The Eroded Self

The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy story today titled The Eroded Self . The author chronicles a wide assortment of privacy abuses, and has a very thoughtful treatment of the harm that is caused when every move you make is scanned, analyzed and permanently recorded.

Comments

Pretty good

[Garthnak]

Very interesting article. Privacy is one of the most important issues on the internet today.

Re:Pretty good

[jxxx]

Im thinking that on one level, something like the internet is incompatible with privacy in everyday meatspace. The very miracle of internet's existance, a common set of communication protocols, requires revealing information. That is if you want a response. Things like anonymous remailers allow a bit of hiding, but in the end you still have to trust somebody.

URL without Login

[Rabenwolf]

Get the story without logging in at http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/ 20000430mag-internetprivacy.html.

Re:URL without Login

[crayz]

I think it would perhaps be more constructive to try to get Slashdot to just link to the story with the partners.nytimes......(or www10.nytimes.com - what I use), rather than getting a couple Karma points every time a nytimes story is posted.

OTOH, if tons of people start using these links, they might close the loophole.

Re:URL without Login

[Anonymous Elf]

I agree it is not informative. However, I do appreciate not having to re-edit the URL to include the partners crap (OK so I'm stupid AND lazy).

But it is a shame that moderation has cause kharma-whoring. They should just wipe everyone's kharma and stick to mods from scratch. This is especially a good idea since my kharma is negative.

Re:URL without Login

[phil reed]

Or, log in with username cypherpunk, password cypherpunk.

Whenever you come across a site that wants a login ID, use that combo and let everybody know.


...phil

Re:URL without Login

[puertoj]

Ive got one that works for you. Just put in: L: admin P: admin Looks like someone is neglecting to work on security.

Permanent record

[www.sorehands.com]

Remember in school, if you did something real bad it would be on your permanent record.

Now everything will be on your permanent record.

Remember...

[InfinityWpi]

...you can't be arrested for thinking something, but writing about it in a text file on your own personal computer means it can be used as evidence against you... and don't forget, the government can't tell the different between a sci-fi game sourcebook and a plot to destroy the world's computers...

OOG STRESS IMPORTANCE OF PRIVACY!!!

[OOG_THE_CAVEMAN]

OOG LIVE IN CAVE MANY YEARS AS METHOD OF KEEPING PRIVACY FROM OUTSIDE WORLD!!! BUT NOW OOG FIND SELF THREATENED BY TRACKING TECHNOLOGY AND LIKE!!! OOG ESPECIALLY SICK OF ACTIONS SUCH AS DOUBLECLICK AND OTHER SUCH ADVERTISING FIRMS TRYING TO COLLECT DATA FOR GREEDY MARKETING REASONS!!! OOG PRAY THAT SOCIETY DONT EVOLVE INTO ORWELIAN NIGHTMARE DOMINATED BY MONITORING!!! OOG THINK LARGE EFFORT NEED CONTINUOUSLY PLACED ON KEEPING INTERNET SECURE FOR USERS AND FIGHT EFFORTS OF OBNOXIOUS PRIVACY INVADING COMPANIES AND SOFTWARE!!! OOG MAY NOT DO BAD THING ON COMPUTER, BUT OOG DESERVE RIGHT TO SELECTIVELY CHOOSE WHAT DATA ABOUT OOG TO RELEASE FOR PUBLIC CONUSUMPTION!!!

Re:OOG STRESS IMPORTANCE OF PRIVACY!!!

[Signal 11]

Look OOG, you're getting tiresome now. The first time, you were funny. The second time, you were just like all the other trolls here.

Since when is imitating AOLers funny?!

Re:OOG STRESS IMPORTANCE OF PRIVACY!!!

[Northern Hunter]

He still makes me smile. But yeah, I can see it wearing thin.

Taking a look at user profiles, Oog has gotten approximately 25 karma in the past two weeks, while Signal 11 has gotten just over 20. He would have had around 30, but he occasionally gets knocked down (some bad moderation, some other things...).

We'll know oog is wearing too thin when:

a) He doesn't get mod'd up any more

b) He starts getting mod'ed down.

If the latter occurs, we'll have flamefests arguing over whether that's right or not, whether or not someone should be allowed to represent their opinions in mod-speak, whether he is being sincere but funny or insincere for the karma... etc.

Re:OOG STRESS IMPORTANCE OF PRIVACY!!!

[Danse]

It may be wearing thin for you, but some people still like it apparently. Maybe they don't read /. as often as you, and therefore haven't seen as many of his posts. Maybe it's something else. Either way, it will eventually wear thin on everyone. Change takes a bit of time, but that may be a good thing. Otherwise we probably have too few people deciding what is worth seeing.

This is truer than you may think

[Junks Jerzey]

It's typical to do web searches and deja.com searches on all technical job applicants. More than anything, this turns up flame wars the person may have been involved in or really stupid activities ("Got any warez?"). People when tend to get in raving Usenet battles about OpenGL vs. Direct3D, Linux vs. Windows, Windows vs. Macintosh, GeForce vs. Voodoo, Athlon vs. Pentium, etc., are people you don't want to have to work with every day. In general, someone who fits the fan-boy personality has two strikes against him, as unfair as that may seem.

Re:This is truer than you may think

[jamienk]

I used to hang out on a newsgroup about a rock band I liked a lot. One of the members of the band would post occasionally. I did a usenet search on his email to see what he had written earlier. While purusing the results, I found that he had, very early (like 1995), used a different email for his REPLY TO. I did a search on that email address and found that he had "anonymously" posted to a bunch of other newsgroups about WAREZ, SERIALZ, etc., and that he had discussed suicidal thoughts and VERY personal stuff about his relationship with his wife.

I felt excited and guilty reading this stuff. I hadn't set out to really investigate him, and I'm not nearly adept enough to search in tricky ways.

Monica Lewinsky's complaints unjustified

[ivan37]

Ok, sure - the special prosecutor found her love letters, but is it any different than if she didn't have a computer? They would have checked her trash can and found the same love letter drafts if she had written them on paper instead of the computer. Sure, the trash would have been taken out faster than the mail message in her case, but I think computer illiteracy also played a part - I have a feeling she "deleted it" but didn't remove it from her trash or deleted folder. It is unjustified of her to whine about computer privacy when the same things that happened to her could have easily happened if computers were taken out of the picture.
Yes, there are still many other problems with computer privacy that are still to be addressed. The article is good about going over these. I am just saying that what happened to her isn't anything new and that for the NY Times to use her situation as a simile isn't very good writing when you really look at it.

Re:Monica Lewinsky's complaints unjustified

[panda]

Trouble is, most people think that if they put it in the Trash (on the Mac) or the Recycle Bin (on 'doze) and then empty the Trash or the Recycle Bin, that the data is gone. It isn't. The bits are still hanging around on your machine in many cases, with the space they occupy simply marked as free. To eliminate the data permanently from your disk you need to use something to write gibberish over the file before you delete it. When someone recovers the file from your drive later, all they get is gibberish.

*NIX systems have this problem, too, but not as bad. There's often so much going on on a *NIX system that free space gets reused rather quickly. I'd still be paranoid and use a file shredding utility if I thought that I was facing prosecution or a lawsuit.

And they're not even doing anything useful

[Tony Hammitt]

Imagine the following:

I personally am waiting for the day when everyone is wearing/is implanted with a medical status recording device. Until then, we can only guess what the affect of drugs and hormones is on the body. Of course, then everyone will know what you are doing at all times, just by reading the tape.

It could even be combined with a GPS tracking system so it can call an ambulance if you have a heart attack or stroke. But it would also let someone somewhere know all of your movements. Imagine getting a speeding ticket through the mail because your personal GPS tracker said you were speeding...

The invasion of privacy is bad now, but it will only get worse. Right now it is expensive to store all of that data, but that's getting cheaper all of the time. It's expensive to build such devices, but will Nanotech change that?

Just what is it that we're all doing anyway? Are we, the geeks, responsible for our own torment because we made it possible? Where do we draw the line?

Perhaps someone will mark the end of the Dark Ages as when, in the presence of overwhelming technology, we have a society that doesn't spy on itself all of the time.

Re:And they're not even doing anything useful

[roman_mir]

Listen, if all you care about is the abstract perfection of the civilization, then don't bother with the human beings. I am sure there will be a time when all this is reality and there will be a good reasoning behind it (crime prevention, health care, finding lost people, anti spying technics etc etc etc) Let me just say how discusting this sounds to a person of our age, and I don't mean it always will sound discusting to all people, I just mean that after fighting for our freedoms, having wars and fighting dictatorships it just sounds criminal to take away those little rights that people have to privacy inside their bodies and their minds. I tell you, there will be wars around this issue and I am against it. Really against this intervention of my own space. I choose to live and die free as free as a man that has to pay taxes and abide laws can be. I am against this and I don't see how this can be justified. It can save lifes, I am sure. What about saving yourself, from the mother-fuckers who thrive for control over you. They want an ant farm, a bee hive a herd of cows they can direct anywhere and make them do anything. That's just great. What is the point of that? (I am also the guy who hates himself for being born.) You know what, there will be times when this technology will be applied to humans but somehow I believe that it will pass away too.

You can lie to most people some of the time, you can lie to some people most of the time, but you can not lie to all people all the time.

Re:And they're not even doing anything useful

[panda]

I choose to live and die free as free as a man that has to pay taxes and abide laws can be.

That's the trouble. You abide by laws and pay your taxes. Following their silly laws and paying your taxes only encourages them to think that you're going along with the program. When they make it a law to say you have to have the surveillance gizmo installed in your body, will you go along with that law, too? All the data, and by your own admission, suggest that you will.

You see where this is going don't you? You said you'd oppose this, but you also said that you obey the laws. So, which is it?

So here I am, advocating lawlessness again, and with Uncle Sam watching, too. I should be more careful in the future.... :-)

Re:And they're not even doing anything useful

[roman_mir]

So what, I should go and kill people?
You know what, I don't do that kind of crap, even if there were no laws about it.
However on the Internet the difference between the right and wrong is blurred and the anonymity of this structure makes people believe that they will not be held responsible, it is security by obscurity so to speak.
I find myself downloading pirated mp3's, videos and applications, I copy software, music and books all this is against the law (copyright mostly.) I pay my taxes and I don't go into killing sprees, should I do otherwise I would spend the rest of my days in a prison.

So what I am saying is that most people abide the law in a sense of not murdering anybody, not hurting or harassing people (lawyers excepted.)

That is where the sentence that you copied from my first post came from.

However, in order to be freer than I was in my home country I have left and came to Canada to gain more freedoms, by this I have expressed my unwillingness to cooperate with basic dictatorship. Have you ever opposed your government? (I don't mean not coming to the election.)

I was actively opposing Intel who tried to install PSN in their processors, and many people did, and look, PSN is gone. It's not there, body. So we can do something right?

This is the point, even if your government tries to control you by means that are accessible to them (and most governments try and do that) it does not last forever. USSR did not last forever and it was controlling their citizens in the worst possible way. Attempts like those crash under its own weight over time. Peoples' attitudes change, what used to be normal becomes unacceptible over time. For hundreds of years Church controlled people in weird ways. They controlled all you did not leaving a single activity to a chance, not even your sex life. And what now? Most people I know are atheists. No one gives a shit about Church anymore.

You can not lie to all people all the time.

Re:And they're not even doing anything useful

[roman_mir]

Yes, I am very sorry for not living up to your expectations, Anonymous Coward.

Re:And they're not even doing anything useful

[panda]

You can not lie to all people all the time.

Yes, you can, but it doesn't mean that they believe you! Even if they don't believe you, that doesn't mean that they're going to do anything about it.

Look, you said you obeyed the law. I took that unqualified statement to mean that you obeyed all of the laws. You also said that you pay taxes. Well, apart from obeying the law, what does that have to do with anything?

You mention about attitudes changing. Yes, that's very true. You say that what was once acceptable becomes unacceptable. Well, the flip side is also true: what was once unacceptable can become acceptable, particularly over time. People can become accustomed to pain and they learn to ignore it. So, yeah, you start by sticking cameras on ATMs for public protection. Then, cameras on stop lights, stop signs and at street corners. Next, on street lights in all neighborhoods. Next, on people's lawns to monitor their front doors, and finally in their homes. Each gradual step conditions one to expect less and less at each turn.

The Internet and technology have not changed the landscape of privacy and the erosion of privacy. They have merely accelerated the rate of that change.

Now, you can ask yourself what kind of world you want to live in. You can ask yourself what's truly important. I don't personally see the erosion of privacy as that great a problem in and of itself. There are larger forces at work, and the erosion of personal privacy is just part of a larger conflict that is going on in the world today. There is a struggle going on for control, not just of our personal space and privacy, but of the flow of information, ideas and all communication. Just take a deep look at what is happening on the Internet, with the Napster and DeCSS lawsuits, the protests in Seattle last December and the protests of the IMF in Washington. Think of those events and many others in light of the megamergers of mega media giants. Follow the money, see who's behind all these corps. Look at how they make political contributions and follow the bills through Congress to the President's signature, all the way to enforcement and incarceration.

There is one side of capitalism that sees nothing but the profit motive and people are just another resource to exploit, for their labor, for the information that you can get about them and sell, and for the money that they have to spend as consumers. Marx was right about one thing: when taken to the extreme, capitalism is a dehumanizing and alienating system. (NOTE: I said he was right about one thing, not everyhting.)

Re:how ironic

[Tau Zero]

Just login as slashdoted/slashdot, and nuke your cookie after the session.
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic

Privacy is dead: welcome to the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the Internet, the free-information Utopia imagined by writers such as Jon Katz. There are no boundaries, no walls, no way to contain the flow of information, including anything about your life: purchases, consumer preferences, physical address, etc.

While many thinkers have hearlded the dawning of this new information age as a way of having open access to art, history, science, the media, government, and other sources, they have in general failed to imagine the "negative" aspects of this openness: that wants you get it going, nothing can stop it. Further, you're the next target.

Now, you might be like me, an ordinary guy, just sitting at the computer, eating a Cadbury bar and drinking water, not thinking about your privacy, but at any given moment, you're information is being traded behind your back by any number of coporations, banks, government agencies, and private citizens. But should you be concerned?

Looking out the window, I see no black helicopters flying overhead. No g-men are breaking down my door to arrest me for having bootleg CDs. In fact, my life is no different than before. Sure, I get spam, sometimes, and tagreted banner ads, but spam gets deleted and I can just use IJB anyway. If these are you biggest problems, consider yourself lucky.

Personally, I think the privacy freaks have it all wrong. With the Internet, all digital material, including your personal info, can't be contained. So what if advertisers know that you're a raving Linux zealot? Isn't it their business to know how to offer you consumer goods targeted at tech-savvy buyers? As far as I'm concerned, the Internet and capitalism go hand-in-hand, and this exchange of information will help capitalism, which will in turn help out the Internet far more than government robots like Gore or George "there ought to be limits to freedom" Bush. Your privacy is long gone, but right now we can at least enjoy the benefits that it brings, as long as the U.S. government doesn't screw something up (I'm speaking as and for USians now).

So you have a choice: you can either accept your loss of privacy and get the great economic and technological benefits that it brings, or attempt to cripple the system with laws, which won't bring back your lost privacy anyway. Remember, it was us, the geeks, who wanted free information. This is our reward. Let's use it wisely.

Re:Privacy is dead: welcome to the Internet

[Zurk]

crap. just because you dont think laws will prevent the loss of privacy doesnt mean they actually wont. a good example is the UK data protection act which (although the UK is far from being remotely free compared to the US) guarantees strict behaviour from companies/government agencies who seek to collect personal data. You dont get great economic and technical benefits from a loss of privacy -- if anything, it exposes you to a lot of strangers and makes you vulnerable. we can have both -- a reasonable amount of privacy AND the benefits of free information flow if we fight any privacy destroying measures hard enough.

Re:Privacy is dead: welcome to the Internet

[jxxx]

But there are boundaries. The tolerance of others.
For most people, there will always be someone more powerful. If you are sufficiently loud, they tend to notice you. Many mediums have a method of cancelation. Someone out there is willing to use that power. How many times have you witnessed, in a manner, a web site fold under pressure from some corporation?

So why isn't anyone kicking in the door? Maybe your positive, or rather useful traits currently outweigh the advantages in stamping you out.

The one thing I see standing to hinder information collection and use is sheer numbers. It's hard to get a large group to stand still and be counted. This works to the disadvantage of retailers. I think that the answer is not so much targeting tech-oriented users, but rather making a larger portion of the population believe that they are in the know.

Do geeks want freedom? Or do they want more toys to play with? It's frustrating to be denied, for finacial reasons no less than any other. Free information batters down one more 'no'.

Re:Privacy is dead: welcome to the Internet

[Viper23]

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. There is a perfectly easy way to maintain your privacy in this type of environment. Step 1. Live randomly. The way I see it any one wanting to keep a full focus picture of me would have to hire a full staff of psychologists full time and still wouldn't keep up. Step 2. Don't care. I tell everyone around me everything about me anyway, so I doubt that there is any thing that someone could 'hold over' me any way. Step 3. Be one with the crowd. The truth is that with the exception of my family, friends and my coworkers, I really don't think that any one cares enough to look me up. i.e. I have a listed phone number and I still don't get very many calls. Step 4. I don't purchase things on a whim. This makes any advertizing money spent on me a complete waste. So, where's the problem??? If anybody wanted to know anything about me, they would just have to ask someone I know. Most of my friends would be more than happy to dvulge that information. I guess basically, what I am trying to say is I hide nothing, I have nothing to hide. If some people don't like something about me, well I don't wish to have them like me. If the powers that be decide that at some point they don't like something about me, it will either be time to move, or join an opposing force.

Re:Privacy is dead: welcome to the Internet

[IO ERROR]

Remember, it was us, the geeks, who wanted free information.

Speak for yourself. All I wanted was source code and better quality programs than the infinite monkeys at infinite compilers are generating up in Redmond.

This is our reward.

If this is a reward, I don't even want to think about the punishment!
---

Re:Privacy is dead: welcome to the Internet

[npsimons]

i wholeheartedly agree! i've been thinking about this subject for some time myself and i keep asking myself "if openness in software leads to better software, wouldn't openness in other areas lead to those areas improving?" Think about it: what if we knew _everything_ that our politicians and public servants did? No more wondering what the NSA is doing behind our back.

What if everything _we_ did was open to scrutiny not just by police and judges and juries, but the entire world? Much less crime, that's for sure. i seem to remember a story a while back about a city where they had cameras installed to watch for crime, but _anyone_ was allowed to watch the output of the cameras, not just the police. This led to the crime rate going down immensely.

In any interpersonal relationship, openness and honesty are what keep the relationship going. If you don't let the other person know how you feel, or you lie to them in some other way, that relationship will not last very long, and it won't be very enjoyable for either person.

i'm beginning to think that privacy is just a made up thing like intellectual property. Natural law doesn't guarantee us privacy any more than it guarantees that we have the right to copyright a work of art or patent an algorithm.

Double click

[jamienk]

Ironic how the NY Time article on the web has a Double-click banner.

Re:Double click

[dexev]

Ironic how the NY Time article on the web has a Double-click banner.

More ironic that you can't even view the page without accepting a cookie from them (it will loop for apparently ever, asking you over and over again.)

reciprocal transparency

[geekpress]

The article is available without registration at: pa rtners.nytimes.com.

The real battle with privacy, as the article points out, is getting people to realize that they really don't have enough. People presume that their e-mail is "secure enough" without really thinking who could intercept it or how embarassing it might be for their boss to read the joke they just forwarded about the transgender trapeze artists.

(The company my father works for has said to its employees: "Don't do anything that you wouldn't want to see printed on the front page of the newspaper." Perhaps people should apply that same principle to their e-mail.)

The article doesn't touch upon another future possibility: that if no one has privacy (including government, corporations, and the rich), then privacy itself loses much of its value. In a world like in Halprin's The Truth Machine, I would not care if all my secrets were out, because everyone else's secrets would be similarly exposed. (That would be the death of the tabloids, and not a moment too soon!)

-- Diana Hsieh

Privacy and Accountability

[Cannonball]

Okay, so here's the real deal. Since the beginning of the Info-Era, the anonymonity of the web promised us a place to let our inner most secrets out without accountability, we have tried to keep this feature an integral part of it. Unfortunately, now the government wants everyone to identify themselves fully, so they can psychoanalyze us and find out which one of us is the next UnaBomber. What's next, .sig-ing with our Social Sec #? Privacy is an issue if we want to make it one. In the meantime, we need to be willing to be accountable for our emails. If you don't want the gov't reading them, encrypt them.

To Monica- it's not our fault you didn't want the public to know you gave head to the Pres. It's not our fault it became public information either. But it is YOUR fault you were unwilling to be accountable for your own actions. That's the problem with the web, we have unmitigated freedom to be whoever we want to advertise ourselves as. So, let us protect our communications with crypto, and if we get caught doing something, let's blame ourselves and hold ourselves accountable. In the meantime, let's make the gov't at least have to work to break our crypto.

Re:Privacy and Accountability

[quonsar]

Okay, so here's the real deal. Since the beginning of the Info-Era, the anonymonity of the web promised us a place to let our inner most secrets out without accountability..."

Excuse me? The anonymity of the web is a myth. Since before the beginning of the info age, networking's most basic requirement has been the ability to distinguish between connected devices. Its quite obvious. Since before http protocol (the web) was invented, every device on a TCP/IP network has had an IP number. Tell me again about this anonymity on the web and how was it supposed to have worked?

In the days where most IP's were consumed by universities and computer science institutions where an IP may lead to a 'public' workstation, there may have been some accidental anonymity. But the very concept anonymity is no part of the protocol specs and was never a design consideration. I wish people would stop spewing this web anonymity fairy tale.

======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16

Re:Privacy and Accountability

[Cannonball]

And anon.penet.fi never really existed right? Hotmail accounts on library terminals really don't exist right? If someone wants it, privacy is available, through dummy accounts, through public terminals, it's all available. Granted these computers have hardware addresses, have IP addresses. It may never have been in the specs or was a considering, but it was still possible. Regardless, it's not myth. Don't act like it's not possible.

The Greatest Thing About This Article...

[mochaone]

is that I found out there is a site called www.disgruntledhousewife.com and they have this thing called a dick list !! Even being a guy, this is some funny ass stuff. I give women props. They always find a way to commiserate with each other and put down those of us (speaking generally here...) who are dicks.

Bravo, women !

Re:MODERATE THIS SUCKER DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Jeez.. If this 'dirty fucker' is using his trick, let him! After all, he's helping those of us who don't want to be registered members all over. (I don't, but I understand the people who do.) Actually, if nobody bothered to reply to this, it would look _really_ informative for those who list by score.

...

[PovRayMan]

The author chronicles a wide assortment of privacy abuses, and has a very thoughtful treatment of the harm that is caused when every move you make is scanned, analyzed and permanently recorded.

When I read that, I thought this was a Jon Katz article. My mistake, michael.

Examples of the Eroded Self?

[Bloody Pulp]

The article mentions Monica Lewinsky love letters, the DoubleClick incident, as well as many cases of Internet and email monitoring by companies.

Though maybe not a true example of the "Eroded Self", I think that baiting.org which entices certain groups of people to send them Instant Messages out of the blue, manipulates and torments them then posts is certainly more amusing than most of the other examples mentioned in the article. Another poster, also mention the dick list at the www.disgruntledhousewife.com website.

Does anyone know of other funny examples of the "Eroded Self"?

Re: Examples of Eroded Self

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, YOU

Socialist trap.

[Hobbex]

I thought that it was a very good article, and that the author put his finger on many of the important issues, and why privacy IS important. However, he goes completely off the track at the end when he starts babbeling stuff like this:

"Moreover, many people seem happy to waive their privacy rights in exchange for free stuff. There is now a cottage industry of companies with names like Free PC, Dash.com and Gator.com that offer their users product discounts, giveaways or even cash in exchange for permission to track, record and profile every move they make, and to bombard them with targeted ads on the basis of their proclivities. This is about as rational as allowing a camera into your bedroom in exchange for a free toaster. But as Monica Lewinsky discovered, it's easy to forget why privacy is important until information you care about is taken out of context, and by that point, it's usually too late."

With this, he is falling right into the most dangerous of socialist ideas: that that we, who know better, should by law protect the common man from his own stupidity. I find such thinking arrogant, disgusting, and a much bigger threat to freedom (witness what past implementation of socialism accomplished) then anything Doubleclick does with my cookies. You can't, and shouldn't, save sane adults from themselves. If somebody wants to screw up there life by selling their privacy and integrity for a free buck, they should be allowed to do so.

I am not a rightwing conservative (I consider myself a pragmatic radical), but if this writer thinks that the way to save society for the future is to further dilute the individuals freedom and responsibility to make his own descisions, then I couldn't disagree more. It is only by learning to protect our own privacy and freedom that we can find a future where we are not the food to governments and corporations.

-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

Re:Socialist trap.

[laborit]

I agree that voluntary relinquishing of privacy isn't something people need to be protected from. It will, as you say, help us remember why we valued it in the first place. The reason my agreement is interesting is that I think of myself as a socialist! But my ideal socialism is about empowering people, not crippling them for their own protection. Selling your information won't stop you from eating, learning, or living a fulfilled life. It won't deprive your kids of a quality education.

I'm in favor of requiring full(er) disclosure regarding these information-collecting promotions, but beyond that the results aren't so horrifying that people need to be protected...

- Michael Cohn

Re:Socialist trap.

[jxxx]

I agree, but I think that it should be carried a step further. Not only should we fight invasions of personal liberties, we should explain to other why it is important. I see examples on a regular basis of people being trained to accept the established authorities into one more aspect of life. The common reaction is that it's not a big deal. The inconvience of going against the flow isn't worth an intangible concept.

Among the distasteful activities is the defence of those who you have a disagreement with. This comes up with KKK demonstrations. The same with the confederate flag. Add in a little scare, such as shooting, a bombing, or a theft of something with emotional significance, and the average person is lining up to be monitored.

Re:Socialist trap.

[psychonaut]

With this, he is falling right into the most dangerous of socialist ideas: that that we, who know better, should by law protect the common man from his own stupidity. I find such thinking arrogant, disgusting, and a much bigger threat to freedom (witness what past implementation of socialism accomplished) then anything Doubleclick does with my cookies.

Socialism oppressing freedom? You must mean Stalinism. Socialism is an egalitarian, democratic system, and has never been implemented. Next time, get your terminology straight.

Regards,

Re:Socialist trap.

[Anonymous Coward]

If somebody wants to screw up there life by selling their privacy and integrity for a free buck, they should be allowed to do so.

The main flaw with this line of reasoning is that most ordinary people don't even realise that the information *can* be collected and just how easy it is to collect.

This is where we enter the realm of whether or not an individual can make an informed descision. For the average /.er, we know the technology because we work with it every day.

For non-geeks, it's a different story.

Because of that, I have to disagree with you. The argument that you present is only valid if people are aware of the extent to which their private information is being collected, and at this point in time companies like double-click go to great lengths to deny that they are collecting this information.

In this regard there is a need for legal remedies - to force full disclosure to the public of the information that is being collected on them.

If that was the case, then yes, I would agree with you. If people want to throw away their privacy, then they can. But only if they have been informed of the consequences.

You might be strangling my chicken but you don't want to know what I'm doing to your hampster.

Re:Socialist trap.

[Mr Skreet Nite]

You clearly have no idea of the fundamental tenets for socialism. The idea of a top-down paternalism is not the preserve of socialism at all, but of liberalism. True socialism is people being in control of their own lives. This has only been briefly implemented once, in the first 3 to 4 years after the Russian Revoloution. It was defeated utterly by Stalin and has never re-emerged since. I cannot understand see why you actually see an excuse to batter socialism here. Protection of individual rights and freedoms and privacy has been the war-cry of most politicians at some time or another, and is certainly not wedded to any political philosophy.

Re:Socialist trap.

[Anonymous Coward]

> With this, he is falling right into the most dangerous of socialist ideas: that that we, who know better, should by law protect the common man from his own stupidity

I need laws to protect _me_ from _your_ stupidity. The fact you don't mind having your privacy shread away don't imply I don't mind about mine.

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Socialist trap.

[greenrd]

He's not stupid. That choice of definition is popular amongst socialists. It's not something he's just dreamt up, it's a real definition.

Unfortunately, the other definition is far more prevalent.

Re:Socialist trap.

[greenrd]

I absolutely degree. Seatbelt laws save lives. Including children's lives. That's more important, in this case, than the stupid "freedom to drive without a seatbelt", which is just idiotic.

Re:Socialist trap.

[greenrd]

Sorry, that should be "disagree".

When marketing data becomes a Biography

[Money__]

It's not uncommon for little tidbits to collect about you as you live your life. Some information is useless, some of it is priceless to the right person. The cost of collecting and maintaining these little tidbits have continued to fall (have you priced hard drives lately?).

As the tools required to keep this data become cheaper, and the laws to prevent it's proliforation are not put in place, these tidbits grow into a complete biography.

Look at the example below and ask yourself: where would you draw the line?

John Smith resides at 123 Elm street.
and he has 48% equity in his house.
and is married with 2 kids.
and he wears 34/32 size pants.
(usually dockers from WalMart).
and he likes renting movies from blockbuster.
and his youngest just got out of a drug rehab.
and he likes those little bite sized carrots.
and his favorite search phrase is "married and flirting"
and his wife spends $150 a month at victorias secret.
and she likes bottled water.
and spends $45 a month on duracell bateries.
and her favorite search phrase is "hot wax"
and his oldest daughter is on the honor roll and she had an abortion last summer.
etc..etc..

So where would you draw the line? Do have any way of knowing if a lists such as this exists? If so, what are your rights?

I would put forth that collecting such extensive and detailed information amounts to writing a biography about me and my life. Like a snapshot, this biography should be the copyright of the individual.
___

Re:When marketing data becomes a Biography

[fluxrad]

that list has been around for quite some time...but it's not owned by DoubleClick. It's owned by the FBI.

Side note: Privacy is still around. I find it surprising that many of the /. posters who pride themselves on technical knowledge and internet savvy have a very narrow field of total vision. So, about %10 of the WORLD'S population is "on line" - do you honestly think the other %90 give a shit about privacy on the internet? The list you provided is honestly not there yet. At best, advertisers have a collection of Income, Children, # Of computers owned, etc. etc. but they don't have any info that wasn't voluntarily given. They're advertisers...not PI's. (Don't ask how i know ;-)



FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:When marketing data becomes a Biography

[Money__]

I'm sure no marketer set out to create such a detailed list and, I would agree that there's no mallice behind creating this kind of biography. They're not investigators, just advertisers.

But these lists do exist, and you and I are only one subpena away from having every little nook and crany of our lives exposed. That's wrong. The people seeking to keep a detailed profile/tracking data/marketing info/clickthrough should have to obtain my informed consent before doing it.

This would make it prohibitivly expensive to keep data in a random and ad-hoc way and give control back to the person who's life it tracks.
___

Re:When marketing data becomes a Biography

[ruin]

Look at the example below and ask yourself: where would you draw the line?

John Smith resides at 123 Elm street.
and he has 48% equity in his house.
and is married with 2 kids.
and he wears 34/32 size pants.
(usually dockers from WalMart).
...

Personally I have no problem with any of the items on the list being public information, but then, I may be odd in that respect. The big deal about privacy rights, as far as I can figure out, is that they be egalitarian. Where society gets into trouble is when one person's level of privacy is greater than another's. Suppose I know this information about John Smith -- that's all very well and good, but by right, John should be able to look up what kind of pants *I* wear as well.

Of course, what people want is to have their information secret and other people's public -- it gives you a sort of power over other people. In my mind, we could alleviate some of this disparity by working towards there being *less* privacy in society. More information would be public, and even better, it would be *understood* to be public. What we have now is the understanding that information is private, but with information being collected in secret, and available to those who have the money, influence, or position to investigate them.

On a related note, something I've been thinking about is the US Census. The information on those forms is public, right? Is the government going to put up a web site where you can look at other people's census forms? On the other hand, if they're not, and the information is in fact private information, then what right did the government have to ask for it?

--

Re:When marketing data becomes a Biography

[elgardo]

I used to be a little paranoid myself about privacy. For a while. Then I realized that if anything would steer "their" attention towards me, it would be the fact that I tried to hide from "them". And for what? I can't say I have anything to hide. As long as you don't show up with a photo of me in the shower. I'll keep my rights as a model, than you very much.

When I say that I don't have anything to hide, I'm *not* saying that I'm perfect. Not at all, not by far. And I'm sure anyone can come up with something from my life that would make most people today squirm... You know... the stories about you, that your mom likes to tell your girlfriend, while you sit there, squirming in the chair. But you know what? I'm glad that those stories exist, to prove that I'm not perfect, to show that I'm just a human after all.

Quite frankly, if anyone has a problem with anything in my biography, then that is their problem, not mine. And for that reason, I can't say that I'm very concerned with my privacy at all. But then... that's me. *shrug*

Use cypherpunks:cypherpunks login

[Anonymous Coward]

It was gone for a while, but now it's back.

Guess it beats thousands of new accounts for asdfjlei1223 with full name Richard Fitzwell every single time slashdot refers to a story....

So they're just letting it stay.
------------------------------------------------ --
CHANGE OF SUBJECT
------------------------------------------------ --

Does anybody here think that all this stuff about privacy is kind of like the Underpants Gnomes from South Park? I mean, yeah, like the NYT says, it's not an accurate picture of the person, it's just disconnected information that they're collecting ..... almost as if they walked into your bedroom and carried off your underpants while singing happy Underpants Gnome songs.

But, as the Gnome explained in his slide show, "Step 1: Collect Underpants. Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!", they really don't have the slightest clue how to profit from this stuff. If your liquor cabinet causes you to see TV ads for AA, how will this profit anybody? You'll be fucking PISSED OFF AT AA!

Yeah, they're provoking us, they're pissing us off hardcore. Well, that isn't going to get them profit! Do you see dairy farmers just going out there and randomly hitting their cows with baseball bats? Hell no! Those cows are PROFIT CENTERS! They should just keep showing us formulaic sitcoms to calm us down. Much better for the taste and quantity of said lactic product, eh?

And the other motive - policing us, making us act morally and ethically at work, at home, every time we converse - spying on us won't help. Now I'm not a fighting man, and most Nerds (TM) aren't
either, but still one punch can kill. Better yet, a rock. Nothing will stop crime so long as you can bash somebodies head in with a rock.

So they're doing all this stuff for NOTHING

"McFry! We have been monitoling your tlansmissions McFry! You're FILED!"

Re:Put down the crack pipe, moderators...

[AndrewHowe]

WTF? You are wrong, very wrong. The whole point of crack (small rocks of of Cocaine freed from its hydrochloride) is that it is smoked. Usually with the aid of tin foil. You, sir, are an arse.

Practice != Preach

[Fuzzy]

Hey, New York Times, if (as your article seems to indicated) you're so concerned about privacy, why do you force me to sign in to read it? What do YOU do with the infomation I might have supplied? (thanks Rabenwolf, for the link) "I can't hear what you say, your actions are making too much noise!"

Startling Revalations

[fluxrad]

Dear lord! i shudder to think of what we might discover about ourselves, our neighbors, and our fellow humans if privacy disappears totally! We might find startling things like:

1) Guys masturbate....frequently!

2) Guys look at pr0n on the net....frequently!

3) The vast majority of non quadropalegic (sp?) people LOVE to have sex....as well as some of the quadropalegic ones to.

4) They'll find out who REALLY was downloading all those damned Dr. Dre mp3's. We really need to get to the bottom of that! If not for ourselves....for our children!!!!

5) Natalie Portman herself is actually behind all of the "hot grits" propaganda on /.




FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

I can already feel the flames rushing in...

[acecccp]

Privacy is great and all, it is important to protect ourselves from misuses of such information. But bear with me on this: imagine the scenario where the entire country is constantly taped. Everything everyone does is always on video - this video is not viewed by anyone unless approved by a bunch of courts (kinda like a search warrant).

Yes, I'm talking cameras in every home and on telephone polls, i'm talking about the justice department theoretically having access to a kind of a 3D studio max construct of the world - at least the surfaces. Privacy advocates are ready to tear out people's throats over even the introduction of the possibility of the benefits of such a concept, but i will anyway.

95% of all crimes will easily be solved. If a woman is killed sometime on a street corner, a qualified person can go and "zoom into" that time frame, and see exactly what happened. No need for lengthy trials, witnesses, perjury. I think that someday society will come to this whether we like it or not, but personally, I think it might be a good idea. The "grinding gears" of american justice are nice and safe, but barely get anything done. We don't build our cars like this, so why do we not mind our courts working this way?

I understand this may be an appalling concept to a lot of you, but actually think about this from an independent point of view, if we wanted to make this work, we could pass legislation preventing abuses, making all irrelevant findings inadmissible, etc.

Re:I can already feel the flames rushing in...

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Intriguing. However, this presupposes something impossible. The qualified people must be 100% reliable - no quirks, completely unbribable, immortal.

Furthermore, the video streams must make their way to the tape recorders. Interception, anyone?

One of the reasons why Communism doesn't work, is that it presupposes morally perfect people. Most of the other reaons are bullshit, more or less. But people are not perfect. They screw up, have murky desires and undeclared agendas. Therefore, Communism will not work. Furthermore, a society of total surveilance would not work. It would simply shift a focus in crimes.

Consequences

[retep]

This sort of practice is some of the worst stuff that you can do. The problem with all of this data collection isn't always what they get right, it's what they get wrong. Just imagine the fallout you would get if someone with the same name as you, not very unlikely, was mistaken for you? Sure you can compare email addresses etc. But why would you want to trust that the people doing these sorts of searches will get it right? Stuff like this is just plain dangerous...

Practical Privacy

[gunner800]

Privacy advocates tend to give rather impractical reasons why privacy should be protected. We say that we should have privacy because it has some implicit value, or because of constitional protection (your mileage may vary depending on where you live), or we may admit that we want to get away with breaking the law in harmless ways.

These arguments have a certain amount of value (and, IMHO, truth) and persuasiveness, but are largely based on personal opinion. Some people don't believe that privacy is inherently valuable, that the constitution "really" guarantees reasonable privacy, or that harmless crimes are really harmless. This limits the power of these arguments.

But this article presents something much more practical, and thus more universal and more persuasive

We should perpetuate the points the writer makes...then take over the world.


---
Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!

Ever since /....

[Anonymous Elf]

Ever since slashdot has required registration to avoid de facto post burial, it has been my opinion that they are part of the problem, more so than the solution.

If the problem is "when every move you make is scanned, analyzed and permanently recorded" then slashdot is guilty too.

You're an idiot

[Reality Master 101]

What is your problem? What do you care if someone gets Karma points?

You do realize that this guy getting Karma points doesn't take any away from you, right?

Jeez; I think money-envy is stupid, but Karma-envy is just ludicrous.

--

Cookie Monster

[BadDoggie]

It's just a bit ironic to find an article which used more than 600 words just to describe the blatant privacy violations of DoubleClick et al. on a Web page with DoubleClick ads; a page that requires a browser accepts cookies, accesses the cookie(s) at least 7 times (666 byte cookie), and also allows a tracking network in to read more cookies and system info (at least 4 reads).

If you're using Win (and many of us have to on at least some of our machines), have a look at IDcide. It's in beta right now (I'm a tester) and only runs with IE right now, but has many possibilities. I'm hoping they'll go Open Source, but if not, I'm sure the functionality (and more) can be recreated.

woof.

Experience is what you've got when you didn't get what you wanted.

Re:Cookie Monster

[mcrandello]

It's not ironic at all if you think about it. It's typical. Start hovering on some of the slashdot ads. There's actually a few that go through doubleclick, focalink, and perhaps more (those are the two I noticed recently)that I already have blocked in my hosts file on my home computer. There was a lot more info before bit-rot set in, over at the doubleclick sid. Interiot was the guy who did the digging, even wrote a bash script to dig through the pages here looking for doubledick ads.

While I respect the fact that the NYTIMES and Slashdot both do and will publish articles about protecting our privacy, and then leave us to discuss mongst ourselves, it bothers me greatly that I still have to submit to tracking on any machine I don't have admin or root access to :(

And I'm sure doubleclick doesn't mind too awful much advertising on privacy-issue articles, as I imagine those are the ones that get the most hits in the tecnology sections of online newspapers.

Hear! Hear!

[Reality Master 101]

And, I might add, the prime example here on Slashdot is the insanity over filtering programs. It's exactly the same -- it's not enough to let people decide for themselves whether they want a filtering program or not, many Slashdotters (including, I believe, many of the people who run this site) think that filtering programs should be illegal somehow.

--

Re:Hear! Hear!

[Another MacHack]

There's a difference between your unsubstantiated claim that "many Slashdotters think that filtering programs should be illegal shomehow" and the beliefs that it should not be legal for the government to mandate filters, and that consumers should have the right to know exactly what the filter programs are filtering.

Re:Hear! Hear!

[NI3]

it's not enough to let people decide for themselves whether they want a filtering program or not...

that's just the reason why the pasword crack was published, to let people decide for themselves :-)

You leave trails everywhere...

[retep]

I recently did a search for my own name, email addresses and website. Sure enough I found stuff from as long ago as 1995, almost (by a few months) as long as I've been using the net. Even though I didn't know about USENET etc. then I still had left a single entry in a long forgotten, but still running, guestbook. 5 years later it was one of the first things that I found.

Re:You leave trails everywhere...

[gwalla]

I just did a search on my own name, and found out that I'm an aviator, author, and humorist. That page, as well as several others with additional evidence, showed up in both AltaVista and Google, so it must be true! Amnesia is the only possible explanation for my unawareness of this obvious fact.

Seriously, though, this just shows that it's fairly easy to get bogus information when trying to pull it together from several sources. Lack of privacy is bad enough, but the possibility of having one's reputation warped by a false positive identification may be even worse. Remember the Harry Buttle / Harry Tuttle mixup in "Brazil"?

BTW, I also found a bunch of old emails I'd sent to the www-style@w3.org mailing list as archived on the W3C's site.

---
Zardoz has spoken!

Re:You leave trails everywhere...

[LilBlackKittie]

You register a domain-name, and your billing address (for some databases at least - things are beginning to change now) go into the searchable WHOIS database.

Anything that you leave traces of your IP address will (if a static IP) be traceable to you directly through another WHOIS lookup. If dynamic then you know what country, what ISP and (depending on the ISP's policy/naming system/size) what region the person lives in.

You post anything to any of thousands of newsgroups (even FidoNet EchoMail groups, as I found when I did a search for my name and came across posts from '95 in WinNT Virus Scanner groups) and you leave a fingerprint of your style of writing.

You or your parents writes a book, and suddenly your surname appears in dozens of places, and a pretty good idea of what you (or your parents) do is available to anyone who goes looking.

You publish a paper to do with anything in the computing field, and your name will be mentioned on dozens of computing research/teaching sites around the world.

I've managed to (by simply typing my [rather rare] surname) find out my parents' occupations, that I used to run a BBS on FidoNet, that I used to be a technical admin for a chat site, countless photographs of myself (after searching for the nick I used on that chat site) from "meetups" that some of the people from the chat site would go to. I've found myself on a good deal of University websites through various societies that I am in (so you can tell what University I am in, what interests I have outside my subject, who I am associated with). You can finger our University mail server (from inside the University) to find out when I last checked for mail there (and if I used telnet, where I last logged in from). I'm probably mentioned in other people's websites (which I have no control over, but they feel the need to talk about me because I'm a "friend" or "associate"), have probably posted to a few guestbooks (under one of a number of aliases, but it would be possible to trace them down to me, if you were to try hard enough).

It's very difficult to not leave a trail of documents that are all linked in some way. And if somehow one of those documents can be traced back to you, they all can be. Eeks!

-- Maz
Scared...

Re:You leave trails everywhere...

[no-s]

I've made a point of leaving pseudonymium in my wake. I was thinking of using a random function to improve my anti-contribution to searchability ever since I discovered I re-used a pseudonym.

Can we use the DMCA to control personal information? Would restrictions on reverse engineering protect our DNA from illicit sequencing by fast food database marketeers?

Seriously, I once looked up an job candidate post-interview for fact-checking purposes and inadvertantly discovered his penchant for high-profile, public S&M. Did I go too far? Or did he cross the line by telling me what university he went to, his thesis topic, and his email address?

Don't forget to post anonymously!

Thank you

[Anonymous Elf]

It's always nice to hear from someone who has given up. You also could not be more wrong. The digitization of commerce combined with encryption and the anonymization of information retrieval has the potential to radically improve your privacy protection.

Governments do not want this and neither to the korporations. Government wants to monitor you, obviously, and korporations want the passkey to your wallet. If all activity is digitized and it cannot be controlled, then a sort of de facto libertarianism erupts that is beyond the ability of your socialist democracies to control. I welcome this. Physical crimes against other persons and property will become easier to prosecute and/or protect against that too is a good thing. But the age of victimless crimes could be coming to an end. Smile.

It is NOT the fault of capitalism which is a system that by definition protects liberties. It is a system that, in its ideal, has not ever existed not even close.

It's called "cut and paste"

[Anonymous Elf]

That little story has been posted before. It was funny the first time it took me 10 clicks to scroll past it.

Re:Slashdot

[retep]

Just another example of the iron wall between Slashdot editors and Slashdot marketers, I hope. :)

Blocking ads, cookies, etc..

[gammatron]

The Proxomitron is a personal web proxy that is super configurable and can block out most banner ads, cookies, pop-up windows, and tons more... this is a great way to foil most tracking networks with minimal effort, and its more extensible than most ad-blocking software and techniques.

--

Re:WE WONT STAND FOR THIS!

[Anonymous Elf]

Because /. doesn't want anonymous posting but they want encourage anonymous moderation. They are very much like the governemnt. After all, the state doesn't like anonymous communication, but it is more than happy to encourage anonymous phone calls and informants.

It is all about control. Uncle Sam wants it, and so does slashdot. Moderators would think twice before marking shit down if everyone saw their decision.

All in all, anonymous moderation is far more cowardly than anonymous posting.

Re:Privacy is in the EYE of the beholder

[Anonymous Elf]

Had your name been Signal 11 instead of Anonymous Coward, this would have been moderated up to 3 (Funny). Sorry.

I hate to be the one to break this to you...

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

...and all the rest of you lot who feel the need to insult, abuse, and otherwise defame Malda and slashdot.

Ready?

If you don't like it... if you hate it so very much... don't read it. Bog off. Go the smeg away. Ye gods, why whinge on about how bad /. is and what a gimp Rob is? Why not just visit the other sites out there that offer what this site does and shut the hell up!?? I mean, I hate "Baywatch", so I just don't watch it. Is the concept of "if you don't like it don't go there" so vastly difficult to comprehend that you can't understand that if you no longer like the site you don't have to go to it?

Then again... what do I know? I'm going back to sculpting my earwax.

Re:I hate to be the one to break this to you...

[Anal Surprise]

I've got to say, I agree with you, but I'm also very happy that dissenters aren't censored. For an example of how oppressive this can be, check out just about any corporate site, or something like Freevibe. Want to express a different point of view? Good luck getting past the editors...

Re:Put down the crack pipe, moderators...

[AndrewHowe]

"Smoking cocaine combines the efficiency of intravenous administration with the relative ease of consumption or ingestion and insufflation. Facilitated by the large surface area of the lungs' air sacs, cocaine administered by inhalation is absorbed almost immediately into the bloodstream, taking only 19 seconds to reach the brain."
Game over.
Continue?

Re:Progressive GIF, data density

[Money__]

Just one small example to help put this into perspective. I'm sure you've all watched a progressivly interlaced jpg or gif image across the net. When you first start loading a progressive jpg, you can make out colors and perhaps a general theme, but no detail. As the image completes it's second pass, the theme becomes a little more clear and some of the detail becomes readable. On the last pass, the image becomes crisp and clear.

The density of the data being collected about you is similar. As the bariers to collection are lowered and the costs of maintenance keep falling, a complete picture of you and your life comes into being. Slowly, week by week, the density of data grows into a complete bio on you and the life that you thought was your own.

All I'm abdicating is a law that asks the keepers of this data to seek the informed consent of the people before adding the data to the picture.
___

Privacy is dead: enter the Phoenix

[LoonXTall]

So you have a choice: you can either accept your loss of privacy and get the great economic and technological benefits that it brings, or attempt to cripple the system with laws, which won't bring back your lost privacy anyway.

I. What are the great economic benefits of losing my privacy? The granting of the ability to someone I got in a flame war with to open a fraudulent credit card account with my name and address? Or is it granting the right to advertising companies to follow me like a hound? Offhand, I can't remember the title, but I read a story once where a guy's supermarket sent him tons of e-mail, reminding him to restock certain goods, advising him to stop buying so much aspirin and go see a doctor, etc. Is that what you want your Inbox to look like? More spam? So much for the economic benefits... what about the technological ones? I'm not about to trade privacy for goods and services. As I mentioned above, the less traceable I am to megacorporations, the less traceable I am to my enemies. I suspect they may even be the same party....

II. Laws don't cripple the system. The lawyers that try to twist their meaning for their clients' ends do. The system tried to retain its integrity by getting wordy and specific, which left gaping loopholes and strange logic as goofy and error-prone as indirectly recursive functions.

III. Laws may not be able to bring back lost privacy, but they can make it illegal to further erode that privacy. And they give an avenue of attack if an artificial person sells you. Provided they don't become prey to what I mentioned in part II. If you want to see a broken/stupid law, go read COPPA.

If information wants to be free, then we must actively combat letting harmful information out of the cage. Indeed, censor it. Or do we wish to let the darkness freely roam the land? The ability to make bombs confers power... power that is as blind to its consequences as greed is to those it treads on. "Human resources" takes on a sinister new meaning.

Disclaimer: I am not anti-capitalist, anti-US, or pro-political correctness. I choose to exercise thought in determining policy on a particular situation. Saying how to make bombs and saying "Personnel" are quite different, and should be given different rules of censorship.

-- LoonXTall

Re:Privacy is dead: enter the Phoenix

[bnenning]

Your sig is rather ironic. You believe that information about explosives (such as might be found in a chemistry textbook) are dangerous and should be banned. The MPAA believes that the DeCSS source is dangerous and should be banned. What makes you more qualified than them to determine what should be legal? Once you open the door to censorship of information it is very difficult to close.

Re:Privacy is dead: enter the Phoenix

[greenrd]

Let's take this to its logical extreme. When "grey goo" nanoweapons are invented, it might not be sensible to make their design public, otherwise a lunatic might be able to take out the whole planet.

Or nukes. Currently cost constraints and national security constraints prevent them being widely usable, but if there were a weapon as bad as a nuke that you could build with your own personal nanoassembler, it again wouldn't make sense to allow the plans to be distributed.

Thus, with sufficiently powerful technology, total freedom of information could lead to total human extinction.

Re:Privacy is dead: enter the Phoenix

[FarHat]

Thus, with sufficiently powerful technology, total freedom of information could lead to total human extinction.

As technology grow, it grows both ways, so when guns came up, you also had bullet proof vests after some time. With electricity, you got circuit breakers after some time. And granted, the protective measures can follow only after the initial discovery has been made. Freedom of the information could possibly lead to someone building a better bulletproof vest or maybe a nukediffuser[TM]. As has been said here many times, security by obscurity is almost always a bad idea.

FarHat.

Re:Privacy is dead: enter the Phoenix

[LoonXTall]

The MPAA believes that the DeCSS source is dangerous and should be banned. What makes you more qualified than them to determine what should be legal?

DeCSS does not have the "clear and present danger" capacity of an Explosives HOWTO. (The danger is to a pocketbook rather than a human life, which makes it a less "natural" target.) Chemistry textbook information on explosives is very different than the information in the (hypothetical, I hope) Explosives howto. So chemistry tells you TNT is explosive. Where do you get the toluene? How are you going to connect the three nitrogen atoms to it? The howto, OTOH, would solve these questions with a simple step-by-step process. No library required.

Once you open the door to censorship of information it is very difficult to close.

True. But if you open the door to free information, that is also rather difficult to close. Although I have no system to propose to enforce my ideal, there must be a middle ground----between the free flow of all information (that which privacy policies theoretically prevent) and utter control of all information.

I think no such system will ever be implemented, as nobody is perfect. At the beginning of World War I, Russia's censors were trying to keep "revolutionary" material out of the country, but they let Marx's works through: they thought it was too boring to start anything. Lenin proved them wrong, but by then it was too late.

-- LoonXTall

Re:Privacy is dead: enter the Phoenix

[LoonXTall]

Freedom of the information could possibly lead to someone building a better bulletproof vest or maybe a nukediffuser[TM].

That takes time... time which The Enemy can deploy the destructive system. If you create a Counterdevice, can you implement it before your Enemy can blow up the world?

I guess that means information must be released to the forces of Good (TM), and released publicly only when a defense is discovered. Perhaps rolling out the defense and having it well in place before revealing the details of the attack would be an even better idea.

-- LoonXTall

maybe its time to vote

[j-pimp]

We all sit at our computers and complain about how big brother is gonna get us , but none of us are going out to become active in political organizations and bringing out these issues. previous generations have done so about issues of the day, but we seem to ake our freedom for granted.

The Aftermath

[Nessak]

Here is a question that I asked myself. I am unable to answer it, so I am asking my close personal friends here at slashdot.

OK, lets move to the hypothetical world 18 months from now. Everything single thing we click, read, or type is in someway tracked. Thanks to Intel/MS turning [back] on some type of Unique Number, they can tract everything back down to my PC. Every website knows there is some student in NJ who goes to school in MA and views slashdot often. They all know what type of music I listen to, what type of research I am involved with, and some even know what and to who I type my emails. What is the result of this?

I am a fairly law abiding citizen, so we can rule evidence for use in court out. The police also know all the things I do, but they are not interested. The people who want the info the most are the Advertisers. So will I only see ads for products that match my type? What would the result of that be? I don't have much money, so I can't just increase my spending. Who else is going to use all this info, and what for? How will this change my life? Will I not be able to get a job? Will I get a better job?

I *really* don't like losing my privacy, and I am uncertain of the effects. Besides more precise Ads, and maybe some easy market research for companies, what will be the result? Could our complete lose of privacy even help lower prices because companies are now spending less and getting better research?

Re:The Aftermath

[Nessak]

Yes, you make some good points. I had not thaught about these points untill now. Don't get me wrong, I have allway thaught, and allways will think, that privicy is a good thing and needs to be perserved, if for anything else but the reasons listed above. Thanks for answering my question.

Re:MODERATE THIS SUCKER DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[j-pimp]

We all complain about censorship and especially about web filtering software. However, there are many readers of slashdot who are forced to use computers with this software installed. Using such language in posts will not help keeping out of these software's list's. Lets take som social responsibility here people.

Re:nit, pick

[Money__]

Thanks for the correction. wow, my spilling really sucks :)
___

A few linux trix

[argoff]

since removed stuff still remains on your hard drive, you can do this to get rid of most of the xtra stuff

dd if=/dev/zero of=/filesys/GARBO
sync; rm /filesys/GARBO
this will temporarly fill up the fs, but get rid of most the crap.
Of course this is vulnerable to taking apart the hard drive and using sensitive detection, you could try this
dd if=/dev/random of=/filesys/GARBO; sync; rm GARBO
a slightly less secure, but much faster and probably just as reliable:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/filesys/GARBO; sync; rm GARBO
another thing I personally like to do since I don't have many important stored cookies is:
cd .netscape; rm cookies ; rm history.dat ; ln -s /dev/null cookies; ln -s /dev/null history.dat
this isn't really totally secure, but limits it quite a bit.
another nice little one is:
echo 127.0.0.1 ad.preferences.net >> /etc/hosts
there are also ipchains plugins and lists with many more ad hosts out there.
chattr -s filename on some implementations of linux will zero out the file when it's deleted.

Freedom from Privacy

[cybercuzco]

My question is, when does freedomstart to conflict with privacy. Example, Does the Government have a right to privacy? Do corporations? The same technologies that are conflicting with individuals privacy can arguably be said to be increasing freedom by allowing ordinary citizens to know things that Governments and corporations would very much like you to not know. The Monica Blewclinsky example is a perfect one. Individuals, like Monica, have a right to pricacy, But individuals Like clinton, are no longer Individuals, Clinton is the representative of the government, and therefore should have no privacy, for the good of the nation, or so the media would have us think. If Clinton couldnt keep a simple affair secret, whats going to happen when some future president needs to keep something important a secret? On the other hand, if that important thing could arguable harm the citizens of the US, it might be good if everyone knew about it. The point of having a president, or any leader for that matter, is so they can lead, and millions of people in the back seat driving dont let people lead. Its a conundrum regardless. Just my two bits.

Re:Freedom from Privacy

[radja]

I don't entirely agree with you. I think in the case of a president, his presidency should be completely open. After all, a president is in the employ of the people. But there should be a distinction between Bill Clinton and president clinton. The man is not defined by his job, nor should he be. It's nobody's business if Bill C. likes to tie up Hillary to their kingsize bed over the weekends (purely fictional, don't go flaming me for that now :) that is his business (and Hillary's).

//rdj

Slander by abbreviation ASSUMES prejudice

[redelm]

One of the key points of this article is about having one juicy nugget taken out of context, amounting to slander/libel. Well, this has always happened. Electronics has just made the process much easier both by making the searching easier, and giving much more material to search.

Ultimately, this can only be worrysome if the nugget receiver is prone to prejudice. For to make an important decision based on a small anecdote is judging without sufficient information--prejudice. But many people certainly are. How do you protect yourself against them?

The author clearly would like to deprive them of information by erecting privacy walls. What they don't have, they cannot misuse. Even if this were possible, there will always be something that can be misused. I do not think this is a good solution. How do you protect yourself against the irrationality of others? No-way.

My preference is to educate people to be more critical of their info sources and more open/tolerant of the reported subjects. Having seen the insides of some media stories and seen the resulting bletcherous reportage, my eyes are wide open. I view network TV and mainstream print about the same as I view USENET. Often mistaken, ignorant, posturing or incomplete, but not always.

unshredded documents

[HashKey]

If you dont shred any (snail)mail that comes to you before throwing it in the trash, and DoubleClick was responsible for collecting the trash, imagine what kind of data would go to their hands. Your phone bills, credit card bills, also possibly, where you shop for groceries, what you buy, how much you spend.. I wish there was a www.eshredder.com for the data that leaves your computer.

how ironic

[spatula]

Does anyone else find it ironic that you have to register your email address, country, zip code, age, sex, and household income before you can read an article about privacy abuses?

You Ever notice...

[Dr Caleb]

How easy it is to misconstrue information?

In the article, Laurence Hessig was mis-quoted through an e-mail.

I looked up my information years ago (before I decided to become invisible). Did I find anything about how many lines of code I've written? About how many machines I've recovered from BSoD's??

No.

But you suck one lousy cock...;-)

Oh the irony

[Miskatonic]

We should beware our personal info being tracked electronically--or so says the article (until someone found a nologin URL) on the website that requires you to log in to read most of their stories. So we're getting a future where in order to learn about privacy, you can compromise your privacy in the process. Hmmm...

I hope everyone got a good chuckle out the bit on crypto products, particularly the quote about, "You can trust us, because we don't expect you to trust us." Thanks, but I'll trust you as soon as you open your source code to peer review. Curiously, programs like PGP and GPG, which meet this critera, go unmentioned.

BTW, I'll re-post a URL that somebody posted in regards to a banner ad privacy article several weeks ago, because I think it's relevant to this and worth reading.

http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/privacy/banads.ht m

Re:WE WONT STAND FOR THIS!

[PsiPsiStar]

Just curious, why do you think that people would be so worried if moderation was not anonymous?
______________________________________ ______________________

Static IP Addresses

[LordSaxman]

At PSU for the last 4 years I've had a static IP address... and a search on Altavista for 'userid.rh.psu.edu' brought up a shocking number of webpage statistics pages.

For ease of use I've always prefered static IP, but to maximze privacy it seems like we'd all want dynamic addresses without name resolution.

So then

[/]

There is some information I don't want anyone to have, because it is never relevent except for nefarious purposes. Race, for example. What we need is more effective means of poisoning such personal records with deliberately false information, but as with all such things, the bad guys tend to stay one step ahead of the evolving techniques of the good guys.

At least one thing is clear: Slashdot's AC trolls have successfully cast doubt on everyone's sexual orientation and excluded Slashdot as a source for such information.

But look at what you are getting

[GrouchoMarx]

First off, I agree that it is disgraceful what corporations can do these days in terms of violating your privacy. Dominicks Food Stores requires your drivers liscence number and phone number in order to accept a check. The CIA can't get that information about you without a warrant. What's wrong with this picture?

However, having data about you available by some means other than face to face does have its advantages, if used wisely . I, for one, do not catagorically object to data about me being known, only known by certain agencies. For example:

• You are in a car accident. You are severely injured, and loosing blood. The police and parametics arrive on the scene. First thing they do is run your Universal ID card through their wireless device (while loading you onto a stretcher, of course). In 30 seconds, from the Central Medical Database, they learn that you are type B-Negative blood, and call ahead for the hospital to have some standing by when you get there. They also learn that you are alergic to certain medications, and make sure not to give those to you. They also determine that you are taking a medication for high blood pressure, which can conflict with other medications used in emergency rooms. They avoid those, too.
• Your 8 year old son is kidnapped, and taken out of the state and held for ransom. Fortunately, he have a sub-dermal ID chip, which the FBI uses to track his location via GPS. They manage to locate him to within 2 meters, and he is rescued before he is severely beaten/abused/raped/killed. The kidnappers are arrested and charged with kidnapping, and no one has to pay a ransom.
• Your credit card number is stolen. Before you are able to cancel it, the bank picks up on the fact that the charge just made on it is seven times what you have ever charged before, and far over your limit. They have a complete record of your credit history, for their card as well as others, so they can flag this information quite easily. They call you to confirm the charges, and you tell them that the card was stolen. You pay no obscene bills.
• You have a Bluetooth transmitter in your Palm X (or whatever they're going to call their new models). When you approach the private parking garage by your office, you drive up to the gate and it opens for you. You don't have to swipe a card or pull out change or even stop the car, because the gate can see you coming 30 feet away.
• You are receiving threatening phone calls from a stalker. You call the phone company, who tells you the phone number of the person who just called you (kept in their permanent log database, of course). You call the police, who run that number through their database and get an address for the person. He/she is arrested for stalking, and you sleep soundly that night.

All of the above scenarios require databases of personal information, or some sort of digitally encoded tracking system. Is there the potential for abuse of any of the above databases? Of course there is. There's also potential for the abuse of the light bulb, but I don't think anyone here would object to everyone having a dozen or so light bulbs in their house. (Great torture devices, all that heat and light...) Marketing data is a stickier issue, because it's benefits are inherently tied to a supply-side capitalist "Market." But that's not grounds to discount all data collection entirely.

Being cataloged has its advantages. Don't dismiss them simply because there are disadvantages as well. There are plenty of disadvantages to computers in general, carpal tunnel chief among them. Notice everyone who is reading this post believes the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

--GrouchoMarx

Re:But look at what you are getting

[Dave Scherer]

However, having data about you available by some means other than face to face does have its advantages, if used wisely. I, for one, do not catagorically object to data about me being known, only known by certain agencies.

This is a straw man argument. No one is suggesting that we outlaw databases. The point is that people should have some degree of control over the collection of personal information about them.

You are in a car accident. Okay. If you want to be in the "Central Medical Database" you can sign a contract with the company or agency that provides it, specifying to whom they may release your information. Better yet, encode all the information directly on your "Universal ID card" so that no one can take the information from you while you are conscious. No global database required.

Your 8 year old son is kidnapped. Okay. You can implant transmitters in your children. Just as long as the rest of us can make our own decisions.

Your credit card number is stolen. I have a better idea. Instead of using "profiling" to shore up a system that is pathetically insecure on the face of it, we could move to a digital cash system that would be more secure and improve privacy.

When you approach the private parking garage by your office, you drive up to the gate and it opens for you. Sounds great, but doesn't need to keep logs, does it? In fact, it doesn't even need to broadcast your identity, just a challenge and response.

You are receiving threatening phone calls from a stalker. I bet that if you thought really, really hard about it, you could come up with a way to provide Caller ID service without keeping permanent logs of all phone traffic. Of course, stalkers would just make calls from pay phones. Oh, right. They do that anyway. Hey, what if all the stalkers follow the transmitter signal from your "sub-dermal ID chip" to track you within 2 meters?

Being cataloged has its advantages. Don't dismiss them simply because there are disadvantages as well.

You're right: I don't want to give up the advantages of technology. I would like to see systems designed to limit the potential for abuse, whether by individuals, corporations, or government.

The real problem

[speek]

happens when you're information is "out there" and you don't have legal access to it. Take credit reports. YOu can't legally get all the information about you without help from a lawyer. Ironically, others frequently can get this info.

The problem here is, what happens when they've got it wrong? What happens when reports about you have it down that you're a convicted felon, but you aren't? Can you fix it? Without consulting a lawyer, you won't find out, first of all. Secondly, once you do find out, you may discover that this information has been sold, copied, propagated to thousands of data-collecting organizations. You may find it's impossible to track it all down and fix it. It's effectively permanent.

Note: I didn't make any of that up. It has already happened to a man in Florida.

Living with more truth than we want

[scruffy]

I think we are going through a phase transition where privacy will disappear and we will manage to "grow up" about what kinds of people we really are and about the distortions of facts out of context. In the past, it was less likely that we would have to face up to our "private" sins and strange behaviors. Now this information will be more likely to be known by anybody. We will learn that ordinary people do all sorts of strange and disgusting things. We probably didn't want to know the truth, but "information wants to be free".

We will also have to learn not to take facts out of context. We are starting to see this now for famous people. How important are Clinton's affairs to his presidency? The people who hate Clinton see this as more evidence of his incompetency. Another group sees these as irrelevant compared to his politics.

How important is George Bush's party animal past to his run for President? Again, many people will see as evidence of incompetency, and others will see these as irrelevant compared to what policies he supports.

Everyone has a skeleton in their closets. In the future, all the closets will be open for everyone to see. We will live with it, and it will become a normal part of life.

What if browsers changed the way cookies work?

[migs]

If browsers had an option that only enabled cookies sent by the specific site you were visiting, all DoubleClick-like profile acquisition techniques would collapse, while preserving the usefulness of cookies for things like storing shopping cart info, site-specific preferences, etc. The only option that current browsers give you is to enable/disable ALL cookies, which is simply not a good option. Yes, you can configure IE to handle security on a case-by-case basis, but setting that up for each individual site is not practical. Maybe Mozilla will be more flexible?

Re:What if browsers changed the way cookies work?

[radja]

I am using opera, which does just that. Just don't visit pages with java, it tends to crash a bit...

//rdj

Way to go sun...

[pbf]

Noticed the great comment from Sun's CEO Scott McNealy:

"You already have zero privacy -- get over it"

Way to go!

Re:your sig...

[Anonymous Elf]

Uhm you forgot to login or did you use that little check box???