the collection process while disseminating our confidential information globally. The result, however, is the same: There are no secrets, finally or ever.

This is why Lawrence Cappello’s On Privacy: Twenty Lessons to Live By is a timely little book (151 pages) that’s surely worth the few minutes it takes to read it. It won’t be the most exciting book you’ve read, but it might be one of the most important.

Cappello is a professor of U.S. legal and constitutional history at the University of Alabama. He’s the author of None of Your Damn Business: Privacy in the United States from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age, and he’s a certified information privacy professional. He’s on top of this data collection stuff, and his advice might help you sleep a little more soundly.

We’re hammered daily by claims that the equity in our homes is being stolen, our bank accounts plundered, our reputations besmirched, and our children driven to suicide. And then there are the endless scams that pop up on our screens (I consider everything a scam until it proves itself otherwise, and then I know for sure it is a scam). And now the government — who should be protecting us — has gotten into the info-distribution game via the unsupervised plundering of heretofore confidential databases.

On Privacy is written for those who are fearful about the disclosure of their personal data but who are reluctant to toss out their electronic devices. Cappello cuts through the noise and confusion and enumerates in short, sensible steps the necessary safeguards we need to adopt to be secure in the digital age. He offers practical insights into why privacy matters, how it shapes free societies, and how it rules our lives in an increasingly interconnected electronic world.

What Cappello doesn’t do is bombard his readers with terrifying stories about unfortunate fellow citizens who’ve suffered life-altering internet crimes. Horrifying examples only encourage despair. Instead, Cappello begins by addressing the requisite rationalization, “The Nothing-to-Hide Trap,” in which we maintain that if we are full-time do-gooders, we have nothing to fear from those who’d access our personal data. “Our personal information exists in snippets,” he writes. “When taken out of context, the private details of our lives . . . too often paint a picture of us that is skewed and not entirely true,” and thus we are often misrepresented. Since first impressions matter, we should focus on what computers collect and, more importantly, the distribution of our personal data.

Cappello breaks down the threats to our privacy into easy-to-read chapters that present the problems and suggest solutions. After a brief discussion of “Privacy Is Essential to Mental Health,” he appends suggestions on “How to Talk About Privacy’s Mental Health Benefits,” followed by “How to Protect Your Mental Health Through Privacy.” It’s all very straightforward.

He claims, for example, that we have the right to be forgiven our youthful transgressions. We make mistakes. “Unfortunately, the mistakes we make in life will remain instantly accessible,” he writes, “to any stranger inclined to take thirty seconds for a quick online search.”

Moreover, we are constantly under surveillance; our movements are tracked by our phones, computers and cameras on the street. If that’s not intrusive enough, outside sources can read your private electronic communications. He offers a solution: Secure your email with PGP encryption, a popular tool that scrambles your writing so that only the intended recipient can read it. The same is true for texts; encrypted text messaging apps are readily available and require only a quick download to your phone. These email and text apps also have an automatic delete option. And he recommends you buy a Faraday bag, a small pouch that blocks all signals; otherwise, you can be tracked by your phone even if you turn off your GPS.

Not only are we surveilled by private entities, but the government has, for many years, been poking into our business. Surveillance is the enemy of free expression: It discourages people from participating in political movements by instilling the fear they’ll be arrested for speaking out against the powerful, which inhibits the right of free assemblage as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Cappello reminds us that the “belief that the surveillance powers of the state must be constantly kept in check is a cornerstone of what it means to live in a free country.”

Most of Cappello’s recommendations are simple and easily implemented: “When in doubt, log out,” delete apps you aren’t using and any accounts associated with them, tape off the camera on your computer, clear your browser history, get rid of caches and cookies, turn off and lock your computer when not in use, and purchase your own Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which makes it difficult to track your online activity. And those are just a few of the suggestions that might save you money and safeguard your reputation. 

Of course, the obvious way to protect your future information — there’s little you can do about the past — is to disappear or “go dark,” as folks are wont to say. This would necessitate the destruction of all your electronics — computers, streaming devices, tablets, phones, smartwatches, etc., and all storage systems — thumbnail drives, hard drives, data stored in the cloud (the global network of remote servers that functions as a single ecosystem), old floppy disks, credit cards, etc. Everything. All of it. Then disappear. Forever.