When discussing mass surveillance and privacy issues, people almost exclusively attribute these problems to governments and corporations. However, I don't often, if ever see people discussing the ways in which ordinary people contribute to these problems.
Cameras
The most obvious form of privacy breaching by ordinary people is by the use of cameras, whether they are phone cameras or property cameras. Firstly, phone cameras, virtually everyone has one and possesses the ability to record anything or anyone at any time, provided said person or thing is in front of them. Since everyone has the ability to press record at any time, this results in people recording any little strange thing that happens and possibly posting it publicly online with no thought into the people that may be in the video without or even against their consent. While there are cases when recording people against their consent may be the right thing to do, for example, major crimes, situations in which you feel threatened, or are interacting with someone with greater legal power than you such as a police encounter, recording someone that poses no harm to anyone just because they may be doing something peculiar, I find to be a breach of their privacy. What's worse is when these videos or pictures are posted online. If the person in the video or photo is identifiable, this may pose of consequence to them even if they are doing nothing wrong.
Property cameras are also an issue. Almost every business has cameras installed and now, people installing cameras on their house is becoming more common due to wireless options that you can control from a phone being available. While most business cameras can be attributed to corporations and public area cameras to governments, small businesses or even non-business buildings will have cameras. Almost every single place you go, there are cameras recording you. I am aware that for a lot of places, cameras are used to assist when crimes are committed. However, as with the previous paragraph, people will often just upload other people doing whatever online. Home cameras are also common now so every time you walk up to knock on someone's door or deliver them something, you could be recorded and posted online even if you do nothing wrong. People may also have poor security on these cameras that connect to the internet and this allows for people to view a stream they aren't supposed to see. You can even find websites that find poorly secured cameras. Even if you think a camera is just recording to help with potential crime, it may be poorly secured or have someone looking for posting material observing the footage on-scene and allow for again, anyone that appears in the video to be recorded and posted online.
Another problem with people using internet-based cameras and posting videos online is what the companies do with the media. When video is sent to these companies' servers, it is subject to their policies. Not only could someone be recorded without their consent, their image could be added to a facial recognition database or used for AI testing and the like. Even if a video or picture of someone is never shown publicly, it could still be in a cloud storage somewhere and used by a company someway.
An issue I noticed as a child pertaining to cameras and consent to be photographed and recorded is that parents can consent on behalf of the child for people to photograph them. This is especially true with schools in which the consent is exclusively granted by the parent even if the child is in high school and old enough to make their own signature-required choices. Children should be able to say "No" for themselves when it comes to this. Parents and family also shouldn't post children's pictures or even an adult family's pictures online for the reasons stated in the previous paragraphs.
Ignorance And Voluntarism
While people's privacy being ignored or violated by others would be an obvious problem, a problem people may not recognize is privacy breaches done to oneself. People often use the the same real life information for things that are not necessary to function in society. All the store or club memberships, registration information for various things, all these things that people use the same, real information for. All these entities that someone gives their address, name, phone number, email, et cetera. Think of all the companies that have this info, all given voluntarily. People will use the same information everywhere on the internet also, still often real life identifiable information. Online, people will use their real life used firstnames and lastnames, tell their place of work/schooling, and have other identifiable people they associate with linked to them somehow depending on the platform.
People may also be required by a workplace or school to sign up and use services that the school/workplace will require you give this information to. Schools will make you sign up for online accounts wherever for school projects using identifiable information and what's worse, some of these projects people make using these services can be indexed by search engines resulting in information they may not want to be public, being so against their wishes. All because a school required them to do so or else their grade suffers. Schools may also require students to use software that students may not consent to the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy of, or even worse, require students to use software that is essentially spyware that requires low-level access to a computer, usually being cheating detection software. Workplaces may also have these problems. People should be able to choose the software they use and control what information they give to services. For example, people should be able to choose an open source/libre software suite or application over a proprietary equivalent.
Tools Of Surveillance
IoT devices have become a plague on society. They are internet-connected gadgets that pretty much just exist to collect data. Whether it be home assistants, 'smart'-whatever, or even the home cameras I mentioned earlier, people are increasingly installing these things into their homes unaware or uncaring that they are collecting data from the residents or even visitors of the household for the companies that produce them. Household appliances, including TVs don't need to connect to the internet. Stop buying them, and if a non-internet-connected item isn't available, just don't let it connect. If it isn't just pure, blatant spyware, it will work just fine without internet.
Modern cars are also a huge problem now. They are over-engineered, overpriced, data collecting garbage. Cars are now able to connect to the internet and since most cars have computers with a screen now, this means people will use them for whatever while allowing these vehicles to send all the data to the companies that make the vehicles. While this article is about surveillance and privacy, let me just tell you quickly my thoughts on modern vehicles. They are all overpriced rip-offs riddled with spyware and even worse, are more expensive and harder to repair because of all the computer crap in them. Cars are also one of the primary reasons people go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt; therefore, being a major financial burden to society. There is absolutely no reason anyone should buy a car for more than a 4-digit price tag (pounds, euros, English-speaking countries' dollars). Only drive cars that were made before 2010 and don't have a computer like what we see today.
Education
People just aren't educated about this. The only place to learn about privacy and anonymity is the internet and even then, it's mostly about online privacy, there is very little about real-world privacy. People have begun to understand the online aspects of surveillance and entities using their data for whatever but they are still unaware of the real life problems we face when it comes to privacy. People need education about online and real-world security, privacy, and how information is used. Schools should have at least some form of education about this. One thing I thought of is just having someone that works in the computer security industry come to a school once every semester and tell online security information to students. Children clearly aren't educated enough on this since many if not most children around the teenager age have social media accounts and very commonly use identifiable information that shouldn't be on the internet. Adults have this problem too.
Mitigation
How can we mitigate some of the surveillance done by regular people? Well, for cameras, you can cover your head and face when in public so you are harder to identify on camera. I have been doing this since about 2017 and have never faced any trouble for doing so. As for information people give out voluntarily, just don't give any information to anyone. Cancel store memberships and the like. Try to use software that can be proven doesn't have data collection and try to use services anonymously. If you can't due to school or work, do what you can to protest the requirements. Stop using random household appliances that connect to the internet. and if you really need a property camera, use one that doesn't connect to the internet. Tell other people not to use these items as other people using them is what may record you even if you don't use IoT devices yourself. Remove any and all information you can from the internet that could possibly be used to identify you in real life or even online. The less that is out there, the better.
Written 2022-2-17 Published 2022-3-1