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No privacy for Pascal – or us

[additional-authors]
January 7, 2015

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Amy Pascal.

Little more than a month ago she was the reigning queen of movie studiodom, the smart, zany, effervescent, sometimes sassy co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment — quite beloved, definitely revered and, notably, the only woman to run a major movie studio since Sherry Lansing. 

Since her appointment in 2006, Pascal has had the last word on every film Sony puts out, typically between 20 and 30 per year (233 since she started, according to the-numbers.com), among them Hollywood juggernauts such as the “Spider-Man” and James Bond franchises, and “The Da Vinci Code” movies. In recent years, Pascal shepherded “American Hustle,” “Captain Phillips,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Moneyball” and “The Social Network” all the way to Oscar nominations, taking home the heavy gold statuette for the latter, which now seems somewhat ironic: Pascal’s crowning film achievement is about an Internet company that mines and shares personal data. 

Until very, very recently, Pascal was known for simply being good at her job. But beginning on Nov. 24, when she, the public face of Sony Pictures, was thoroughly targeted, violated and smeared — first by anonymous assailants calling themselves “Guardians of Peace,” then by the press — and instantly became the highest-profile victim in the most insidious modern Internet crime, known as the #SonyHack.

In late December, a harrowing scene at Los Angeles International Airport revealed an anxious Pascal, looking air-travel disheveled as we all do after a flight, desperately trying to evade the flashing cameras determined to stalk her around the terminal. It was a sad sight: Pascal aimlessly wandering, grasping onto her husband, pleading for it to stop. But there was nowhere hide. Already laid bare by the hackers, who had leaked humiliating private emails, she was equally hamstrung in public because our over-sharing society feels a right to know. As Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg might say, privacy is so passé. 

If the #SonyHack revealed anything, it is that none of us is safe. Anyone using a smartphone, a social network, an online bank account or merely reading a website is surrendering — wittingly or unwittingly — mega bytes of personal data. Anyone with a personal computer is liable one day to get hacked, not just the bargain-seeking Target shoppers among us. 

We are all susceptible to the injuries inflicted upon Pascal.

It used to be that status could protect you. Gated mansions, tinted windows and first-class airline seats could afford at least the illusion of privacy. Certainly, the rich had more ways to hide from prying eyes than humans of a lower order — especially the poor, the mentally ill and convicted felons, who are granted no freedom from being observed in their various environments of incarceration. But no more. The great democratizing force known as the Internet has made it just as likely, and just as possible, that some of the most powerful people in society — like Pascal — are as vulnerable to being hacked as the average Joe. 

So how do we mere mortals protect ourselves from privacy privations when a powerful, corporate conglomerate like Sony was powerless to protect itself? 

Over the last few days, I decided to take a personal inventory of the ways I’ve intentionally or unintentionally exposed myself to the vicissitudes of the World Wide Web. On Sunday, I was perusing nordstom.com (their winter coat sale is a must) when I was prompted to seek out my “true fit.” Within seconds, I gave away my height, my weight and my bust size before deciding that I’d rather not see those numbers displayed myself. After that, I signed up for Personal Capital, an online asset management company that aggregates all your financial information, calculates your net worth and offers investment advice. It took maybe two or three minutes before I had input the names and passwords of every bank account, investment account, retirement account and credit card under my name. If anyone were to hack that, I’ll be even gladder that I also own a little bit of real estate.

It is difficult to tabulate the myriad ways data about me is revealed — Netflix knows what I watch; Amazon knows what I read; Google knows what I write, my romantic interests, and keeps a running tally on everything I am even the least bit curious about: people, news, health issues, lingerie, entertainments, international diplomacy — the list is frankly endless (I am very curious). The weird thing about our loss/surrender of privacy is that it is a twofold conundrum: Some of our data is stolen, like what happened to Sony, and other bits we offer up as readily as we once did unblemished animals in the ancient temple. 

Even in our radically datafied dystopia, it is difficult to calculate just how much we’ve lost from this loss of privacy. In addition to the precious numbers categories — Social Security, health insurance group, routing, checking and savings — there are the precious interpersonal categories that are harder to quantify. That is likely where Pascal was hurt the most. 

“If you reveal everything about yourself or it’s discoverable with a Google search, you may be diminished in your capacity for intimacy,” journalist Kate Murphy warned in a New York Times op-ed last fall. Citing the social penetration theory developed by Irwin Altman and Dalmas A. Taylor in the 1970s, Murphy recounted how relationships form based on a process of slow, selective, mutual disclosure. Study founder Altman described it as “a process of privacy regulation.”

“Information about yourself is like currency,” Murphy wrote. “The amount you spend on a person signifies how much you value the relationship. And that person compensates you in kind. That’s why it feels like theft when someone tells your secrets or data miners piece together your personal history — using your browsing habits, online purchases and social networks — and sell it. And it’s also why if you’re profligate with information about yourself, you have precious little to offer someone really special.”

Perhaps the greatest casualty of the over-sharing/data-stealing age is the opportunity for authentic human connection. Why get-to-know when you can just Google? Who or what can you trust in the age of the terabyte? Intimacy is for the ancients.

During the opening moments of “The Honorable Woman,” the most astonishing piece of television of 2014, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal delivers some stirring lines in voiceover: “Who do you trust?” she asks. “How do you know?

“We all have secrets. But sometimes, rarely, something can happen that leaves you no choice but to reveal it.” 

When the world intrudes where it shouldn’t, Jewish tradition offers space for storing secrets. In fact, there is a strange and special benediction offered when a large number of Israelites are seen gathered together, the Birchat Chacham HaRazim, blessing God, the knower and keeper of secrets.

How quaint, I thought, when I first heard of it. It used to be that God was the One who knew secrets. Nowadays, it is God and Google and Amazon and hackers and Nordstrom.

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