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The Tightening Net: Part Two
The United States (with the help of some European Enlightenment radicals) invented the legal notion of individual, constitutionally- protected privacy, even if contemporary American citizens seem content to surrender it to government and corporations. The modern-day United States has few mechanisms for protecting privacy when it comes to personal data.
Some European countries give citizens legal control over their personal data, and forbid the transmission of personal information from one source to another without the individual's permission. They also have government agencies responsible for monitoring violations; citizens can turn to them for help. And even in most European countries, citizens surrender confidentiality when buying homes or cars or applying for bank loans. Generally, they can rest assured that the information they surrender won't be sold or passed along without their approval.
Canada, which has a privacy commissioner, has recently enacted a bill requiring companies to ask permission before collecting personal data; it also requires that they tell clients why they need it and who will see it (most Americans happily turn over their phone numbers to clerks at chains like Radio Shack and Toys 'R Us when they make purchases). But it's almost inconceivable that similiar legislation or a privacy commissioner could get past the thousands of corporate lobbyists encamped in Washington. Corporations have become the primary contributors to national political campaigns. They have powerful lobbies in Washington, where individual consumers seem to have few, if any.
The list of reasons for collecting personal data keeps growing. Federal law requires some employers to notify the government of newly-hired employees so that governments can garnish the wages of people delinquent in their child support payments. The government also screens for terrorists, tax cheats and illegal immigrants. Corporations use software programs to screen for anti-social or other "problem" behavior, and check employees against vast databases of crime and debt. Schools are deploying software programs to look for potentially violent students. Some states require that anyone who works near children go through computer and database checks for criminal histories, particularly sex offenses. In an increasingly phobic and fearful culture, it seems that privacy is sacrificed everytime a law enforcement or other perceived threat is raised.
Privacy problems are the underside of the information revolution. As the Net makes the collection of information easier than ever, it also points out one of the principal ironies of technology: Advances are almost always a double-edged sword. Software collection programs present society with access to information, advanced research and marketing techniques, but also with complex new problems, few of them being addressed by government, politics, the tech industries themselves. People are at the mercy of credit-reporting companies who can dig up all kinds of information and, in effect, punish them without perspective or due process. Getting accurate information and redressing errors is like getting tech support: it's supposed to be possible, but just try it.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote of every American's right to an "inviolate personality," a zone of privacy around their intimate behavior and personal lives. That zone has vanished, in part due to harassment laws and other legal evolutions, but also, increasingly, because of software and mushrooming databases. Code has become a social instrument beyond the wildest dreams of many of its creators.
Banks and insurance companies have a right to see customers' credit and payment histories. But lesser infractions used to be forgotten, and individual bankers or agents had the power to make individual judgments. Computers now make information available to companies that wouldn't have had access to it, and software programs make decisions about reliability and risk. The entire process has become simultaneously impersonal.
Although there are some statutes of limitations on bankruptcies and debts -- after seven and, in some cases, ten years, according to federal law, bankruptcy can't be legally used against you and some debts must be forgiven -- there are no procedures for eradicating this information, or even for knowing how much companies are considering it. Personal data survives in databases for all time. And companies increasingly distance themselves from the source and repository if the information, the database collectors themselves. That makes accountability even harder.
Don't lenders, insurers, and colleges have some responsibility for making proportional judgments of their own, for studying the relative merits of each case and make individual decisions? Or will they blindly followed credit-tracking information, no matter the sometimes punitive impact on people?
In his book "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace," Harvard's Lawrence Lessig explains that the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees Americans the right to some measure of privacy, was conceived at a time when the prime technology for invading privacy was trespass. "Imagine then," writes Lessig," that in 1791 protecting against physical trespass protected 90% of personal privacy. The government could still stand on the street and listen through open windows, but the invasion presented by that threat was small, all things considered. For the most part, a regime that protected against trespass -- or unreasonable search and seizure -- was also protecting privacy."
When telephones appeared, this protection eroded. Private information was transmitted via phone lines. Rather than 90% of privacy being protected by the Fourth Amendment, only 50% was, estimates Lessig. Ever since, protections against privacy have not even remotely kept pace with technology. The boundaries around the reasonable information that banks, insurance companies, government and other institutions need to perform their legitimate business have been overrun. And corporations, not governments, have become the most wanton violators of privacy. One reason individual citizens feel apathetic is that they see little harm in Wal-Mart getting data about their shopping habits, or in Amazon selling lists of the books they like to other companies.
The public's fear seems to center on government, not corporate, intrusions of privacy, although polls show that fear of companies misuse of personal data is growing rapidly. But with corporations growing increasingly enmeshed with the political system, this may become an even more significant political issue, although it was never raised in the presidential campaign. History suggests that governments can change character -- Communism and witchcraft were crimes under some governments, not another. If the federal government should bow to corporate pressure and get serious about pursuing hackers and crackers online -- this doesn't seem a remote possibility -- people might regret looking the other way as their privacy is sold off bit by bit. Should today's citizens come into conflict with their government, there'll be no dearth of information about who and where they are, what they've read, bought, watched, and how they handled credit cards when they were 19.
Seemingly small transactions often have enormous implications for people's lives. The free flow of information is a noble notion, but it's becoming a frightening one as well.
There was time when the people mattered. Now it's
all about corporations and money. If something
isn't done soon, I predict another civil war within
the next 100 years. Sometime before then there will
be a mass exodus. Other countries do a much better
job at upholding their founder's original constitution.
I'm on my way out in four more years.
Yeah. When will Canadians clue in that Chretien had nothing to do with the current economic boom, but that it should really be credited to the US. Stop being so sapless and get rid of the lying, arrogant, parasitic f***er. Jean, there already is two-tier health (governement doesn't pay for dentistry, prescriptions, etc), stop try to confuse the electorate. Time to lay off all those governent employees who sit on their arses all day doing nothing, thinking that the job is their right not priviledge, and taking our hard earned money. I don't like the Alliance, but they had a point about Newfies. Time to fire everybody who helped lose that $1B in the Jane Stewart's department.
No, there is one distinction that is entirely warranted:
"Someone has information about me because I chose to give it to him"
versus
"Someone has information about me that I didn't choose to give"
See, you have a choice. You can choose not to give information about yourself. There are tradeoffs--some people might not deal with you because of this--but this is self-limiting; if you refuse to buy a product from anyone who wants your telephone number, you're creating an untapped market, and untapped markets attract suppliers.
Katz confuses these categories by going from wiretapping to credit histories to giving your phone number at Radio Shack in the same breath. I think he's doing it deliberately, so that he can scoop up the deservedly bad reputation of wiretapping and smear it all over Radio Shack.
Tapping my phone lines, bugging my home, looking through my windows with a telescope--those are _involuntary_ privacy violations. I have no choice about participating in those things. (Ironically (but predictably), the European countries Katz applauds, where citizens "own their own data", typically have less protection against this kind of intrusion than the U.S.)
This also applies to trading information that wasn't supposed to be traded--I made a choice based on a claim that my information wouldn't be given away, and that claim turned out to be a lie. It's fraud. There are laws against fraud. There are courts that enforce the laws against fraud. We don't need a new system of laws and Privacy Führers to prevent a specific kind of fraud.
It seems that Katz's diatribe against "privacy invasion" is an indirect attack on another target: "unaccountable institutions" that "make decisions that affect our personal, financial, and work lives." This is his problem--he doesn't like institutions that aren't 'accountable', which he defines in terms of elections and public referenda. Katz demands that no one be allowed to do anything that 'affects' him in any way without submitting it to a vote.
The practical problem (I'll leave the ethical problems alone for the moment) with his little statist fantasy is that historically, the free market has been much better at enforcing accountability than _any_ government, elected or otherwise. Politicians lie; businesses have to deliver, or their competitors will.
If Katz wants to criticize the free market, he should do it honestly instead of disguising his argument as concern for our privacy.
Go on, Katz, say it: "Workers of the world, unite!" And if you're not going to say it, shut the hell up.
True, but the companies to keep our eyes on are the private corporations buying that information and selling the data about us. They can aggregate it, correlate different information and come to their own conclusions. This aggregation is what "data mining" is all about. What if the database is screwed up? Will you be able to find out before it screws up your life? You miss out on a job? You miss out on a home loan? There are mechanisms to correct mistakes, but they are universally slow.
I'll agree with you that the agencies shouldn't be able to sell your info. But putting restrictions on the aggregators is like saying, "Yeah, I see the sink overflowing, but what we really need is more and better mops to clean up the floor." What we need is to turn the faucet off. If privacy regulation is in fact needed, I would think that the government should start with the beam in their own eye.
Once it leaves the government's hands, they have lost all control. All government agencies are accountable, for the most part, (ultimately) to the citizens of that country. (Yes, I know there are major exceptions.) If there is enough uproar (as there was a few years back about driver's license records, which enabled a stalker to find, and ultimately murder, a sit-com actress) the government will change its laws.
But the info didn't magically 'leave the government's hands'. It was sold, and your privacy with it. The plac to start is to stop the government from selling the info in the first place.
Right now, privacy is being treated as an opt-out process- I would prefer if it was, by default, opt-in. Since we don't necessarily know all the data that is collected about us, I want all information about me to be considered private, and let me decide what is to be made public.
If a private company wants to distribute it, they should have to tell me what information they are selling and to whom. I would prefer it if my state would not distribute this information, but ultimately, it will have to be a federal action that forces privacy. As it stands now, if it is not expressly prohibited, it is permitted.
Agreed, for data collected by the state (state in the broader context of government). It's bad enough that they collect the data in the first place, but to sell it, that's ridiculous.
As for information given to marketers, banks, etc, the onus should fall on the consumer to read the fine print (or lack thereof). Caveat emptor. If Joe Public went into a transaction remembering that the lack of a policy is a policy (a policy of doing whatever we goddam well please with your info), this wouldn't be a problem.
Regulation is not the solution to stupid people giving out info to a web site that they'd never give out over the phone.
(to be truthful, it appears that for the most part, we agree, unless, I'm being particularly dense and failing to catch on to your irony)
We do. My major peeve, as stated above, is that we're setting the fox to guard the henhouse. We should at least hobble the fox first.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...ain't privacy fun...
Dear Jon,
If you don't give your info out, people don't have it. If you don't specify that it be kept confidential, it won't be, nor should it be.
Your article fails to make a compelling statement of the 'problem', in its unabashed eagerness to offer up government regulation as the solution.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
P.S. Wired 9.02, pp 74 Online Privacy, by Stuart Luman. You've been scooped on this one.
...regulation cures all ills...
Or, consider this it boils down to who "owns" that information- My private information is mine- I should retain ownership, and from that, control. If I give it to you, you can use it, but you should have no right to distribute it further, unless I grant you that right.
I would agree, but only if you make that provision when giving the info to me. Anything given is implcitly given without restriction. Unless that restriction (that only I can use the info) is made explicit, I ought to be able to do whatever I please with it. If there is no privacy policy listed, don't give the info to that person.
It's like giving money to panhandlers. A handful of change (generic demographic data), hey, who cares what he does with it. A hundred bucks (name, DOB, SSN, address, phone number), one ought to be looking for some reasonable assurances that the money will be spent in a way I see fit.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...the more we keep discussing this, the more we agree...
Much easier said than done. Some things can't be kept out of the public record- such as deed information- I've bought 2 houses, and I have no choice but to have that information available. I don't mind if the local public utility uses it to send me a letter informing me of something they have to do in the right-of-way. On the other hand, this same database is *SOLD* by the state (I'm in the USA) to direct mailers, Mortgage companies, and so on. My vehicle registration information has been sold. I've asked for them not to, but the lists go out immediately after the registration, but the "opt-out" takes up to 8 weeks, and I have to opt out of each individual VIN registered to me, I'm given no option to blanket-deny any requests under my name.
Note that the examples you've listed are all examples of governmental agencies selling your info. These would be the same folks Katz would like to 'protect' us from privacy loss. Tres ironic.
Personally, I see your point, but public record is just that, public. Private info, on the other hand, should be private unless you give out rights to it. However, if there's no stipulation when the info is given out, caveat emptor.
Or we can just pass a law, and the problem will go away.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...ever since I got this hammer, everything looks like a nail...
yes! yes! yes! its for the children!
everything is for the children!
think of the children!
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
> 1) You're a radical lesbian feminist, so you
> have the right to speak on the subject. OK, so
> all us non-radical, non-lesbian, non-"feminist"
> (although I may classify myself as a feminist,
> depending on how you define the term) people,
> especially white males (like me), better shut
> the hell up and listen to their betters?
> Uhh...no.
That's not what I said.
I'm using 'right' as in 'something to which one has a just claim'. I don't consider people who say they aren't feminist *and* have no real clue what feminism is about (in any of it's permutations) to have much right to speak of it and be believed or taken seriously, in the same sense I consider the loweliest script kiddie who runs a linux box at home to have more right to speak of linux than a well-qualified (on paper) 'computer expert' who has never touched linux and only knows about it from MS and other anti-linux sources.
Case in point: I went to the local small computer shop today, and the guy behind the counter told me he doesn't run linux because 'it only runs on Intel motherboards and doesn't support sound' -- if you know anything about linux, you know that's wrong. By the same token, there is an unfortunetly common belief that feminism (especially radical feminism) requires that one hate men (as opposed to challenging patriarchy -- the two are vastly different, and hating men not only is not helpful, it's counter productive) -- recently a young woman who told me that she was anti-feminist also told me that she felt that feminism's main message was that if one didn't hate men one was a 'disgrace to your vagina' -- if you know anything about feminism you know that this is not an accurate portrayal of feminist theory or philosophy.
Perhaps I should have used 'expertise' -- if you like, s/right/expertise there. I don't do semantics arguments.
> 2) There is something wrong with the CONCEPT of
> a white male? a) What is the concept of a white
> male?
The concept of 'white male' requires two concepts, race and sex.
Race is the concept that there are different groups of people that can be separated on the basis of their skin color. Racism is the concept that various values of a human being (their fitness or non-fitness for various things) can be judged by their race.
Sex is that concept that there are two (in some cultures more, but in the U.S. only two) groups of people, separated by certain apparent characteristics -- usually considered to be genetilia (not chromosomes -- how many people do you know have actually had a chromosome check?) and some secondary characteristics -- breasts or lack thereof, facial hair, etc. Sexism is the concept that a person's fitness for various things can be judged from their sex.
It's commonly argued that race is a 'real' thing -- while I"ll grant that both heritage and skin color are actual realities, race in this country is a social construct. This can most readily be seen in the fact that the definition of who is 'white' has changed over the past 200 years (i.e. Irish in the 1800s in most parts of the country were not considered to be white -- italians and jewish people of european origin have also not be considered white at various points) and the fact that skin color often seems to have little to do with it. My skin is lighter than that of most 'white' people, yet I am not white because my grandmother was japanese (I also have two great-great-greats that were native american, one sioux and one cherokee, but it's likely that if I did not have a japanese grandmother I would be considered white). Why is race important then, if it's so amorphous? Because it's used to decide *who* has privilege (see racism) and by privilege I don't mean who gets a limo or lots of money -- I mean who doesn't get pulled over because they don't 'look' like they should own that nice car, who is seen as a threat when they walk into a convenience store late at night, who is likely to be stopped because they don't 'belong' in this neighborhood, who gets service in a store vs who gets ignored because they don't 'look' like they'll have money, who gets loans vs who doesn't. There are tons of studies showing that all other things (income, dress, etc) being equal, people of color are still *much* more likely to deal with the above than white people. If you don't deal with these things, than you're not likely to realize that *not* dealing with them, in this society, *is* a privilege.
Sex is similar, though a bit more problematic, because there *is* actual difference between males and females, and the vast majority of people biologically only fit into one group or the other. Those who aren't born with clearly male or clearly female genetilia are generally surgically altered/mutilated at very young ages to conform to societies expectations (usually 'into' females because it's a technically easier task to 'construct' female-looking genetilia than male-looking genetilia) (Incidently a good book along these lines is _Gender_Shock_). So while biological sex is 'more' real than race, it's still not the 100% that the societally constructed concept of sex is (don't believe me? I genderbend on a regular basis. It amazes me how strong the impulse in people to assign a sex to someone is.
Again, sex is important because (and, outside of mating behavior, *only* because) it strongly affects how people are treated by other people -- who is considered techinically competant, who is considered to be 'easy prey' for rapists, muggers, etc (not that men never are raped or otherwise violently attacked - but both happen significantly more often to women), who is considered to be authority (ever had your computer componants or car parts or furniture automatically given to a male companion? Had it happen so regularly that you're shocked when someone actually gives it to you? Ever had anyone assume that you didn't know anything about your car/computer/tools/exercise equiptment because you were male? All this is privilege as well), how much you make (see http://news.excite.com/news/zd/010116/16/it-pay-w
So the concept of white male, in our society, is the person with 'default' privilege -- you will reliably be represented in media and in society (this analysis does not include class, sexual orientation and a number of other attributes which are similar to race and sex in that they are used to discriminate).
> b) Why is it a problem?
because the concepts exist to exclude and discriminate against groups of people, as groups.
> If there's a ruling elite in america,
Are you saying there is not?
> it is
> neither identically nor exclusively the domain
> of white males.
Up until a generation ago you'd be wrong. Now there are a number of 'token' women and people of color in some positions, however, the vast majority of those in power are still white males.
That said, ruling white males are a very small subset of all white males -- as I said, the problems were not caused by every individual white male, however, every white person benefits from white privilege (and some of us who are not white but pass for it as well) and every male benefits from male privilege (regardless of color) and white males benefit from both. Thus, white people, and males and especially white males are in positions to challenge this privilege, but often don't -- mostly out of ignorance (often willful, but that's another post)
> Most of us white males have to muddle along on
> our own, without even the chic of radical
> lesbian feminism to help us make sense of our
> pathetic, misguided lives.
Most of us non-white males muddle through the same stuff, without the nifty bits of privilege, making it that much harder. While I find radical feminism to be useful in interpreting the world around me (as, say, quantum theory is useful in interpreting our universe) I would hardly call it chic. In some ways it's empowering, enabling me to see that there are patterns, that I'm not imagining the things I see, and that there are others who have come up with strategies for dealing with the inevitable problems that come up, as well as for 'fixing' the system -- in other ways it's depressing, because it would be nice if I were the only person who has had to fight some of the battles I have -- not for me, but for the rest of the world. 'Chic' is just not a word I'd use to describe it.
That said, I'm sure that, should you be politically minded, there are plenty of political ideas and philosphies that could help you make sense of your life. (Actually, radical feminism also holds that patriarchy harms men, though not really in teh same ways that Promise keepers thinks)
> Wow. Excellent reply. Far better than run of the
:) ) and nine years ago I sounded as bad as a lot of the people here. Debate is a learned skill, ask any debate coach :)
;P ). Bad sysadmin, no root prompt.
:) ) and ultimately this became codified into our societies (from Sumer on down the line). In it's more extreme manifestations it leads to situations like that between protestants and catholics in Ireland.
:) ). Again, these problems aren't confined to males, females do all this stuff too. It's a societal thing.
> mill Slashdot fare.
Thanks. I try hard to remember that I've been arguing on-line for about nine years (since I was thirteen
> since the
> basic discussion here has centered around what
> does and does not constitute a "right", it's not
> a good term to throw around loosely.
Agreed. I forgot vinnie rule #1 (think, then type, not the other way around
> It seems like, at the very basic level, you are
> fighting against human xenophobia and stupidity.
Well, I'm not sure stupidity is exactly the right idea here -- very 'stupid' people (the mentally retarded) are often the *least* prejudiced people. Very inexperienced people (young children) generally also lack prejudice (of the sexual and racial kind -- they are very prejudiced towards their families and people they know, but in a young child this is probably good for survival) except that they've been taught (generally by their parents, but also from TV and the few societal influences they've been likely to encounter). There was a time, when resources were much scarcer (while there is still resource scarcity, there is definetly enough *resources* for all people to eat, which thousands of years ago was not the case) that choosing your family or group or tribe over others was *vital* to your family's survival (and therefore your genes..ultimately we are still DNA's way of making more DNA, whatever we wish to think
At one point all of this was necessary for survival, but I think (and can argue) that these attitudes are counter-productive (and somewhat counter survival, but probably not enough to darwin them out) and therefore should change for the benefit of all people.
> it's going to make them almost impossible to
> fight against.
Well, if you look at history, there is progress being made. To look at the United States (which is, honestly, the only place I can intelligently discuss right now. I keep meaning to learn more about world politics, but time/energy/yeah, I'm sure you know the excuses here), before the 1860s, it was considered okay to keep humans as slaves because they were another color (and during colonial days slavery of whites was allowed, though the politics around this is very different than that of black slavery in the U.S. [and I should note that I'm using politics in the sense of the way humans organize power -- in the 'office politics' sense, rather than necessarily in the government sense, though the former does encompass the latter), later that century black people were given the right to vote, in the 1920s women finally got the right to vote, civil rights movement made great advances in the 1960s (certainly, racism et al still exist today, that's what started this conversation, but it's definetly *less* than what it was in the 20s or 50s) and the women's rights movement in the 70s also made advances (again, sexism exists still, but not to the same extent). This history gives me hope that with continued work, education, activism, etc that someday (maybe generations from now) it *won't* exist.
Even if I'm wrong about this, there's a great essay about racism (written in the late fifties, I think) that argues that racism will never die, that black people will never be considered equal to rights, however, the author argues that that doesn't release anyone with a conscience from the duty of fighting racism anyway, because it's far better to go down fighting than to live on one's knees.
> I'd argue that these persons do not provide an
> accurate representation of white males,
They aren't meant to represent white males -- in fact, white males certainly *don't* have monopoly on thinking that a female will not know about cars or computers (or any other sexist behavior). Nor is that behavior 'better' when other women or people of color engage in it. What males (in this case color doesn't matter so much, from my view, though someone who is clearly of color might disagree with me) have a monopoly on is assumed competance -- by males and females (and others).
Your thought experiment has merit, but that wasn't the situation I was talking about.
Two friends (male and female) walk into a car/computer store. They go to the counter, and the counter person greets them, looking at the male, and asks him what he wants. The female pipes up with her list, and the counter person puts it on the counter and asks the guy if that will be it, the girl says yes, the counter person finally gets the clue and asks the girl if that will be cash or credit.
This is such a normal occurance in my life that mostly I just shine it, though occasionally I'll throw in a smart ass comment on my way out about computers/cars not requiring penises...
Another occurance that used to be common (when I worked as a PC tech at computer stores) customer comes in (normally male, though males *are* overrepresented in the set of 'customers likely to talk to the PC tech' so that may just be a statistical artifact) and when he discovers that a *girl* is working on his computer (or has been sent out to answer his questions) he asks 'Can you please get a real tech?' (best answer, "I am a real tech" and if that doesn't work I'd employ a technical I used to call 'beating them over the head with technical terms' -- you can probably guess what it entails -- in some techs this is normal behavior, but I generally try to go out of my way to make sure that non-technical people understand what I'm saying, I consider the former to be not nice behavior, though sometimes justified)
Similar things used to happen when I worked tech support (I'm now a sysadmin, and while I get an occasional surprised coworker I haven't had to deal with customers in a while)
> you might have a case to argue that that
> individual is sexist.
I think I do here, but more, I think that it shows a pattern of 'normalized' sexism. We aren't talking one or two or three cases here, we're talking onces every two or three days, for *years*, in the case of the work related ones. In the case of the store incidents, I generally frequent the same computer stores once I find the ones I like, so they tend to clue on to me pretty quick (though my experience has been that they clue to *me* not *women*).
Discussions with my female friends have shown similar patterns (my favorite is my best friend, who is, if possible, louder than I am, who has a very clearly female name, yet sales clerks, wait people, etc are *consistantly* returning her credit card to her husband -- occasionally (and I have witnessed this) when he says 'This isn't my card' the wait person will say 'but I'm sure that this is your check' -- while my friend is sitting right there! Valets also hand her keys to him all the time. He says it's made him much more aware of daily discrimination women face (hmm..perhaps men should date at least one woman with more money than them at least once in their lifetimes
> You've still got a long way to go to prove that
> white males control the power structure of the
> worldAs far as whether there is a power elite in
> America, I'm holding on to my romantic notion
> that there is not against all logical analysis.
> Please be careful about bursting my bubble. : )
Well, since that there is a power elite in America is an inseperable part of 'there is a power elite in America and it is almost exclusively white and male', I'm not sure how an effective argument could *not* burst your bubble.
That said, some obvious facts that support this are:
A. The U.S. Congress is still vastly white and male, though there are both women and people of color represented, they are underrepresented compared to the population of the U.S.
B. We have never had a non-white, non-male president
C. The majority of the supreme court justices are white and male
(thus, the three major branches of our government are very largely white and male)
D. Nearly all of the heads of large companies are white and male
E. the last Forbes 'top ten richest people in america' list I saw was all white, and while there were three women on it, all three were from the same family and had inherited their money (the walton family, that started walmart, as I recall)
F. The heads of major news outlets are nearly all white and male (possibly all, I don't know of anyone who is not, but it's possible there is some member of the board I don't know about, so I'll hedge here)
As I said before, just because you are white and male does not mean you are likely to be a person in power, but if you are a person in power, odds are overwhelmingly that you are white and male.
> If you proceed from the assumption that white
> males are going to treat you (a woman)
> differently than they would treat a man, you are
> engaging in exactly the sort of behaviour you're
> arguing against.
Agreed. And I don't proceed from that assumption, but I also don't ignore that behavior when it happens (regardless of the person's race or sex).
>Fine by me. Though it'd be nice if the
> environmentalists,
if you haven't noticed, the majority of environmental activists are white males, so I find it highly suspect that they are blaming you, because you are a white male.
> racist race warlords (self-appointed "civil
> rights leaders"),
I sincerely hope that you aren't trying to imply that all civil rights leaders are racist race warlords (there are a very few who are of color, there are a hell of a lot more who are white males) -- for the non-racists race warlord civil rights activists, please see feminism
>and feminists stopped blaming the troubles of
>the world on me just cause I happen to be a
> white male. Hey, I didn't ask to be.
Cluephone here -- (and I'm a radical lesbian feminist, so I think I have some right to speak on this subject) -- no one is saying, you, Dannon, are the cause of all evils because you are a white male. The *concept* of white male -- the whole societal philosophy that allows the concept of "white male" to exist (and no, neither feminists nor racial minorities invented the concept) is the problem. And I know you didn't ask to be, I didn't particularly ask to be a mixed race dyke myself...it just happens (in the most literal of senses) -- that said, there's no escaping that you benefit from the privileges accorded to white males in this society, as I benefit from the privileges accorded to white women in this society when I pass for white (which is fairly often, I'll admit -- not entirely by choice)
Certainly, the societal framework that feminism (and civil rights movements) works against is generations old -- no one living now had any say in it's beginning, but we all have a little say in it's demise.
1. Artists producing songs for the express purpose of giving those songs to who pay for them, only to have those songs shared without permission with the rest of the world via Napster.
2. YOU, providing information to a company that you think will be kept in confidence only to have that company share said info with many other companies without permission.
JonKatz = Troll
Justen Stepka
And black males, statistically, commit more crimes than white males. Maybe we should have a tax on black people since they're more likely to commit crimes than white people. Wouldn't that be "fair"? NO.
Insurance company statistics are designed to do one thing and one thing only: wring as much money from the populace as the law allows. Since the law requires me to carry car insurance, this is a Bad Thing.
And lay off the ad hominem attacks. They don't add anything to the discussion.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Let's talk about your last paragraph here. Two specific points:
1) You're a radical lesbian feminist, so you have the right to speak on the subject. OK, so all us non-radical, non-lesbian, non-"feminist" (although I may classify myself as a feminist, depending on how you define the term) people, especially white males (like me), better shut the hell up and listen to their betters? Uhh...no.
2) There is something wrong with the CONCEPT of a white male? a) What is the concept of a white male? b) Why is it a problem?
If there's a ruling elite in america, it is neither identically nor exclusively the domain of white males. Most of us white males have to muddle along on our own, without even the chic of radical lesbian feminism to help us make sense of our pathetic, misguided lives.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Wow. Excellent reply. Far better than run of the mill Slashdot fare. Sounds like there's meat for a real discussion here, rather than the normal rant/counter rant.
Your use of "expertise" in place of "right" does indeed clarify your meaning. Although I'm not one to pick semantic nits either, since the basic discussion here has centered around what does and does not constitute a "right", it's not a good term to throw around loosely.
It seems like, at the very basic level, you are fighting against human xenophobia and stupidity. All of the "structures" (my term, encompassing all of the sociological interactions you mentioned above) you describe have developed over many thousands of years of history. I'm not trying to argue that that makes them right, but it's going to make them almost impossible to fight against.
Let me address specifically your points about treatment of females by service (car and computer) personnel. First of all, I'd argue that these persons do not provide an accurate representation of white males, and they certainly aren't the ones at the top of the sociological power structure.
As for your point about computer parts, let me put forth a thought experiment.
Two men walk into a computer store. One is tall, has red hair, a big voice, and smiles a lot. (like me) One is shorter, quieter, some might say less obnoxious. The lummox (me) walks up to the counter, and starts talking about computer parts. Would it be surprising for the clerk to direct his responses to the quiet person? Yes. If the quiet person happened to be a woman, it would STILL not be surprising if the clerk spoke to the lummox, since that is the person who initiated the conversation.
In other words, if you argue that you commonly go into computer (or car) stores, exhibit a basic understanding of what's going on, and the clerks STILL talk around you to a (possibly male) companion, you might have a case to argue that that individual is sexist. You've still got a long way to go to prove that white males control the power structure of the world. (I, for instance, do not have a decoder ring...)
Let me put it to you this way. If you proceed from the assumption that white males are going to treat you (a woman) differently than they would treat a man, you are engaging in exactly the sort of behaviour you're arguing against.
As far as whether there is a power elite in America, I'm holding on to my romantic notion that there is not against all logical analysis. Please be careful about bursting my bubble. : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Your argument is backwards. Since the insurance companies ALREADY discriminate based upon genetic information, how much WORSE do you think it's going to get when they get access to my entire genome? Or my personality profile based on what sites I visit?
I think it's reprehensible that insurers charge males more than females for car insurance. Just because they're doing it now doesn't mean it's OK.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Because Bill J. Clinton and his lapdog Janet Reno have been much better for privacy in the US. Get a grip guy. At least George W. is not an opponent of your right to defend yourself and you belongings.
Just cuz you ain't paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.
The problem is not that the information is known, but that it will be used for unethical discrimination. Medical information, sexual orientation, disabilities, race, etc., can all be used improperly. I don't think we will have much success trying to outlaw the transfer of this sort of information (privacy laws). After all, isn't "Information wants to be free." one of our mantras. Instead, we will have more success outlawing improper use of this information (discrimination laws). Complete success is unlikely given that it is all too often easy to make up an acceptable excuse for not hiring so-and-so. But I think will be a more successful approach than trying to bottle up information.
Maybe the fact that there is so much bad information in thes databases is due to the fact that the credit reporting agencies have no accountability for the accuracy of the information they provide. If they had some financial liability for times when credit was denied based on inaccurate information, they'd do a better job of checking it out. How about $1000 for every credit refusal? Right now they don't really care, and will put anything they dig up in your credit file. And why should they? You're the one responsible for finding errors - usually when you get an unpleasant surprise when applying for credit. Then you have to notify them, get the error fixed, and apply all over again.
I don't kid myself into thinking this will ever happen. The credit reporting agencies are perfectly happy with the status quo; they can screw with people's lives, and never be held accountable financially.
Just a thought;
Antisocial
I don't intend to use my firearms to protect myslef against the police - there is no justification to use force on an officer who is just doing his job. I know there is a functional court system to fix the problem if I am wrongly accused and to compensate me accordingly if it is done outside of the law. I do expect and in fact have used my firearms on two occasions to defend myself from another person. In one case two hispanic males broke into my apartment while I was home asleep. They stood between me and the phone - I couldn't have called 911 no matter how hard I tried. I displayed my gun and they ran away. They were later arrestd on drug charges. The other time a large man (and 3 of his friends) walked up to my pickup, opened the door and tried to pull me out onto the street. I drew my weapon from the center console and he fled never to be seen again. I am glad I live in a state where I am allowed to defend myself when necessary. In both of those cases the police could not have arrived in time to prevent me from being seriously harmed (or killed) by these criminals.
I know that private ownership of guns could kill me some day, but so could the 4th ammendment by supressing evidence against a killer who walks free. Are you willing to permit warrentless searches if it will save lives? mabee we can save money if the federal budget if troops are housed by people living near the base? The rights in the constitution are there to protect the minority and take 3/4 of the states to change to make sure its truely in everyone's best interest.
The law you are looking for depends greatly on the state. Here is the reader's digest version of Florida Statute 794 as it relates to age of consent:
Suspect over 18 Victim under 12 = Capital Felony*
Suspect under 18 Victim over 12 = Life Felony**
Victim under 16 but over 12 = 1st degree felony
Suspect under 24 Victim 16 or 17 = Nothing provided the suspect is not in a position of trust/athority/custody.
Suspect over 24 Victim 16 or 17 = 2nd degree felony
* Capital felony is punishable by death or life in prison. There is currently case law that prevents the sate from asking for a death penalty for any crime but murder, so this in effect makes the only possible sentence for this crime life in prison.
**In FL there is no parole system, sentences are for a fixed number of years and 85% must be served before you get good behavior/gain time. Life is life meaning no release except by pardon.
There are certin crimes that demand more than "serve your time and start over" - If you look at the laws in most states those people convicted of a felony loose some of their civil rights. This includes voting & holding public office, free association (its common for felons to be barred from associating with other felons), firearms rights, movement (must register with the city/state/etc), required to submit to drug testing or to take medication, cannot hold some jobs (police officer, security guard, child care).
I believe that every employer has the athority to investigate the background of an applicant and the thruthfullness of answers provided on the employement application. In some instances an employer could be liable under negligence for not checking an applicant's background, for example: when they care for children, the elderly, have access to weapons, or large sums of money. I don't think that having a record should bar a person from holding most jobs as long as they are honest about their past and the employer understands the risk they may be taking. Breaking the law has its consequences and serving time in prison does not mean the person is reformed but just they served the time the court imposed (minus parole, gain time, early release, etc) its up to the individual through their actions to show they are reformed and can act within the law from now on.
IANAL, but my guess is that this wouldn't work. As I understand it, copyright can only protect a particular expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Perhaps if you had some original way of expressing your personal data (in verse, perhaps?) you could copyright that, but even then they'd be free to copy the information, so it wouldn't do much good.
.sig.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
There are two _____.
Be aware that there are a lot of situations to consider. If you were in a situation where you were capable of being a parent, and then your situation changes, you can't go back and unhave the kids.
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
Greed.
America claims to be the "Land of the Free", but a greater percentage of its citizens are in prison than in any other democracy.
Not all of them are in prison, some are directly fried directly. America might not give a sh*t about human rights, but they sure know how to recycle the good old "games" of Rome. When will Bush Junior bring back the lions ? The electric chair is not as entertaining.
The odd thing is that the USA is the country where people trust their gov. the less (to the point of total paranoïa), yet they trust it enough to accept its decision of killing someone. I personnaly trust my gov. to use the tax efficiently enough, but wouldn't let it decide who should live and who shoudn't...
The US constitution is like the Bible : it is overly old, some parts are still meaningfull, but some parts are also meaningless to the point of stupidity. I mean, do we really need to stone to death people guilty of adultery ? The world change, and sometimes the laws that govern it need an overhaul every couple of centuries... (show me someone who still follows every one of the ten commandmants and I'll show you a weirdo religious nut).
It's no coincidence that the countries with the best day care, ie Sweden, France, are also the countries with the most spiritually malnourished people who have no innate sense of human worth. They're but a small stpe from state sponsored creches, where a child sees their birth parents twice a year.
Yeah, it's not like in the wonderful USA, where prisons are full and people are fried on the electric chair on a regular basis (mostly because they were found guilty of not having the same lawyers as OJ Simpson). A country where everyone is free to carry a gun so that he is ready to kill when the time does come (self defense, killing rage, "don't worry it's not loaded", etc.). A country where it's nice and popular to starve to death other poorer country because you like their politicians (Irak, Cuba), or simply bomb them when the president need a little popularity boost.
Now don't come back talking about sense of human worth. France and Sweden might be mostly atheist (which apparently is what you seem to think is equal to "spiritually malnourished"), but they certainly put more price on life than in the USA (the place were a bunch of judges get to pick the president and human rights are not even respected).
ARTICLE V:
You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health care.
Why not ? Many of the most civilized countries, and even some not so advanced, have free health care. It works. Those against free health care are often (if not always) people with way enough money to afford some private health insurance, and not generous enough to consider giving part of their income to help people who could use a doctor (don't talk to me about charity, it's just a lame excuse to sooth your guilt, not to effectively help people)
ARTICLE VI:
You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.
I think this is self contradicting. If you don't have the right to physically harm other people, how come you have the right to kill them on an electric chair ? Or is it "eyes for an eyes" ? I thought that was the justice of 2000 year old backward and primative barbarian...
i dont know what causes the high prison rates. but i would put my money on poor education and poor parenting.
I guess you found one of the reason, but how about "a very repressive justice" ? It seems to me that the judges are somewhat very "prison happy" in the USA.
Where were you in your current election then? From what I know of your (beloved) constitution, that didn't look right at all.
When are you planning to march on Washington with your gun? Please let us know, I'm sure the rest of the world could do with another laugh at the Americans.
Ridiculous drug laws is why you've got such a high percentage of people in jail.
I think that that's the point the original poster was trying to get across.
- "Many Europeans own their own data, and Canada actually has a privacy commissioner."
- "Some European countries give citizens legal control over their personal data, and forbid the transmission of personal information from one source to another without the individual's permission. They also have government agencies responsible for monitoring violations; citizens can turn to them for help. And even in most European countries, citizens surrender confidentiality when buying homes or cars or applying for bank loans. Generally, they can rest assured that the information they surrender won't be sold or passed along without their approval."
- "Canada, which has a privacy commissioner, has recently enacted a bill requiring companies to ask permission before collecting personal data; it also requires that they tell clients why they need it and who will see it"
Hope that helps.----
"Here to discuss how the AOL merger will affect consumers is the CEO of AOL."
grep -ri 'should work'
All i had to do was go to my post office, buy a little sticker for approx 1$ and then go home and put it on my mailbox and *poof* no my ads. (The funny thing is that i still get some junk mail, but only from american companies to whoem i was stupid enough to send in my registration card. I wont make that mistake again.)
I just wish it was this simple to protect my electronic mailboxes too. Luckily i can rest assured that im protected from domestic companies spreading my data all over the place. They don't really need a privacy policy. Obtained data is confidental, they are by law restricted from passing it on to others. Even my bank and insurance company that are owned by the same company are not allowed to share data.
Now this is privacy as it should be everywhere, including the USA IMHO.
Even though this has been noted several times on /. before, it's important to remind people that in order to have full anonymity, one must pay cash. Using a credit card and the club card together links them in the database. For instance, notice what happens when you go into Wal-Mart with a new credit card. Usually the computer will ask the clerk to check your ID. After a few times, the computer will stop asking, because the card has not been used for any fradulent transactions.
Walt
You "own" a copyright simply by virtue of proving that you wrote it, and when.
It was fairly common, before the '90s, to get a "poor man's" copyright by mailing the work to yourself via US post. Some also had the work notarized or sent via registered mail (registered, in the sense that the work is read into public record) The official-ness of the post mark dated your work, but only worked as such in DEFENSE.
IE: if someone else copied your work, and then sued you for copyright infringement, you could produce the letter and the official-ness of the postmarks was sufficient to prove prior art.
On the other hand, you couldn't use this OFFENSIVELY to sue someone else for infringement. In order to do this, you must register the work via the US copyright office, and enter the work in it's "latest and greatest form" into the Library of Congress which is, by the way, a matter of public record.
IANAL, but Copyright law was the subject of my HS senior thesis. That was six (SIX?!?) years ago.
Because your records are already public and have existed since you were born / naturalized, all changes and alterations might be considered "derivitave works" of an original, uncopyrighted work. Not a great position either devensively or offensively.
.. since they have one of the worst human rights records in the world. Seems that even without firearms in the hands of the average citizen, the police still feel the need to "drop in" twice a year to "check up" on law-abiding citizens.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The root of the problem here is not sex offenders (former, current, "rehabilitated" or not) or drug dealers or understaffed I'm-too-busy-for-my-own-child-so-watch-(him-or-her )-while-I-go-work-for-somebody-else-to-make-enough -money-to-get-another-credit-card-so-I-can-spend-e ven-more-money-that-I-don't-have-on-even-more-stuf f-that-I-don't-need
farms....
It's all about VALUES. It's YOUR child. YOU raise him/her.
*duh*
What's this button do?
Actually if you read what I wrote, I never whined about lack of political correctness, that was far from my point. The internet is a global community. I was just suggesting that it might be nice if webpages could reflect that and look on a global scale, even though it is based in America and staffed by Americans.
That's not likely to happen here anytime soon.
I've noticed that slashdot has been a bit U.S.-centric at times. It doesn't bother me, but I'm sure a poll would reveal that many many readers are not from the U.S.A. Perhaps more generic language (points of view) in articles would be more appropriate?
Oh, how might it be enforced?
Primarily, I'd suspect, through a) whistleblowing, and b) alleged victims who suspect this, and raise havoc -- a large-enough scandal would prompt a Congressional investigation. Same as with most other possible government malfeasances, I'd think. It's impossible to prevent wrongdoings here, just about as it is in nearly every other aspect of life.
The Intelligence committees have some leverage here because if they don't like the answers, well, it's Congress that controls their money.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
A criminal defendant can refuse a jury trial if he has more confidence in a judge, IIRC.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Well, most corporations face effective competition. To a certain degree, if you don't like their products, their behavior, or anything else about them, you may be able to avoid them.
I doubt Firestone tires have been selling well recently. Nor Corsairs after Nader's work, and so forth. Don't like Reebok for alleged labor abuses? Don't buy them, and if you're curious you may be able to find out whether they sell shoes under other labels. Don't like Coca-Cola? They may be harder to avoid (because their sub-brands like Minute Maid (IIRC) aren't blatantly labelled Coca-Cola, so you may need to check the fine print), but still possible.
Want Proctor & Gamble to oppose GM foods, or to sign on to your human rights protocol de jour? Shareholders have proposed both of those motions; majority vote wins. You can basically force a vote for many public companies; there are advocates who buy shares solely for this purpose. You can't really force your representative or Senator to even propose a bill or amendment, or submit one yourself in most states (albeit some have referendum rules); in most cases, all you can promise is that you won't vote for him otherwise -- and in some states, such as if you're a GOPer in MA, proposing some right-ish measure, or a liberal Socialist in TX -- forget about it.
Try opting out of, say, taxes, the Census, or just about any other aspect of Government; it's a whole different matter. Who had more power -- Ralph Nader and his allies in the consumer movement, or McVeigh? Who had a broader effect? I think the answer is obvious...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
a) Health care, unlike most other suggested rights -- such as free speech, to not quarter troops and so forth -- is a service, and in fact an exceedingly expensive one.
1. It needs to be paid for.
2. Somebody needs to provide it.
If there is a right to it, then there must be both a right to the funds for it, and also a way to coerce providers into supplying it. The Federal government arguably doesn't have jurisdiction over it; it is NOT an enumerated power, and arguably for almost anything that the Feds could do with it, the States legally could -- if their individual Constitutions permit.
b) No self-contradiction. Execution is the society's ultimate means of self-defense; individuals are also empowered to use self-defense within reason -- for instance, to use deadly force in most states, if not all, requires a probable, immediate and very serious threat; shooting squeegee men isn't approved, nor is maiming people for no particular reason at all. Self-defense is the right, not wanton mayhem.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The CIA (and the NSA, as well) have minimal domestic jurisdiction in terms of eavesdropping and other forms of SIGINT, HUMINT et al.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
If you are not able to handle being a parent, then why did you have kids?
I'm not saying it shouldn't be upheld; I was making the case that it's not BEING upheld. And, personally, I don't think that simply carrying a sidearm does anything to help at this point in history.
The authors of the constitution were immediately stinging from the british prohibition on colonists owning weapons, a measure they took to keep the colonies in check. The founders of America realized that citizens would need to be entitled to bear arms to prevent this sort of tyrrany from occurring again. In those days, though, to arm oneself meant to carry a musket.
Now, adequately arming yourself against government oppression would necessitate significantly more firepower. This, the government has decided, is NOT something we're entitled to. Everything from automatic assault rifles on up has been effectively banned. And you think you even COULD resist an oppressive government with the weapons you're allowed to have? Not a chance.
What I'm saying is, the second amendment is already gutted for all practical purposes.
I have not bothered to see if this is feasible because I don't have enough confidence that it will work to believe it's worth the money to consult a copyright lawyer, but if enough people think it might be worth getting together and doing it as a group effort (dividing the cost) - hey, might be fun. ;)
--
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
It's funny because it's true.
Jon, yet again your headline has nothing to do with your content.. but we will let that slide.
One thing makes this all possible. Just one. Money. Yup. Folding Green.
It has *nothing* to do with background checks, they are an added bonus. It has nothing to do with criminal records, or bank accounts.
It has everything to do with targeted marketing. With pyramid schemes. With "simply reply with remove in the subject line" to email addresses on forged domains that dont exist. (even if you could read the email, which you cant, cause it is in swahili)
Money makes the world go round.. like it or lump it, it doesnt change it. If someone thinks they are gonna save 20 bucks on groceries, they will tell you over the phone whether their children were circumcised and whether they masturbate or not. THAT is where the loss of privacy has come from. Of all the people on the net, how many actually pay attention to all the pretty little pre-checked boxes on their Yahoo sign up page? the ones that say "send me information" and "share my information with other companies"?
Very few.. but they will complain like demons scorned when they get emails.. with headers like "you were referred to us as someone with an interest in bovine oreinted pornographic material".
Its money man.. its Technocracy at work. And the only way to fix it is to burn down TRW, and the clearing houses, and the credit cards, and the car loans. Nothing this side of that is going to change anything, because we need *money* and to get money, we give out information that we would not ordinarily give to our best friends.
"neither a borrower nor a lender be" is trite and annoying, but its good advice.
Maeryk.
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
**America claims to be the "Land of the Free", but a greater percentage of its citizens are in prison than in any other democracy**
.02, no change.
Uhh.. totally new concept here, but maybe if that percentage of citizens felt like following the laws, this wouldnt be a problem?
**Do I even need to mention the farce that they called an election? The world leader in technology, inventor of the internet, and they don't even have a modern voting system. It would funny if it wasn't so sad.**
More flamboyant crap that says nothing.. the presidential election is decided by the electoral college.. this is not news to anyone. This is not a new thing. The problem with this election was the whining by "disenfranchised" voters (IE: we were outnumbered by people who thought differently, therefore its unfair) and people who wanted to steal the office in spite of the laws put into place to keep it from happening. Get a clue friend, you were sucked into the media circus too. Open your eyes.
**Don't even get me started on this one. What other civilized country still excecutes people? This is something that 3rd world countries are great at, as well as places like China and Iraq. But the USA? How can a country that is so ahead economically, be so behind in social policy and human rights? **
Social Policy? Human Rights? oh.. sorry.. I forgot that when someone goes ape with an ak-47 and shoots up a school, it is everyones fault but their own.. it is the gubmints fault, the legal gun owners, the nasty republicans.. *anyone* but the person that pulled the trigger or stepped on the gas pedal or switched the detonator on.
GROW UP! THere are penalties for crimes.. if you kill three people you will *DIE*.. you make that decision at the time you decide to end three lives. No sense whining about it afterwards.. sure.. killing people looks like a good alternative, if you are guaranteed houseing, cable tv, three square meals a day and weight priveleges for life! why not? It's certainly easier than actually *working* for a living!
Yes, I know it's off topic.. but this had to be said, at least IMHO.
Laws are laws, and have penalties.. except for the very rich or the elected, that applies. And it should. I dont speed because I dont want to pay fines or lose the right to drive. I dont kill the annoying neighbor with the lound thumping stereo in his car at 3 am because I dont want to go to jail. It's as simple as that.
And yes, if they said "go nuts, start kakking people" I probably wouldnt either.. but still.. The *LACK* of following laws is what leads to most of these situations. That guy with the loud stereo is in violation of at least three laws I can think of, but when the frazzled neighbor goes out and confronts him the fourth night in a row and gets into a fistfight, no-one will care that the incosiderate sod with the radio actually *caused* the problem.. it will be the one who used "violence" first. I'm not saying either is right, I'm just saying.. it takes two.. in a lot of cases.
Maeryk
my
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
There is no constitutional right to privacy in the US. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. There ought to be, but it just isn't there. Sorry Katz. Your fantasy USA may have privacy enumerated in the Bill of Rights, but the real one the rest of us have to live in does not.
Edith Keeler Must Die
But isn't the UK where citizen's trust each other even less than in the United States and have consequently authorized their government to place more restrictions on their individual freedoms and liberties?
So much so, that, for example, video cameras constantly surveil streets and sidewalks and the police are constantly vigilant looking at recently released criminals on the streets (was it Birmingham?). I think the U.S. has started doing this, too, in some cities, but I think the idea got started in the U.K.
And the U.K., too, iswhere citizens have no qualms with the government restricting their ownership of firearms to a much greater degree than the United States. You may argue that they have done a better job of balancing the needs of the public welfare againts potential crazy individual gun owners, but the fact remains that the direction of the judgement is further against individual liberties. I know, I know, we in the U.S. probably inherited our violent streak from the U.K. where public hangings were a spectacle several centuries ago and where rampaging U.K. soccer mobs frighten their host counties.
Generally, you won't find anything being done about privacy encroachment, yet. When the technology improves, the costs decrease and cameras and microphones proliferate, and I purchase surveillance from a retailer of either that pretty actress or that other political enemy for a very reasonable cost and such survailance covers their every public action, itinerary and most conversations with the possible exception of some events in their homes, and if I mis-use this information, say, as a stalker, THEN and ONLY THEN will the public start to realize the ramifications of what is happening.
The acts of government encroachments upon individual freedoms and privacy have a very long history that includes cases of abuse, where power has been exercised contrary to the individual's will. It is not sufficient that the mere potential for abuse exists. It is only when similar acts of abuse occur that the public will become aware of the dangers.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This reasonings assumes that potential muggers are not affected by information about the outcomes of muggings. In fact, when Bernard Goetz shot his would-be assailants, violent street crime in New York decreased substantially. If you actually managed to shoot six muggers, I don't think you'd be able to find a seventh. Concealed carry laws decrease violent crime, not because every victim is guarranteed to be armed (they aren't) but because the risk of an armed victim rises to an unacceptable level compared to the small rewards. Anyone willing to take such serious risks could rob a liquor store instead.
Leaving aside the fact that muggers rarely use guns, I disagree with your implied assertion that criminals have better gun skills. I think that legitimate gun owners are more likely to practice at the range and become thoroughly familiar with their weapons. We'd be much better off if criminals learned to use their guns correctly, because we wouldn't have so many instances of gangsters shooting bystanders by accident.
The right to privacy was "codified" in the twentieth century by US Supreme Court rulings extrapolating upon the protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Katz's construction is perfectly accurate. We may also say that abortion is constitutionally protected in that the Constitution has authorized the Supreme Court to rule on these matters. Ashcroft used just such a construction in his testimony to the Judiciary Committee today, characterizing abortion as "constitutionally protected health services."
illegitimii non ingravare
There are relatively stringent procedures in place to ensure the privacy of medical records in America. Not exhaustive nor sufficient, but certainly effective enough to warrant them being treated distinct from the other issues mentioned in this thread.
A medical transcriptionist is far more cognizant of the confidentiality required of him than the presswoman printing an IPO offering circular, speaking as one acquainted with both professions.
I think the principal loophole in the protection of medical records involves the claims procedure in an accidental injury case. The release I signed when making a claim in an automobile accident allowed the defendant's insurer to make an exhaustive search of my medical history in order to substantiate that any claims I might make were not the result of a previous condition. This information was explicitly to be used only for the purposes of such an evaluation, but I didn't get any witnessed signatures from the insurer and I have no way of monitoring their subsequent behavior!
illegitimii non ingravare
while I respect your choices regarding your child's upbringing, I feel strongly that your comments betray you a pathetic bigot.
illegitimii non ingravare
I remember a few years ago I read an article in the Manchester Guardian that described how pedophiles had replaced serial killers as the real-life demons of the world. Maybe it's simply because there are less serial killers walking about these days and that the Internet has helped spread pedophiles' misdeeds (story on a sting just the other day on CNN.com).
The funny thing was, even though the article did its best to try to cast a sympathetic light on pedophiles' status, I felt absolutely no sympathy at all. The risk of discrimination against pedophiles and their right to privacy are absolutely superceded by the right to security of the children.
Convicts do have a right to be able to start anew, but there are some things that you just don't do, no matter how much privacy is violated, and one of those things is put pedophiles around children.
It's just says WANT to see you fry. We can want anyhting we want, thats our business. Just because I want something doesn't mean im going to get it, see #1
This is not an issue to do with privacy, but rather our attitudes toward sex offenses.
If, as a society, we belive that these acts are a crime, then we should detain and punish the offenders. After that they should be released and allowed to get on with their lives unharrased.
However if we believe that these acts are phsycological disorder, then we should put people in secure facilities where they can be treated until they are no longer a threat. This would also allow for the detention of people who could be diagnosed with these conditions, protecting society before they comit any crimes.
"I have a baby and my wife stays home to raise her."
"I am just sick of all these damn people who think its ok to let someone else raise their children. Its not. You are escaping the hard part of parenting. You are not a good parent."
Hmmmm. So "someone else" raising your kids is alright IF and only if it's the little wifey? Or are you one of those "liberated", feminist males who proudly spouts that HE would stay home just as quickly - but will never be doing so in this lifetime. Put your money where you mouth is: ALTERNATE years of staying home with your wife.
Believe me, I know about this from both sides: I remember two daycares, one very good, and one very bad. My parents still had plenty of "hard parts" of parenting left to do (which they did well!) after picking me up from daycare and after I no longer needed to go. I was also a full time nanny, so I know how hard it is from that side as well. And I LOVED my nanny kids, so don't go saying they weren't taken care of properly, educated, fed well, entertained, disciplined, rewarded, praised, and hugged appropriately while in my care just because I wasn't their birth parent. I find yours (and right-wing society's in general) absolute reliance on a traditional nuclear family to be ludicrous, if not dangerous. Whatever happened to "It takes a village to raise a child."?
Focus on your own damn family, not mine.
ooky
Sending in the warranty card makes customer service so easy.
When the clip for the heart rate measurement feature of my exercise bike stopped working, all I had to do was call the 800 number. A replacement was sent snailmail and got to me in 3 days. I never had to leave home. Taking the receipt 15 miles and then likely getting the answer "we don't have a spare clip" would not have been pleasant.
Companies can and do keep track of this information. They do a better job of keeping track of it in their databases than my (ahem, well, let's be generous) "filing system" for receipts does.
My address is in the phone book. If somebody wants to mail me, it is not going to be hard to do. I'm not about to get paranoid about it.
FUD and scare tactics work with most people, because unfortunately most people are talking monkeys that refuse to use logic and reason. They are more comfortable reacting emotionally to situations and having someone else tell them what opinions they should have. All the world over, we need to start attacking problems at the sources, not blindly chasing the symptoms. And like with a good doctor, if a treatment fails to work, or causes a deadly reaction with a patient, then we need to divorce ourselves from our bigotry and arrogance and act in an ethical manner to change the 'treatment'.
Its not really that hard to do. There is a saying here, however "Vigilance is the price of liberty" And then there is "Those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve and lose both"
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
The US Constitution does not have a codified guarantee to privacy. The "Right to Privacy" is a derived right, assumed from provisions in the Bill of Rights by Justice Brandeis. This makes it a lot less of a "right" than, say, the right to bear arms.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Check your facts and read the Constitution again. There is no constitutional guaranteed right of privacy. It has been argued that there is an implicit right of privacy, and federal judges have tried to manufacture a right of privacy, but the US constitution does not have a right to privacy anywhere in it. Some states have a right to privacy in their constitution (Alaska for example) but federally there is no right to privacy.
I've started reading Jon Katz's rants up until the point when he makes his first factual error. Nice to see that I didn't even get through the first sentence this time.
What's needed in a Free Market Economy is a level playing field. Don't let Corporations/Government gather/sell ANY personal data.
Does that make it any different than the Prime Minister?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Please.
One negative personal experience should not be the basis for such a sweeping generalization. Daycare is a service, like any other; there are good providers and poor ones. Just because I was ripped off by a mechanic once does not logically justify stating that garages are anti-family, and that countries with good garages are the ones with people with no sense of human worth.
For what it is worth, I placed my son in a great daycare environment with a strong community of parents. Somehow I was able to get enough information by looking over certifications and checking references without having to plumb some database to see if there are any sexual offenders on staff. My goodness! Some effort and judgment instead of chunked out reports. It's a crazy idea but it just might work.
Actually it was the privacy commisioner that broke the story regarding the HRDC database - he basically told the government to shut it down, which the government did (more or less). For details go here:
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/english/02_04_08_e.htm
So the Commissioner has been useful. Read the report, you might find it interesting.
-PCB
'Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.' B. Pascal
Granted, there's nothing will repay what's been done to the victim. So what do you do - execute the offender? There's also ppl who never recover from having their purse snatched or having their house broken into, but there's not much you can do about it short of counselling for the victim.
As for the eroding privacy laws, we've got a case of that over in the UK. A newspaper released the names of some alleged sex offenders who'd served their sentences. A couple of days later, an innocent man had to go into hiding (he'd been threatened, attacked and had ppl smashing up his house and his car) bcos he happened to have the same name as one of these guys. You can't tell me this is right. Vigilante violence is NEVER, EVER a solution, unless you happen to believe that a person's human rights don't mean shit and you're prepared to stomp all over ethics, morals and laws. If your moral code says that it's OK to drag someone out of their house and beat them up bcos you THINK they MAY be a sex offender - well, you're a pretty sick individual yourself. And eroding ex-offenders' privacy is entirely vigilante-ism - it's just a threat to throw them to the wolves, and that makes you as guilty for supporting it as the thugs who actually do the beating-up.
Grab.
Would you care to quantify the "spiritually malnourished" line? Or "no innate sense of human worth"? This doesn't help your argument - ppl tend to be turned off when they see daft statements like that.
I happen to agree with you that the parents (or adoptive parents or whatever) are the best ppl to look after their kids; this is a full-time job, at least until the kids go to school, so one member of the family needs to stay at home. Whether it's the mum or the dad, doesn't matter.
The case for childcare comes with single-parent families. I don't have too much sympathy for women (especially young girls with low/no income) getting pregnant after one-night stands and deciding to keep it - children do cost money, and if you can't afford to look after a child properly (ie. at least provide basic food, clothing and a home of some description) then you shouldn't be having one. But ppl whose partner dies or leaves them - they need to work to provide for the child, and then you do need some form of daycare.
Grab.
If only we could moderate this story down for being wrong.
The Gov't should not stop companies from being able to distribute my info any more than they should be able to stop me from distributing information about a company.
Jon, you want to be cuddled too much. You are as wrong as the Dem's for giving money to poor people or the Rep's for not equally taxing companies.
Uh, no. Because there is no codified guarantee of privacy in the constitution, a bunch of Supreme Court justices "found" one in the "penumbræ and eminations" of the various liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
I suppose they could have found worse things there (in fact, they frequently do), but there really isn't any such thing.
---
Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
I've read the constitution, and I did not see privacy mentioned. There are certainly limits to government actions with respect to individuals, such as prohibitions against arbitrary search and seizure, but this does not amount to a grant of specific privacy rights. Other nations, such as Italy, do have specific guarantees regarding privacy of communication written into their constitution, but the US does not.
WHoops, in "olden dayes" people in your village who knew you and talked *might* have to care about your response to what they said about you. They knew you and you knew them. They would even forget some things they knew about you over time. But today, there's no symmetry to that relationship at all. They know all about you from the extensive shared archived indexed and crossreferenced databases of your retail purchases, services are billed for, your demographic profile, your zipcode, your medical history, and all the same data that pertains to people related to you. And you don't have any idea who "they" are. They will be companies like TRW, and WHOEVER pays for the data. Genetic cross referencing of data obtained by insurers on behalf of your employers is how far off would you guess? 5 years? 10 years ? And no bit of data and no conclusion based on a derived profile no matter how erroneous will ever be forgotten.
Gee, on second thought maybe it isn't one fucking bit like the olden days! Hmmm?
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
His first paragraph must strike a balance between hooking the reader (by standing alone) and appearing like a part of a cohesive whole.
Now pardon me as I get moderated down...
When you put in your salary range put in the lowest possible range. You'll look less appealing to marketers if you have no money to give them. =) Also see if you can do the same thing with other questions on the form.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Another thing one has to consider:
Do you really want to work for a company that bases their hiring decisions on these methods?
If, during an interview, someone asked me to submit to an unwarranted background check (or any drug test) I'd simply thank them for their time and leave.
It's an employee's market, you can afford to shop around, and don't let anyone tell you differently.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
How is it that in one paragraph you state that corporations need the information so they can be more efficient or we are all harmed, yet in the next paragraph you make an exception to keep those same companies from avoiding "high-risk" people. Having those "high-risk" people will make the company less efficient. Which is it to be?
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
that most people couldn't care less about the amazingly dull details of your personal life.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
Some customers where furious that all of their purchasing habits were going to tracked in a database, and refused to sign up for a card. Since they would be paying MUCH more for the privelege of privacy, they said they would be forced to shop elsewhere.
I tried to convince them to do what everyone else including myself-an employee, was doing: fill the application form with bullshit. (they give you the card before they check the form) However they objected to this as well, for philosophical reasons.
Maybe thats the problem: most people are pragmatic enough not to worry about the erosion of privacy/anonimity, and they are content just to spoof the system whenever they can.
But it must be the individual's choice to trade this privacy for the efficiency of such corporations. Neither the company, nor you, have any business making the unilateral choice for all individuals.
Many people are happy to trade off their personal information. That doesn't mean that everybody should be happy to do so, nor that everybody should be obliged to do so. We do not live in a society of clones, all alike where one approach fits all. The way we deal with this is choice - by giving the individual a clear and effective up front choice in these matters, we cater for all individuals, not just the ones who don't care.
Actually, Canada's privacy commissioner does an extremely valuable job. The role involves being an advocate for the consumer, and developing fundamental privacy positions for the consumer. The commissioner advocates consumer privacy rights to corporations, trade groups, and to the government, and is frequently quoted internationally. The commissioner doesn't need to be elected, so the bribery concerns that surround elected officials aren't present, and as such the commissioner can be more effectively trusted not to be under undue influence from those with deep pockets who would seek to erode privacy.
Such a role is extremely valuable in modern democracies, where the choice at election time is frequently between two candidates who are in the pockets of the same corporations.
Sorry, copyright only applies to expression, not to raw data, concepts or ideas. The copyright notice is meaningless unless you write a copyrightable item, and change your name to the contents of that item - say, a poem, a graphic symbol (perhaps that's why that one's been used), or a novel.
... then why should the governments bother trying?
I've always liked John Proctor's tirade in The Crucible:
"He preach nothin' but golden candlesticks until he had them. I labor the earth from dawn of day to blink of night, and I tell you true, when I look to heaven and see my money glaring at his elbows--it hurt my prayer, sir, it hurt my prayer. I think, sometimes, the man dreams cathedrals, not clapboard meetin' houses."
They did that, not me.
They did that, not me.
They do that, not me.
Don't judge me by others' actions, and don't judge my beliefs by others' actions.
And yes, I screw up. You screw up. Everyone screws up. Rules shouldn't be used as a stick to beat people with ("look, I never break these rules and yooouuuu dooooo..."). Sadly, they often are, but that doesn't change the validity of the rules themselves. And the fact that Christians break the rules too shouldn't be used against Christianity, especially since one of the central beliefs of Christianity is that people's inability to follow the law shows their need for God and the way out he offered to humanity.
There ya go. Gospel in a nutshell. Mod me up, (Score:5, Informative/Insightful).
Whoops, I coveted karma. You see?!
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
in a word, yes: smash the ability that organisations have to use your personal data against you. tall order? well, it's a TALL glass. (it appears i was denied a mortgage on a modest house because i am diabetic)
Clearly all the shouting and all the guns in the World haven't made the USA any more free. Freedom in any society comes from less force and more talk. If you don't have the patience for that maybe you should just stick to hunting gazelle on the savannah with sticks.
One day it might sink into the American psyche that a man with guns is not a man with freedom, he is just a man with guns.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
Ok, it may not be constitutionally guaranteed, but it is *implied*. This matter of privacy also falls under Tort law which states that and invasion of privacy includes:
* The use of a person's name, picture, or other likeness for commercial purposses without permission.
* Intrusion on an individual's affairs and seclusion.
* Publication of information that places a person in a false light.
* Public disclosure of private facts about an individual that an ordinary person would find objectionable.
Firstly, the loss of privacy is never trivial not the least because it's almost impossible to regain it.
Your point about information being the lifeblood of the corporations who provide services is a good one, but I wouldn't make such blanket statements about it. There are services I need and services I don't. I don't mind giving my profile to corporations I know the services of which I'll need, but if this profiling information is being bought, sold and collected without letting me to know about it (Doubleclick for instance) that's going too far.
True.
I tried to keep the point simple. But it still stands in the corrected form that you state it. You are reimbursed for actual damage.
However, it is important to remember that substantial punitive damages are for special circumstances (e.g. I had some malicious intent in not paying the $5, not that I felt like buying a couple packs of baseball cards instead).
And this follows nicely into my point that the justice system exists to punish offenders equivalent to the crime they commit. It is not to disproportionately levy sentence on those that commit crimes.(unfortunately this is sometimes done, thinking that the system is a detterent for future criminals, but there is no proof that this works).
The courts were not setup with the thought that we would become a society of victims. That, in a sense causes the system to collapse upon itself, just because someone feels especially victimized doesn't mean they should get a (stronger or even any) legal remedy.
If you take the view that the victim has to live with it for life, than your real belief is that this crime is deserving of a life sentence.
That is the basis of the US justice system. That a debt must be repaid in full. If I violate a contract that would have made me give you $5, then I am liable for $5. Not $50, because you have to live with the fact that I broke my word for the rest of your life.
The ideas of jail as a tool for reform was abandoned years ago in the US. It is supposed to be a deterrent, but I think there have been studies showing that it no longer deters either. The only thing it is used for that it actually accomplishes is punishement. Which is unfortunate, but I suspect that deterring and reforming prisons would cost more than society might be willing to bear.
Like have air conditioned doghouse or big houses, or need large, expensive churches.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
See #10
6. Thou shalt not murder.
See Crusades, Israel, etc.
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
"Church of latter day saints", praying to virgin mary, etc.
I'm an agnostic. I follow the commandments more than many so-called Christians do.
I'm willing to change my mind (I said agnostic, not atheist). However, saying "I'm going to hell" ain't gonna cut it, nor is any reiteration of the watchmaker hypothesis or other self-referential proof.
My belief system is a combination of Marx' (Groucho, not Karl) and Pascal's:
God doesn't exist, and no belief system matters
God does exist, views my actions independent of belief and judges those. In other words, a fair God.
God does exist, gives a certain belief system precedence and judges based on that. As such, He is completely arbitrary and I don't want a damn thing to do with Him. He can go to hell as far as I'm concerned (pun intended)
The main conclusion of the above possibilities is that there is no point to believing / worshiping God, provided you are a reasonable human being.
The exact opposite.
I expect to be judged on what I am/do, not what I believe.
If you reserve the right to judge me, than I reserve the right to judge you. I don't care who or what you are. This applies to the person down the street, the President, God. I don't care.
Apparently, you are afraid to be judged. I didn't post anonymously. You did. Why?
How am I slanderous? Please explain. How am I a hypocrite? I ask for fairness, and give the same in return. If someone doesn't want a give and take, they can fuck off. Self-Centered? How is treating you the same way you treat me self-centered? Vain & Pompous? Just because I state my views in an assertive manner? Opinionated is the best you can get out of that.
Come on. We saved you??? You saved your foreign economic interests.
Yes, the U.S. did come into WWII and turn the tide (or was it just in time to see the tide turning?), but what have you done for us lately? Protected your access to cheap oil, protected your shipping route through Central America, etc.
Hey, we benefit too, so thanks, but don't make yourselves out to be altruists.
Also, I believe it was the US military forces that performed these services to mankind, not the armed citizenry. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You can never put too much water in a nuclear reactor.
> Why on earth do I want the freedom to live in > fear of loonies with firearms? I could do with > a lot less of your "liberties". It is because you don't have the freedom to bear arms as we do that you don't understand this U.S. Constitutional right. Freedom, like technology, is a double-edged sword. Yes, we have the right to bear arms, and yes that does mean that potential "loonies" can bear arms as well. The advantage to this right to bear arms is that our government can't simply persecute groups of people without expecting resistance. What this is designed to do is act as a balance of power between citizens and the state. (whether or not it actually works in practice is an argument I'd rather not get into.) If those in power abuse their power and begin persecuting people, the people have the right to defend themselves, with deadly force if neccessary. Thankfully our government has for the most part kept it's end of the bargain. (with some glaring exceptions: persecution of blacks during civil rights movement, the waco texas incident, etc.) The UK has never been about protecting personal liberties. After all, that's the reason that the U.S. is an independant nation and not a British colony. I will admit that the UK has gotten a lot better in recent years, but your country still has a long way to go. (any country that can jail you for not giving up your e-mail encryption keys is not a place I'd want to live.)
I'm personally challenging you to go one entire month without an article like this. I believe that if you stop constantly writing about it, you may be inspired to do something about it. You know more about this topic than probably anyone on the planet but all you do is write about it. The question is: will you take the challenge and try to come up with a solution?
Frylock: That's not a toy!
Master Shake: You say that about everything you own. You should own toys. They're fun.
I have to note that your complaint:
The technology is there, whether we want to believe it or not... Information is the most powerful weapon.
Its a wonder if we could keep anything private no matter what precautions we take...
Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind...
--
You must have had bad experience(s) with Americans to have that attitude. Most Americans that I know (not a large percentage, though ;]) are fairly nice and will help you if they can. Even some of the not-so-well-to-do will feed, clothe (spelling?), and shelter you, for a little while, anyway.
"To many, a tux is something you wear for formal events, to those of substance, Tux is a symbol of freedom." --sandalle
This reminds me about a guy that each time he had to give his name to some company he would use their name as his initials. for instance if he would get something from AT&T he would register with them as "A.T.T. Smith" or some thing like that.
;)
That way he could keep track of who was selling his details.
Maybe a good tip for the paranoid out there
See ya, Thomas
I find it interesting (and a little inconsistent) that Katz complains about both (a) people having access to 'personal data' (like criminal behaviour), and (b) computers making bank loan decisions.
Wouldn't the two cancel each other out? The programs banks use to calculate loan risk are just huge neural networks (essentially), that impersonally feature-match between the applicant and the huge database of people who have or have not defaulted on their loans. Then the program determines whether the applicant is similar in important ways to bad credit risks, and rejects (or approves) accordingly. Very impersonal, i agree, but also balances the interests the Jon Katz brings up.
The computer doesn't care about your arrest for grafitti when you were twelve. Unless that makes you a bad risk (which i doubt). A human looking at that might be irrationally biases against that and deny a loan based on their coloured perceptions.
So, only a machine "sees" your personal data. It doesn't have irrational biases or prejudices. These programs are frighteningly accurate.
So, Jon, where's the problem? Getting a loan is not a natural right. I agree that privacy is a right, but sometimes you have to give out information to get something you want, like a loan. I think machine-driven decision-making balances these interests well.
/bluesninja
Heck, never mind that - what about the Shouldice clinic that Joke Clark went to when he needed minor surgery? That was a private clinic. Hey, what about the Liberals DEMANDING that New Brunswick pay private abortion clinics 100% of all fees requested for abortions? I guess punishing people for two-tier health care applies to Alberta, and even then, only cause they didn't vote Liberal.
As to getting rid of Jean. It won't happen. Hence me moving to the USA
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
perhapse we are headed toward a new era, from which our descendents will look back upon previous times and think of how backwards our ideas of privacy were. the pursuit of truth is hindered by human interference (lies, cover ups, and propaganda). maybe if the playing field were equal and all was bared for the population to observe, our society would be bettered morally and historically. if everything is documented, it can be possibly recreated in computer simulation later on, leading to accurate virtual worlds for the students of the future to explore and interact with. of course, this would never work because the people in control will want their lives to remain private, so it will end up being a one way mirror for them to keep track of the flock while their own caste is free from public scrutiny.
Hmmm - I'd still like a bit of reason in the system, rather than knee-jerk "if you were convicted, you don't get the job". For instance, if a 17-year-old has sex with a 16-year-old (or whatever the age of consent is), is that a sex crime? Should that stop the person from EVER having a job that involves children? Should that person have to go door to door, forever, saying that they are a sex criminal?
Of course, if I'm wrong about statatory rape, then my point is moot. Still, I've seen little good come out of absolute laws (three strikes, zero-tolerance school laws, etc), that I'm wary of opening that can of worms.
That being said, I think issues like universal health care, affordable housing, well-paid educators and child-care workers, and many other issues are more important than whether Amazon knows my book preferences, or my bank tells other I now onw a house.
Thanks for doing the research. I'm glad that there is some flexibility, at least in Florida's law. I would be a bit worried if some 23 year old was going out with my 16 year old sister, but that's another matter entirely...
at what point, do you think, Coke or Microsoft would be satisfied with their customer base, and decide, "oh we don't really need more customers, so let's just stop all the tricky marketing and underhanded stuff we pull." yeah right. i think they would acheive 100% market share, then beginning cloning new consumers before they decided they had ENOUGH CUSTOMERS. hah.
i could live a little longer in this prison
I win again.. hmm makes me think of abba :)
Anyways.. back to flamebait boy.
Here are my responses to your highly intelligent posts.
1) You can't spell.
>> "then edit it down to a reasonable side. "
2) You hide behind being an anonymous coward and then abuse people, and you call people "powerless and impotent" and "p0s3r" , methinks it is you who is these things.
3) If you have an issue with Katz's articles, then use the back button on your browser. Thats what its there for.
4) You are a twit. Shut up.
Amendment 9 has been used in privacy regarding the government (not businesses) interfering with peoples lives. It is the only amendment that makes very little sense now, but will mean more and more as the government gets more repressive.
Do you think your insurance company might find it interesting to add to their profile about you that you like to visit microbrewwry web sites? (Hmmm... liver problems in the future in X% of cases.) Or add to their statistical models that as an avid computer game player, you are X% more likely to have heart and obesity problems?
As advertisements get more focused, won't your grocery store want to know what you're allergic to, or if you're lactose intolerant? Hope you're not too embarressed about these things (as some people are!) because now your grocery clerk knows about it (when you handed them your Personalized Coupon for 15% off Soybean Milk.), and who know who that bored gossiping jerk might tell?
Define Paranoid: This guy.
New federal medical privacy regulations, touted by the Clinton administration as a landmark of patient protection, will for the first time explicitly permit doctors, hospitals, other health services and some of their business associates to use personal health records for marketing and fundraising.
A pregnant woman, for instance, could receive pitches about vitamins or infant health-care products. A patient who has been treated for sexually transmitted diseases could receive telemarketing calls offering condoms or new medicines.
The exemptions also give foundations affiliated with hospitals continued access to patient names, ages, addresses and telephone numbers for fundraising initiatives. Such foundations raise billions of dollars annually by soliciting patients and their families at medical facilities and at their homes.
Your point is well taken. Frankly, I think the punishments for child sex offenders are too light, so take my arguments with that in mind.
At the least, I'd like to know if my kid's teacher was a previous sex offender so that I could watch even more closely and decide for myself if I think the teacher was "ok." If the candidate had served their time and was judged ready to be back in society, then they should NOT be discriminated against when getting the job. I'd just like to be aware.
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
it is dangerous reasoning, but the thing is, when you look at it as 'we don't want to punish them for life,' you're missing one point. the sex offender may have paid their debt to society but the person offended *against* has to live with it forever. they are punished for life, if they can't find a way to let it go. there's no guaranteed way they can "pay their debt" and then leave it behind.
i do believe that privacy is an important issue that is being eroded. i also believe that eroding privacy laws specifically for sex offenders is a damn better deterrent than the prison terms they get. it's a conflict, and i can't help but fall on the erosion side because the current process for reforming child molesters has a less than 15% success rate. if it were higher, i'd say let em go. but it isn't.
I think it might have potential - after all, you can copyright a database and all kinds of other stupid shtuff, so why not copyright your entries on somebody's form? I might just have to patent that idea...
And not just this crime, but any crime. If someone no longer feels safe after they've been robbed, should the robber therefore be put away for life?
While I would probably agree if I had kids of my own, I do think this kind of reasoning is very, very dangerous. You are basically punishing such a person for life, completely abandoning the whole "pay your debt to society, start over" thing.
Where the f$ck do you live? I've regularly walked down streets, in the middle of 'large' cities (4 million plus), where I'm the only person. Besides which, you're kinda supporting my argument here - I'm saying that it's unrealistic to expect everyone to defend themselves - in whatever arena (mugging/computer/personal data), and your counter requires 3 helpful bystanders.
Yes, but it's a question of balancing risks.
Absolutely correct. The risk is lower if only police are legally allowed to carry guns.
Right now robbing people carries a certain risk level. If those people started carrying guns, the risk level goes up. Obviously not everyone is going to have a gun, or use it, or be a good shot. But what are you, the mugger, going to do if suddenly there's a fairly good chance that your victim, or a bystander, will have the means and motive to fight back? Eventually you're going to give up and switch to stealing TVs from warehouses, and everyone will be happier.
Actually, the answer is not that the mugger will give up. The answer comes in two parts. First, muggers in the US use guns. A lot. And a lot more than anywhere else. Why? Because they're easy to obtain, and a lot more effective than a knife. The second result is even more disturbing. In many US cities where the average victim is likely to be carrying a gun, the muggers have adopted a simple philosophy. It's even easier to take a wallet/purse from a dead body, and there are no witnesses left over.
The idea of everyone carrying is absurd, and, reducto ad absurdium, the muggers response to even a moderate percentage of the population carrying is even more absurd. The rest of the world looks with horror on the US, and its criminal statistics. Unfortunately, it's ingrained into the American psyche, and has unfortunate carry-overs into other areas. Like Personal Data - hey, everyone has the right do do whatever the hell they want, until they hurt someone. So there's nothing _really_ there to stop someone from building a nuke in their New York apartment. Hey! He hasn't hurt anyone yet! Of course, prosecuting _after_ the fact is kinda pointless. Just as pointless as prosecuting muggers who've shot and killed their victims, in that the whole damn scenario could have been resolved by applying a little intelligence beforehand, and recognizing what is a realistic 'limitation' on an individuals freedom.
Well, I'm happy to see you got modded down, but I thought I'd address the fallacy in your argument anyway.
I'm actually pretty good with a gun. But my 90 yr old grandmother can't even lift one. Your solution - everyone packing a gun - fails to take into account the large number of people who can't use one. Going a step further, let's say I can shoot a mugger first (a big and highly unlikely assumption) 90% of the time. By the seventh mugging, my overall survival rate has dropped to less than 50%. Heck, if you assume the average mugger shoots right at the 50th percentile (which is far too low), that means 50% of the time the victim gets shot while trying to resist
OK, let's flip back to the privacy issue. I run a machine with 3 OS (Win95/Be/Linux), a DSL line, and no, you can't have my IP. ;) I don't expect everyone out there to approach the level of security I have. Now, as someone concerned with everyone else's security, is it more effective to try and bring everyone's machine up to my level, or try something at a higher level? The problem with the first solution is that the majority of computer and Mac users are clueless about security.
Now for personal information. I worked for the company that originated the whole credit rating formula thingie. I _know_ just how much info they have on the average individual, and from how many sources they gather that info. I've taken some steps which minimize the problem. Can't remember when I received my last piece of spam, but it has to be over four years back . Similar to the gun/mugging and computer/security issue, do you realistically expect the average individual to understand and implement the techniques required to protect themselves?
It is far easier to pass laws with real teeth to keep corporations in line.
Take, for example, the MIB (Medical Information Bureau). Only those individuals with a genuine interest in your health - as in, requiring your signiture to that effect - can view it. They can't even use the information from the MIB by itself - they must independently verify the data. Fines for violating these two basic laws run into the millions ... AFAIK, the last company to violate the first (by forging a signature) went belly up from the fine. Anyone can access their own record on the MIB, and correct it - and thousands of people do. Compare that to the current fiasco with the credit companies. They aren't regulated. Getting your credit record corrected is virtually beyond the power of any individual.
Which illustrates another point of the whole debacle. Do you care if the person had a speeding ticket? You can find that out. How about membership in some questionable organizations (Socialist party? Wiccan? /.?) You can find that out too.
I find the US to be utterly pathetic with regards to discrimination. Here, they take the view if it's NOT protected by law, then it's fair game. If you're a guy, and wear a skirt, that's grounds for dismissal. If you happen to be (quietly) Jewish, working for a rabidly pro-Christian boss, that's supposedly protected. (Both the above two are actual cases, where the employee in question was recognized as #1 in the company, until that 'questionable' piece of info came out.)
So, here's a question for ya: Do you agree with the idea that after jail time is over, the person has repaid their debt to society? Or does the fact that convicted pedophiles have, for all intents and purposes, a 100% recidivism rate, mean you want to be able to check a potential day-care provider's name against the conviction list?
Insurance companies forget traffic offenses after a suitable period. But I don't think I would want a persons conviction for pedophilia wiped after seven (or ten) years. Regrettably, it's really hard to make any kind of guideline to distinguish between what should be kept around and what shouldn't. Especially when opinions differ radically (e.g. pedophilia)
Just out of curiosity -not because I'm laughing at you or anything- but just out of curiosity, could you or anyone else here point me to a record of cases where individual possession and use of a firearm (any calibre, mag size your choice) ever successfully prevented the execution of a warrant by US law enforcement upon a named individual and premises at the specified street address in the warrant, without death or dangerous injury to the objecting individual and/or mortal danger to innocents in his company or household.
The case for private gun ownership has nothing to do with a single individual preventing government misbehavior. However, a nation of armed citizens can indeed prevent tyranny. And to the folks who claim that rifles and handguns are no match against a professional army and its weapons: you're dead wrong. What good are bombs and tanks in urban guerilla warfare? Would the government simply destroy entire cities, wipe out its population, to stop an insurrection? I doubt it.
and would certainly put single mothers of any description out of the running (78 cents on the dollar, remember)...
Just what relevence does that statistic have? Contrary to popular belief, women do not earn 78% of what a man makes on the same job. Women often work in lower paying fields than men (compare the percentage of men in tech jobs versus the percentage of women in lower-paying jobs like teaching) and do not spend as long in the work force. That is what your statistic reflects. It does not say that a woman who wishes to make a lot of money cannot do so.
America claims to be the "Land of the Free", but a greater percentage of its citizens are in prison than in any other democracy.
To quote Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show':
"We're number one! We're number one!"
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
completely abandoning the whole "pay your debt to society, start over" thing.
I'm of the opinion that child molesters have paid their 'debt to society' when they are stone, fcsking dead.
But that's just me...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Unfortunately sex offenders have the highest rate of recidivism of felony offenders.
I agree that people should not be punished for life, but I think the recidivism rate merits a reevaluation of this concept.
IANAL, but I do work for law enforcement, and let me tell ya: I've seen the sorts of images that these sickies trade in when my detective friends are doing forensic examinations. I have little problem with the keys being thrown away on this type of criminal.
--
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
What is annoying? Junk mail, Spam, credit checks, all those things that we hate. But they aren't going away. Your information will be sold, often by the same government that just gave you a tax cut and is looking to make up the shortfall. It's the price we have to pay for living in an information-based society. There are many worse problems in the world than all the crap that appears in my mailboxes.
What is unfair? Getting your identity stolen, having inaccurate information on your credit report, having your medical information given to people who have no business knowing. These are all things that suck, but 99% of them can be prevented. Instead of whining about how much they suck, read your credit reports every few years! Whenever you get rejected for something, ask why! When you find out why, if it's incorrect, pursue the matter!
If you think you're getting screwed and no one's talking to you, remember that you should have a right to know information about yourself. You might have to start kicking ass and taking names (of managers and supervisors), but isn't that what you do with Tech Support people anyway?
ARTICLE IV: Load of crap, especially, the part about hospitable Americans. Oh yeah, the poor are just fine working minimum wage. They don't need anything more because the hospititable Americans pay their rent and buy them food for them when life takes a bad turn, not put out on the street and forgotten.
ARTICLE V: Yeah, one's job should determine whose appendicitis is removed. I actually had a horrible doctor tell me I was faking appendicitis at 10 years old. I had to endure a ruptured appendix for 4 days before surgery took place. But that's good, because my mommy wasn't a lawyer.
ARTICLE VI: You will go to jail 2/3 of the time, unless you can afford Johnnie Cochrain or are a cop. A jury established that Dan White DID shoot Harvey Milk, mayor of San Fransisco, but that it wasn't his fault, it was the Twinkies, so he got off scot-free.
ARTICLE VII: Unless you are a cop, corporation, or celebrity, politition, or a son/daughter of one of the above.
ARTICLE VIII: Very true. Listen to "Die for Oil, sucker (Jello Biafra, I Blow Minds for a Living) for more.
Hmmm. What if you filed for a patent for the process of recording or transmitting data about yourself? You could then sue any company transmitting data about yourself for patent infringement?
Maybe you could make all your personal information a Trade Secret, and mark "This information is confidential" on all forms. Then if they tell it to anyone else you can sue them for corporate espionage.
Lastly you could try and Trade Mark yourself, but that would just stop them from using your name on stuff...
Just some musings on the alternatives...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
What an awesomely sweeping assumption you put forward! Your statement that "...the issue of online privacy is only really of interest to people who spent too much time online, and too little time in the real world" is insulting. Have you ever been turned down for a mortgage because of financial trouble you had fifteen years previous? Ever had an insurance company deny you life insurance, deeming you a "bad risk" based on the fact that you've gotten three speeding tickets? Opened your mailbox or your email recently and found that you can't find your real messages for all of the junk from targeted marketers?
Your comment about confidentiality in medical records shows you've put some thought into the issue. Your statements following that show that you should have put in a lot more.
Next time, consider asking why others consider a subject important, instead of assuming that because it's unimportant to you it's unimportant for all.
Virg
All well and good, but this approach has some down sides to it. The first and most obvious is that it's not going to reduce the amount of invasion into your spending habits, it'll just change the results. Tell them you make more than you do, and you'll get targeted for vacation homes and new cars. Tell them you make less, and you'll get targeted for secured credit cards and get-out-of-debt schemes. You actually run the risk of getting on more target databases since you'll fit a larger range of criteria.
The second down side is the one that should worry you, though. Suppose you apply for a large loan; perhaps you need a car loan or a mortgage. When the credit check is run, you run the very real possibility that the data found will be contradictory. This is a huge red flag for lenders, and most will reject you out of hand if they find it. After all, it's often the first hint of a fraud in progress, and if you're willing to lie to anyone, who's to say you aren't lying to them?
Next time your fiancee feels she needs to send in a warranty card, remind her of two things. First of all, you don't need to send the card until you actually need the warranty (if you wear it out or replace it without ever needing it fixed, no card needs get mailed) and you can leave marketing stuff like income blank on the card and still get your warranty coverage, no matter what the card says.
Virg
And man will live for ever more because of ADJUSTMENTS.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
I guess you don't consider things like single parent families, or parents who don't get paid enough to provide a good living for their children. Or perhaps because not every man and woman out there is able to handle being a stay at home parent. You try it. Hell of a lot harder than it looks.
I can't stand conservatives who only think in terms of what they think is best for every one else. We are not all the same.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
You are making artificial distinctions where none are warrented. There is really only one privacy problem: There exists data about me. Who is allowed to know it and what can they do with it?
Neither of those is the proper question. The thing to ask, is: how did someone get the information about you? Unless I get that data in a way that violates your rights (fx. I'm your health insurance company and I break into your house to rummage through your refrigerator looking for fatty foods), or unless I have some agreement with you regarding the data, then it's knowledge in my brain and you cannot rightfully demand that I deliberately act in ignorance of it.
That's the underlying false premise that Katz's essay and all other arguments of its ilk are based on. He repeatedly says things like "In the U.S., we may never be able to control our own data again." But data that I have about you isn't your data, it's my data because it exists in my mind. Unless I've agreed otherwise for some reason, I have the right to make my decisions based on all the knowledge I possess. You do not have the right to force me to effectively undergo a partial lobotomy to excise data from my brain just because that data is about you.
That holds true as well for exchanging of that data. If I see you at the bookstore buying yourself a copy of "Visual BASIC for Dummies", I'm free to post that fact on Slashdot to paint you as a Gates-adoring Microsoft toadie. I'd be a jerk, sure, but I don't think you could argue that you had some right to prevent me from reporting what I know or what my knowledge leads me to conclude. I would still have that right if I was the owner of the bookstore. And I would still have that right if it was an online bookstore and the whole deal took place electronically.
Or to put the matter differently: you buy a book from Barnes&Noble. You can tell anyone you want to that Barnes&Noble sold you the book. Why shouldn't Barnes&Noble be able to tell anyone they want to that you bought it?
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
When it comes to privacy, we are our own biggest enemy. When someone asks for personal information that you don't think they should be getting, just tell them that you are not willing to give out that information. When I get asked for a phone number, and I don't want to be thrown on a mailing list, I just tell them (800) 555-1212 (I get some really interesting looks when I use this one) or an old pager/cell phone number. I don't enter contests, because that is where most mass mailing lists get their information from. A 1/5,000,000 chance of winning Super Bowl tickets, isn't worth telling the whole world my e-mail address, telephone number, and home address.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
[beastie boys riff as you read this]
The United States was founded by people who wouldn't take NO for an answer. Bollocks to those who say that we Americans are too complacent, that we must give in to the corporate masters of our private data!
We will take it back by brute force, by hacker attacks, by whatever means we can. And Jon Katz shall be the first at the point of our bayonetts - for he encourages us to wait for our supposed Tech UberGeek Saviours, who will remain as gutless as the day is long. It won't be the technological elites that will save our privacy, it will be the everyday man, woman, and child in the streets; it won't be the scriptkiddies of last century, it will be the Net Appliance using street kids who don't give a darn what the tool is called that they use to pry back their privacy from the grasping hands of corporate and government control.
And all praise the corporate greedmeisters who foisted Bush upon us, because we would not rebel against Gore, as he slipped away our holds on our personal data, but we shall rebel against the 19th Century ideas and ideals of the old-fogey Bush crowd.
Wait not for the clarion call, wait not for the right time, there never shall be a right time, and the call to arms is now!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
While I would probably agree if I had kids of my own, I do think this kind of reasoning is very, very dangerous. You are basically punishing such a person for life, completely abandoning the whole "pay your debt to society, start over" thing.
Its not abandoning the "pay your debt to society, start over". Its just saying that you have a problem being around children, so you must get a job where you are not in contact with children every day. They dont do checks for sex offenders if you want to work construction. Frankly, if I knew someone who had a history of computer crime, I would not want them fixing my computer. I would let them build my house, or serve me food, or teach my children mathematics.
It would be more accurate to say that other countries pay better lip service to privacy than the United States, as evidenced by the current flurry of stories about DNA banking in Germany, Canada, and the UK.
It is an oversimplification to single out any one country as less private than another, since practically every government in the world has some form of overt or covert intrusiveness in it's policies and practices.
While I'm not generally inclined toward One World schemes in any sphere, any effective, however belated, attempt to roll back tech-enabled breeches of privacy and codify (and more importantly enforce)privacy standards must perforce involve international cooperation.
It is not helpful to play the "I'm more private that you!" game.
All your belongings are base to us.
You left one other important result/purpose: criminals in prison, particularly career predators, are no longer at liberty to threaten you or I. A career robber in jail cannot rob me again. Public safety is one of the few good reasons for paying taxes.
All your belongings are base to us.
Simple. In a world where even those households where both parties involved are employed often must work collectively 70+ hours a week (under non-Mike Harris labour laws, that's 1.75 full-time jobs; thanks to Mike Harris, here, it's just 1.2) just to make ends meet, it's really hard to have one or other party stay home to raise the children.
While I'm all for parental responsibility, I'm also all for eligibility for parenthood being determined in some other way than "whether or not they can afford it"--which might leave childbearing to be the sole province of predominantly white, upper-middle-class and higher types, and would certainly put single mothers of any description out of the running (78 cents on the dollar, remember)...
Interrobang
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
This entire thread seems good evidence that the whole idea of Rights is backwards. What we should have instead is a bill of Responsiblities. A few examples might be:
- You have the responsibility to foster and encourage others to speak freely in all public forums and forms of expression. You have the responsibility to remove any barriers to free speech that you inadvertantly may have helped to create.
- You have the responsibility of respecting, fostering, and promoting the privacy of others. You are responsible for avoiding acts that would infringe on the privacy of others.
- You are responsible for reporting and filing legal charges against any citizen or legal entity that you become aware has failed in these responsiblities.
We are responsible for protecting each others' so called "rights". If we could all reverse our thinking along those lines so that instead of whining about our rights being infringed we were worrying about not infringing someone else's, not only would we likely all end up with more realized freedoms, but it would probably be easier to prosecute corporations for failing in their responsiblities, rather than try to gather enough consumers together to file class action lawsuits and prove their rights have been infringed.
The problem lies in how we've always thought about rights. We're utterly backwards, though when it comes to our children somehow most of us get it right. You don't teach your children that they have a right to play kickball on the playground, or that they have a right to share other kids toys, you teach them that they are responsible for including other children, sharing, and making friends with others, despite their differences.
And then off we adults go, running around shouting for free health care like a bunch of brats. Its OUR responsibility to develop a health care system that works for everyone. And it's everyone's responsibility to earn the privilege of being part of that system. Same goes for every "right". Why does that seems so obvious?
You idiot, insurance companies don't automatically charge men more because they have dicks and women don't; they charge men more because men have more accidents than women. How you can think (if "think" is the right word for whatever's going on inside your thick skull) that this is "genetic" discrimination is beyond me.
Only a handful of the 100 most popular online stores give shoppers adequate privacy, according to the EPIC ( it's a Washington-based privacy research group). The group's research focuses on whether sites use profile-based advertising and whether they use cookies in their site operations, both incredibly controversial practices on the Internet. The also focus on retailers' compliance with "Fair Information Practices''--those are basically guidelines that provide basic privacy protection for consumers--which *none* of the companies in the survey addressed properly, according to EPIC.
Both cookies and profile-based advertising are par for the course. They are a widely used standard practice. As far as being "incredibly controversial practices on the Internet," this statement is moot, at best.
The use of cookies is generally necessary for session tracking purposes when users log in to check their account (IP number tracking is not reliable for users behind firewalls). Their use in conjunction with profile-based advertising is (to me) a generally good thing. When I go to Amazon, the front page usually shows me books that I'd probably be interested in. Sure, this is just good business for Amazon -- an attempt to sell more books; but that doesn't mean that they're doing me a disservice by tracking my reading habits. Practices such as this are rather benign.
Katz asserts that information that is stored and tracked for years (primarily by credit services) can adversely affect the lives of people, and they don't even know it. Sure, some people screw up, and have financial problems -- sucks to be them. But in other cases, mis-information reported by these agencies can have a negative impact on people who have done nothing wrong. I myself have received calls from collection agencies for bounced checks. Too bad it was someone with the same name that had bounced the checks.
Anyhoo -- I ramble on.
is your best defence.
Ever watch "Twelve Angry Men"?
regardless if you write copyright, all rights reserved, or not, any material you write is automatically copyrighted. posting the notice is just that - a notice meant to remind others that you own it. you'd be hard pressed, though, to win a copyright case based on personal information. especially when they take bits and pieces of that information, and reorder it so that it vaguely resembles the original source, but is distinctly different. sure would be a funny challenge, though 8-)
It was because of assholes like you that I resigned from the armed services. I could not, put my life aside, or, 'on the line' who would not support what we have SWORN to uphold. The Constitution. ALL of IT. Not just the parts you like, or the parts I like. The government is fast on it's way to govern the people like no one else on earth. The lambs like you will be first. The rest of use will die resisting the tyranny of our brothers who have been brainwashed into thinking their employer 'has the right idea'. WE ARE PAYING FOR OUR OWN SUPRESSION. Only in America.
What seems to happen within society is a trade-off between safety and rights. Many of the classic libertarians in the 17th and 18th century wrote about these ideas, even as far back as Hobbes' Leviathan. We trade some of our natural freedoms and liberties for security. Some philosophers believed that once those rights were surrendered to the state, they could not be reclaimed, others - such as the Founding Fathers - believed that those rights could be reclaimed when the State overstepped its bounds, as England did with the unfair taxation and lack of colonial representation. As this article suggests, State's change; the US was founded on ideals that in part proclaimed a natural right to rebel against tyranny. Today, our government has taken - and we have tacitly given - many more of our rights than was previously permissable. We all accept that forced immunization is a wonderful idea; some of us (not me) think that laws requiring seat belts usage are good (though I would never ride in a car without one). The State is increasingly 'nanny'ing its people. We are accepting further and further intrusions intoour lives, accepting mandates, ingnoring invasions. One of my grad instructor's worked for a big financial corp that went under for fraud. He said, quietly, that with any one piece of info, he could know everything about anyone who had ever entered into any transaction in North America. My current prof came from the Intelligence community. He left in part because the technology being used and being developed was really beginning to frighten him. It may be too late to take back the rights we've given the State in the past 50 years. We traded them for safety from the Reds. We may want the State to keep them to protect us from sex offenders, terrorists, and sociopaths. Just pray that the State doesn't convince us we need to be protected against dissendent thought or dangerous diversity. The technology for Thought Police exists...
There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood.
last i knew america had much less smoking than many other countries (italy was an ash tray when i lived there 2 years ago). and drinking.... hm... contries with no drinking age (no strict US laws) have much less abuse of drinking then america. maby thats not the problem either.
i dont know what causes the high prison rates. but i would put my money on poor education and poor parenting.
way to take the moral highground and yell about all the "immoral" stuff that people do.
honestly though... thoughts like that scare me.
my rights end where yours begin.. and vice-versa.. lets try not to push all of our ideals and beliefs on other people.
"Shut up brain or ill stab you with a Q-tip" Homer Simpson
Quite right. They're all evil because they don't believe in Canadian socialism!
Pathetic.
And I was under the impression that a significant portion of the CIA and NSA's budget came from a single pool, to prevent it from being traced-- Congress could reduce the size of that pool, but they might have a hard time de-funding a particular agency or department.
The NSA maintains agreements with other countries' intelligence deptartments whereby we monitor their SIGINT and they monitor ours. Then they get together and share info. Technically, they're not exactly violating their charter... From what I understand, this is pretty common and is no great secret.
why do americans put up with and even contribute to infringements on their privacy?
because we are, in the main, a gullible and stupid herd and we don't get it and we'll never get it since that would mean we have to sit down and think about it and then we would have to overcome our latent assumptions of trust that it could never happen to us. how could we possibly do this and not miss another riveting episode of SURVIVOR?
ugh. what a CHUNKBLOWER.
in a society where we seem to be defining ourselves based on our consumerist tendencies (do people who drink starbucks actually like the coffee? or are they just posers?), we reap what we sow.
for those of us who don't mind thinking occasionally, live by one rule: never trust The Man. The Man will take your money and won't care. The best way to thwart The Man is to turn his tools against him. F the Man. and F the Stupids too. it's simply the mob mentality that has gotten us where we are today in terms of privacy. must have the latest and greatest. must get more, even though i'm not really sure what i'm getting.
He's also trying to get John Ashcroft, who (I've heard) is an opponent of the UN based on the soveiregnty issue that come with that, into the position of Attorney General.
I have the same feelings about government, and I'm aware of the place the Bush family has in the scheme of 1 world government by the UN. I must admit the nomination of someone to Attorney General who believes the one worlders are a threat shakes things up a little. Either the theory is bunk, or GW is his (gasp) his own man and actually believes in the Constitution.
At any rate, I'd have to know more about Ashcroft and his opinions on the UN to make a decision about him and Bush, but as it stands now I think things are looking up for the freedom-inclined.
nemo me impune lacessit
When I apply for a job, I'd rather they hire me at what I claim I'm worth, just because I say I'm worth it. But if I'm hiring someone, I want to know what you've done before to rate that salary.
When I buy a house, I'd like them to trust me to always make payments on time, thus giving me the best possible rate on the loan. But if I'm lending the money, I want to know if you make the payments on your car loan and credit cards.
I could go on like this all day, but they all come down to the same thing: personal interactions always come down to trust. The more I value whatever I'm putting at stake -- my time, my money, my children -- the more carefully I want to check you out to see if I will trust you with it.
We can talk about how "big business" is constantly eroding privacy, but "big business" is a collection of individuals, each of whom is protecting their investment. If you don't want to give them the information, don't. What, they won't do business with you if you don't give up the information? Well then they're not the kind of company you want to do business with anyway, are they? The class warfare routine is starting to get old.
Governments are a different animal. If you disagree with them -- try driving without a license -- you can go to jail. When businesses become powerful enough to unduly influence legislation (ie: they write it themselves for rubber-stamping) they've crossed the line and should be guarded against as jealously and agressively as we would guard against an oppressive government.
Nope, no sig
reading
writing
arithmatic
creating false identities
597qd83Xb
First of all, here, let me stand in defense of the Judeo-Christian ethic here for a moment, which is what I gather Coke Bear refers to in his comment:
(My guess is that it has something to do with religion, but thats just me...)
The Judeo-Christian religions are probably the most responsible for human rights advances over the past 6000 years than any other single religious/philosophical arc available. Historically and culturally, they are the source of it all. Just for the record.
No, in fact, much of what drives all of these things we're seeing, the privacy issues, the death penalty, the voting problem, is power. And you can cry about it all you want, but the dead truth of it is that the source of power in the United States is people. Media can manipulate people, and thus shift power, but that's only feasible insofar as a story can be "spun." If something big enough were to happen, there's very little the Media could do to force an angle contrary to what occurred. Politicians can think they have power, but in most cases the only thing keeping them in those positions is the power of inertia and apathy. Witness that many elected representatives on the national level spend as much, if not more time pressing the flesh back at home than actually sitting in Congress and doing what they were elected to do.
Also, another clarification: The "United States" does not execute people. Not unless it's treason in time of war, and some people have even snuck out of that. (btw, I don't think there is a civilized country that does not offer the death penalty for such a transgression.) However, some individual states do carry the death penalty. Recent overturnings of the death penalty in some states is evidence of the power of the people, the nature of the nation and states as democratic republics (the US's technical classification) affirmed.
But what we've discovered in this country, in this political experiment that we call the United States, is the power of apathy. Occasionally, enough people get jolted out of it to make something happen, but those occasions are few and far between... and honestly, often misguided. And such is the case with the privacy issue. Americans don't care, by and large, who knows what about them. They might get annoyed with this or that or the other thing, but fundamentally, they don't care enough to take action.
When will it hit home enough? When honest computer nerds start being persecuted for hacking crimes on the basis of pirated personal information? There's one school of thought that says, "So what?" If there's convictable evidence found, then they should be sent to jail! There's another school of thought, however, that says: "We're still protected by the courts." And this, by and large, is true. What books I read is still circumstantial evidence in any court of law, and more to the point there's no proof that I've read any of the books I bought, according to Amazon. Have people been convicted by circumstantial evidence? Yes. Have trumped up charges been applied in this manner? Occasionally. Will there be a significant increase in these types of cases? Not likely.
But, of course, Mr. Katz's biggest complaint is not about the government's use of private data, but that of corporations. Corporations? What are they going to do, drown you in spam and junk mail? That's ridiculous. And this article is mostly alarmism at its worst, the most common form of media manipulation. Now, I'm no friend to the corporate conglomerates and I realize that there is reason to fear for and protect your privacy, but Mr. Katz does not compel me to any of those reasons. I think that people ought to take more care, that they ought to understand what they are doing, but ultimately they don't, and that's the problem; privacy issues are merely a symptom.
And btw, France has some of the worst civil rights laws on the books (or lack thereof), so let's not go crowing about how awesome and ahead of us Europe is. If you had a small, semi-homogenous population concentrated in a space the size of Pennsylvania, you wouldn't face the problems we do today. Yeah, corporations and lobbyists are evil, so what else is new? They also lobby against unions, environmental protection, safety standards, the minimum wage and so on. Duh. It's in their interests to do so.
Honestly, the privacy debate is about as newsworthy as my grandma. In other words, I care about her and everything, but she doesn't belong on the national news or having rants written about her. The real issue, of course, is that we don't want criminals to have our private information, which is more obvious than anything stated above. If that means keeping it out of the hands of the government or corporations, then by all means let's protect it. But Wal Mart having my phone number or Radio Shack my mailing address makes very, very little difference to me personally--since it's public domain information anyhow, I can't see what advantageous use they can make of it other than, gasp, to let me know what wonderful products they have, which is the meat and potatoes of any for-profit corporation.
Duh, Jon, duh.
- Capt. D
Are you trolling? Are you seriously suggesting that with regards to human rights, the "Judeo-Christian ethic" has been responsible for it all?
No more than the guy I was replying to who implied that certain religions were the root of the currently debated evil. And while I admit that the Judeo-Christian ethic does not have an out-and-out monopoly on the concept of human rights, I'll stand by my statement that they are responsible. By 60 AD, the most liberal society on Earth was that of Rome, which still fed people to lions for sport and where the paterfamilias held the rights of life and death over his family. Socratic/Platonic philosophy, perhaps the largest other proponent of human rights to date, had been largely stamped out by a Roman Imperium jealous of its own purported divinity. If you can supply another philosophical system that has, at its base, a regard for human rights equal to that of the Judeo-Christian system and equal in influence on Western culture, then I'll concede the point.
But no, I'm not trolling. Just giving an historical perspective to a ridiculous comment.
Just because the federal government doesn't run Ole Sparky 24/7 Texas-style doesn't mean it doesn't have death penalty provisions, because it does.
Minor mischaracterization of my position. I did not say that the federal government does not have any provisions for the death penalty, though I did not realize there were many (if any) at all other than treason. What I did say was that "The 'United States' does not execute people," which is true from your own admission: it does not and has not for 38 years. I doubt a single other jurisdiction with the death pentalty on the books has gone so long. And why is that? The reasons I stated before: power of the people. The federal death penalty is an upopular option. Hell, Aldrich Ames didn't even get it for selling out to the Soviets/Russians for how many ever years. Straight up treason. In the third world countries that the original poster mentioned, that would have earned him a bullet in the back of the head immediately following trial if there had even been a trial, and for traitors that's not likely.
But no, I don't make this stuff up as I go along.
- Capt. D
The U.S. codified the idea of constitutionally-guaranteed privacy, but other countries do a much better job of protecting it these days. Many Europeans own their own data, and Canada actually has a privacy commissioner. That's not likely to happen here anytime soon. In the U.S., we may never be able to control our own data again, or protect ourselves from the indiscriminate use of databases and unaccountable institutions to make decisions that affect our personal, financial and work lives. Nor do many people seem to care if corporations own and sell the details of their lives.
you know john, i was always told in english class that a good journalist always starts a story with the most important information first, gradually getting less important towards the end of the article. here i see you've gone for the less conventional "straight into the boring drivel" opening paragraph.
it's something to think about.....
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The Dude abides
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The Dude abides
I recently went to change insurance carriers and got refused coverage by a variety of providers. It took me nearly a month until the full cause of this was known. One of the agents was a close friend of my In-laws. You should have heard the strange tone in her voice when she turned us down.
is worthless.
But, I suppose, if you're totally willing to trust your government with everything, ie. a cradle to grave welfare state, you might was well trust the nanny state to protect your privacy.
The other side of the coin is to take responsibility for your own protection by arming yourself, against intruders or a dangerous government.
The problem isn't that the data is visible. The problem is that it's only visible in one direction. Companies can know everything about YOU, but you can't know anything about what their doing with this data, and often you can't check up on it to see if it's right because you don't even know it exists.
If individuals lose thier privacy, then so too should corporations. Either total privacy for all or total publicity for all - nothing in-between.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The thing is that much of this sort of behaviour is counter-productive to getting more accurate or personally applicable company->consumer communication.
Corps do the same thing to consumers all the time. Customer support centers where the 'manager' is the person in the next cubicle over. When I ask people in corperate offices who has the authority to say yes, they "don't know". Then I ask, 'who do you report to?', they "don't know". Sure.
Best Buy won't tell people that their returned merchandise policy is 'put it back on the shelf'. Just try asking a store what their markup is on an item sometime. Why not?, they gladly collect info on how much you paid for your car, house, anything. How many times have you asked a store what is the difference between this name brand item and that generic brand one (obviously the same product w/ a different nameplate) and they tell you 'just the price'?
Some software companies are even going so far as to attempt to squash reviews and benchmarks in order to deprive the public of information that would help to make a wise purchase decision. There must be a big advantage to knowing more than the person across the bargaining table! (that should be obvious).
Insurance companies increasingly use personal info to defeat the purpose of insurance (spreading risk). Instead, you can afford insurance only if your odds of actually needing it are smaller than the chance of being struck by lightning in a cave, twice in one day. If there's any chance you might (god forbid!) make a claim, you'll probably be better off putting the premium payments into a money market account.
If you don't happen to fit their profiles of average people, you'll find that services are denied to you based on their misinterpretations of your personal data. Sometimes, consumers (citizens) have to lie in self defense. Imagine how much worse it would get if the corperations had a higher confidence in the accuracy of your profile.
In other words, corperations DO NOT have your best interests at heart. They don't have a heart and their only reason for being is to make as much money as they can. Pride and self esteem are for privately owned companies only. They are not interested in giving YOU what you actually want, they are interested in giving you a little as possable in exchange for what THEY want.
Looking at things another way, TRW et al charge money for a copy of my credit report, and corps pay it. The information must have value. I notice that they didn't pay me for MY information.
Anything given is implcitly given without restriction. Unless that restriction (that only I can use the info) is made explicit, I ought to be able to do whatever I please with it.
Why should "given without restriction" be the implicit ruleset for personal information? It certainly isn't the implicit rule for most intellectual property... I have dozens of CDs, books, EULA-free software packages, etc. which I was not only given by their original owners, but which I paid money for, and which I didn't make any agreements about at the time of purchase! Should I be able to whatever I please with them?
Society already agrees that we don't need an explicit contract to be signed every time copyrighted material is traded; we have copyright law which codifies a set of implicit agreements. Would it be such a stretch to change the implicit agreements for personal data to reflect a similar retention of control?
(Not the previous poster.) Oh, look, despite being COMPLETELY on-topic, it's an unpopular viewpoint, and there moderated down!
And yeah, I'm deliberately using the +1. If you don't like that, blow me and my karma both. This is a serious problem: some moderators don't understand the purpose of moderation. It's not to encourage concensous, but to encourage discussion.
That's a little disingenuous because credit risk is already built into the loan. To front a credit risk and then deny a loan becaue it might be risky is very close to charging everyone else a premium for the banks' double dipping into the risk pool. It's akin to an insurance company only taking healthy people and then dropping them or charging them more if they file a claim. True any bank should be allowed to decide who gets a loan and who doesn't but wouldn't differential rates be just as effective. They do that now with PMI vs. no PMI.
At least that is the way it is supposed to be...
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Yes, but the UN has no jurisdiction to enforce it. And without forcing countries into communism, how would they?
Finkployd
Privacy is not the only area where the USA talks big, but has actually fallen behind other countries.
America claims to be the "Land of the Free", but a greater percentage of its citizens are in prison than in any other democracy.
Speaking of democracy, isn't that one of the things that Americans think is so great about their country?
Do I even need to mention the farce that they called an election? The world leader in technology, inventor of the internet, and they don't even have a modern voting system. It would funny if it wasn't so sad.
Since the elections, I've heard people (particularly Republicans) state that America is not a democracy, its a republic. Fine, but don't try to pretend the people have any say.
Human Rights...
Don't even get me started on this one. What other civilized country still excecutes people? This is something that 3rd world countries are great at, as well as places like China and Iraq. But the USA? How can a country that is so ahead economically, be so behind in social policy and human rights?
(My guess is that it has something to do with religion, but thats just me...)
(Excuse me while I put on my flamesuit now...)
Reality has a liberal bias
A good point, but are you aware how much data is being kept about yyou already without your permission? Certainly if everybody had your explicit permission, nothing would be wrong.
Tell me that in ten years, Sheepdot. The stuff I mentioned has almost already happened; very similar things are already being done. Genetic privacy issues are already real and aren't going away, and may yet affect you (who has perfect genes?). Stores are collecting incredible (in the literal sense of the word) amounts of data today. It's not paranoid when it's already happening!
PS: As for the idea that companies need detailed data about you to function efficiently, that's just plain bullsh*t. What they need is an efficient infrastructure, good lines of internal communication, good management, all the traditional stuff. Only marketers think they "need" detailed data about all of their hypothetical future customers. (Note nobody complains about data companies need to function... surely Amazon needs to know where to ship that book to... while this could be worked around it's not really worth the effort at this time.)
And how do you get an efficient infrastructure? By tailoring it to meet demand. I think it is safe to say that there's nothing wrong with *agregate* statistical data, right? (I.E. "43% of the people going to Amazon.com look at books, 12% of those, actually buy books.")
Consider Amazon.com. The efficiency of their infrastructure is not merely about how many books they can ship in a period of time, or how many hits their web site can handle, but how many *orders* they get per dollar spent on business development (including marketing).
What is more efficient for Amazon.com? 100 customers who each come and buy 1 book, or 10 customers who each come and buy 10 books. The latter. Why? Because there is overhead to processing an order. So clearly, multi-item, and repeat purchases are important to the efficiency of their operation. How do you achieve that? Traditionally it's done via the 80/20 rule. You can get 80% of your customers to behave in the manner you desire with 80% of the effort, and you ignore the other 20% since that would consume the "other" 80% of the effort.
Personal targeting allows businesses to operate *much* more efficiently. Amazon.com can suggest items to me that I am likely to want, and can hide stuff I'm unlikely to want which makes me more likely to buy multiple items or order again. I do, in fact, like this feature.
I do not like the idea that Amazon.com would sell this information, or that it could be used against me by 3rd parties -- that is where the biggest privacy-related problems lay.
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
There is no such thing as a right "to" anything. A right "to" something is another way to say that you have a right to force somebody else to do something to help you.
Instead, true rights are things that nobody can do to you: own you, hurt you, take your property, stop you from saying or writing something, or going somewhere, or meeting with someone.
A "right to a job" imposes an obligation on someone else to provide you with a job. True rights don't interfere with anyone else's rights.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I don't hold a conversation with anonymous cowards. Signon or be satisfied with one reply.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The privacy commisioner position was probably created after that HRDC (Human Resources Development Canada) scandal where it was discovered that the government had been collecting a huge database of personal information. HRDC was also involved in another scandal where they lost a billion dollars (yes, they have no idea where it went). The database was ultimately disbanded, but....
For many years, auto insurance has cost more for men than for women. Insurance companies discriminate on the basis of whether you have a Y chromosome. Is this somehow different than what we call "genetic discrimination" now?
Only in one respect--you can determine someone's sex without performing a genetic test. Still, people have no control over surrendering information about their sex, nor can they determine it.
If it's OK to discriminate for car insurance on the basis of sex, why not health insurance on the basis of other factors?
>Companies actually (gasp) use this information to determine how to best initiate information, and what sort of information to give you.
the information they give me is:
-we have product foo
-it does bar, and generally monkeys around beter than anything else [for this price]
-it'll cost you this much
gues what.. if I want bar and some general monkeying around, I'll look up the information (independant tests usually from specialist mags or consumer orgs) or ask in a couple of stores about what there is, and at what cost. this would bring down cost for the product, since there's no more millions gone on so-called info. I would be a lot less annoyed, and so would many many people with me. all this better communnication talk is the difference between carpet-bombing and laser-guided smartbombs. the result is destructive and everyone would be better off without it.
//rdj
PS. less trees will die too
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Slashdot is usually on the side of free spread of all information. Funny to see the reverse position being taken here.
Perhaps (and I stress this is just a loose thought) the real beef is with big corprations?
Because your situation has changed since you've had a child. Maybe your spouse has died, been incarcerated, or left you to fend for yourself. Maybe the working spouse has been laid off and now can't find a job making more than half of what he/she did before, so in order to make up the difference, the spouse who was staying home needs to get a job.
Be aware that there are a lot of situations to consider. If you were in a situation where you were capable of being a parent, and then your situation changes, you can't go back and unhave the kids.
And these people don't have families? No retired grandmother to help out? I may be far from the norm, but I have a huge extended family. I've been helping raise my little cousins for so long I have no desire to have my own kids! Whenever my mom needed some help with me and my brother she could call one of her sisters, or her mother, or my dads mother. What happened to the american extended family?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The short version of what a lot of people are saying in this thread is that If you Can't Take care of your child then Don't Have one. The last thing we need is a lot of children growing up full of resentment because their parents were always too busy to play with them. If you want to have children then be prepared to slow your life down and sacrifice to take care of them, don't think you can just pop one out, send him off to day care and then show up at high school/college graduation to say hello.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
>[I'm going to continue to assume that] You're in the ad business - you know as well as I do that the cheapest and most effective method of advertising is word of mouth. Not slapping the word "viral" onto a glorified chain letter, but real people spreading the word that someone concentrated on their core business and developed a superior product than that of their competitors.
/less/ ads that give them equal economic returns. Tying your browsing habits to your personal data will only happen 'opt-in'-style, in the future. Fortune500 companies will be insanely careful as to how they handle this kind of information, and these sorts of technologies.
Bang on. I actually work on the bleeding edge of online advertising (as a developer). We are working on bringing the Fortune500 companies online; delivering an advertising model that will enable them to get favorable ROI. And I really do think it comes down to the value we place on our privacy. Definately the most important factor in a successful consumer-tracking model is that it is an 'opt-in' system, not 'opt-out'; that is, a company does not start communication with you until you SPECIFICALLY request it (by interacting with a banner online, for instance). The point is, for fortune 500 companies, it already is opt-in for the most part. Coke would never send you unsolicited email. Allowing them to track the data of consumers who want to be tracked makes everyone happier, and probably does something to keep those companies off the backs of those who do not 'opt-in' to be 'tracked'. And don't make any conclusions as to the severity or level of detail in 'tracked'; right now, all ad companies can track is browser, ip, os, area code, and time data. Nothing personal, but information that still might give a company insight into increasing its Return on Investment (ROI) on a given campaign, and thus allowing them to actually show
I find it all quite exciting; I started working this job feeling ethically uncomfortable, but the stipulations as to how the ultimate decisions must be in the hands of the consumer has convinced me that I am a part of something which is better for everybody in the long run.
My original point was that if that 'opt-out' option is available, it's better for everyone, including, I believe, you, to opt-out rather than supplying bogus information. Never will companies stop trying to track the consumer's behaviours (and in the future, it will be less of a 'tracking' and more of a 'listen to what the consumer has to say'), so bogus information will only lead to incorrect targeting and more wasted dollars, paper, and electrons.
If something has never been said/seen/heard before, best stop to think about why that is.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Copyrighting your personal data won't work, since technically you don't "own" the data, but this does:
:-) Things that make you go, hmmmm.
"All Rights Reserved."
Remember, when you give your signature, you [potentially] are waiving certain rights. Include the above phrase to keep all that you can. (Make sure it is JOINED to your signature, not seperate!)
WHY do you think companies have this everywhere?! They are legally a person under the law, so use the same laws they do, to your advantage for a change!
Another interesting tidbit, is that the Queen of England is a corporate sole. And the Governer General of Canada! What do these people know that most people don't?!! Black's Law Dictionary gives a hint "in order to give them some legal capacities and advantages, particularly that of perpetuity, which in their natural persons they could not have had."
So if a person is a corporate sole, do they have to pay estate tax on their death?
Do you own research though. For other ways to protect yourself, you can read the Frog Farm FAQ
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"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson
Actually, that's also prohibited, explicitly. Did you really think that if you thought of that, that its watchdogs would not? Really, now...
From the NSA FAQ:
Couldn't the Agency simply ask its allies to provide them with information about U.S. persons?
We have been prohibited by executive order since 1978 from having any person or government agency, whether foreign or U.S., conduct any activity on our behalf that we are prohibited from conducting ourselves.
Therefore, NSA/CSS does not ask its allies to conduct such activities on its behalf nor does NSA/CSS do so on behalf of its allies.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The Bush family has always been tied very tightly to the CIA... One of the foremost priorities of the next administration is "National Security"...
Our privacy rights are going to erode so fast that it really can't be called "erosion," it'll be more like "excise."
Oh, of course, it's Katz on
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Here in the UK we _do_ have rights of data access. For once our Government has done something quite well. The Data Protection Act Was originally drafted in 1984 (the irony!) and has been amended a few times since. In action, it works - I have requested credit profiles for myself for the nominal charge of UK £1, and received the information quickly and without quibble.
Pity about the mess that is RIP, though... Stand has a good writeup about it...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
In msot of these other countries peoep lpay for services we Americans expect to be 'free'. They pay per minute communciation charges. They pay for a license to recieve off-air TV, the list is huge. They pay large taxes to supprot large government infrastructures to address (amogn other things0 some of Jon Katz's favorite issues
Americans always want everything for nothing. Slashdot is particularly good at this behavior. If you don't want the companies whsoe services you use making money off of the generated inforation, be prepared to make it up out of your own pocket.
Thats life as an adult, folks.
Jon, where in the Constitution (or the Bill of Rights) is the right of privacy specifically guaranteed? Other than the 4th amendment's protections against unreasonable search and seizure (which the Supreme Court seems hellbent on gutting) there is no guarantee of the right of a person to privacy. The ninth amendment is usually taken to constitute a right of privacy. though it doesn't specifically mention the word. IIRC, Justice Harry Blackmun's majority opinion in Roe v. Wade relied heavily on precedent involving the 9th amendment. Any constitutional lawyers feel like commenting?
I: You don't have the right to our public lands to strip mine, graze your cattle, chop down our trees, or drill out our oil.
I'll buy that. It's highly unlikely that I'll ever be in the mining, cattle, lumber, or oil business, being a computer engineer, but if I ever do end up in these businesses, I'll do it only on land that I own. And since it will be my own, and I give a hoot about my own land values, you can rest assured I'll take damned good care of it.
II: You don't have the right to rile up your dittoheads by blaming all their personal problems on environmentalists (tree-huggers), immigrants (racist term of the month), and feminists ("feminazis").
Fine by me. Though it'd be nice if the environmentalists, racist race warlords (self-appointed "civil rights leaders"), and feminists stopped blaming the troubles of the world on me just cause I happen to be a white male. Hey, I didn't ask to be.
VI: You don't have a right to criminalize victim-less behavior so that you can sell extra helicopters to Columbia, have an excuse to violate the original Fourth Amendment through illegal search and seisures, and basically try and enforce a police state.
I couldn't agree more. Arresting folks for being high in public makes sense to me. Same as throwing folks in the drunk tank if they've had a bit too much and are wandering the streets. Arresting them on the suspicion that they've got a little bit of a plant in their own house, however, is ludicrous.
VII: You don't have a right to the possessions of others. But, if you're a criminal junk bond salesman or inside trader, you'll go to a minimum security prison with a big screen TV and get to live a life of leisure.
I won't disagree, our prison system's messed up. Like the guy in Shawshank Redemption said, "Funny thing is, on the outside, I was an honest man. I had to come to prison to become a crook."
X: Agreed.
Thank you.
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Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
I couldn't agree more. In the words of Voltaire, "In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other."
This seems about as good a discussion as any to share something I got from a friend lately. It was supposedly written up by a member of my state's legislature. Can't verify the source personally, but I do agree with the sentiment.
Articles for the Constitution
We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great- great-great grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt-ridden, delusional and other liberal bedwetters.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people were confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of Non-Rights.
ARTICLE I:
You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.
ARTICLE II:
You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone - not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc. but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.
ARTICLE III:
You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful, do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.
ARTICLE IV:
You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.
ARTICLE V:
You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health care.
ARTICLE VI:
You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.
ARTICLE VII:
You do not have the right to the possessions of others. if you rob, cheat or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big-screen color TV or a life of leisure.
ARTICLE VIII:
You don't have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience. We hate oppressive governments and won't lift a finger to stop you from going to fight if you'd like; however, we do not enjoy parenting the entire world, and do not want to spend so much of our time battling each and every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat.
ARTICLE IX:
You don't have the right to a job. All of us sure want all of you to have one, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful.
ARTICLE X:
You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to pursue happiness - which by the way, it is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.BR
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Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Hear hear. In the words of Ben Franklin, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
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Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Mr Potter has already shown in the past months he had a serious problem with the French, since its ideological (not to say religious) leanings are simply incompatible with the simple fact that the French system is working. Facing this dilemna, he has two choices: ask himself whether he has to question his own beliefs, of spread FUD on France to persuade himself and others that France sucks. Of course, the second solution is the easiest one, especially since he's definitely not alone, in the Anglo-Saxon countries, to play this game, newspapers will feed him with the FUD and lies he needs.
Now we know he also has a similar psychanalitic issue with Sweden. No wonder, the reasons are approximately the same (although I assume his antipathy towards Sweden is much less viceral).
Will all this being cleared up, Mr Potter, may you please answer this simple question: what is your definition of "spiritually malnourished", how do you measure that, and how do you observe the consequences? I'm sure your answer will bring us plenty of light, and plenty of fun.
The simple fact is we have tools that are as good or better than the tools any government or corp out there have. For example (I link to this all the time but it is because I think they deserve all the help they can get) take a look at rubberhose . Or if you really want your stuff to be private take a look at this. Either of those tools will help you protect your data. Ok for cruising the web there are a lot of anonymous redirectors out there and ways to encrypt your stuff. Now as to being able to live without someone tracking your stuff. It is possible to live without a credit card not easy and stuff tends to cost more (no shopping on the net) but it can be done. As for credit it is possible to get housing with bad/no credit (trust me I've done it) and you can do the same with a car but then again if you don't want someone to track you you would not be buying a car on credit anyway. As to background checks put some effort into it and figure out a way to make a living where it does not matter. The US military would like you and many of the people in their ranks to think that I am not able to get a job because of the kinds of issues that Jon is going on about. The fact of the matter is because of my skillset I have not had one employeer since I got out check my record and now it is so far in the past I doubt anyone would care. This is only a issue for the lazy and those who don't care. If you really care it is possible and not very hard to live a very private life.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Of course the United States is not going to be as aggressive as European countries on this issue, because the US is the home of freedom. Freedom of speech cuts in a lot of directions, from the right to send you advertisements in your mailbox (which is why spam will never go away) to the right of someone to repeat information that is known about someone else.
You can't have freedom's upside without freedom's downside. For every instance that socialistic countries crack down on something you like (privacy regulation), there are a hundred ways they crack down on something you won't like (France's anti-nazi nonsense).
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
While we are guarenteed that we won't be prohibited from exercising free religion, for example, there is no guarentee that people and the government will not know what our religion is. Similarly, a hundred years ago you could walk around town, and, if you knew the gossips, get all the dirt about who I had been flirting with, whose flowers my dog dug up, etc. Now the inquiring person doesn't have to leave his house, but this is only a difference in degree not kind.
As true as Lessig's observations are, they are not entirely relevant here. True, your house was private in the time of the Constitution, but still if you welched on bets or screwed up your accounts the whole town would know, b/c you didn't do that kind of thing in your home, instead you did it out in public, at the bank, etc., i.e. in a non-protected environment.
Your public actions are public knowledge. The notion that judgements are now made on the numbers and not on a personal level is not a result of more data being forfitted but instead due to the power and efficiency of databases and computing in general. There has never been anything preventing companies having guys follow you around and see where you shop, it is, after all "a free country" to quote the maxim, but it's not efficient.
the problem, in the end, and in my opinion, is not that our public actions are public, but that the private acitions of corporations, because by the silliness of the law they are considered individuals, are private, however. if people decide to hate us based on our dog in that flower bed, though, they have every right.
--(Harvard's) b1nd0x
sell your certainty and buy bewilderment
It's alot easier to see the negatives in a situation and I was guilty of it when it came to personal information being collected and used. When one looks at it from the standpoint of keeping violent children out of our schools, making sure support payments are made, or keeping terrorists out of our countries. It is too bad that collected information is seldom used with ones judgemtn and too often read in black and white. It is this information that could make living life difficult for a respected member of society that made one mistake in the past.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
For crying out loud, Jon. The concept of personal privacy doesn't appear anywhere in the Constitution. Every single time you start waving the "And You Can Thank The United States For..." banner over your head like a lunatic, you not only make yourself out to be more of an ass, but you provide immesurable cannon fodder for equally idiotic people to perpetuate the "Americans Are Big Headed Blithering Idiots" mantra.
Yes, the United States have revolutionized modern government, and they stand as an example to the world in many things. No, not everything you touch can be turned into Home Team Glory. The government of the United States was crafted by a group of genuinely brilliant men who based much of their own thought on generations' worth of work done by European thinkers, scholars, leaders, and revolutionaries. Your assertion that "some European Enlightenment radicals" helped the United States invent personal privacy is about as accurate as me asserting that Europe provided the framework for personal privacy, and that framework was first implemented by some Colonial separatist radicals.
Why do you insist on labeling everything you see as good and just in this world as American?
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
As for online privacy not being as real a concern as, say, your example of medical information, where do you think companies interested in your medical health are looking? It's not just your doctor's notes they want to see. Insurance companies would also be fascinated to see how often you read the 'Cancer Survivor' type of site. Or to track down every comment you've made at the 'Need For Speed' race car site.
Just because you can't imagine the danger that will come from losing online privacy, it doesn't mean it won't later come back to haunt you once you've lost it.
________________
________________
Private Essayist
How about copyrighting your personal data, and at the bottom of each form you fill out put the line.
:-)
All personal data (C) 2001 All Rights Reserved This copyrighted information may not be transmitted or, duplicated in any form without the written permission of the copyright holder.
I wonder if you could sue a company for copyright infringement, if they violate that statement.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Right there. That's your problem. Not just for this, but for most of my big issues with the US. Lobbying (in my opion) totally perverts the normal course of government. How can government govern for the people where there are a whole army of people, paid for by a distinct minority, who have the power to influence the opinions of many senior senator and representatives.
Granted, some good bills have been passed due to lobbyists, but they were bills that, in a lobby-free environment, would have come around anyways (assuming a semi-sentient government). Put all groups equal before the house. End lobby groups.
No more lobby groups, and you get bills like one for privacy and one to stop Alaska being turned into a large oil refinerny to happen naturally.
Cue The Sun...
I hate to tell you this, but in the US privacy is not constitutionally-protected. The closest thing we have is protection from unreasonable search and seizure, but this only applies to law enforcement and so isn't sufficient to really qualify.
It's one of the great shames of the United States in this day and age, but it's true.
----------
I set to (2) so hopefully much of the crud is screened out but I'm amazed that the discussion basically breaks down into:
(1) Ya can't fight city hall so don't try.
(2) Lie Lie Lie.
(3) No privacy is the price ya pay for keeping molesters off the street.
(4) Privacy is an overrated concept promoted by those socialist pussies in Europe.
And they call me cynical?
If you think laws guaranty your personal emotional completeness you are a delusional weenie. That doesn't mean we don't need to have some standards and guidelines.
How do you know you weren't turned down for a loan, not because of your credit risk but because of your medical history.
How do you know you weren't turned down for a job because of your video tape rental records.
The point is, children, that you need to establish some basic protections or expectations of privacy in order to claim that they exist at all. Or would you rather see an eBay marketplace with lists of all of the a.b.p.e newsgroups you fetish around in?
Have you been studying your history?
England's history is filled to the brim with revolts by powerful barons (see Magna Carta , Oliver Cromwell ) against weak kings who were consequently unable to see their power (and thus the power of the State) constantly eroded. The net result is that during the industrial revolution, when the bourgeois seized economic power, they frowned upon the power of the state to interfere with their profits. The british empire is filled with private corporations that had their own armies to enforce their own justice over conquered lands (like the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company - which still exists to this day); of course in no way that "justice" is geared towards the well-being of the people who lived there first - for example, the HBC forbade indians to trade furs amongst themselves (as they did for thousands of years), but instead, they had to SELL them (for trinkets) to the HBC, and, of course, indians had to buy it from them if they needed furs).
The net result is a mindset which sees all evil in whatever the State does, and turns a blind eye to the worst abuses by private citizens, a, perhaps, every private citizens aspires to be a Bill Gates.
With such a mindset, it's no suprising that citizens see nothing wrong in being screwed by private enterprise (after all, they might, one day, become big enough to screw smaller fry) but jump to the ceiling each time the government steps in to protect smaller people.
--
Canada's privacy commissioner is simply another position established so that the Liberal government has a job to grant to party supporters who no longer want to act as representatives. The position is a farce and carries absolutely no real duties or responsibilities.
It's something akin to the new $182,000/year "Ambassador to the Environment" position conjured up for a retired Liberal...
Just cuz you ain't paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.
First of all, if your credit report looks like someone wiped their ass with it, ie, someone with five pages of past dues, overdraws, and collections, nine times outta ten you ain't gettin the loan. It's simple economics. You can stand on a soap box and say that it's private information, but when your talking money, it turns into another issue. Especially when it's not your money to start with.
I know we'd all like to forget those times when we forgot a credit card payment or we let a bill or two go astray. But that's not the banks fault. They're simply covering their ass, so to speak. You can't expect a lending institution anywhere to simply try to forget that you let your payments go to collections and your loans foreclose then say, "Well, we knew you had to buy groceries, so it's okay."
If you can't afford a loan, don't get one. It's as simple as that. If you can't afford a credit card, don't get one. Rinse, Wash, Repeat. It's not anyone's responsibility but yourself to keep track of your bills, and you can't just be forgiven for them overnight.
But there is a flipside. If you've shown improvement over the last long while--and I'm talking years here--then even five pages of bad credit could still get you a loan. But you have to be willing to pay off what you owe, or be making headway doing so.
Credit Bureaus weren't made so banks could nose in on your business. They were made because banks were tired of getting ripped off.
Of course, I don't have to add (but I will) that politics are everything and if you know the loan officer at your local bank then you're probably more likely to get the loan. I hate to put it that way, but it's true. Just ask the girls with the big breasts and how much trouble they have getting their car fixed.
Evan
misterorange.com
The Constitution is not a guarantee of anything. It is an agreement between a people and a government. The Federal Government agrees that it will only do a few carefully circumscribed activities (this is the theory anyway), and the people will not revolt against it.
That we've failed to enforce the Constitution is hardly the fault of our government. Governments have a certain nature -- to take away freedom. Woe until any citizenry that forgets that as ours has.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
My bad. Those whose views you espouse. (It's just that the only people who've phrased it the way you did have been direct marketers ;)
>social patterns and behaviour are irrevoricably changed by new technologies
Interestingly enough, I agree with you here - but come to the exact opposite conclusion, namely...
> I know more than a few marketers who's attitudes towards consumers are almost direct reactions against consumers' attitudes towards marketers.
>The point is, I'm no coperation-lover,
Don't mistake my loathing of certain marketing techniques with a loathing for corporations in general. I like corporations. I work for one and invest in several others, tech and non-tech alike. Profits are great. (Though I'm speaking for myself here - there are just as many slashdotters who loathe 'em)
> You sound like my counter-culture friends who would rather spend a good night out culture-busting than figure out an alternative for the corperations (who are too lazy and focused on their core business to pursue such alternatives); that is, a cheaper, better, more cost effective, easier way of advertising that doesn't piss everyone off.
In honesty, I think you and I are aiming for the same thing (less-intrusive and obnoxious advertising) here; we just have different strategies of getting there, because part of my goal also includes a privacy factor; it's none of your business what I read/watch/listen to, which is why I try to deny you that data.
When I enter bogus demographic data, my intent is to devalue that data pool. If I'm successful over the long term, companies will realize that direct marketing campaigns - ranging from telemarketing to junk mail to spam - generate poor returns on investment. And they will have to find better ways of generating sales. (Which is, ultimately, what I think you're after too, except that you place less value on privacy than I do, because you see privacy as a commodity to be traded away in exchange for less-intrusive ads, whereas I see it as an inalienable right, for which ad agencies have yet to offer me anything remotely near what I'd "charge" for it.)
[I'm going to continue to assume that] You're in the ad business - you know as well as I do that the cheapest and most effective method of advertising is word of mouth. Not slapping the word "viral" onto a glorified chain letter, but real people spreading the word that someone concentrated on their core business and developed a superior product than that of their competitors.
To pick an example of what I mean by "real" word-of-mouth vs. "let's generate some buzz" campaigns, six months from now, we'll have all forgotten about "Ginger". But we'll still be having the P4-vs-Athlon "bang-for-buck" debates because AMD, two years ago, bought some smart engineers and came to market with a product that provided lots of bang for very little buck. AMD got where they are today without a penny spent on guys in bunny suits or blue face paint.
If you wanna make an even more direct comparison - Coke vs. Pepsi. No "AMD is better because of technical reasons" here - but if you look at revenue growth, it's all about profit margins at the soda fountain, not the can in the store. KO can show as many CGI-rendered bears and happy teenagers sitting around campfires or howling at trains as it wants, but over the past few years, PEP's been getting the higher-margin and better market share by concentrating on the fountains in the theatres and restaurants.
Which is to say that word of mouth doesn't have to be at the consumer level, nor does it have to be based on technical superiority - it can be at the small business level, based on sound pricing strategies too.
> I do this as a matter of principal; keep seperate web-based email addresses, my "salary" ranges from 0-10,000 to 250-500,000 depending on my mood at any given time, my job title similarly varies, etc. etc.
/love/ to send you communication that aligns with your interest rather than showing commercials of the All American family (ie, the lowest-common-demographic denominator); but they can't (yet), because consumer targeting and profiling technology isn't there yet and people still don't believe that if a company can give you what YOU actually want, everyone is better off.
The thing is that much of this sort of behaviour is counter-productive to getting more accurate or personally applicable company->consumer communication. Companies actually (gasp) use this information to determine how to best initiate information, and what sort of information to give you. The thing I find mind-blowing is that people complain how companies never do things the way they want, but turn around and throw as many cogs into their consumer-profiling analytics as they can. Did you know that if a company could give you what you actually wanted, they could ease up on the geurilla or trick-the-consumer style tactics? Ask Coke or Microsoft! We dont like them because they can rarely afford to target their enormous consumer-bases with customer-granular communication. (Imagine if the fist time you heard of Microsoft, they offered to send you sports scores to your cell, or a free software package of your choice along with Win98, which you (or 98% of computer users) will get anyways.) They would
If something has never been said/seen/heard before, best stop to think about why that is.
"Old man yells at systemd"
> What about those of us who just don't want the "information" you "want to give" us
:) I work in an industry company; we don't advertise, much less track info. And, at any rate, you live in a capitalist country; if you think advertising isn't the foundation of capitalism, give my sympathies to your mail box for being misunderstood. You're getting information, whether you like it or not. The basis of my argument inherently assumes you'll never stop getting 'junk mail' (which I believe to be true). So, stop whining about it, and at least make the best of it. You're opinion is nothing but a tantrum.
Who said it was me?
Also, track records arn't applicable with respect to new consumer-behaviour-tracking technologies. One of the very foundations of technology, society and values studies states that social patterns and behaviour are irrevoricably changed by new technologies. That is, if you can only look backwards, you'll never be happy with the future. I know more than a few marketers who's attitudes towards consumers are almost direct reactions against consumers' attitudes towards marketers. There's no use arguing who started it now (never mind that these people are your family, your neighbours, and maybe even you, depending on your job and employer); we might as well just make amends and figure out a way of making things better for both 'sides'.
The point is, I'm no coperation-lover, nor do I work for one, endorse one, or play one in a movie, but you're a fool if you think they're going to magically go away if you whine and wave your arms around enough. I'm much rather figure out a way of sleeping with the enemy, and getting a good lay out of it. You sound like my counter-culture friends who would rather spend a good night out culture-busting than figure out an alternative for the corperations (who are too lazy and focused on their core business to pursue such alternatives); that is, a cheaper, better, more cost effective, easier way of advertising that doesn't piss everyone off. Including yours truely.
If something has never been said/seen/heard before, best stop to think about why that is.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Until more people in the U.S. start to remember that the customer is in the driver's seat[1] and absolutely refuse to disclose data which isn't relevant, privacy is lost.
[1] Try it, it's fun. I love going into a store, paying cash, and have them ask for my phone number, social, etc. That you "have to have it for your records" is entirely your problem, not mine. You can leave it blank, make something up, or I'll buy somewhere else. "Oh, you need my social for insurance? But I didn't give you any insurance information, and besides, I paid cash already. You're not planning to defraud my insurance company, are you?"
Looks like 8 minutes.
Wow, you really held yourself back this time.
Good job of combatting the sterotype of gun-packing Americans. Do you still think that amendment has any bearing on your lives today? Do you still think any problem or issue can be solved by a gun? Interesting.
Here's to hoping you grow up as a nation one day. Your neighbours to the north would certainly appreciate it.
Katz says people don't care. He's right, but why don't they care? Do they misunderstand the risks? Is the scope of the theft too grand for the imagination? Have they been swimming too long in the stream of media images that reassure us that corporations are benign, friendly -- big brothers, sure, but never Big Brother?
For a brief period in the 60s and 70s, cultural assumptions about corporate power shifted merely enough to allow such impertinent questions to be asked in the mainstream media -- and for fledgling regulation to emerge in legislatures. Not only was such regulation inadequate to the job of preventing the eventual corporate state, but in areas ranging across environmental, labor, fiscal, and energy controls, we've seen it eviscerated since the 1980s.
Here we are twenty years on. Corporate power is ever ascendant, with politicians from both parties its handmaidens. In this era, how would we save privacy? How can we hope to do that when we can't even stop corporations from polluting? From laying off workforces and merging like mad DNA to boost stock values? From annointing its own as our political leaders? The loss of privacy is of a piece with these other losses: it, too, has been sacrificed for the golden virtue of business efficiency -- for the faster track to profit.
Privacy, as Brandeis recognized, is a bulwark against power. You cannot discuss privacy absent an equation which also measures the power that threatens it; or put another way, any bulletproof vest is pointless without taking into account what kind of bullets might be fired at it. The executives have the best guns. And the vest-makers all work for the executives. Bad time to dress for battle! What are we going to wear?
Only a handful of the 100 most popular online stores give shoppers adequate privacy, according to the EPIC ( it's a Washington-based privacy research group). The group's research focuses on whether sites use profile-based advertising and whether they use cookies in their site operations, both incredibly controversial practices on the Internet. The also focus on retailers' compliance with "Fair Information Practices''--those are basically guidelines that provide basic privacy protection for consumers--which *none* of the companies in the survey addressed properly, according to EPIC.
It's a shame that the US doesn't seem like's it'll follow other nations' lead in the privacy issue-- legally enforceable standards of privacy are necessary to ensure compliance with Fair Information Practices, and new techniques for anonymity are necessary to protect online privacy. The ECIP released a report last year on December 17th, that found that 18 of the leading shopping sites did not post a privacy policy, 35 of the sites have profile-based advertisers operating on their pages, and 87 of the e-commerce sites use cookies.
EPIC also reported that many privacy policies are "confusing, incomplete and inconsistent."
Doesn't surprise me. The stated policies of most big shopping sites run the gamut from bad to atrocious. People should have the right to buy without being tracked and without having their personal information sold
--M.
And this is my problem... how?
Sounds like a problem for wannabe-privacy-invaders. My heart bleeds.
What about those of us who just don't want the "information" you "want to give" us, because your track record has demonstrated, time and time again, that you'll abuse it.
We don't like you. We don't trust you. And we will not cooperate with you.
Some states require that anyone who works near children go through computer and database checks for criminal histories, particularly sex offenses.
I believe this is ABSOLUTELY necessary for all child care facilities. Do you really want some sex offender, particularly a pedophile, playing with your kids? These checks take a couple of days and are not a big deal.
However, I'm in one of those states that do require it and I know first hand that a lot of daycares do not run this check. Mostly because they are so understaffed that unless the candidate looks seedy, they will most likely be hired. I could go into an entirely off-topic rant on how day care staff need to be paid more if there is ever going to be GOOD day care out there. But I won't go into that.
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
The REAL privacy issue has to do with false (and occasionally deliberately false) or misleading information being circulated as absolute fact.
(If it's on the computer, it -must- be true... ...mustn't it?)
Everything you do leaves a paper/electron trail. Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes, it can be so shockingly abused that it's amazing anyone's still living in the US.
Have you =EVER= had any kind of parking ticket? That might not be bouncing round the police database any more, but any unscrupulous department could sell that data, without you ever knowing. Suddenly, you stop being employable. No explanation is ever given. After a small fortune is spent, you discover that some popular vetting company has turned your long-forgotten parking ticket into a "Current Police Record" and a "History of Illegal Activities".
Then, there are those times that personal names get confused and the wrong database entry is updated. Your local supermarket's computer decides you're dead. Your mail gets halted. Your credit cards are cancelled. Your bank accounts are frozen. Your driving licence is void. All automatically. And fixing one DB is pointless, because any automatic update'll pick the error right back up again.
Want to find yourself homeless? Just irritate a friend of someone you want a line of credit from. "Denied Credit" does -NOT- look good on a credit check.
Or maybe you want to work for a high-tech company involved in banking, credit, stocks or computer security. You'd better hope that your neighbor's brother's daughter's friend has never shaken hands with a drug dealer. It'll get onto your record the moment anyone does a paranoid background check. And once you're listed as a "Known Associate" of a "Potential Criminal Family", how long do you think you'll last in any top job?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Medical data, address data, demographic data, habit data, all of that is just data. Rest assured that if things continue as they are, all of these will continue to be abused. Do you think your insurance company might find it interesting to add to their profile about you that you like to visit microbrewwry web sites? (Hmmm... liver problems in the future in X% of cases.) Or add to their statistical models that as an avid computer game player, you are X% more likely to have heart and obesity problems?
As advertisements get more focused, won't your grocery store want to know what you're allergic to, or if you're lactose intolerant? Hope you're not too embarressed about these things (as some people are!) because now your grocery clerk knows about it (when you handed them your Personalized Coupon for 15% off Soybean Milk.), and who know who that bored gossiping jerk might tell? Think Microsoft might want to know if you visit Slashdot a lot? Here comes the onslaught of "Why NT is Better Then Linux" ads! Think the Federal government might just decide that frequenting Slashdot is a sign of dangerous computer skill? (Why this might be bad is left as an exercize for the reader.)
Privacy concerns can be fruitfully divided into discussions about the exact way your privacy is being violated, but at the present time with the present policies, all privacy violations are important.
In a way, the "lesser" ones are more important to Slashdot frequenters, because it's obvious how insurance company privacy violations affect people, and a lot of people will stand against it. The more subtle, but nearly as powerful taken to its extreme (where it is busily being taken to while we sit complacent) privacy violations of watching what sites you visit, what you spend, how often you spend it, where you spend it is far more difficult to understand.
Consider... if I knew your surfing habits precisely, how much would I know about you? If I read everything you ever posted? Would I be able to guess with some level of statistical certainty (which is fine with insurance companies!) that you have some disease? Dangerous political views? Personality profile? (Bet you didn't think of that!) How would you like to be rejected for a job because your Anger Index was 32 too high... back in 1992?
Privacy concerns are not overrated; indeed, the more you understand about computers, the more you really look to see what's already going on, and the more you extrapolate into the near future (to say nothing about the far future), the more you realize that they are seriously underrated... mostly because they are difficult to understand easily. Regrettably, they are still very real.
PS: As for the idea that companies need detailed data about you to function efficiently, that's just plain bullsh*t. What they need is an efficient infrastructure, good lines of internal communication, good management, all the traditional stuff. Only marketers think they "need" detailed data about all of their hypothetical future customers. (Note nobody complains about data companies need to function... surely Amazon needs to know where to ship that book to... while this could be worked around it's not really worth the effort at this time.)
One thing to keep in mind is that most Americans don't necessarily look at privacy issues in the same way as many posters on /. do. I was shocked to see my fiance actually take the time to send in the warranty card on a $40 blender she bought. Her thinking (i.e. "it may break and I may need to get it replaced") was obviously not the same as mine (i.e. "we are going to get even more junk mail than we already get."). I'm of the opinion, if you have a receipt and your blender's broken and it's worth more than the cost to ship the damn thing to Cuisinart, then you can get it fixed. If you don't have a receipt it doesn't matter if you sent in the warrantly card or not. Okay, so much for that rant.
The next thing I noticed, however, was that all the personal information was incorrect. Salary was different, personal interests were different, etc. etc.. Her name and address were correct (i.e. if we needed a replacement blender, we could get it), but all the marketing info was BS.
I do this as a matter of principal; keep seperate web-based email addresses, my "salary" ranges from 0-10,000 to 250-500,000 depending on my mood at any given time, my job title similarly varies, etc. etc.
In other words, businesses may be getting more and more info, but is any of it any good. And, what is the cost of seperating the good info from the bad?.
I'd like to add one more point, however, any information we are forced to give accurately (for a driver's liscense, bank loan, etc.) should be strictly protected.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
There's a lot of paranoia amongst the tech-savvy populace of the net, and yet there seems to be a consistent failure to grasp the fact that current concerns about privacy are unwarranted and overrated.
Why is privacy overrated? After all, we live in a consumer society where we demand value for money and quality service from the corporations that provide everything we need to live, and information is the lifeblood of these ideals. Without reliable information corporations aren't going to be as efficient, and in a free market economy such as ours, this harms us all in the long run, far more than the trivial loss of privacy that comes from a company knowing how often you read /.
There are real privacy concerns out there which we should instead be addressing instead of whining about how companies compile online demographics. For instance, the need for privacy for medical information is paramount, and yet sorely lacking in America. With the increasing use of genetic technology in medicine, we either need safeguards to prevent insurance companies from declining "high risk" people, or a socialised health care system in which we can be guaranteedt treatment no matter what.
But the issue of online privacy is only really of interest to people who spent too much time online, and too little time in the real world.