No More Safety In Numbers

Twitter is a dangerous thing, isn't it! After nearly upsetting all the internetz by briefly tweeting an embargoed (notice to not publish) story today, it has suddenly became clear how a momentary lapse in concentration or a misheard/misread instruction could have galaxy-exploding consequences. 

A galaxy exploding - yesterday.

 Today's news happens to be rife with confidentiality related stories. This story in today's Guardian  is especially jaw gape inducing. But ongoing injunction stories along with the recent Wikileaks debacle have all highlighted a threat to confidentiality and privacy that the internet currently presents.

Will we one day just have to live without secrets?

Stay with me here, but one of the main concerns about the nearing completion of the quantum computer (within the next two or three decades) is that the whole idea of encryption will become obsolete over night. Once a workable quantum computer is up and running, all the passwords and captchas and pin numbers and secret questions about your mother's maiden name in the world will be unable to offer any protection whatsoever.

What sort of world this will lead to is complicated, scary, and beyond the scope of this article (and my mind), but rest assured it will be as epochal as the printing press. 

The quantum computer will mean captchas are
useless - Well, it's something.

The current problem with privacy is just a microcosm of the impending quantum revolution. How do I know this? I know this because the problem of the future is nearly already here - information is no longer worth anything.

One of the largest resources of information on the planet, Wikipedia, is free, as is access to the majority of the internet's content. Going by today's news, the only things people are prepared to pay to find out are the contents of celebrity voice mail messages, and the reason for that is significant.

In economics terms, what sets the price for any commodity is demand (how many people want it) and supply (how easy it is to get). If loads of people want it and it's difficult to get, then the price is high – which is why celebrity phone messages get big bucks from tabloids. However, what has happened with the internet is that loads of people want information (which would make it valuable), but there is free access to most of it (that is, supply is nearly infinite) – therefore, the actual cost becomes, in effect, zero.

How is this relevant to privacy and confidentiality? Well, the game has changed. People once bought newspapers because there was no other way to find out the day's news (supply was limited). Information was worth something and keeping secrets could mean income. That no longer applies. Information is nearly free, and with it privacy and confidentiality become worthless.

One of the biggest things Twitter has done is reduce the value of secrets and information to a whimsy. Anyone with information can broadcast it far and wide for no cost, which others can receive at no cost. Is this good? Is this bad? Well, it's definitely different.

We're in the middle of a revolution. This is the first stage in a new world where real secrets could become the most valuable assets on the planet, while your private information's only refuge will be a very precarious safety in numbers.