Why Privacy Matters

by Marvin Dumont

Digitization is making privacy dead — thanks to cookies, biometric data, 24/7 cameras, and other tracking tools. But innovation could also resurrect it.

Privacy is worth fighting for. Losing it means losing individual power to untrusted governments, institutions, and unethical third parties such as hackers, and even social platforms that sell your data without consent.

Lack of consent is a top reason why invasion of privacy can be immoral — assuming there isn’t a compelling reason to do so such as criminal investigation or national-security considerations.

Bureaucrats, law enforcement, organizations, and advertisers have normalized the practice of monitoring people 24/7. That’s a problem.

When individuals are (pejoratively) labelled as “users” or even “subjects” it dehumanizes them and removes the dignity and respect that should be inherent in human relations. Big Brother (like Beijing) tends to treat people as serfs or creatures whose worth is to solely serve the watchtower’s objectives.

Here are a few consequences of being watched all the time:

1. It changes your behavior. People feel pressured to conform to others, and to neglect their conscience. It’s coercive.
2. Staying private gives you more freedom to act as you see fit. Preferring anonymity doesn’t mean a person has anything to hide at all.
3. Constant interference and meddling in private affairs lead to inauthenticity. People wear social masks when they’re watched, and this can harm relationships. Lies become more common.
4. Everyone makes mistakes. But if your discussions, messages, photos and videos are permanently stored on the web, you can be subject to unfair attacks in the future. When our minor mistakes are memorialized, it threatens our reputation.

Individual liberty means the freedom to make humanly mistakes every now and then. However, Big Brother takes advantage of these by coercing or threatening people with social backlash or regulatory punishment.

ABOUT APOLLO

Apollo (APL) all-in-one privacy currency combines features of mainstream cryptocurrencies into a truly private and unregulatable platform. With 2-second block speed, it’s also one of the fastest cryptos on Earth .

Apollo stands out in the area of privacy. The platform lets you transact and send data in total anonymity via tech such as Encrypted Messaging, Private Ledger, Decentralized Exchange, IP Masking 2.0 and Coin Mixing.

Encrypted Messaging allows any user to send and receive untraceable messages, as well as, data files from one account to another. Check out the Messenger feature on Apollo Wallet which is a secure channel for communication.

IP Masking 2.0 uses encrypted-data protocol to hide your real-time physical location. It may be possible to use the platform in restrictive jurisdictions such as China where Tor is blocked. (See article.)

Coin Mixing (Apollo Mixer) is groundbreaking tool (built by our developer team) that hides the sender, recipient and transaction amounts. It obfuscates the money trail so you can do business safely and privately. (See article.)