It’s Columbus Day, a day to ponder the miracle of discovery to some, or the day to celebrate undocumented immigration to others.  Choosing the discovery theme, because otherwise this would be just another day the courts are closed for me, it presents an opportunity to write about personal privacy and what we’ve lost.

Over at Healthblawg, there’s a post about Microsoft’s new HealthVault.  This is a nice, neutral subject, and hence a good way to enter this discussion without the baggage that 9/11 terrorist fearmongers bring to the table.  After all, I’m not a terrorist.  You’re not a terrorist (you aren’t, right?).  We can all agree that we are against terrorism. 

But we have all seen a doctor at some point, even if only briefly.  And that physician wrote down stuff in a “chart”, a piece of paper where the doc records information about us.  I never looked at my “chart”, and I really don’t know what is in there.  I did watch over her shoulder one day, but it didn’t make any sense to me and, frankly, I couldn’t read her handwriting anyway.  But I’m okay with the fact that she wrote it down, because next time I see her she will remember me and why I came there before.  And I trust her to write things down accurately.  Why would she lie?

So while it’s okay that my doctor keeps my medical info on hand, I really don’t want her showing it to my next door neighbor.  He’s a nice guy, and I like him a lot, but he really doesn’t need to know it.  And when he asks me “How are you?” and I say “Fine”, I don’t want him correcting me.  My “fine” should be good enough for him.

But the truth is that I have no secrets.  Not anymore.  Maybe my neighbor doesn’t know my cholesterol level, but the government does.  Or at least it does if it want to know.  It knows all about me, and you, because we are ordinary citizens living ordinary lives the way ordinary people do. 

We see doctors.  We have charts.  We use banks.  Our children to go school.  We use cellphones.  We use computers (some more than others).  We have licenses.  All kinds of licenses.  We file tax returns.  We buy houses.  We just buy.  Clothing, cars, food, books.  We use credit cards to buy these things.  We leave a huge trail behind us as we go through life, detailing the commonplace nuts and bolts of our daily travels.

Science has become very good at taking snippets of our lives and piecing them together to draw rather broad conclusions about what we do and who we are.  It can’t stop AIDS, but it can make a computer that can listen in on your cellphone conversations for key words that will alert another computer that you are up to no good.  It can even listen to your conversation when the phone isn’t on.  Too bad that in the scheme of scientific priorities, this is higher than curing disease.

There are benefits to being able to know everything, just in case the government needs to.  They can use it to protect us.  But this applies more to us ordinary people than to people who are bent on wreaking havoc and destruction.  They are more cautious than the rest of us about the trail they leave behind.  We aren’t cautious at all.  We don’t think we have any reason to be cautious, and it isn’t worth the effort.

There was a time when we boarded a plane to fly to another city in America and did not have to prove our identity.  I think about those days whenever I enter an airport.  It was one of the perks of being an American, the freedom to move about the country at will because I was an American and it was my right.  Not so anymore.  Is it a big deal to have to show my drivers license to some security guard I don’t know?  Not really, but the loss of freedom doesn’t happen in one shot.  It’s death by a thousand knives. 

And so Microsoft, the only entity that knows more about every individual in American than the government, has developed HealthVault.  The name suggests that our medical information is safe with them.  After all, it’s in a vault.  But who has the keys to the vault?  I suppose that Microsoft will have them.  And I’m sure the government either has them, or can get them.  Insurance companies will no doubt demand them, or refuse to pay the obligatory 12 cents on the dollar. 

Every time I read a story about how somebody “goofed” and left the back door to a vault open, I chuckle.  No, it isn’t funny, but I just love irony and find it wherever I can.  When we call customer service and find out that somebody named “Stewart” in Bangalore knows all about us, I wonder just how tight the security is over there.  Do they have parties in Bangalore where they talk about my issues with pottery barn? 

Then there’s the lost laptop problem, where we are “required” to tell our deepest personal information despite its utter irrelevancy because “that’s our policy.”  But when some new-hire twinkie forgets the notebook computer at Starbucks, this top secret private information about 27 million people is now floating out there.  Some vault, right?

I don’t plan on uploading my health records into Bill Gate’s vault.  Frankly, I’m in excellent health, as anyone can see.  No one needs to know more about my health than that.  And I want to keep a few secrets for myself.  For those of you who believe that privacy is an anachronism, and that your personal safety is at risk if the government cannot immediately access every piece of information about every person in the United States, do whatever you have to do with your health care records.  I’m sure that young Stewart in Bangalore cares deeply about your privacy.