Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
There's a tricky three-way traffic light in my neighbourhood. If you're southbound, there are two lanes and the left one is a forced turn, but it's deceiving because it visually lines up with the single-lane road on the other side of the lights. If you want to go straight you have to be in the right lane.
I pass through this intersection a lot, and I'm used to drivers being unaware that they are in the forced turn lane, so I always proceed carefully because my usual route is straight through.
One day last fall, I pulled up to the intersection in the right lane, windows down and enjoying a nice day. In the left lane was a car driven by a young woman. I'm 50, and she looked to me as if she was just old enough to drive.
When the light turned green I proceeded straight through the intersection, then realized that she was also going straight through. The road narrows quickly, and she looked over at me in annoyance because I was unexpectedly (from her perspective) quite close to her.
I yielded, let her go ahead and fell in behind her. Since I'm used to this I didn't attempt to wave at her or signal that she had made an error.
A bit farther down, the road again becomes two lanes. She moved into the right lane and slowed down until I passed her. I purposely didn't look over at her.
We came to the next stoplight. She pulled up beside me and, through the open window, I heard her say: "Hey." I glanced over at her.
And she took my picture with her smartphone.
I reflexively snapped my head the other way. Before I could say or do anything else, she peeled off to the right and was gone.
The light turned green and I carried on. Soon, a number of questions flooded into my head. What's she going to do with my picture? I guess she could post it on her Facebook page with the caption, "This is the moron who cut me off today." Or maybe there's a website called badtorontodrivers.com?
Then I realized with a start that she'd been behind me for long enough to take a picture of my licence plate, too. Is there a hacker lurking in some dark corner of the Internet with a way to use my plate number to figure out who I am? My name, address and phone number? If he gets that much, I assume he can learn everything about me in short order.
I realized that taking my picture was a threat. She was saying to me: "I can hurt you. I can use this information, and you won't be able to do anything about it, even if what I say with it isn't true. Now you're going to be afraid because you don't know what I'll do with it." Never mind that she almost certainly couldn't do anything to hurt me with just a picture.
As our lives become more and more entangled with the Internet, we're giving up our privacy inch by inch. For many of us, it's impossible to live without a smartphone now, and we give up plenty of personal information to the people who built our OS.
When we click "Accept" on the Terms of Service screen for a new app we installed, we likely gave programmers permission to track our every movement to within a few metres, whether we're off to our weekly medieval-role-playing group or our lawyer's office. We may also have granted them access to our Contacts list and/or the phone numbers we call.
Every Web search we do reveals something about us to the search-engine operator. Those who use Web-based e-mail services expose their private lives to a company that scans their thoughts and feelings, fears and foibles, and categorizes them according to keywords.
When we participate in social media, computers are building a profile about us, based in part on their analysis of those with whom we interact – and for those of us of a certain age, that means "friends" we haven't seen in 25 years.
There is incredible promise in the Internet of Things. When roads and cars talk to each other, we can cut energy consumption and highway deaths. When air conditioners talk to smartphones, we can save money on electricity. These and untold other small miracles can only be achieved with free-flowing data.
There's no way to put this genie back in the bottle. Privacy means something much different from what it did even a few years ago, and it's changed forever. Some will say that the only ones who should worry are those with something to hide. Millions of Target and Home Depot customers would disagree. I wonder if the data that are being collected on me are secure.
The heartbreaking circumstances surrounding the death of Rehtaeh Parsons and other incidents show that young people need to be inculcated early with a sense of how wrong it is to use information about others to threaten and coerce, to humiliate and blackmail.
We need to make sure these issues are addressed in our schools. It's time to admit that there's no playbook for this. Some of these young people will have their hands on the levers of a power more profound than anything we can imagine.
Let's start by making sure they understand that you shouldn't use your smartphone as a weapon.
Nikku Nayar lives in Toronto.