Owen Arden, a graduate researcher in Cornell University’s Department of Computer Science whose research focuses on Internet and mobile data security, comments on the lesson to be learned from the scandal that followed the FBI’s investigation into emails associated with former CIA Director David Petraeus.
Arden says:
“Most systems today give us very weak privacy guarantees, and this story illustrates that weak privacy is effectively no privacy.
“Understanding what kind of metadata is collected by the programs you run and the websites you visit is usually very difficult. Determining how that data might be shared is often impossible. We shouldn't have to trust companies like Google so completely, but the incentive to lower our expectation of privacy is growing.
“The unfortunate truth is that those who truly care about privacy are forced to opt-out of services that have become an everyday part of life.”
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