Bits of Freedom and privacy in 2016
2016 was the year in which privacy went mainstream.
Major Hollywood movies like James Bond and Jason Bourne were overflowing with eavesdropping spies and Oliver Stone made a film about Snowden for the general public. Privacy suddenly also received more attention closer to home. The NPO organised the Privacy Weeks with a big privacy test, a number of lectures by the University of the Netherlands and the television programme Hunted. For the very first time, the highly popular TV programme ‘De Wereld Draait Door’ dedicated time to our Big Brother Awards. Maurits Martijn and Dimitri Tokmetzis even managed to write a bestseller about privacy. Their book Je hebt wél iets te verbergen (“Yes you DO have something to hide”) held the number one position in the non- fiction bestseller charts for weeks.
Businesses have also started to realise that their customers consider privacy a fundamentally important value. WhatsApp is currently encrypting all of its users’ messages and Apple has started to pay explicit attention to the question how their different products protect the privacy of the user.
This new focus is ultimately a response to the increasing importance of data in our society. Data flows have turned existing power relationships on their head. Governments and businesses alike are doing everything they can to analyse as much data as possible, as quickly as possible, in order to get a grip on their citizens and users. The urgency of the work of Bits of Freedom is therefore increasing rapidly too.