Zones of Information Privacy

One privacy expression available to me is the choice of how I share information about myself. This expression is something everyone in the world chooses every day, whether we do it consciously or not.

Part of existing in 21st century societies is being exposed to intense and enduring coercion regarding how I should decide to make a choice. The zeitgeist is to overshare my information, or worse yet, to abandon altogether my responsibility to my soul and to my community, which is to make these choices rightly based on my circumstance.

As I have studied privacy, it has been helpful for me to think about information sharing within a concept of zones separated by trust boundaries, so that I can visualize the location and movement of my information.

Zero Zone - Unshared information

My unexpressed thoughts live here. The complete and detailed biometric information of my body, too. This is the place of hopes, dreams, desires, fantasies, and theories. I believe that a healthy person is most clearly in collaboration with the body, mind and soul when holding and contemplating information in Zone Zero. All my choices and privacy expressions continue to be open to me in this zone, and I experience coercion only insofar that I allow it.

Zone One - Intimate sharing

It is typically a bad idea to try to live much of my life in Zone Zero. I crave relationship, friendship, and mutual trustworthy interaction. I think we all long to be surrounded by just the right amount of people living in a just society. Zone One contains those people who I am in closest relationship with, those with whom I share my dreams and thoughts, who may know aspects of my mind or body even better than I know it myself. These people are so close to me that it would be impractical or even impossible for me to keep some of my most private information from them. By extremely close proximity and by intimate relationship, they receive the information I naturally exude, and they are entrusted with safekeeping those most vulnerable parts of me.

Zone Two - Consensual sharing

Family and friends that I love and care for aren't exposed to my naturally emanating information, like those in Zone One are. Yet I regularly share with them personal or sensitive or unfinished information, which is a hallmark of a loving and trusted relationship. I don't believe that any machine or organization can ever be in Zone Two, I believe that this zone is still reserved for other souls with whom I might share with for purposes of care, love, friendship or other altruistic reasons. My shields are down by choice in Zone Two, whereas in Zone One the other party is inside the shields.

Zone Three - Transactional sharing

In Zone Three I am either consciously or subconsciously sharing based on the expectations of a beneficial result. My sharing is not altruistic; I am getting something for my sharing. I believe most of my conscious day-to-day information privacy choices are located here. When I consult a doctor, use a social media service, use GPS location devices, pay with my credit card, when I share my thoughts with a coworker, when I sign up for a newsletter or when I leverage a algorithmic language platform, I am choosing to transact with another party using my information in exchange for the value I may receive.

If this sounds a little cold, I won't disagree; I believe such "cold" decisions are how we experience nature outside of the prior zones. It is entirely natural for us to weigh the risk and reward of our actions within our minds, in an instant, as is often required. In fact, the better a person is at doing this, the more reward they typically realize.

Zone Four - Societal sharing

I am compelled within my society to provide certain information about myself.  For example, I must obtain an identification card to live or travel. I must walk down a public street that is surveilled and stored by society's camera. Disturbingly, this can include highly intimate information such as where I live, where I am at almost all times, who I have voted for (if I live anywhere that allows voting), or what the detailed biometrics of my body are. While society may claim my information is protected, in practice societies and governments take little care to protect it, and I have no guarantee of protection or recourse if the information is made public due to theft or the negligence of the society.

This information zone contains potentially the worst type of sharing: it is sharing compelled by society using the threat of harm; it is used for society's own ends disregarding the autonomous soul; the information can be breached and used by maleficent actors, and there is no practical recourse or prevention available to me when I am harmed by society's negligence or deliberate violation.

Infinity Zone - Unprotected information

Everything we make public, or everything that is made public through acts of theft or compulsion, is in the Infinity Zone. It is not Zone Five, because it has no boundary; it is instead the Infinity Zone because there is no end to how the information can be used or what the consequences of the use can be to me, the individual. Consequences from information placed in the infinity zone can be invisible to me, such as a decision about hiring or credit that is based on information about me. Consequences can also be unbound by time, such as information about me that will be permanently retrievable if they are reported by a news organization or stored by a data broker and either published or sold. Consequences that are unbound by time and that are invisible to me have the potential for infinite consequences.

As we move outward through the zones, the level of trust we have in the people we share with goes steadily down, and in a just or moral world the degree of accountability would rise accordingly.