Groupthink

There's an entire, vibrant privacy conference business.  There are privacy conferences somewhere in the world every week of the year.  Some are commercial, some are taxpayer-funded.  Why are they so boring?

Because they take one of the most interesting topics in the world, privacy, and discuss and debate it from an insular perspective, namely, from the perspective of people who are in the privacy "industry."  I'm very clearly part of this "industry" too.

The privacy "industry", or "privacy industrial complex", as some wags have dubbed it, consists of privacy professionals at companies, privacy advocates, privacy regulators, privacy consultants, etc.  So, conferences tend to be incredibly banal statements about who's more committed to privacy, and begin with stentorian declarations, like "privacy is a fundamental human right, therefore...".  Or they consist of a "debate" between two privacy advocates, which is like listening to two members of the National Rifle Association debate the social benefits of gun control.  Or they consist of paid-corporate advocates trashing their competitors' privacy record, often without disclosing who is paying them to do so.

The interesting privacy debates, in my opinion, are the debates where privacy is balanced against other fundamental human rights, like freedom of speech, or balanced against other social goals, like encouraging innovation, or tested against other yardsticks, like regulatory cost-benefit analysis.  But very little of that occurs at privacy conferences, because virtually no one from outside the privacy "industry" speaks at such events.  E.g., rather than hearing privacy-people talk endlessly about the need for more privacy regulation, I'd like to hear from an economist evaluating whether such regulations are effective, or whether their costs exceed their benefits.  Rather than hearing privacy-people talk about the need to create a "right to be forgotten", I'd rather hear from a free speech advocate on how such a right would undermine freedom of expression.  Rather than hear privacy-people talk about how technology needs to be reined in, and subject to bureaucratic prior approval (in other words, slowed-down), I'd rather hear from people who are committed to building modern and dynamic economies about how (archaic) privacy laws are hampering the creation of innovation-based economies.

But privacy conferences have largely become like any other conclaves of groupthink.  At a Vatican conclave, you don't get a serious discussion about the health benefits of promoting the use of condoms.  At a Tea Party rally, you don't get a serious discussion about whether government welfare benefits are a guarantor of minimal human decency.

I have pretty much stopped going to most privacy conferences, at least for now.  When I go, it's mostly to have a chance to have one-on-one chats with people I'd like to meet or catch-up with.  I think privacy is the most interesting topic in the world.  But groupthink gatherings don't move the debate forward.  If I was at an NRA meeting, I'd advocate for gun control to help reduce the shockingly high murder rates in the US, and I'd probably be run out of the room.  There are so many smart people in the privacy profession, why aren't we challenging each other more, to take a small, wild step outside the privacy-industrial-complex, and actually engage more with the real world?