Prologue + Chapter 1 what is privacy

Prologue

This is intended as an introduction to privacy and anonymity, the why, what tools, and how it is done. I hope to lay out a multitude of ways people allover the world are maintaining privacy and anonymity, using many different tools. I do not plan on going into the finer details of how tools work, more of an understanding of what should and is being used as well as why its being used. This is in part to get the info I have absorbed and the research I have done onto paper in a high level overview.
Chapter 1 – What is it and Why?

Lets start by defining the differences of anonymity and privacy
• Anonymity – Keeping your identity private, but not your actions. For example, using a pseudonym to post messages to a social media platform.
• Privacy – Keeping some things to yourself, which can include your actions. For example, messaging friends privately so they know who sent the message, but only they can read it. 

As you can see these two things work closely together but are different, if you are in a group of lets say 10 people and everyone is wearing a green shirt with their faces covered (assuming everyone pretty much looks the same) you have a pretty good chance of going around and not being picked or singled out, but assume you and only you happen to have a red shirt on, now you would easily be picked out.
That would be an example of anonymity, now lets say you have a cardboard box surrounding you, a very private environment but not very anonymous. Here is a quote from privacyguides “Anonymity is often confused with privacy, but they're distinct concepts. While privacy is a set of choices you make about how your data is used and shared, anonymity is the complete disassociation of your online activities from your real identity.” Your threat model will determine what and where you will focus your efforts. An example: I like to keep some online identities such as my twitter completely anonymous as in I don’t want my twitter to ever be linked back to my real identity, which may involve only using it through the Tor network or on a vpn and never mentioning any identifiable personal information. Now other platforms such as my Reddit I am friends with my real life friends on there and we follow each other. On that platform I want to protect my data and my account, that is where my add blocker my request for my data to not be used to improve Reddit comes in to play.

Now for the why. I will be quoting a few people here so lets get started.
Edward Snowden said “Arguing That You Don’t Care About the Right to Privacy because You have Nothing to Hide, is No Different than Saying you don’t Care about Free Speech because you have Nothing to Say.” Another quote from the privacy guides “You shouldn't confuse privacy with secrecy. We know what happens in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That's because you want privacy, not secrecy. Everyone has something to protect. Privacy is something that makes us human.”
As well as many places still do not even have freedom of speech online or off, they are consumed by mass surveillance and censorship. There are many long-standing precedents for anonymity in publishing. The responsibility of a journalists not to reveal their sources is recognized almost universally. Many authors write under pen-names and there are still some cases where the true identity of the author has never been discovered. Even the Federalist Papers were published under a pseudonym. Additionally, anonymous peer reviews of proposals and articles is common in academic circles. Additionally, anonymity is useful for people who want to ask technical questions that they don't want to admit they don't know the answer to, report illegal activities without fear of retribution, and many other things. Trackers have gotten so bad that the EU have set in place the gdpr (General Data Protection Regulation) It does a lot such as require websites to prompt you for consent to use cookies, and set rules in place for businesses to report any kind of data breach they may suffer. This is just a start towards the right path, but there are many other bills in the US and European union, that want to weaken our data safety such as having a backdoor either before your content is encrypted or weakening encryption to allow your government access. These frequently get shot down as any kind of back door for thew “good guys” would greatly weaken our security as a whole.