Slashdot Mirror
Part One: Killing The "Inviolate Personality"
Jeffrey Rosen says he began writing The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America as an effort to understand the constitutional, legal and political drama behind the impeachment of President Clinton.
His exploration grew broader. The Clinton impeachment, Rosen later concluded, was really a window into a phenomenon that affects everybody, whether Kenneth Starr is after us or not: the erosion of privacy at home, at work and, especially, in cyberspace, where intimate personal information is increasingly vulnerable to exposure. All kinds of people -- litigants, employers, government agents and prosecutors, total strangers -- can now look with impunity at our diaries and e-mail, digital footprints and track the books we order and the Web sites we visit.
The Unwanted Gaze became an unsettling alarm of how technology and new laws -- especially those which spring from sexual harassment legislation -- have combined to make privacy nearly obsolete before most Americans have quite grasped just how much it's being threatened. When it comes to issues like technology and privacy, America is truly an unconscious civilization, blissfully trading away even prized and hard-won freedoms. (Yesterday, the White House announced that it planned to propose legislation that would set legal requirements for surveillance in cyberspace by law enforcement authorities.)
Invasions of privacy were a hallmark of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, writes Rosen, who's a law school professor and columnist. And increasingly, they are a legacy of the new technologies and software deployed on the Net and the Web.
Privacy used to be regarded as a nearly sacred American right. Keeping British soldiers and government agents out of people's homes and lives was one of the primary justifications for the American Revolution. But most Americans have barely blinked as their tastes, habits and preferences have been routinely tracked online. That apathy might be changing. "The public is nervous and increasingly suspicious of what online and offline advertisers are doing to them," the chief privacy officer of AllAdvantage, a Net advertising firm warned recently. As people become more alarmed, so will politicians. That means more laws from Congress, always a frightening possibility when it comes to the Net.
This broad-based assault on privacy --by no means confined to the online world -- threatens one of the cornerstone ideas of individual rights that dates back to the Enlightenment, and was embraced by the American legal system -- the idea of the "inviolate personality," the belief that a human being's innermost convictions, communications and tastes were private, to be protected from monarchs and governments as well as prying gossips. Online, this is an especially powerful idea. We talk to strangers all the time, assume all sorts of postures and personalities, express all sorts of opinions in all sorts of places, explore strange sites and spaces, leave all sorts of tracks. That freedom of exploration and expression is one of the most powerful things about the Net and the Web, one of the things that makes it unique, that so many people love the most about them.
In l890, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote that "the common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others." That legal principle once prevented prosecutors from seizing and studying diaries, letters, and private papers. Thus many Americans were flabbergasted by the degree to which prosecutors could vacuum up the most intimate details of Monica Lewinsky's life, from her bookstore purchases to her private letters and e-mail. Whatever people thought of her relationship with this dunder-headed president, many were uncomfortable not only with the prosecutor's zeal but with the wide public dissemination her private life and records received in media and court documents. Lewinsky's "inviolate personality," however strange or narcissistic, was exposed and destroyed as thoroughly as anyone's in memory, possibly excepting Princess Diana.
Lewinsky -- along with much of the rest of the country -- was shocked to learn when agents seized her personal records and clothing that the right to privacy can be snatched away at any time. Her most personal e-mail messages to family and friends were posted all over the Web.
Rosen convincingly assigns a lot of the blame to recently-enacted harassment laws, which made the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky dramas possible. As sexual harassment law expands, writes Rosen, people can be interrogated about their consensual relationships on the flimsiest of allegations. During the l980's and 90's, he writes, the Supreme Court recognized sexually explict speech and conduct that created a "hostile or offensive working environment" as a form of gender discrimination, a legal evolution that made it difficult for lower courts and employers to distinguish consensual affairs from illegal sexual coercion.
The threat of harassment suits has prompted companies to wantonly invade their workers' private e-mail and personal correspondence -- even to rifle their desks -- almost at will. Online or in the workplace, the idea of the "inviolate personality" is vanishing, not by vote or legislation but by a gradual erosion caused by a series of court rulings and the advance of new information technologies like the Net.
The inviolate personality has also been undermined by diverse other culprits.
On the Internet, snoops are only one danger. In cyberspace, warns Rosen, the greatest threat to privacy comes not from nosey employers or colleagues who tattle but from the electronic signatures and footprints that make it possible to monitor and trace just about everything we read, write, browse, or buy. As people reading this know well, most browsers are configured to reveal every Web site people visit as well as IP addresses which may identify individual users. Often, this invasive software is even admired and hailed as cool new stuff.
But that information can be -- is being -- collected and stored to create detailed profiles of user tastes and preferences in shopping, reading and other habits, all of great value to hungry retailers, increasingly global megacorporations for whom mass marketing -- thus the gathering of personal information -- is nearly a religion. It will also inevitably be used by law enforcement. The FBI's "Carnivore" system, so named, agents, say, because it is able to quickly get the "meat" in huge quanitities of e-mail and instant messaging systems, consists of hardware and software that trolls for information after being hooked up to the network of almost any ISP. Once installed, "Carnivore" has the ability to monitor all of the e-mail on a network, from the list of what mail is sent to the actual content of the communications. Like other forms of searches and seizures, "Carnivore" requires court approval to be deployed. But it's capable of gathering an unprecedented amount of communications from targets in seconds, including personal and intimate messages many people believe are being sent anonymously.
In the Corporate Republic that comprises contemporary America, information gatherers are much more likely to be companies than cops. Rosen cites Amazon's creepy software that uses ZIP codes and domain names to identify the books most purchased by employees of prominent corporations. Amazon also touts its "recognition" software that tracks its regular customers' buying habits and makes personalized recommendations to them. Rosen also recounts the flap over DoubleClick, the Net's largest advertising company, which last year was forced to delay a plan to create elaborate dossiers linking users' online and browsing habits with their actual identities.
The combination of gender discrimination laws and new technology, and the risk they post to the idea of individual privacy, amount to a seismic change. Throughout the United States, the young in general and students in particular have no right to privacy at all. Their computers and writings are routinely seized and examined, and their e-mail, personal correspondence, writing and speech are increasingly taken out of context and disseminated to authorities and law enforcement agencies.
Democratic states have always drawn a distinction between public and private speech, recognizing that the ability to expose parts of our identity in some contexts that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to real freedom.
Privacy is vital for the evolution of individual personalities, and for the formation of intimate relationships. It permits communications between friends, lovers and families. It is essential to freedom of expression and to any form of individualism, to the development of intellect and values. It's even essential to creativity. The idea that our reflexive reactions, frustrations, mistakes and missteps -- especially those expressed so freely, impulsively and widely online -- can at any time be disseminated to the world is a very real impediment to free speech and thought.
Next: Platforms for privacy?
Hi Jon, I'm moderator right now, so I'm posting anonymously.
e rtarians/>
s p?theisbn=0963865420>. It is a study of encryption and financial privacy. Basically, since strong encryption *does* exist and can be used to evade taxes, etc. people *will* use it. Government can try to clamp down on this behavior, but they cannnot stop it completely. So government has a choice: embrace the new technology which allows privacy, or become a hellish police state. Guess which way the US seems to be heading. *sigh*
;)
Anyway, I think there are some good comments in this thread. You can draw a lot of information from this. I think in general there is a feeling that cryptography is not enough any more. There are/used to be a lot of people who feel/felt that we could safeguard privacy with pure mathmatics, and laws be damned. As I'm no great fan of government, I'd like to be in that faction, but it is not true. What good is your encryption if the secret police tortue your private key out of you? None.
There's some thoughts regarding this idea at "Twilight of the Crypto-geeks", <http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/04/13/lib
Since I don't like the transparent society, I think there is still hope for encryption and privacy. However, it is clear that encryption needs to be part of a larger privacy committment in society (note, not government). If people value their privacy, there are ways to protect it, and outrage when physical and/or legal methods are used to subvert their privacy or their fellow citizen's privacy.
A few people using encryption are a target to an oppressive government, but the masses using encryption provide a huge shield to *everyone's* privacy.
A good look at this topic can be had from _The End of Money_, by Richard Rahn <http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.a
You might want to pick up the book, Jon. It's an easy four hour read, and pretty entertaining. Beware, the author is an unabashed libertarian
Luke Francl
As sexual harassment law expands, writes Rosen, people can be interrogated about their consensual relationships on the flimsiest of allegations.
What was done to Bill Clinton would have been unconscionable had it been done to anyone else. Not because Clinton is scum. He is. So are millions of people whose lives should remain private. He deserved to have the law used against him for a single reason. He signed into law the bill that allowed expanding a sexual harrassment investigation into consentual affairs. He praised it as a step forward in women's rights. Every Congressman, President, and Judge should be held fully accountable by the standards that they set for the rest of us.
Doesn't change a thing. Why shouldn't I be allowed to decide that privacy of my DNA profile is more important to me than the potential of receiving this kind of treatment quickly. And lest you point out that it's easy to say that when I'm healthy but I may think differently when I'm sick, I will in turn note that making hard decisions is part of life, and it's not for you to second guess whatever decision someone makes.
My concern is that the government will, without our input (except from fulltime pundits), enact just such legislation "for the good of society".
If we don't move first on this subject by creating an organization with by-laws that [1] suit our purposes and [2] blunt proposals from other players, then we will be someday (soon) forced to play by a rulebook written for us, not by us.
Btw: I don't think losing a license because of a corporation would be very likely. For example, I don't think I have ever heard of a lawyer losing his license that way.
In fact, I think that developers would be at an advantage if they had a professional society behind them which could defend them against a corporation.
To me, it's really a matter of chosing the lesser of two evils. The first evil (doing nothing) will result in shackles being put on us by others. The second evil also involves shackles but we would hold the keys.
Also, don't forget the difference in society between licensed trades (e.g., electricians and plumbers) and licensed professions (e.g., doctors and lawyers). If we do nothing we will be a licensed trade but if we act on our own we can be a licensed profession.
-- OpenSourcerers
I used to sell life insurance. Your medical records are available via a centralized facility called the Medical Information Bureau. It is used to check to see if (for example) an applicant is lying when he claims to not smoke before issuing a policy.
Yes, we needed your signature to release the information but the point is that the information is already being stored in a centrally accessible fashion.
This isn't robots collecting DNA samples (yet) but you should know that when a medical test is ordered, a lot of other information is collected along the way. Blood tests in particular test for a set of things at the same time. All that information is centrally accessible.
The only way I can think of in order to maintain traditional privacy would be to live in the woods as a hermit. Even then, it's too late because you left a trail of data as a child.
A lot more interesting information on this is here.
-- OpenSourcerers
I think that many of these issues should be handled by making the practice of software a licensed profession like law or medicine.
Right now, the only real players in this arena are the government and corporations who together have a largely shared agenda. There needs to be a third player with an agenda that is sufficently different so as to make a difference. Also, that third player needs to be sufficiently powerful so as to be a peer to others.
If in order to practice software commercially you had to be licensed; and if to be licensed you had to uphold a code of ethics; and if you could be "disbarred" for violating that code of ethics; and if that code of ethics contained statements about privacy such as "no user tracking without the user's explicit knowledge and consent"; then something about these issues could be accomplished.
Since I am here on this subject anyway, I would also point out that such a code of ethics could include clauses about not writing code with the purpose of breaking a competitor's product; not releasing programs without disclosing known bugs; and so on.
As things stand now, if a developer is told to do something questionable there is little recourse for the developer except to do it or quit. If, however the developer could say "that violates my professional code of ethics and if you insist then the Software Practioners' Professional Society will have something to say about it" then much could be accomplished.
There will be those whose blood pressure will sky rocket at the mention of licensing developers but to me it is foolish to ignore the inevitable in the hope that it will go away. Even plumbers and electricians are licensed and pretty much all the harm they can do is damage a single building. The distributed nature of software makes the potential for damage much greater.
Consider the total economic damage of a 747 crashing due to a mechanical failure. For this there is always a major international investigation that lasts years and heads do roll.
Now consider the total economic damage of a system which allows the propogation of something like ILOVEYOU. Where is the investigation? What rules and regulations are being imposed to prevent a recurrence?
This state of affairs will not be allowed to continue much longer. The field of software has been the "Wild West" for about as long as the real "Wild West" existed. Civilization (no matter what one thinks of it) is coming.
If licensing is inevitable, then we should take action ourselves now because we have a choice between being a trade and being a profession. If we don't make that choice for ourselves, it will be made for us and we probably won't like the results.
So, yes I think that software could prevent many violations of privacy. However, that software would have to become ubiquitous and transparent. No one currently with the power to accomplish that has any interest in making it so. It is up to us.
-- OpenSourcerers
The right to Innovate and Inviolate!
Sheesh. I need more caffeine... or less Microsoft... Or something.
---
seumas.com
It is funny the response that the Government gives when people bring this up. The innocent has nothing to hide. Yes we do our passion, thoughts, dreams these are things we need to hold on to. If I decide to keep them private then they should be private. I would not let just anyone these things. I certainly would not want the government to know them either this is what I am afraid of. That we will give up what make us human.
I just thought of it as a book review.
It's only Part One.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
As for "the legal system" preventing use of technology to invade your privacy, haw. Tell that to the Republicans that Clinton obtained the FBI files on (for instance). As if the government is some kind of shining bastion of ethical purity.
...) really really wants to find out what brand of toilet paper you use and how often you jerk off, it can. Legalities aren't going to stop it. But it can do this in special, exceptional cases. It cannot do this to a hundred thousand people just in case. Government always did and will continue to do illegal things. But it does them in small bits and pieces. I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that the FBI wiretapped somebody without a court order. I would be very much surprised if somebody told me that the FBI wiretapped the whole population of Washington, DC. That is the difference that the legality makes.
The issue is of scale. If the FBI (or CIA or NSA or
Outlawing technology because it can be used for nefarious purposes is never a good idea.
That's a straw man. I never argued for outlawing the technology. I argues for limiting certain uses by certain entities. For example, I see little point in trying to outlaw automatic face recognition from street video cameras. But I see a lot of point in legally prohibiting police departments from doing this.
When there is no way to ensure personal privacy, it's a good idea to ensure that the people who would invade it have no privacy either.
The same old point -- I don't think it compensates in any way. Let me ask you: because Jenny put a webcam in her apartment, does she now have a right to come into your home and put a webcam there? Can she invade your privacy because she has none?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
...lets get rid of those stupid sexual harrisment laws.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
But wait... we have a constitutional right to privacy according to "Roe v. Wade"!
Of course, that only applies if you want an abortion, and has nothing to do with privacy.
Seriously, though, the fourth amendment does guarantee a reasonable degree of privacy WRT the government. Of course, "unreasonable" is turning out to be as slippery a concept as "interstate commerce".
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Based on what i've seen, Katz is less of an inverstigative reporter and more of a commentator: he doesn't do a lot of deep fact-finding, but rather comments on what he sees in broad terms. If this is the case, his job is not to pry into people's private lives but rather to comment on parts of society that should be obvious to everyone, in ways that make us reconsider how we see said parts of society.
no need for irony tags
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
I am currently in the middle of Rosen's book, and find it quite interesting, especially having just read "Database Nation".
/. community) has been at the forefront of tearing down our rights.
One of the interesting points (thus far) of the book is that it focuses on the legislative and judicial aspects of privacy rather than the technical. As fast as technology changes, it seems that the judiciary has in the short course of 100 years pissed away any ideas of personal privacy.
Of particular note is that many of the anti-privacy judgements by the Supremes were written by Sandra Dee^H^H^HDay O'Connor, many dissents written by Thomas. Also, several important lower court decisions were from our favorite jurist, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. So what? So, it appears that one of the lesser judges has been making smarter decisions on this case, and a judge revered (at least by the
The book also echoes some of the points of "No Logo": (and yes, this is obvious and redundant) money buys privacy.
If knowledge is our current currency du-jour, it is apparant that much of the current intellectual capital is being wasted either protecting the lingering threads of our privacy or tearing them down. For every hacker working on GPG and other encryption techniques, we have several working on Echelon, that crazy FBI scheme, and others.
Perhaps it's the dark side of the force versus the light? And it seems that many universities are being bought out by the quick, easy path of the dark side: disallowing free speech, signing up with M$ and others, selling out concessions to Coke/Pepsi.
Unfortunately, it is to end with the rebellion of the people. Doubly unfortunate is that most rebellions have been led by the bourgeous (sp?) shopkeepers and their children in universities. They were the first ones bought and sold.
University is no longer (hell, maybe in the US never was) a place for intellectual freedom and curiosity; it is a factory that turns out pieces of paper that entitle one to a higher salary. Perhaps in the natural sciences (and of this I am not sure) discovery is not allowed. However, in any of the humanities and social sciences, only dogma is allowed. Expect not to find any revolutionaries there unless they are of the chic, neo-hippy type, just waiting to put on their three piece suits and do five hours of pro-bono after 55 hours working for a corporate firm.
So we are left with the shopkeepers. Sadly, there are no more in the US. Or very few. Wal-Mart has pushed them out. Actually, consumers have pushed out the shopkeeper by shopping at Wal-Mart instead of at the local shop. Laws are increasingly tough on small businesses, despite the fact that they are the primary source of jobs for the current economic expansion. The deck is stacked. When you reach the point of having some political pull (say 50 employees) the governments heap crushing requirements on you. This may be the reason so many new companies do not last forever.
So, if they aren't working for or owning small companies anymore, where is the middle class? Here in Southern Maryland, they are owned by the government. If they don't work directly for them, they work for a contractor or other business that is 100% beholden to the gubmint. So there is no way they will rise up and demand the return of their privacy.
The upper class doesn't count. They can buy their own freedom.
The lower class? Most of them haven't had privacy in a long time, so nothing has changed.
So, while this may seem like a Katzian rant, things HAVE changed. And for the worse. The past 100 years (particularly the past 25) has seen the technology to allow unwanted intrusion skyrocket at the same time that the courts have ignored any pretense of paying attention to the fourth, fifth, and first amendment.
About a week back, I submitted an Ask Slashdot. In it, I requested information on what people thought was a fair email/web privacy policy for a company, given the current legal/judicial state. It wasn't posted. Is Slashdot not interested? Perhaps. Or perhaps this is yet another source of rebellion that is quickly mainstreaming. Or even worse: maybe what they say is right. Maybe it is easy to shout down the law, it is easy to complain about M$, it is easy to complain in general. But change is hard. Perhaps too hard.
Maybe we all like our air-conditioned homes and new cars too much to actually dare upset the balance.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
And why should the President expect privacy? He chose to stand for election to *public* office. At that point, any right to privacy he had became forfeit, IMO.
;-)
But I don't expect all that many people to agree with me, so that's okay
You don't understand what privacy is. It is not hiding any and all information about yourself. Privacy is control over personal information. It means *I* get to choose who knows what about me.
Are you advocating European-style privacy laws?
Please clarify what exactly is "personal information", and where this choice is made.
For example, are you suggesting that one should not be required to disclose my income when applying for a lease or loan, such as for an apartment or mortgage? Many people consider that personal information. What about medical histories and health insurance? There is no choice in the matter when an entire industry follows the same conventions.
What should determine your "right" to privacy, the respective industries, or government regulation?
This is a cease and desist order from IDG Books Worldwide. You have infringed upon our copyright by unlawfully mentioning our "... for Dummies" series. Please print a retraction, or our hordes of lawyers will descend upon you. Thank you, and have a nice day.
As the Internet expands to the masses the percentage of people who abide by and apreciate the net's tradition of openness shrinks. Did we really expect people to respect privacy in the face of the almight dollar???
Predestination was doomed from the start.
The value you place on your privacy is exactly that; a personal value judgement. Your assessment is fine, for you. The key issue is that you get to make that choice rather than someone else making it for you.
Graham
No.
But I can't help myself, so I'll go on talking for a while. There are so many ways a user can be tracked, its like asking if _X_ can make a full-blown implementation of UNIX completely secure? There are always holes. And we (the humans) create our own holes in privacy when we give out information. Encryption and pseudonyms don't protect us against outselves.
LouZiffer
LouZiffer
If you're going to put monitoring equipment everywhere under that assumption that it actually works, then that puts the imputus strongly on these devices for proving that I'm guilty.
If anyone is stupid enough to organize major criminal activities through e-mail then they deserve to be caught just for their stupidness. Just like someone shoplifting in an obviously camera infested area.
However. If I find someway of bypassing your security measures that whatever law enforcement will become increasingly reliant apon, then I never did it, did I? I get away scott free.
Militant advertising is a whole other matter. I like how search engines now target advertising based on what you use for search criteria. I guess as long as the advertisers are aware of the growing resentment against them and that people now are probably more likely to associate negative feelings to a product in an ad.. at least moreso with our generation. I don't any of us are fooled by advertising any more.. This isn't the 50's.. As long as they're aware of that, then everything is fine. There's three main ways of presenting advertising: eliciting positive feelings i the viewer, 'reverse psychology' (our stuff sucks, don't buy it), and shock value (Calvin Klein is good at that one) but the younger generations have been so saturated and desensitived to media in general and advertising specifically that they would probably have to smear baby guts on the wall to get my attention anyway.
Do any of you find this getting closer to Orwell's "1984" every day? Not to kick a dead horse, but neither the government nor (and fscking especially) a company nor an individual needs my personal information unless it has direct bearing on a court case and is so ordered by the court with jurisdiction. I did not vote to have my constitutional rights revoked. Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Seems pretty damn clear to me.
So they install cameras to take pictures of license plates.
People are being shot with guns at schools and churches.
So they install metal detectors, cameras, and want a database of all gun owners in the country.
People die because they choose to smoke cigarettes.
So they sue tobacco companies for an absolutely absurd amount.
Drug dealers and other criminals are possibly using e-mail to plan their crimes.
So the FBI installs boxes at ISPs to copy all e-mail and other net traffic from it's users.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Ben Franklin
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
For Mindstorms, an expansion set to make rovers and retriever arms.
I don't have any Mindstorms yet, butmay be down the road.
George
Rosen argues that new software..encryption, pseudonymous e-mails, etc. will return a sense of privacy to the Net. Is this so? Do any of you think software can really protect privacy from government surveillance and corporate tracking programs.
I think software theoretically can give you some privacy on the net (as long as the NSA doesn't crack it), but it would have to be easy to set up, easily available, and totally transparent to use.
As a corollary, consider real world privacy. While you can theoretically increase your privacy by wearing disguises when you go out, and you could sweep your house for bugs, and you could keep a log off all the license plate numbers you see on the cars behind you, do you? Do you know anyone who does? So why would online privacy be different?
George
...moderate me down and be done with it, alright?
You're gonna have to work a little bit harder to lost that triple digit kharma, try adding some hot grits next time.
Did you get the Exploration Mars addon yet?
George
That is the problem, agencies like the FBI and the CIA have been acquiring powers without the accountability to go with them. A problem with any enforcement group with powers "over and above" is the development of a "Men in Black" or even more dangerously Us vs. Them, where the definition of Them becomes more and more inclusive.
The X-Files may not be real, but Echelon and Carnivore sure are. If you take a good look at an FBI or CIA man and compare their mentality to someone who works or worked for the Soviet KGB, or the South African, Chinese, French, or Israeli secret services you'd be hardly pressed to find enough differences that matter.
Who Should Watch the Watchmen? It may be one of the most important questions of our time.
Echelon already exists and is reading the email of everyone on this planet. Computer technology can actually do these massive scaled searching and sorting operations to an increasing degree. Give it another 5 years and who knows what may be possible by then. Brin argues quite convincingly that government and corporate agencies are developing and using the tools neccessary to strip our privacy.
Brin isn't arguing that we should surrender our privacy in order to buy government accountability. He's arguing that we've already lost it, are losing it more, and we can't prevent it. And the only defense is to return the offense.
The decimation of Jewish populations of Europe under the Nazi governments was an atrocity. What the Serbians and the Bosnians have been doing to each other in turns was an atrocity. The National Guard firing on unarmed peaceful student protestors was an atrocity.
But Monica Lewinsky? That was an overinflated soap opera that virtually crippled a Presidency, distracted a Congress that resulted in a straight-laced prosecutor publishing the most salacious library of reading material at taxpayer expense.
companies have no personality to be violated, and indeed privacy laws should apply equally to everybody. everybody includes all persons. not cars, bicycles, corporations or other artificial entities.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Perhaps we shouldn't be worried about keeping things private. Perhaps we should be more worried about the reasons why people need privacy in the first place. Such as the false moralities defined 2000 (and more in some cases) years ago by social outcasts that caused the whole "Lewinski scandal" and other recent atrocities. Maybe we should be worried about just trying to get people to grow the fuck up.
Lib.BENCH the only site you'll ever need!
Look up its posting history for the calculated, inflamatory nonsence it's posted before.
Google for its supposed employer: "NPO Technologies"... just like "steve woston"'s "jjjjulius games", there's no such company.
For the love of Bob, don't feed it anymore.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Now is the time for all Americans who wish to live free or die to fight, and for the Tories, er other people to run to Canada. In fact, every 4th of July we should have such a ceremony. Anyone here who wants to trade their freedom for "safety" and "security"? Here's your plane ticket, and don't let the customs agent slap your butt on the way out. I'll supply my own safety, thank you. That's why I learned how to fight, shoot a gun, and hopefully speak truthfully and honestly. By the way, this isn't a jab at Canadians. You can do what you like up there, it's merely a historical reminder.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Privacy is a farce, and it's never been garunteed by the constitution as a basic human right. Get over it, and move on.
>>Why? Because to provide the services which people desire, providers are going to need more information. For instance consider the possibility for gentically tailored medicines, something that isn't too far ahead in the future. In order to personalise such medicines drug companies are going to require your DNA profile. Are you willing to give up on advances like this for the sake of some nebulous concept like privacy?
Good question. No I proabably wouldn't want to not reap the benefits of it. BUT I want to have the ability to MAKE this decision.
I want to know WHO does WHAT with my Data, with "me".
I have a european background and hey, if somebody in germany steals your papers then you have a problem, because you have to apply for them again. There is not much more harm done than that.
A friend told me recently that her driving license was stolen 5 years ago (in the US) and that person wrote a bad check with it. Now her credit rating (for a $20 check) is wrecked and she is fighting ever since then to get it back on track.
I agree. To get a lot of customized services people need to know, but the way the system is currently in the US it is very dangerous. Because for MOST companies the only YOU that exists is the one they have in their Databases. Somebody makes a mistake and YOU have to face the consequences in Real LIfe.
Maybe using DNA for Authentication is a solution. That way a stolen drivers license or check doesn't affect the individual that much.
But face it: In todays america, with all the information that is freely available, ANYBODY can ruin anybodys life.
And in that case: Yes, privacy is important. But I guess for that it is way too late in the US anyways.
Michael
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Interesting. Why are we NOT allowed to see our FBI files? This information is all about US, yes? Isn't it a basic right written down somewhere (or SHOULDN'T it be) that we are all entitled to know as much about ourselves as possible? Is there a justification for this kind of individuality-denying secrecy that I can't think of?
It's like that episode of Seinfeld when Elaine wasn't allowed to look at her own medical chart (I don't <b>think</b> this is based on reality, but it might be). Remember she was running around with it in secret, trying to sneak it out of the hospital, and some doctor or nurse confronted her with this maddened look in their eyes?
Well, yeah. M'point is, how is hiding someone's "file on you" FROM you justified?
+++ATH0
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
A more devious trick would be to infect other people's computers with a worm which doesn't spread per se, but it does surf. It does the same corrupting of the click-stream for thousands or millions of people that your personal corrupter does for you. NOW DoubleClick is seriously hurting, not only because their entire database is being seeded with corruption, but because the main "benefit" of their tracking (targeted ads) is diluted. People's patience with DoubleClick goes away, there's less click-through revenue, and their business withers before their very eyes.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Do you remember anything about Watergate and the activities of the "plumbers"? That was privacy invasion in the service of political dirty tricks. Even if more privacy leads to fewer opportunities to catch scumbags electronically and a requirement for more good old police work, this is better than the kind of manipulations and other abuses that a lack of privacy will inevitably produce.
You can't tell me that the powerful can be forced into the open the way little people are. The powerful have ways of putting their affairs behind closed doors that most people do not. For this reason, the average person needs European-style data security laws, anonymous digital cash, and 100% encrypted communications. This is the only thing which can keep individual rights free from wholesale manipulation as we fall headlong into the digital age.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Privacy is gone. The governement has taken it from us. So, a little insignificant document called the Constitiution and hte Bill of Rights promise us rights, but that has no place in modern society. Hmm...does this mean that the governemnt is a tyranny? I hope it does. The governement gave us the right to privacy, and it has taken it away. But wait! We are a democracy, am I not correct? The legal system has no power without the people. The declaration of independence gave us the right to rebel and establish a new governement if the current one becomes a tyranny. but, they have taken that as well. Just try a mass rebellion...get a few million people, and watch every single last person get killed. That might cause some political unrest for a while, but the White House will say they were fascist commies, and everyone will beleive the bullshit, and exist in their sugar coated world. The military is just one rung away from total brainwashing of soldiers...they start training in high school(J-Rot-c). Don't think they'll see the fact that the nation is heading in the wrong direction, and that killing is immoral and wrong. They'll be glad to do it. My opinion is that if you just leave people alone, let them live, stop fuckign with their privacy, and such; everythign will work itself out. Of course, if you say "Hello" to a person that doesn't want to speak to you, it's sexual harrasment nowadays, and then they confiscate your box, intercept your mail, tap your phoneline, and make you go to jail. Well, my rant is going no where, so gimme a -1. It'll put my karma down to 0. Just don't expect ot see your privacy anytime soon.
-------------
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Not necessarily anyway. Think! Robots.txt, .htaccess, inviteonly option in chat rooms, VPNs, GPG chat (I got dibs on that USPTO!)
If McFeely wants to say "You got no privacy, get over it," I can say, "You got copyright, get over it."
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Theres no such thing, and there hasn't been for years. Not unless you want to tear up all your credit cards, get rid of your phone, internet connection, quit your job, let your drivers license expire, sell your house, flee the country, and fake your own death. If your willing to do all these things, flee to the woods in a little cabin with no electricity under dense tree cover... you might just get a little peace.
Blender And Linux Fan
Interesting link - good to see at least one half-decent argument on the side of the men in grey.
Don't forget that more privacy = more opportunities for random scumbags to screw us around and MUCH less chance of them ever being caught. Question is: which of the two ends of the privacy scale is potentially more damaging?
My instinct says the latter...
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
I was thinking the same thing, except I was looking for a different key phrase. I was getting excited until I read in the fourth-last paragraph:
In the Corporate Republic...
Aaaaargh!!!
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
It's also very interesting that Jon Katz's favorite cliche, which he babbles about almost constantly, is "information wants to be free". Of course, privacy is information. Why shouldn't THAT information be free? Privacy advocates want information to NOT be free. It is a contradiction to be a privacy advocate and an advocate of free information. Jon Katz is a hypocrite about almost all of his main issues (e.g. advocating digital media, but refusing to release his book online), but this one is particularly glaring.
Hear, hear. I think those comparisons tend to follow the same line:
People want to be taken care of. Whether its metal detectors and cameras or lawsuits, there is an abdication of personal responsibility. Liberty and responsibility go hand in hand; by definition, if you have liberty you MUST take responsibility, or you have bled liberty away from whomever you attempt to hold responsible.
Never knock on Death's door:
The Anti-Blog
In l890, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote that "the common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others."
This quote backs that up. Each individual the right to determine There is nothing online that requires me to use my real name. I really hope that no one has the 555-5555 telephone number because I've used that hundreds of time signing up for stuff. If you are paranoid about your email being targeted and read (out of millions out there) then encrypt it!
Offline don't leave your personal items floating around your desk. Take them home if you are worried that your employer is going to come and snoop around. If you can't take it home then buy a pad-lock.
Its all common sense. People should use it rather than posting cynical comments to Slashdot. Corporate America wouldn't have near as much power if the average person didn't give it to them in the first place
Never knock on Death's door:
The Anti-Blog
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Toronto. People in Canada are actually free, compared to the US. And there's concepts, such as protection from corporate abuse. Y'know... the apartment complexes can't screw you around as easily as they can in the US. And people are less paranoid, of course. Though I'm still young, so this is not necessarily my final destination. There's an entire world out there I'd like to see. :^)
Who Wants To Date A Norwegian?
...there... the door. If you don't like the laws in the US, then just go live somewhere else, before they have completely taken over your life. (I already did.)
Who Wants To Date A Norwegian?
Like or hate Katz, asking for a shorter article on this subject shows how much you care about it. But then, being an AC seems to show you don't care about who/what you are.
I think the slashdot readers here, sometimes forget the importance of what Katz is saying.
If we begin to give up our freedoms, we are the generation future ones will look back on and BLAME for their misfortunes.
If we don't exercise our rights and educate people of these limitations of freedom, then the people on top can do whatever they want simply because of the ignorance of the people.
By simply criticizing Katz and not giving this ANY thought you are simply increasing the overall ignorance of our society.
I know that's just me being a knee-jerk again, but on some level I find it a compelling argument -- if the transparent society really is such a good idea, then Brin ought to be taking the first steps toward it. He ought to be demonstrating his allegiance to the idea by becoming the first wholly "transparent" person.
. . . or maybe it's not such a good idea after all? I'd argue that a fully transparent society is impossible. Someone will always be able to hide more than someone else, leaving one of those two people in a slightly more powerful position.
Mind you, I did say that this was a knee-jerk response on my part . . . .
I have no
Killing the "pretentious journalist"
(*IRONY ON*)
Mr Katz is a journalist.
It is a function of journalism that the 'privacy' of individuals is overlooked or ignored, in favour of exposing a story which is in the public interest.
It is very touching, therefore, that, as a journalist, Mr Katz is concerned about privacy.
(*now how do I switch off the irony tags ?*)
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
That Idea of juries going around and checking up on law enforcement is a good idea, but the jurists will need more of an incentive to go snoop around than an full-access tour of the FBI. They would need to be paid, and better than juries are paid now.
Also I can see some people becoming concerned that a terrorist could get one of those passes and walk into the FBI building with 50 lbs of C4.
As for the cameras. Once people acually realize how many there are and how many more there will be. I bet very large hats will come into style, like sombreros. Maybe CmdrTaco will wear one.
The problem that I have with companies gathering information on me so as to offer me products that I may want is that in most cases, I don't want the products.
I prefer to browse in stores instead of being told what I should want by compaines that have a profile on me.
Privacy is good, only for the reason that it allows me to live my life more or less how I want to, without ads telling me how I should.
But is the solution allowing the gov't or some organization, with force of law, to bar one from the field?
How about this: no convicted felons can program. Ever. Even if it was possession of one ounce of marijuana when you were 18. Even if it was because of an act of civil disobedience. Or what about getting ones license revoked because they pissed off some corporation.
We need systems in place to uphold ethics, but not dangerous laws. Bad software will get written in any event. Let's prevent it from being used against us, either to destroy our privacy or any other freedoms we may have. Shackling programmers with gov't or pseudo-gov't bureaucracy is not the answer.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I think a large chunk society has lost the notion of free speech and wants special treatment to shield them from critiscism. We got here partially because we have indeed become more sensitive to minority groups and positions. A bigger part is played by the need to appear sensitive to the needs of all groups. For organizations this need is driven by the need to attract and keep customers, and members. For both persons and organizations there's also the basic desire to avoid confrontation so they can get on with whatever it is they do. I mean why risk getting into a nasty arguement when you can just remain silent and get on with your life. Meanwhile organizations don't want to have to fend off suits from offended parties. So, companies and individuals alike sanitize their communications. For individuals working in organizations it means they have their personal privacy invaded so that the company may continue to avoid offending someone. Its ironic how one part of our privacy dilema has stemmed from progress on discrimination issues.
Meanwhile on a personal level, people have become very complacent about their personal identity. I thinks this arises largely from the security we've had in this country for the pretty much the whole century. With a few very notable exceptions, this century has been marked by increasing economic security. People have become very confident in their standard of living, and have little to complain about. A lot of folks out there have a hard time imagining that someone might do something dangerous with their personal information.
You are a cretin
What about the cheerleading "usual people", who are happy when the same courts base their outrageously stupid verdicts on the internal documents of the corporations ???
I think, it would be just fair if the same privacy laws are applied to everybody.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
>But it seems to me that privacy as a concept is >somewhat outdated and needs to be reevaluated in >light of social and technological changes. Our >society is increasingly reliant upon the fruits >of technology, and despite what people think, >this change is inherently at odds with the >notion of personal privacy. Privacy is very important to some people - some people are the members of minority groups open to persecution and have to keep their personal lives hidden or they'll be open to attack. Yes, the same principles would mean that the systems that destroyed their privacy would carefully film their stabbings, but that's scant comfort. Some people are engaged in activities they have no wish to be publicised: some people who are homosexual live for years openly gay among friends but hiding it from families to save the pain. In what way is this panacae of open access going to help ease that pain it released? People do things they don't want discovered for whole variety of reasons: not always that they are wrong in any criminal or moral sense, but often simply that life is easier that way. We should value that privacy, that space, that room to be ourselves - its loss will destroy a lot of lives.
The irritating thing about it is that the question has to be asked. Why should I even have to think about my government surveilling me? If my employer wants to make sure I'm not porning it up at work, thats cool. If my ISP checks my home directory on their FreeBSD box every so often just to find out if I'm stashing kiddie porn (or something else illegal) there, I can even understand that, as long as they have reasonable suspicion before going through my files.
But when my government, the institution I turn to if I'm in trouble in another country, the ones I look to for protection from hostile nations bent on making a point by making me a martyr, puts on me the burden of wondering if they're watching, I can't help but be a little pissed off. In fact, very pissed off. I don't care if its under the guise of protection. The government should not ever preemptively watch citizens.
It reminds me of a short story by Issac Asimov. Multivac, the big government computer, has so much data on its citizens that it can predict if they're even thinking about commiting a crime.
He didn't use the words "geek" or "post-Columbine" even once! Has he been cured?
Interesting point, Mr. ... What was your name again?
Somehow i doubt you see the irony of your own statement.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Why has the world gone to a place where each person's individuality is void?. Somewhere in my mind I could wish that my piece of land (my house for example), would be a untouched place for government. In Denmark there has been a case about the Tax Dept. directly evading a persons privacy by putting up spy cams, just to prove that he used the firm car as a private car. I mean, don't they have better to do but play MI5 agents?. I wish the goverments could realize that people want privacy, not Big Brother-systems. If this continues this way we will be seeing flying camera droids "just to make sure the citizens are all right", and keep an eye on us all 24/7? Who would have access to those videos?. I don't want my parents to know what I do with my girlfriend in my free-time for instance, or my neighbours?. Privacy rules really.
-Stskeeps, http://unrealircd.com
If a company needs to use large anonymous statistical samples of DNA in order to develop treatments, that is acceptable, but there is no need for my name, or anyone else's to be associated with the samples. It is only when a sample (DNA or otherwise) can uniquely identify me that it becomes a privacy concern, especially if the party to whom I give my information then gives the info to others without my knowlege or approval. So, I personally find no cause for concern if drug companies need DNA samples to develop treatments, or even if one of the samples is mine. My only concern is whether they or anyone else can use these research smaples to identify me, which isn't a problem if the samples truly are anonymous.
I do NOT think that making government transparent will in any shape or form compensate me for the loss of my privacy.
The problem is that a big chunk of accountability of people (not just government, but managers, nursing home workers, cops, basically everyone) involves getting rid of their privacy. Brin pointed this out: everyone wants to have surveillance of everyone else but not to lose their own privacy. They want to be able to watch their kids at the day care center (and spot any screw-ups by the staff), yet they get in an uproar when they find out their boss has been counting their restroom breaks. You want to find out about the criminal record of suspicious people in your neighborhood but don't want anyone to find out about that little item on your driving record. You cannot have it both ways. With surveillance equipment becoming cheaper all the time, you have two choices. You can either open everything up (Transparent Society) or close it down and try to keep everything a secret from everyone. The latter would obviously benefit criminals and people in positions of power (the two would often describe the same people).
But one can perfectly well stop its use by the government and law enforcement.
No, you can stop the use of privacy-invading technology by those who are easily controlled by the government and law enforcement. Criminals and anyone in power who is less than perfectly honest will be more free to use the tech than the average citizen, which is exactly the situation we don't want. I mean, look how well Prohibition worked and that would be a hell of a lot easier than keeping people from misusing a camera.
how does [outlawing surveillance tech] create the police state?
Because it's an utterly stupid thing to try. Let's take your example, outlawing face recognition. What about fingerprint and voice recognition? It's pretty much the same thing, right? Congratulations! You've just destroyed the entire biometrics industry! How long after that until it becomes illegal to have video cameras and voice recorders? They can be used for surveillance, after all, and we can't have that. You see a trend here?
To repeat myself, your loss of privacy does not compensate me for my loss of privacy.
Except that to a great extent, you do not have privacy right now and even that will decrease in the future. The question is not whether or not you will lose your privacy but who will have access to your data when you do: Everyone? Or a select bunch of people who are unaccountable to you?
--
Dyolf Knip
I think that the real issues surrounding privacy aren't just what information is being collected, but whether or not it is being used for what the collector said it was for. If I provide my DNA information to a drug company, for example, using it to make medication for me is one thing, provided that's what I gave it to them for, but selling it to insurance companies or funeral homes, or even using it for their own marketing is something else.
Perhaps there should be statutory limits on reuse of information, and an expiration date on sensitive data after which it must be destroyed.
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
is that the Americans control large part of the net. And they still do have nuclear weapons. Otherwise, I couldn't care less.
True.
But do we allow people to read a newspaper without telling the publisher their home address, income, what other publications they may have read in the past year, what color they painted their house, their medical conditions....
Do we allow people to get on a soapbox anonomyously? What about the crowd that gathers around the guy on the soapbox? Do we take pictures of them and find out who they are?
Yes, it's not quite that bad. But I rather dislike the idea that by simply viewing web pages, not saying anything of any kind, I reveal all sorts of info through doubleclick and it's ilk. (or did before Junkbusters)
It's one thing to hold people accountable for their public statements. It's another to keep track of their movements without their knowledge. I like my privacy. But I'm beginning to think that total transparancy is preferable to the current situation. It's not just that companies and governments are gathering information about me. It's that (other than the big 3 credit reporting companies) I don't even know who they are, what information they have (correct or incorrect) or how they're using it. THEY have privacy. I don't.
To email, do the obvious.
Actually he did get in a comment about "young people and students" not having any privacy. Any true KatzBot watcher would have recognized this...
First off: You didn't mention Columbine once, Katz. Good for you. :)
Seriously, tho... who here doesn't know any of this already? This book sounds just like another volume of the "Well, Duh!" series of Common Sense for Dummies books. The only way to get privacy nowadays is to live in a cabin out in the woods of a mostly-rural backwater state and not use technology whatsoever. And even then, they still found the Unabomber.
Privacy is what you make it, folks. If you don't want to be tracked through cyberspace, don't use it. Just like if you don't want your fingerprints on file, don't get arrested. If you don't want your email box to get spammed, don't give out your address. The only way to have true privacy is if you don't do anything. But then, if you do nothing, you don't need privacy.
Would I exect my auto mechanic to live up to such standards and accept being watched that closely? No.
There was a day when we expected more for our leaders, not less. Unfortunately, neither of the main candidates for president this time around inspires much reason for hope in this area.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Your proposition is too either/or. Just to take your example, certainly your doctor may require your DNA profile but why should your insurance company have it? I would say it is accepted that at times you have to give out certain personal information in order to have your doctor treat you or perhaps get a loan for a house. The point is that it is your choice. You are in control of your personal information and you decide who gets it and for what purpose. There isn't, nor should there be, any requirement that you have to vomit out your private life to the world just gain access to basic services.
But we did find a match for "Corporate Republic".
"Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus" can be rewritten to "Yes, JonKatz, there really is a post-Columbine Corporate Republic requiring registration of Goths and geeks that's secretly blah blah blah."
One interesting thing to wonder about is if the sexual harassment laws really protect people with low self-esteem. As being one of the rare males that was supposedly harassed by a female I know it didn't bother me. I have pretty high self-esteem so I just thought the chick was nuts. The other female coworkers got her fired because they were not comfortable. Anyway my point was I wonder how close self-esteem levels correspond to feeling harassed.
*You Said I Won't, I Said I Don't, But I Just Might*
I fail to see how the loss of somebody else's privacy compensates you for the loss of your own.
The fact that I am not an exhibitionist does not imply that I am a voyer.
In today's society the loss of your privacy feels bad. But I don't think its inherently bad. The real evil is an imbalance in privacy. It sucks when others have more than you do. If everybody had none (and by everybody I include govts and corporations), then you wouldn't miss privacy. In fact it might even seem absurd.
Who would care what you were getting up to in your bedroom (or simply in your mind), when everybody else was open for scrutiny. Your little life would be lost in the noise. And not only that, imagine the power it would give you! You'd know all the details you want about the company's you buy from, the govts you vote for, and the people you associate with. I'd say thats real empowerment.
The current imbalance in privacy is what allows corporations to exploit you, govts to oppress you, and creates the conditions under which markets fail. I say we should blow it all open.
"Now, Mr.Smith, I see it that ten years ago you were in the habit of buying at least a pack of condoms a week and a lot of alcohol. That leads me to question your moral standards and the suitability for this position. By the way, around that time you bought several bongs -- can you explain to me what a bong is and what do you use it for?"
Thank you for your question Mr. Jones. By way of reply, I'd like to raise some issues that pertain to your "character". Can you explain to me the following incidents from your own personal history?
If everybody had access to everything about everybody, it would take something pretty shocking to prejudice you against another person. Who hasn't got some sort of skeleton in their closet?
And of course I include govts and corporations in "everybody".
> You seem to believe in a Rousseau-like theory
> of mankind: there are base animalistic urges
> which the civilized man must control and
> eventually overcome.
That's Hobbes ("Nasty, brutish and short"
being his famous description of life without
the constraints of civilization). Rousseau
believed exactly the opposite--that people are
born pure and good and society twists them into
evil ("Man is born free and everywhere he is in
chains.")
Chris Mattern
Encryption software will help, but only when it becomes the default option on mail clients. The reason I don't use PGP on a daily basis is because most of my friends and relatives(who are who I email most with) are not tech savvy enough to use encryption. At work, I sometimes use encryption(when I am sending data I want kept secure, like passwords), but because it's not what my client automatically does, I don't always use it for just normal interoffice communication even though I think that I probably should use encryption all the time. When encryption is default, as in ALL email, as in EVERYONE uses it because the lusers don't know how to turn it off because it's the default, then you will see encryption make a difference in basic, personal, privacy. Right now, it's just not worth encrypting everything to me(and I think a lot of people like me who have the desire to use encryption, but don't for other than technical reasons) since it would make my emails unreadable to many of the people I send them to, and I don't care to teach everyone I know what encryption is and how to use it.
Psuedonymous emails are great, and they do contribute to a sense of privacy. I never get spam(except for the shit my luser friends forward to me) because everything I sign up for gets sent to a hotmail account I almost never check. Spam piles up like crazy there, but I never see it. I think this does contribute to a sense of privacy. I feel like my email address is private, and open only to the select few(my friends, relatives, and coworkers) who I choose. Pseudonyms are already making it harder for those who would invade your privacy to associate you with a real person, or even another net identity. Everyone can and should have an email address that they keep as separate as possible from the real me. If the email address that the gov't or a corp is tracking is not related to the real you, you have created a sort of privacy. Admittedly, it would be a hell of a lot better if there was no tracking going on in the first place, but hiding behind pseudonyms is a pretty good way of insuring privacy.
So yes, I do think software can protect privacy. Probably not as well as say, legislation, and proper oversight of programs like Carnivore and echelon, but it's a step in the right direction. If everyone used basic software methods of privacy protection, it would also send a message to the people in charge that privacy is something people value, and when people start trying to protect their privacy, they'll realize just how little they have. So while software privacy protection is hardly the end all of privacy(encryption can be cracked after all), its an important first step.These are the kinds of questions you need to ask in your columns. Clear, to the point, and thought provoking(although I don't have time right now to really think about this. Sorry, some other time I'll try and give a more complete reply than this hastily written and not very well thought out post.). This particular question has been hashed out a lot, but it's a good start. Try asking a question like this at the beginning of a column, and then answering it yourself with a concrete proposal. You don't seem like a stupid person, Jon, try sharing some of that wisdom with the rest of us in the form of a concrete solution to one of the problems you point out.
I must say, I've tried to stay away from Katz bashing. I always read Katz's articles, and some of the time I don't think they're that bad. But this article, as near as I can tell, spends a long time and uses big confusing words to tell us that privacy is good. Maybe I'm missing the point of the article entirely(if so could someone clue me in?), but as near as I can tell, this article dragged up some old news and drew no interesting conclusions from it. I wish I had something to discuss here. I think privacy issues are important, and that proposals for ensuring personal privacy are a good thing for /. to discuss. I also like it when /. keeps me informed of the latest attempt by corporate America to deprive me of my privacy. However, I don't need to hear about old stories without a useful proposal or conclusion or some kind of insight. I hope that the next installment will propose some concrete alternatives and back them up with some argument.
Evil is immortal and BS lives forever. You want proof? Look up your local city ordinances, especially if you live in a "bible belt" area of the US.
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Lies, more lies. This is probably the biggest piece of FUD you've written in years.
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I write for a living; when I publish something, it is clearly my thoughts, exposed for the world to see.
I've used the Internet for two decades, and I've never expected the web to be private - there are too many hands in to pot. So I avoid doing things online that I don't consider "public" information. If I post on a newsgroup, I make sure it's something that can be read by anyone (including business associates and "guvment agents") who can search DejaNews.
Certainly personal information GIVEN IN CONFIDENCE should remain private -- credit card info, SSNs, etc. But partly because of the lack of privacy, I don't buy things online -- hell, I don't even have a credit card.
If people expect privacy from the web, they have no clue as to how the web works.
All about me
You're not thinking out the implications of what you are saying. No one thinks they have anything to hide, until their most private thoughts are made public. Imagine being fired for a comment about your company or boss you made in an email to your spouse or a friend, on your own time from your home computer, using your personal email account. Or how about being sued for sexual harrassment, because you mentioned in an email message to a friend that the new receptionist was attractive.
Do you really promote the concept of inforced DNA profiling? If the need arose, I have no problem with voluntary DNA profiling through ones personal physician, but before you give up your civil rights, you must consider the worst case senerio for abuses of those rights (by the government, by profiteering corportations, by terrorists, or by your local lunitic).
Though I rarely agree with your opinions, and most of the time you are in space, they are always entertaining and contraversial, and provide me with a forum to express my opinion. So I hope it doesn't come soon.
You don't understand what privacy is. It is not hiding any and all information about yourself. Privacy is control over personal information. It means *I* get to choose who knows what about me.
You know full well what I meant, you're just being anal about terminology. I was talking about how the concept of choosing to keep your personal data private is becoming outdated. Better?
If I get to choose whether to submit my DNA profile (understanding I'll get a worse/none medicine if I don't), then I have no objection. If everybody is required to submit their DNA "for the public good" whether they want it or not, privacy has been violated.
Sure, I'm advocating a choice here, otherwise that'd be rather totalitarian wouldn't it? But give it a generation or two and your concerns won't be something people care about - they'll be used to having their information open to all.
Privacy is a product of today's society rather than being an inherent right. It's got a lot to do with the hang-ups that people have when it comes to their personal life. The Puritans have a lot to answer for IMHO.
Threats to my personal safety are moving to the internet? Huh? Let's say my machine gets owned and my hard drive published for all and sundry to see. What does it have to do with personal safety?
Wait till direct neural interfaces become available and see what threats to personal safety can be acheived through the net.
You are arguing for a police state. You seem to like the idea of living in a police state. That's a value choice and cannot really be argued.
Security != police state. I'm not in favour of totalitarian police powers, just giving law enforcement agencies an advantage over criminals. That's hardly objectionable is it?
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
In the example above, a drug company is requesting that you reveal your DNA profile so that they can offer a targeted medical treatment. This is perfectly ok. However, if my DNA profile was available to any drug company that wanted it - without my permission - it would be an invasion of privacy.
Yes, but what if they need your information to develop said treatments in the first place? The process is likely to take a long time to calculate the correct compunds/amounts so they'd need your information in advance to make this work. What then?
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
(1) Information is power. If I know a lot about you, I can forecast what you will do in a given situation. I will know how to manipulate you and what buttons to push to get the response I need. Surrendering privacy means becoming powerless.
Nonsense. No set of statistics and information can encompass all the data required to predict what somone is going to do in any given situation. At best it'll allow you to predict broad trends with a little better precision than today's marketeers acheive already. Unless of course you're a hardcore sociobiologist and believe that your genetic makeup determines all of your actions...
(2) I would link privacy to territoriality: both have the idea "this is mine and you can't have it". And territoriality is biologically determined in humans -- you cannot say that this is a product of some specific society.
And we should let our biological urges rule us then? So no condoms or birth control for you then. Making biological arguments is rediculous, technology has allowed us to go beyond what our genes would have us do.
And privacy is a cultural thing - the Japanese place far less emphasis on privacy due to the differences in the way they live.
A lot of security == police state. Security is intrinsically opposed to freedom because security is about setting limits and predictability -- both necessary is certain amounts, but both limiting freedom.
But without security anyone can choose to do whatever they like to you and get away with it. What kind of freedom is that?
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
First - here's one thing:
No matter what the encryption is, or the trick being used to avoid detection, SOMEONE can decrypt or figure out the gimmick. If someone was smart enough to create it, someone is smart enough to break it. And chances are, if someone can break it, the government or security companies will try to get access to that person - bottom line: these agencies and companies put food on the table by monitoring transactions. They're going to figure it out somehow.
Second, here's another thing:
You ask if these countermeasures will return a sense of privacy to the internet. I don't think so. Or, if it does, it will be a sense of privacy heavily laced with paranoia. Using these tools to protect one's anonymity smacks of sneaking around, covering up one's own footprints at all turns and hiding under camoflauge. That's not a sense of privacy. It's a much less comforting, much more anxious feeling. Freedom fighters hiding from Big Brother, if you will. I think that the only thing that could generate a feeling of warm, cuddly, security for internet users (and I won't delve into the feasability or lack thereof of implementing it) would be strict regulation of internet surveillance. STRICT.
We can't just say "technology is making privacy outdated" and leave it at that, because those currently in power can always use their power to maintain their own privacy, or at least keep people from using knowledge about them against them. Meanwhile, they can use what they know about you against you.
The next time your insurance company asks for DNA samples, ask for the same information about the officers of that company. When a telemarketer calls you, ask for their home phone number. Call them back in the unlikely event that you get it. And refuse to give up information about yourself unless the person or group asking does the same.
Privacy shouldn't be confused with freedom or personal sovreignty. "The benefits of abandoning it [privacy] are just too clear," as you said, but not when done unilaterally by the powerless.
Don't worry. He'll mention "geeks" in his "Cameras in the Hellmouth" series.
JonKatz, What do you think of David Brin's idea of the Transparent Society (excerpt posted earlier by someone else)?
Say bye to all your online privacy. This article mentioned Carnivore again, which is simply bad news for anyone. I hate it when people use the "if you weren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide" argument, but if you think about it seriouslym the laws were sortof deisgned for that. The consitiution and bill of rights, with the innocent till proven guilty and the unreasonable search and seizure laws were DESIGNED to protect people from being unlawfully prosecuted.
True, i _may_ be breaking the law with my computer (napster?) and i'll admit it....in court, under oath. But I don't want someone stumbling on it because they were "in the neighborhood." The day you can come in my house to make sure i'm not running a meth lab, just in case, is the day that you can run Carnivore on my ISP.
-Superb0wl
-Superb0wl
It's not that I'm lazy....it's that I just don't care.
But then, being an AC seems to show you don't care about who/what you are.
Either that OR he's posting AC because he's afraid of Katz's big brother. hmm....
-Superb0wl
-Superb0wl
It's not that I'm lazy....it's that I just don't care.
People have no privacy? It's no wonder when you try to make it illegal for them to do so!
The government needs to back off and realize that crypto isn't something that can be regulated at the border like guns or drugs. They need to see that within the digital landscape, there is no need for international boundaries.
If strong encryption became available and was made mandatory in government and business, you can bet that most of this lost privacy would disappear. Me, I don't want the rest of the world to know what I did last weekend, so I encrypt all emails. If everyone did the same for *everything*, it would be a *lot* harder to dig up personal information to be used against you.
As a side note and slightly OT comment, I'd like to say that sexual harassmant laws are so blatently unconstitutional it's sickening that they were ever enacted. You can now be arrested if a woman so much as THINKS you said something bad to her. Thank god for feminazis.
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
I got tired of hearing the phrase "electronic footprints" round about the 3rd time. Why use such a phrase when others are so superior? Like, say, "digital i-dentity e-placeholders."
dinosaur comics
Or you could allow your browser to randomly alter the cookies it sends back to doubleclick. At least then you woun't be hogging bandwidth when you're idle.
In order to personalise such medicines drug companies are going to require your DNA profile
Isn't this a different type of information? When I go to the doctor, I have to tell him things like whether or not I smoke, and what my diet is in order for him to treat me more efficiently. Similarly, I would have to give up my DNA profile if I wanted a drug that depended on it.
But that doesn't mean there should be robots going around taking DNA samples and storing it in a secret place so that, on the slim possibility that I do need such a drug, the information is available. Information is important in our technologically advanced world, but we should know when information about us is being collected.
Actually, being confrontational is not a bad thing. The problem here is that we are trying toavoid that at all cost which is complete nonsens and generally leads to unwritten censorship ( this Rocker (?) guy in NY being case in point)
Very true. I tend to belive that there is no such thing as legal system here anymore. It is so "flexible", depending on current wave of political correctness rulings can change from one extreme to another very quickly. Another part of the puzzle here is liberal press. It almost sounds like cliche but consider this - federal data shows that white people are much more likely to be victims of so called hate crime yet we never see that in the news. But what can you expect from the press when about 90% of them are registered democratic voters.
Uh, you do realize that Jon is reporting on a book, not necessarily saying these things himself, right?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Our society is increasingly reliant upon the fruits of technology, and despite what people think, this change is inherently at odds with the notion of personal privacy.
...
For instance consider the possibility for gentically tailored medicines, something that isn't too far ahead in the future. In order to personalise such medicines drug companies are going to require your DNA profile. Are you willing to give up on advances like this for the sake of some nebulous concept like privacy?
It is one thing for an individual or organization to say "we require this piece of personal data in order to provide this service, do you agree?", and quite another for the same entity to simply take this information and assume you want thier "tailored" service.
In the example above, a drug company is requesting that you reveal your DNA profile so that they can offer a targeted medical treatment. This is perfectly ok. However, if my DNA profile was available to any drug company that wanted it - without my permission - it would be an invasion of privacy.
I guess that my concept of privacy involves maintaining /control/ over my personal information. Organizations should not be able to share personal data that I have agreed to divulge unless (a) they recieve my permission, or(b) I give them a carte blanche (sp?) to do so.
--
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Well, what if you can't afford the drugs anyway, because your insurance company refuses to cover you based on your DNA profile? What then, smarty-pants?
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
This column is strange for Katz - the word "geek" never occurred in the column.
Eh, I think that we should replace Katz with Senor Cranky.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Okay, that's a reasonable argument against Anonymous Cowards in online forums... But that has nothing to do with privacy.
Privacy is the notion that I can stand in the street and say what I want (and of course be visible), but when I go home and shut my door and talk to my friend no one is watching me and listening without my consent.
Online, the same thing. If I post in a public forum, privacy isn't an issue as I've already made the choice to have my words be seen. But if I send a private email to someone, then it should in fact be private and free from people reading it at will.
Anonymity and privacy are not the same thing, so don't argue against one to say you can't have the other.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yeah, we should... we should like... maybe just all submit to our governments and walk around nude and live in houses built with clear glass and keep a log of every thought we ever say just in case someone somewhere would like to know it -- I mean, who needs autonomy and a sense of self when we can just become one fleshy glob of "citizens" existing to fuel aristocracy and economy!?
---
seumas.com
A UK prof and regular e-mailer sends this:
Jon, one of my students has just completed a thesis that describes a
> system that allows you to send messages across the system that are
> guaranteed anonymous. The system assumes the use of PDA like machines
> but can definitely be made to work. Proivacy of content can of course be
> obtained by encrypting the messages. (Up to a point etc....)
>
> L.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
The tradeoff with the gender discrimination stuff is pretty interesting...It's a strong example of one kind of freedom colliding with another..But the loss of privacy online is particularly painful, as the thing most people I know love the most about going online is the freedom to explore.
Seems gender discrimination could be protected other ways?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
If you want the internet to be your soapbox, then deal with the repercussions.
There are more issues at hand here than civil liability for libel, as in the case of damaging corporate profits through false rumours you mention. At the most trivial level, a person who damages corporate profits by telling the truth can be subjected to civil prosecution, and even if it is baseless, he/she can be ruined by the cost of litigation.
At a more serious level, the absence of privacy opens to door to political and religious persecution. Suppose my employer is a lumber company and, in this privacy-free world you advocate, he catches me online arguing in favor of banning the harvesting of lumber in national parks and fires me. Or what if he (or the local police) disapprove of my choice of religion? What about an online support group for rape victims? How about an anonymous tipster leading the police to a serial killer?
Privacy isn't just a matter of hiding from responsibility. It's often a matter of hiding from persecution or standing up for what is right without placing one's family at risk. It would be nice if everyone lived in a social class so fat and complacent that they'd gladly give up their basic rights to protect stock valuations, but the middle class of the western world is less than 4% of the world's total population. The privileged attitude of "let them eat cake" has a less than encouraging history.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
just have to observe that where I shop, people regularly swap cards - if someone is getting checked out and doesn't have a card, more often than not the cashier will use theirs, or someone in line will let the person paying use theirs. The point being that that database is basically useless as far as tracking the buying habits of any ONE person.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
There are good journalists and bad journalists. Regardless of your opinions of the quality of Katz's writings, I challenge you to provide a single example of an article he's written which, in any notable way, infringed on an individual's privacy.
You know, it didn't take gender discrimination laws to allow people to be interrogated about the particulars of their personal lives. Women who have brought up rape allegations have been interrogated about their personal lives (including all sorts of things that shouldn't matter -- such as when they first had sex, how often they have had sex, whether they had sex out of marriage, who they also had sex with, what they were wearing, what they normally wear, how many kids they have, and what they like to do in bed) for decades. I'm not big on turnabout is fair play, but it occurs to me that the men are whining about the same behavior we've put up with (for much less reason) for generations.
from Rosen, via JonKatz:
Invasions of privacy were a hallmark of the Monica Lewinsky scandal,
Actually, what Kenneth Starr did with Ms. Lewinsky is what prosecutors -- federal, state and local -- do all the time. It's just in this case, it seems to have come about as part of a civil trial (the Paula Jones fiasco), which Mr. Starr used to attempt to fabricate a criminal issue.
It's not gender discrimination, per se; it's prosecutoral misconduct highlighted by a consensual relationship (leaving out whether or not it was sexual) that got invaded.
more JonKatz:
In l890, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote that "the common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others." That legal principle once prevented prosecutors from seizing and studying diaries, letters, and private papers.
However, once a person's activities, including speech, take place in the public domain, they are free for scrutiny. So buying books online at Amazon means that those records can be supoena'ed. Buying books with cash at your local bookstore doesn't leave that kind of trail. The nature of various online transactions destroys anonymity unless specific -- and perhaps unfortunately, legislative -- prohibitions are put in place. I begin to appreciate the German constitution more and more -- they wrote into their Grundstutz, back in '48 and '49, that there were limits on what data could be collected by governmental and private entities. We need to do that here as well, as the EU has pointed out to the US government repeatedly ;-)
Further:
Thus many Americans were flabbergasted by the degree to which prosecutors could vacuum up the most intimate details of Monica Lewinsky's life, from her bookstore purchases to her private letters and e-mail. Whatever people thought of her relationship with this dunder-headed president, many were uncomfortable not only with the prosecutor's zeal but with the wide public dissemination her private life and records received in media and court documents.
I take it that people don't keep tabs on local trials, eh? Granted, living near particularly litigious Boston has some perks, but the behavior of Starr and his staff is no different from the behavior of the various Middlesex County DA's for the past 13 years. The only difference is that, if possible, the prosecutor's victims, in this instance, were even dumber than the usual ones up here in MA. Most of us would take the dress for drycleaning the next day, believe me. And, if asked a question on the stand that our lawyers couldn't successfully object to, most of the men I know would rather just say, "No, I didn't screw her. She blew me. Ask her."
more Rosen and JonKatz:
Rosen convincingly assigns a lot of the blame to recently-enacted harassment laws, which made the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky dramas possible. As sexual harassment law expands, writes Rosen, people can be interrogated about their consensual relationships on the flimsiest of allegations. During the l980's and 90's, he writes, the Supreme Court recognized sexually explict speech and conduct that created a "hostile or offensive working environment" as a form of gender discrimination, a legal evolution that made it difficult for lower courts and employers to distinguish consensual affairs from illegal sexual coercion.
I think that you only accept Mr. Rosen's conclusion -- that harassment laws are nearly exclusively gender-based -- if you accept his premise of same.
The Paula Jones suit was a civil suit. There was no legislation involved there. Like most civil suits, the lawyers presented whatever they could dig up -- and the fact that the president has round heels was what they dug up.
[I would not have imagined describing a man like that 20 years ago, would you?]
I feel that the judge allowed the plaintiff's lawyers too much leeway to invade the president's privacy. And her decision stated that basically, Ms. Jones had no standing to sue Mr. Clinton -- he wasn't the one who'd caused the uproar, the magazine that was paying for her lawyers had. Remember, the settlement came after Clinton had won the case, in order to forestall any appeal.
more JonKatz:
The threat of harassment suits has prompted companies to wantonly invade their workers' private e-mail and personal correspondence -- even to rifle their desks -- almost at will.
Perhaps the publishing industry is different from others, but I've *never* had a job -- and I've been in the workforce since 1977 -- where my employer didn't explicitly have (and abuse) that right. So, I don't see where harassment suits changed anything, except for premise that the company uses.
That's one reason I'm now a contract programmer -- they can't invade my desk here without a search warrant ;-)
I think you should try doing a reality check before accepting premises such as these -- it's just the same old story, with more explicit sex added...
--jas
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
Though the article does deal with an important issue, this should hardly come as a surprise. We've been building up to this in America for some time, IMHO.
Ours is a diverse country, but sadly most people still don't respect that and fall constantly into an us versus them mentality - the result being a whole lot of "uses" battling for territory and for "their" version of being American.
And so, we're in an inquisitional mentality, glad to ferret out any information that is deemed "unAmerican." So we pry into your sex life, we check your email, we humiliate you for your operating system choice, we don't like your religion, etc.
We operate under the delusion of a promised land that will someday be perfect (ie only containing our selected "us"). So we're glad to keep having "revolutions" under the illusion that someday we'll get it right just like we did 200 plus years ago. Someday we'll have our promised land, heaven on earth, whatever, and be proven right for all eternity.
The end result is a country of people with their hands on each others throats, a broken political system, corrupt churches, and an insanely high crime rate. And, of course, we're constantly taking each others freedom away.
We could stand for freedom, but it seems that freedom for our "us" is what we look for first. As long as that occurs, people will have no problem taking away each others rights and freedoms, and ferreting out the supposedly inviolate personality.
So, start standing up for everyone then you can fight this.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
OK so it seems almost impossible to keep those who run websites, and those who advertise on them, completely in the dark about your goings on. Yes you can run a junkbuster, but this merely filters out the ones you know about. What if we went the other way? Would a system that continuously jumps sites make the data gathered useless? The basic idea would be that there would be two browsers running on your machine, 1 doing actuall stuff, the other hitting random sites. The random browser would only connect when the connection was idle. Have it never display anything it gets, just get it and pipe it to /dev/null. This way when doubleclick collects their data on you they would see you have been hitting a really wide variety of sites. Like homedepot.com, playboy.com, marthastewart.com, aol.com/~bob, slashdot.org, linux.com, microsoft.com, dumbentia.org. They would actually have no idea what sites you actually visited, and which were the random junk, ok if you kept hitting a site then they might figure it out, but you could have the second browser hit a set of random sites repeatedly, everytime you log in. I dunno its an idea.
Think of it in the same way as Jam-Echelon.
-cpd
Nonsense. No set of statistics and information can encompass all the data required to predict what somone is going to do in any given situation
You'll be surprised. One of the functions of intelligence agencies around the world is predicting how key players are going to react to event. They have psychologists on the staff who read thick dossiers full of personal info and then forecast what would the person do in a given situation. That's rather routine and even if you can never get 100% accuracy, say, a ~70% batting average wouldn't be too bad, would it?
Unless of course you're a hardcore sociobiologist
What does sociobiology has to do with this? We are not talking about DNA.
And we should let our biological urges rule us then?
It's not a choice we have. You seem to believe in a Rousseau-like theory of mankind: there are base animalistic urges which the civilized man must control and eventually overcome. I can assure you it's much more complicated than that.
Making biological arguments is rediculous, technology has allowed us to go beyond what our genes would have us do.
Did technology help you get rid of your instinct of self-preservation? Or or need for security and approval? Will technology negate the love of parents for their children?
the Japanese place far less emphasis on privacy
You are mistaken. Japanese are very private people -- it's just that they are private about different things. The famous (or notorious) Japanese politeness, correctness and formality: this is a shield to preserve the privacy inside their heads.
But without security anyone can choose to do whatever they like to you and get away with it. What kind of freedom is that?
Nobody is arguing for anarchy (at least not me). Freedom and security/accountability/restrictions must be balanced against each other. Our disagreement is about the point of the correct balance: I believe you want to balance it at a point I call totalitarian.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
IMO, summing up, online retailers can collect information about me... [snip] ... And I think I can be reasonably comfortable online with that.
There is a slight problem with your analogy to the bricks-and-mortar world. In the physical world helpful salesperson saw what you were interested in and showed you something. Fine. Five minutes, or a day, or a week passes and he forgets all about it. In the online world your preferences and choices go into a database and, as far as you are concerned, stay there for eternity. That's not good and that's a big part of what makes data collection so dangerous.
"Now, Mr.Smith, I see it that ten years ago you were in the habit of buying at least a pack of condoms a week and a lot of alcohol. That leads me to question your moral standards and the suitability for this position. By the way, around that time you bought several bongs -- can you explain to me what a bong is and what do you use it for?"
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
We're not talking to private citizens here. We're talking about people in power. Wouldn't you like to see your FBI file? Shouldn't you be able to? I'd say yes.
Yes, but why do I have to surrender my privacy to do it?
David Brin and you seem to make the assumption that the government can be made transparent and accountable only if the citizens' privacy is destroyed as well. Why? Yes, I think that people in power should have less privacy that "normal" people. Yes, I think that government should be accountable, to a certain limit (I want neither rule by mob, nor rule by opinion polls). That's all fine. But what does this all have to do with stripping my privacy?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
no. people are lazy and stupid.
unless encryption comes standard on Outlook and friends, nobody but the truly paranoid will send encrypted email.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
As technology becomes more sophisticated, and as we grow more dependant on it, and people in power want to have their provacy while removing yours, then loss of privacy for individuals is inevitable. The best defense is not to fight it, but to turn it to your advantage. Turn the camera back on the cameramen. Don't give your DNA to the insurance company. Or if you do, demand that the officers of that corporation make available their DNA records to its customers.
It's always a good idea to include in any debate over privacy the idea of a bilateral loss of privacy. Debates are almost always make the assmption that those in power will retain their privacy, while those not in power will lose. It doesn't have to be that way.
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
To repeat myself, your loss of privacy does not compensate me for my loss of privacy.
It should be included in the debate. I'm not saying it's a panacea.
As for "the legal system" preventing use of technology to invade your privacy, haw. Tell that to the Republicans that Clinton obtained the FBI files on (for instance). As if the government is some kind of shining bastion of ethical purity. The government is made of people, jsut like companies and families. And what people are usually afraid of is not that what they're doing is wrong, but that they will get caught.
When there is no way to ensure personal privacy, it's a good idea to ensure that the people who would invade it have no privacy either. If DoubleClick wants to track my browsing patterns, I can run Junkbuster. If it was not possible to run junkbuster, I would demand that DoubleClick executives publically reveal their personal browsing practices, both at work and at home. And I would take measures to discover what they were independantly, if possible.
Outlawing technology because it can be used for nefarious purposes is never a good idea. Who gets to decide what is dangerous? Let's say that your bank wanted to provide secure access to ATMs without requiring a breakable, loseable, insecure ATM card. They could have their ATMs perform face recognition, and/or ask for a voiceprint, etc. to grant access to your accounts. It would be more secure and more convenient. Now, if the government mandated use of the system for tracking "criminals," that would be bad. If it is not possible to make them not use the system in that way, then we can simply demand that those officials publically reveal their locations and movement habits as well, using the same or another system. It's about accountability and control. When "privacy" is used to increase power over someone else, that's bad. When it's used to increase power over your own life, that's good.
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
That's stupid. She voluntarily gave up her privacy. That doesn't mean I have to give up mine. If I somehow forced Jenny to give up her privacy, then perhaps I should be forced to gve up mine as well.
Like the use of encryption by private individuals? The publishing of information necessary to make LSD? The sale of anhydrous ammonia to certified large-scale farmers only, because it might use used to make a bomb, never mind the garden I have? Limiting what government can do is different that limiting what citizens can do. The people of a free republic grant certain powers to the government, not the other way around. Just say no to victimless crimes.
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
You work for a privacy-software company? Is "Kaa" the snake in "Jungle Book?"
Just curious...
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
"We don't need privacy, we have nothing to hide! Why do you want privacy, are you a pedophile or something?"
So you like the idea of coming home to a message on your answering machine that reads, "Hi, I'm from Happy Bear Pharmaceuticals, your doctor's office told us that you're HIV-positive, and we would like to extend to you a free trial offer of our new 'Margarita' drug cocktail!" Doesn't that strike you as something that maybe - just maybe - should be your choice to disclose?
Wah!
So it did. But it was my perception that in many cases the legislation raised the barrier to law enforcement having a little look-see at your personal life. The current wire-tap laws are inconsistant; it is easier, for instance, to tap a phone modem than a cable modem, due to regulations on the cable industry. The proposed legislation would set the same standard for tapping any Internet connection. It also gives judges more leeway in determining if a tap or trace is actually warranted. The big hole in the legislation the White House proposed is that it makes no mention of use of or restrictions on Carnavore, and other systems that mass-trap email, rather than a targeted trace.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Rosen does make some good points about limits are being crossed, but I don't think the situtation is as dire as he would lead us to believe. Take the example of Amazon's recommendation software. Who hasn't been to some small store recently when they decided to show you another product? Were you interested? Did you buy it?
Now ask, how did they know what you might like? Simple, they looked at you, or they knew what you had purchased on previous trips to the store. I don't think Amazon's recommendations are that different. When I go to their store, I give them a certain permission to evaluate me, the customer.
On the other hand, targeting a certain, very small class of people, like executives, by using ZIP codes and domain names is a little more disturbing. Now they are passing the bounds of the information that they glean from merely *their* "store". That is, they must conspire with others to create this information.
I think most small brick-and-mortar operators would not be likely to share the customer purchasing decisions or consumer data with their friends or or store owners, and likewise online operators should follow a similar standard.
IMO, summing up, online retailers can collect information about me, but they shouldn't be sharing it, selling it, getting out of debt with it, or following me around like DoubleClick is wont to do.
And I think I can be reasonably comfortable online with that.
Zorn
/ is the root of
a) One company gaining some personal information about myself securely and confidentially in order that they can provide me with better service. Isolated nasty incidents may certainly occur, but I can't see any reason for a widespread unavoidable problem.
b) Some nosy people gaining personal information about myself that I chose to disseminate in plain text
c) The government having the right to collect such plain text information, require myself and other people to give up such information if they have it, and use that information as evidence against me in a court case
d) The government having the right to collect encrypted information about me in the same way and to demand of me the encryption key so that they can read it and use it in evidence against me.
There is _no reason_ why a) should pose any privacy problem whatever. At least in the UK, the Data Protection Act makes it illegal for the company to spread my data about, and I have the power to choose to use the company whose data integrity I trust.
b) does not have to be a problem since I can choose to encrypt my personal communications with people to whatever extent I like.
c) the same as b)
d) is the the only terrible problem that I see, and that is not an inevitable cause of the Encroaching Digital Age, but merely a stinky piece of UK legislation.
I see that there is great threat to the privacy of all people who don't care about the issues, or don't understand them. But each individual has the power to sort this out for themselves.
Slightly more seriously, I think there are two points here - one is that too many people treat things said on the internet as though the conversation was private, forgetting that they are, in fact, broadcasting to the world. The internet has nothing to do with privacy. The second is that there seems to be less of a general respect for the separation of private life and public life. It seems like there was a time when you could say what you wanted in private and not have reporters try to dig it out of your friends to see if it could be made into a story. But then again, I'm probably wrong about that - Oscar Wilde's homosexuality trial comes to mind as an example of someone's private life not being left alone...
- My business web site has my name, address, phone number, business license number, Dun and Bradstreet ID, and valid E-mail addresses. I have a listed phone number. I'm required to do this by the California business and professions code.
- Back in my aerospace days, I used to hold a high-level security clearance from one of the three-letter agencies, which meant periodic lie detector tests and a thorough background check.
- I was involved with a major company during the IPO phase, and had to report my financial transactions to the SEC, which published them. So my financial history is a matter of public record.
- I was an expert witness in a major court case that resulted in some prosecutors losing their jobs. This got me some publicity.
- Most of the technology I've developed over the years is described in Internet RFCs, free software, published papers, or patents. I prefer to use trade secrets as little as possible.
None of this seems to cause me much of a problem. I've been threatened by someone whose Internet scam I exposed. They're now out of business and I'm fine. (So there.)So it's possible to live without much privacy. Once in a while I have to deal with some jerk. They usually lose. That's life.
I didn't bother reading the post because, just as in the past, I got bored after reading the first sentence. That said, here is my un-educated post. Moderators: get the 'offtopic' stamp ready.
Sexual Harrassment laws are just a sample of the horrid American legal system. When a person is accused of harrassing a coworker, their entire sexual history can be introduced as evidence. Yet during a rape trial, the victim's history can not. This is not a victim/criminal distinction, it is a female/male distinction. A victim of a crime has the right to privacy, but only when this privacy does not prevent certain crucial information from coming to light.
But this is only one of many errors. We also see affirmative action laws, designed to equalize, but instead promoting racism. When you wish to make people equal, does it make sense to raise one person up, and lower another? NO! True equality is that of a person using their inherent skills. A blind person is blind. To say that they deserve special treatment is wrong. A black person is black. That doesn't mean they need government assistance to get into college. A woman is a woman. She does not need to sue to get a job.
In fact, all of these supposed indifferences have been proven to be untrue. The female/male wage difference? Skewed by outlying data. 'Minority'/white college enrollment information? Incorrect census data. None of these injustices exist. But that doesn't matter, because the media can keep using them for stories, and the ignorant can keep believing. That is their right, isn't it Mr. Katz?
Pax Digitalia
I've said this before and I'll say it again. The right of privacy is tightly bound with the idea of egalitarianism. Privacy rights do not mean "Nobody gets to know anything about anyone." Privacy rights are when the same information about each person is either public or private, and people have an understanding as to which is which.
Suppose everyone's name, address and occupation and other information were all stored in public databases. And I mean *public* -- anyone can easily search the date for the information they want. So I know where you live, but you also know where I live. This would be a change in the way our society did business, but it would hardly be an erosion of privacy rights.
An erosion of privacy rights would be if certain individuals had more information in the database about them than others. Or if government organizations had access to even more information, but didn't share it, or even tell anyone they had it.
The fundamental loss-of-privacy situation is when aspects of your life are open to scrutiny, and the people examining you (and pointing fingers and laughing) have their own skeletons in their closets, but don't have to share.
--
share and enjoy
I understand your logic, but let's take this one step further to refine the idea at hand.
1) Someone is alleged to have broken the law (in this case, s/he might have sexually harassed someone).
2) We (as a society) have practiced that when someone is under suspicion, we will investigate the allegations to determine guilt.
3) Here's the twist, in today's modern society, we have progressed beyond asking the neighbor if he saw or heard anything strange around 10pm last night. Because of our connectedness via the Internet, electronic commerce and everything else, we have the ability not to only "ask the neighbor next door" but to look at credit card reciepts, phone records, usenet postings, etc.
The idea really at hand is if our investigators are justified in going beyond "asking the neighbor next door".
This is another view of the world.
The only problem with the above statement is that Paula Jones (trailer park hair and all) announced TO THE WORLD at a newsconference her allegations that she was "asked to touch it" by Clinton.
Therefore, she precipitated any and all investigations into her private life. Anyway, I honestly don't remember any "electronic invasions" into her private life, except for a stupid A&E Biography on her early years in Arkansas.
This is another view of the world.
If companies develop a "profile" on me, consisting of my web viewing, TV habits, or product purchases, it will result in better targeted advertisements.
Sure, I don't want someone stealing my identity, or gaining access to my assets. But I view Privacy as a curtain for criminals to hide behind. If there was 100% positive ID (DNA?), stealing your SSN would be worthless.
Carnivore, go ahead and scan all my email. While your at it, could you also filter out all that spam?
Everything in this post is false.
Here we see yet another Katz rant about privacy and how we should all be alarmed about the rate at which we are throwing it away due to ignorance and apathy. It's good to know that Katz is at least consisten, if not original :)
But it seems to me that privacy as a concept is somewhat outdated and needs to be reevaluated in light of social and technological changes. Our society is increasingly reliant upon the fruits of technology, and despite what people think, this change is inherently at odds with the notion of personal privacy.
Why? Because to provide the services which people desire, providers are going to need more information. For instance consider the possibility for gentically tailored medicines, something that isn't too far ahead in the future. In order to personalise such medicines drug companies are going to require your DNA profile. Are you willing to give up on advances like this for the sake of some nebulous concept like privacy?
More personal information is the key to any number of services and advances that will benefit you as an individual rather than being for the use of a generic person made up of statistically generated market profiles. You may not like it, but the likes and dislikes of the average /.er are not those of the man on the street.
And the increased opportunities of all of this technology mean that threats to your personal safety and freedom are moving from the physical world to the internet. Whilst at the moment you're more likely to be shot by some nut with a gun than have your online details hacked, this will change as more and more of your personal information will be stored online.
When it gets to the stage that all of your most important business is stored and done online, privacy is something that favours the criminal rather than the innocent user. Thanks to the banner of privacy, criminals can hack your details with a much greater chance of getting away with it than if the internet is logged, verified and secured. Hopefully something like an online version of identity cards, already in use in some countries, will become the norm.
Anyway, privacy is something that will become increasingly irrelevent in the face of technological advances. The benefits of abandoning it are just too clear.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
In l890, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote that "the common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others."
...Not that it's unthinkable--Brandeis was brilliant. But Katz is wrong.
Brandeis didn't become a Supreme Court Justice until 1916. Not to nitpick, but I hate sloppy research. This throws into question the accuracy of the attribution, of the entire article, and for some of us every other "fact" cited by Mr. Katz. Born in 1856, Brandeis easily would have been the youngest Supreme Court justice of all time in 1890!
No. Being member of discount club is up to you and has nothing to do with "evil corporations" trying to hijack your personal information. As far as I know, one can still simply walk into grocery store, pay with cash and walk away, completely anonymous.
To them I say, your privacy will only be important to you when it's gone. When you become a criminal by governmental fiat or your own carelessness. Or, more likely, you commit countless, pointless crimes on a daily basis (speeding? jaywalking? installing a high-flush toilet in your bathroom? violating ordinance X or Y? copyright infringement?), and you just haven't been called out on it.
By the time your insurance company is raising your rates (or refusing to cover you) because they bought your DNA records or your grocery-buying habits, it will be too late for you. By the time you find yourself suddenly called out on the various infractions you commit on a daily basis for speaking out against something in the interest of those in power, it will be too late for most of us.
The transparent society will be a society based on blackmail. Transparency will never be equal for everyone or every organization.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Sadly, it is shorter.
Next week I intend to do a five line column..Since I know many of you won't read the column, here's a question I'd love some help with. in the book, Rosen argues that new software..encryption, pseudonymous e-mails, etc. will return a sense of privacy to the Net. Is this so? Do any of you think software can really protect privacy from government surveillance and corporate tracking programs.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm all in favor of giving law enforcement all the tools they say they need and they say they want under one condition: The more they get, the more light shines into them
I fail to see how the loss of somebody else's privacy compensates you for the loss of your own.
The fact that I am not an exhibitionist does not imply that I am a voyer.
It's like agreeing to be kicked in the face once in a while provided that other members of the society also get kicked at least as often.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
For the most part, Katz has raised some good points. Privacy is dead, or at least mortally wounded, and most people don't even know it.
Again, the largest threats to privacy are corporations whose only interest are the bottom line. I'm surprised Katz didn't mention grocery store discount clubs. Imagine tying your grocery store buying habits to your online shopping/surfing habits (thanks, DoubleClick) - and then linking that to your personal identity. It's not too farfetched.
From a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune: "The data compiled by using those cards can be disseminated in a variety of ways. CalPIRG noted yesterday that there have been cases in which supermarket companies, using membership club data, offered customers' prescription information to drug manufacturers and provided law enforcement agencies with records of customers' buying habits to help in the creation of suspect profiles. One chain even allegedly threatened to detail the alcohol purchases of a customer who sued after falling down in one of its stores." Yikes!
Carnivore is worrisome, but not too unexpected - the FBI and other 3 letter organizations have been spying for years. Better the devil you know...
Finally, on company time I don't expect much privacy, except maybe in the toilet. It's their desk, not mine. It's their computer, not mine. It's their... see a trend?
"No prints can come from fingers / If machines become our hands." -- Jack Johnson
David Brin and you seem to make the assumption that the government can be made transparent and accountable only if the citizens' privacy is destroyed as well.
Umm... no. David Brin's premise, which I am also using, is that technology combined with power is and will erode personal privacy, and there's nothing we can do about that. You can't un-invent technology, and outlawing it creates the police state we want to avoid. Given that erosion of privacy is going to happen due to the technology existing and the will of those in power to use it, we need to re-think how to defend ourselves. The answer is, turn the cameras back on the cameramen.
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
But the FBI, CIA, etc, are "voyeurs" with the power of the legal system (i.e., the ability to use force, including deadly force) to back them up.
We're not talking to private citizens here. We're talking about people in power. Wouldn't you like to see your FBI file? Shouldn't you be able to? I'd say yes. What right does the FBI -- even though it is composed of citizens like us -- have to spy on you in secrecy, and carry out covert operations that affect your life using that information, with impunity?
It's not at all about "misery loving company" as you said. It's about accountability. The U.S. government is supposed to be "of the people, for the people". Power ultimately rests with the people, not the government. If we're the bosses, why can't we check up on our employees?
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Although they sometimes go overboard (see the Jovanovic case for a nightmare in progress), they solved this problem in cases of rape by limiting the extent to which previous consensual sexual encounters by the alleged victim can be introduced as evidence. The obvious thing to do would be to extend this to alleged prepetrators of sexual harassment and stop turning such cases into fishing expeditions for every factoid about a person's sex life.
BTW, don't feel too bad for Clinton since he explicitly supported the laws that got him into so much trouble (and has said almost nothing about reforming that broken legal process).
Brian Carnell
http://www.equityfeminism.com/
Hi. Read this: http://www.kuro5h in.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/7/18/122257/231. Please don't b-slap me; this is important!
--
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
The real danger is how people or institutions (Ken Starr, et al) MISUSE the information gathered in the name of these investigations and then use them in way inconsistent to the purpose of the investigation (leaks, etc.).
Just think about Charles Bakaly (a Starr aide) who is in court right now fighting charges that he leaked info about the Monica investigation to the NY Times.
This is another view of the world.
I think most people, including Jon Katz, have this notion that the internet provides the perfect platform for people to get on their virtual soapboxes and voice their opinions to the world, all the time remaining anonymous. I have a problem with this notion.
First, the internet is a public network accessible by anyone. The fact that it is called an internet as opposed to intranet renders assumptions about privacy rights as suspect. To the extent that there are things done that can cloak your identity, anonymity can be achieved, but I don't think people should be surprised if it isn't lasting.
In some respects, the cry for privacy rights is really a request to relinquish responsibility for voicing one's own opinion. We don't allow witnesses to testify in court anonymously. Why should we allow people to go into a financial chat room and unleash false rumours about companies that bring down their valuations? We are seeing now that people who thought they could get away with this are being prosecuted for making reckless and false comments, as they should be.
If you want the internet to be your soapbox, then deal with the repercussions. If you want to ensure absolute privacy, on the internet or anyother medium, you are living in a dreamworld. The sooner you realize this, the better off you will be.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
The internet is an ocean of minds and it needs to stay that way. It's one of the last bastions where human interaction and human thought can roam, explore and interact largely without restriction. Without this, many people who have access to the net would feel increasingly boxed-in and claustrophobic. The government, your employer, other governments, your friends... They have no granted right to know every thought you think or care to share, yet you do have the freedom to share them -- and without revealing yourself, if you so desire.
Privacy and anonymity should be granted to those who wish to have it. I'm in favor of leaving things as they are. You can encrypt data. You can use pseudonyms. There are many things you can do to assert your privacy and anonymity. Please, leave government (all 200 of them that would like to regulate the internet) out of it and let technology govern the ability for privacy. As long as there is demand for it, and it is not made illegal, means of acheiving relatively secure privacy will be available and usable.
Further, not everyone who wants anonymity or privacy is on a soapbox, as you seem to be. There are people who are seeking legal information, medical information, information on dealing with rape, abuse, drug addiction, dealing with sexual harassment, unfair treatment at work, career advice, information on relationships, raising children, self-defense, constitutional rights, police mis-conduct, misconduct by government officials, alchoholism and a million other things which would be stifled if people could, without any effort, find out that you are Jane Jones of 1414 S Someplace and that you were concerned with the fact that your employer is threatening you with termination if you don't follow through with unethical and perhaps illegal conduct and that your husband is an alchoholic and you're not sure how to leave him and get assistance for yourself and your child without being put in danger and that you were raped when you were in high school and that you think you might have felt a lump in your left breast and are scared to death that it might be cancer.
These are the reasons that both privacy and anonymity is important. What is valuable on the internet is information and the free flow of it -- not the names attached to it. It has nothing to do with responsibility of the individual and everything to do with the very fundamental expectation of freedom from punishment, persecution and unjust attack by the unneeded granting of your personal information, unless deemed available by yourself.
I would really encourage people who just shrug their shoulders and say "bah! It's the new millenium. It's technology! Get off your soap box and live with it!" to reconsider their position. The internet is larger than Slashdot and people being accountable for their statements on the specs of the latest rumored graphics card -- and there are far greater risks and losses certain to come from not protecting privacy and anonymity than there are from protecting it. I, for one, would rather not fuck with it, lest we make the biggest mistake of our generation and wager the rights of future on-line generations.
Now I will jump off of my soapbox.
---
seumas.com
Did John plan to write a review? It is hard to tell if he is summarizing the content of the book or propviding his own political commentary.
For another review of the book check out this link.
The prologue to the book and another review are available on the New York times site (free registration required...).
An interview Mr. Rosen gave to NPR's All things Considered can be heard here. Note: For some reason I cannot listen to this on my computer...
He manages to leave out many of Mr. Rosen's arguments for why private speech should be protected, and why these protections should be extended to our electronic utterances.
Mr. Rosen points out that much of our private speech only makes sense in context, and that that context includes our relationship with the person we are communicating with and their knowledge about us. Thus my letters to my wife or my best friend may make no sense when read by a perfect stranger (such as a police officer, judge or jury member).
He also touches on how allowing stranger access to our private thoughts and communication infringes our freedom. The title of the book even comes from a tenet of Jewish law that protects others from being watched without thier permission (thus the 'unwanted gaze').
IMHO It is much more important to publicize and emphasize the real reasons privacy is a basic freedom, rather than just repeating privacy like a mantra and grumbling about how stupid and thoughtless Americans are to let these freedoms be eroded by the "Corporate Republic".
I will. I promise..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
David Brin's premise, which I am also using, is that technology combined with power is and will erode personal privacy, and there's nothing we can do about that.
You are a bit confused. Your original statement was "losing personal privacy is OK if everybody else, specifically government, loses it too". My response was "no, it's not OK, and you can and should get government accountability without sacrificing personal privacy". Now you are saying "See, we are going to lose personal privacy anyway, so if we get government accountability into the bargain, this is not bad".
First of all, my point is that it is bad anyway. I am not a big fan of the "if you are going to be raped anyway, just relax and enjoy it" thinking. I do NOT think that making government transparent will in any shape or form compensate me for the loss of my privacy. Accountability of people in power is one thing, loss of personal privacy is another thing and I still don't see why you think they net each other out.
Second, I don't think that the loss of privacy is inevitable. Yes, technology is coming and one cannot stop it. But one can perfectly well stop its use by the government and law enforcement. Think about wiretaps. For a long time there has been technical capability to wiretap thousands and tens of thousands of people. Yet court-sanctioned wiretaps in the US number in hundreds per year. This is a straightforward example of privacy-invading technology being held in check by the legal system. I am not saying the same thing will happen to all the new technologies, but I don't see total surveillance as inevitable.
outlawing it creates the police state we want to avoid.
How come? If you outlaw, say, automatic face recognition and cross-referencing of personal information databases except by court order, how does this create the police state?
The answer is, turn the cameras back on the cameramen.
That's exactly my point: this is NOT the answer. To repeat myself, your loss of privacy does not compensate me for my loss of privacy.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
---- ----
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.