Zero Privacy: Culture

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

In this future, technology advances in such a way that privacy becomes obsolete. In other words, no one has decided to give up privacy, it's just that trying to hold onto it is like trying to keep the horse and buggy around when everyone else has cars - it's a losing battle and isn't going to work in the long run.

The basic technology that allows this is untraceable, stealth micro-drones. They can be created anonymously and cheaply using 3D-printer farms. Defenses are possible but don't work 100% of the time, so any person, place or system can be compromised eventually. These drones also allow remote physical access to computer systems, and therefore given time will also allow an attacker to bypass any computer security.

For the purpose of this question, assume that the absolute best security in the world (government w/unlimited resources) can only keep information secure for a maximum of 6 days.

This is too broad of a scenario for one question, so this one will specifically focus on Civilian Culture.

How would zero privacy impact culture - things like relationships, schooling, child-rearing, job hunts, etc.

Updates For comments/questions:

Edit: To keep things narrower, answers should be loosely based on Western (US/Canada/France/etc). But keep in mind that that's just the start point, not the end.

1. I am looking for implications on a stable end state, not the transitionary phases.
2. I will be asking other questions to follow up on Government (politics, corruption, crime & law enforcement, etc), on Military, and on Business. So this question is mostly about the various interpersonal relations - is that narrow enough or does it need to be reduced further?
3. Drones aren't known to be able to defeat natural biological defenses yet (or rather, solutions to that problem aren't compatible with an effective drone). So thoughts and your internal body structure are safe, minus what a drone could obtain through most external scanning.
4. Security defines how long it takes for an area to be compromised, but once it's compromised anything that happens after that point is known immediately. You can have a top secret facility that's totally secure, but as soon as you start to use it - information or physical objects moving in and out - you open up holes and the countdown starts.
5. Everyone has access to the data - the big players with drones are all spying on each other, and can't keep the little players from spying on them. So all of the watchers are watching all the other watchers, anything from GoogleBook, to the NSA, to Jim down the street.
6. Computing resources are sufficiently advanced that all incoming data can be scanned and evaluated.

Bounty: The big thing I'd like to see is more thought on the implications of this as a mature culture. I see a lot of answers that feel more like "how things would work if our cultures had zero privacy suddenly introduced", but I feel that if this has been around for a while expectations and values will shift. How will people and groups adjust?