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"Online Privacy Alliance" Claims Privacy Too Expensive
Non-Newtonian Fluid writes: "An industry group headed by the usual suspects (Microsoft, AOL, Sun, AT&T, etc), just released four industry-funded studies that claim privacy is just too darn expensive, so why bother? They seem to want to kill any privacy legislation before it can get off the ground. Interestingly enough (though not surprising), they also seem to be working with the Direct Marketing Association on this." Scott McNealy, working hard to make sure we get over it. I should probably also mention that since the new health privacy regulations have been delayed (possibly indefinitely), the USA is firmly committed to remaining the industrial nation with the least privacy protection.
Where personal encryption is illegal?
-no broken link
but no refund
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
I wonder what would happen if we started telling these CEO's details about their medical history, or their web visits, how long they would resist privacy legislation....
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
By inference, you can read between the lines and surmise that the money to be made off personal privacy is simply too lucrative to ignore. When companies like boo.com go out of business, the customer list is just one of the assets that creditors drool over.
What's your damage, Heather?
"..the group Monday went public with four industry-funded studies asserting that privacy legislation would cost consumers billions of dollars annually." and have "undertaken a campaign to nip Internet-privacy legislation in the bud"
So, let me get this straight. A big group of companies is saying that the reason they don't want privacy regulations, is that it would hurt the consumers?? Excuse me while I cough up a lung.
When was the last time that these companies stood for consumer's rights? Let's not forget that AT&T currently has a 40% stake in the cable TV market, and I'm sure would love to grab as much info about consumers from Digital TV as possible.
As soon as I saw that the DMA was involved I knew this was worthless. Remember that this is an institution whose sole existence involves acquiring information about people, so they can sell stuff nobody wants. Unfortunately, here in the USA, if people are making money, it must be OK. The DMA is an institution which produces nothing, is annoying as Hell, and has taken advantage of a lot of people. And now they're trying tell me that its just too expensive for them to NOT know all about me ? Please.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
feh
People moan about morality being outdated, and then they run into something like this, an utter disrespect for the rights of others.
There is not that much distance between this and outright thievery, looting, and pillaging, and plundering. All it takes is a little less respect for others. That's all.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Keep it up, y'all.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
On a certain level, I have to agree with this. What we need is an informed consumer base able to make decisions with the knowledge of what privacy is being traded for what benefit. Having a mish-mash of laws to 'protect' us only confuses matters and sends MegaCorps scrambling for loopholes, which they are adept at exploiting.
Privacy should be based on technology and an infrastructure that supports it. The problem occurs when the same MegaCorp writing the software and influencing the infrastructure has a vested interest in using personal private information.
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
Fred H. Cate, head of Indiana University's Information Law and Commerce Institute and a critic of new privacy laws, said the overall financial impact of privacy protections on all of the U.S. economy would be "in the trillions."
Can someone go and smack this guy please. Honestly, I know there are people from IU around here... Does this guy do a lot of LSD?
Privacy is a thing of the past. Everybody can freely find out all details about everybody else - past relationships, earnings, educational achievements, you name it it is just a short search away. The most amazing thing of all is that the people of this time like this state of affairs.
Imagine, the honesty in society. You can check up on prospective dates. Crime is incredibally low in this environment.
Society has become transparent. 'Privacy' is regarded as an outdated and rather curious concept, and everyone is of the opinion that the lack of privacy is a good thing for society as a whole - it engenders honesty.
Is this the future? I think it may well be. I can see that attitudes like this are becoming more and more common - my teenage neice already searches google for information on people she knows.
There is a case for saying that the lack of privacy leads to a transparent and crime free society, but there is a problem - corporations.
I think that the lack of privacy could well be abused by powerful corporations, this is the bugbear we must avoid.
I think that the EU is showing the way forward here, by standing against Corporations where America will not.
I must admit I am scared by the possibilities of this future, but I think it will happen.
--
Except of course, if something on the internet is happening, which prevents it from turning into how we see it.
Namely those terrorists, who want to keep us from turning the Internet into a huge Cable Television thingie and a gigantic technicolor shopping mall, generation Bazillions of $$$.
The studies published Monday conclude that proposals to limit companies from sharing or selling customer information without permission would cost 90 of the largest financial institutions $17 billion a year of added expenses, and would result in a $1 billion "information tax" on consumers through costs tacked onto products from catalogs and Internet retailers.
Yeah right, of course those companies have the right to waste my time, by spamming me by every available means and at my expense.
What's really worrysome is that given enough money, those jokers are actually able to turn this into a repectable organisation with near-official status. See the BSA.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Imagine, the honesty in society. You can check up on prospective dates. Crime is incredibally low in this environment.
That giant scream you just heard was the collective noise of every woman who's ever been stalked. If we could all suddenly get an unlimited amount of data on anyone we chose, Natalie Portman's every move would be stalked by thousands of drooling trolls. Do you see that as a good thing? A reduction in crime? Me, I don't.
What's your damage, Heather?
E-mail encryption use is low despite potential for snooping. Here is Kehoe who has tried to persuade friends to install the free software, too, but they couldn't be bothered.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
"Hospital consortium" claims cost of saving people is "too expensive", points at rising costs of treatment. Recommends against seeking medical advice for illnesses, advises killing oneself now to lower hospital expenditure.
Does my bum look big in this?
I don't know how privacy regulations are in the USA, but I do know we have privacy laws here in the Netherlands. If they actually *work* is a completely different story. Companies *must* give you insight in data they haven on you, but in reality it is almost impossible to track down what information the do have on you. I have tried this with a few companies: I was constantly being put on hold, talked with a lot of different people, and nobody knew anything. One company could tell me that they regularly bought personal data from 'another' company, but they couldn't which one. So you can have all the laws and regulations thath you want, but what companies do with your information is quite something else!
By far one of the most interesting services I've seen in the privacy industry of late has to be zeroknowledge systems (http://www.freedom.net).
They have a distributed-trust network of anonimizing routers. All your traffic is layered in a multi-level encrypted route ball and is spit onto the internet once it has been decrypted by each hop on the way.
The windows version comes with a decent personal firewall, and the linux version is a kernel module and a GTK based client program. It intercepts all network communications at the socket layer and disallows any traffic generated by the user running the client that isn't to/from the freeom network. Very cool.
-=Chris -- Stop feeding microsoft. DON'T USE HOTMAIL! ---HUSHMAIL---
Judge (skeptical, but interested in that video): Are these -really- relevent to the case? They seem very intrusive.
Lawyer: Your honor, privacy was deemed too expensive, by Congress, in 2001. I am merely trying to save this court an unnecessary financial burden.
Microsoft's Lawyer: Ummmm, when we said "too expensive", we did not mean "too expensive". We were misquoted.
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)
This is not a good reason. Microsoft and other big companies would want to make expensive things like this law because they can afford it and small upstarts can't. This would make it even easier to stop competition. The real reason is that privacy is not really expensive, it just gets in their way of having no government control once again it about there power not the consumers interest. Next they will say that security is too expensive so let the hackers have there way with you. This is bullshit. Make it law and they will do it with little complaint or trouble once everyone else needs to do it too.
Not to be an alarmist, or a paranoid freak, but we need to look at the big picture here.
1) What do we know about big giant corporations?
They are ultimatly concerned with growing their revenues, this is usually at the expense of the truth, or privacy, or "fair play."
2) What is the trend among big business today?
Mega-merger. The big boys keep merging and forming even bigger corporations. AOL-Time Warner anybody? This trend will continue too. What's the joke... in a few years we will only have 3 or 4 companies.. Sony, IBM, MS, GM...
3) Who will be able to protect us in the future when these giant companies, with gross amounts of money, want to track us like a dog?
Nobody.
It seems quite likely that *stupid* privacy legislation would carry a huge, unnecessary price tag. So what kind of legislation is appropriate? How much privacy can be achieved with technology alone, without any change in current law?
Considering the nature of the Internet, isn't it possible to achieve a high level of privacy without new laws? What kind of laws would smooth the way for technology-based solutions?
Nick
Just out of curiosity, is anyone going to actually comment on specific privacy laws, or just spout off knee-jerk reactions to The Man putting the little guy down?
Just keep it simple.
...for THEM.
Consider: Corporations now make money using data that belongs to you (phone number, ssn, number of children, etc). They either make this money directly (by selling it to advertisers) or indirectly (by using it themselves in "targetted advertising", etc). Privacy laws stop them from making this money.
But it gets worse than that: Really STRICT privacy laws actually COST them money. They'd have to have compliance officers, regulatory reports, privacy consultants, policy creators/enforcers, etc.
Imagine YOU were a company that was making, say, $1,000,000/year on private information. Then a law is passed and you are looking at paying OUT $100,000/year instead. You'd be pretty pissed, wouldn't you?
NOTE I'm not saying that we should just bend over and let the corps give us the shaft, however. I'm just saying that anyone who didn't see this coming must have fallen off the turnip truck recently. The only antidote to lobbying is MORE lobbying. Call or write you congresscritters and tell them how YOU (not your cable or phone company) feel about privacy. It would probably also help to call the companies in question, but that should be a second step, not a first one.
--
324006
Society has become transparent. 'Privacy' is regarded as an outdated and rather curious concept, and everyone is of the opinion that the lack of privacy is a good thing for society as a whole - it engenders honesty.
This might not be such a bad thing, if everyone were on an equal footing. But that is unlikely. Some people will benefit from this tremendously and others only indirectly if at all.
Also, a shift to a transparent society is one that people will simply not be able to opt out of.
The end of privacy will be a non-voluntary transaction which benefits one side only. That could be a reasonable definition of the word "robbery".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
- Lie on the application. This worked nicely when I needed a Kroger card (Blacksburg Kroger, for those who are curious), and the sales-droid was none the wiser. If you choose to use this technique, I'd recommend writing an at-least-plausible address. And, of course, be sure to check the "don't mail me" checkbox, as returned mail would be a dead giveaway
;).
- Don't shop there. This seems to be the Most Pure solution, from a cypherpunk point of view. Then again, it could be expensive, if it means missing out on sales. Pleasantly, there's at least one grocer near me (Shopper's Food Warehouse) that doesn't yet require a grocery card to get the sale prices.
- Trade cards / make fake cards. I read a webpage about some cypherpunks creating their own barcodes (?), but dammit if I can't find the link at the moment. I also read on that page that apparently cypherpunks regularly trade supermarket cards at their meetings. This approach seems to have the dual benefits of both get-the-sales-prices and mess-with-the-supermarkets. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that there aren't any cypherpunk meetings near me (DC metro area), AFAIK.
So, any ideas?Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
"There is a real fear that some politician riding his horse is going to say, 'I'm going to tell my constituents that I'm protecting their privacy,' " said Michael Turner of the Information Services Executive Council
:)
Imagine that. A politician trying to protect his constituents....
Wait, this can be done better.
Senator's sysadmin: "We get signal!"
Senator: "Main screen turn on."
Lobbyist: "How are you gentlemen...all your privacy are belong to us!"
Lobbyist: "You have no time to ride your horse. Make your time."
Senator: "What you say!!"
Now, that's more like it.
w/m
I submitted this article to Slashdot. This sort of plays right into that topic. View your privacy as an asset of yours, one that can be sold or bartered. In other words, if you want to buy something without having your privacy violated (e.g. the store keeping an entry for you in their records) be prepared to pay extra.
What I am essentially saying is that you can view receiving spam from Amazon with their recommendations, and having them know what you buy, is part of the price that you paid for that book (or CD, etc.). If Amazon isn't willing to accept this deal, then I'm sure that some other e-tailer will.
For instance, you can use NetZero et al. You're paying for internet access, but instead of paying in cash, you're paying in privacy. Whereas, should you go to a regular ISP, you pay more cash, but less privacy (a good ISP only logs stuff that's directly related to QoS; limiting the number of ICMP packets that can be sent from one account to, say 1 per 20 seconds, or so is a good idea, imho).
...this book has already been written. The Light Of Other Days by Clarke and Baxter. Pretty good book, although the end is lame with a capital "suck".
Short synopsis for the lazy: Tech breakthrough allows cheap devices to create wormholes that into any location at any time. So you can spy on what your neighbor is doing or what your husband said yesterday.
--
324006
What I really object to is statements like 'we shouldn't impose any regulation on the Internet that we don't have in meatspace'.
Actually I think that argument makes a lot of sense, however they are using it to get the wrong conclusion.
They are saying that because it's ok (or at least legal) to do this offline, it should be legal to do it online.
Of course the other logical argument would be that it should be illegal regardless. How come none of these people make that argument? I wonder....
Anybody can have as much privacy as he/she is willing to shell out for. You can buy things on-line, it's cheaper but you give out your information, such as your name, address, credit card numbers etc. You can buy things in a usual store, it'll probably be more expensive, don't use credit card, only use cash, don't feel in any customer service cards, don't bother with warranty and at least you will have more and better control of your financial information, your name and address info. Buy yourself a power generator and your energy company will not know anything about you. Dig your own well, you won't have to be worried about your water supplier selling your personal info. Don't use banks, whatsoever and don't have any credit cards, don't buy a cell phone, don't use a computer that is connected to any network (only use anonymous connections from libraries.) Only work for cash and never ever file tax returns. Never buy any property, only rent space for cash (then you don't have to bother with the electric line and your water supplier.) Keep all your information with you at all times. Do not own a vehicle or a driver's license.
Then you are really entitled to talk about privacy, but you wouldn't want to, because it will disclose the important information about your current location and your name.
You can't handle the truth.
I knew this dude from Metropolis
Who's mightier than all of us
The villains they hate him,
The media chase him
And that's why he stays anonymous!
This utopian "lack of privacy" does not "engender honesty" any more than the conditioning of Alex in Anthony Burgess's Clockwork Orange engendered in him lawfulness, kindness or respect for his fellow man. The same way The Brave New World engendered contentment in Bernard Marx.
I don't even think your scenario is that accurate. Not without some Huxleyan conditioning.
Any sociologist will tell you that privacy is a basic human need. Haven't you ever wanted to "just get away from it all"??
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Speculating that "transparancy" will reduce crime is like positing that communism should reduce theft. It is incredibly nieve. Looking at communism from an "academic" or theoretical standpoint, it would be easy to say that since everyone shares in the product of each other's labor and resources are allocated according to need, there would be no need to steal, so theft would be non-existant. It didn't work out quite that way in the real world though did it?
Transparency would only work in theoretical ideal world where everyone's inforamation was available equally and powerful elites could not choose to share or not share at their desire. Not very likely in the real world.
>I think that the lack of privacy could well be abused by powerful corporations,
Why worry about large corporations? All they want you to do is to buy things and not harm you.
What I'm afraid are individuals and informal groups who want to do harm to me because of my past. They could look up my sexual orientation, the type of pr0n sites I prefer or my religous background.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
The real problem (at least in the corporate eye) is that they can't MAKE money on privacy. Think about all the demographics they can sell by collecting your information. Actually storing all of that into a database costs money, be in in hard drive space, computer power, or electricity. If it wasn't collected, stored, and processed, they wouldn't spend a dime.
But a corporate funded "study" is like a comercial saying "eggs are good for you" being paid for by the Egg Farmers of America or a "study" paid by M$ stating that "yup. windows is the best." Really.
Now LACK of privacy costs a lot. It costs the victims everything. And the next time someone gets turned down for a job because they smoked a joint 14 years ago or because their brother's wife's cousin was arrested for writing a computer virus, then maybe people will start to realize privacy isn't just about hiding crime, its about protect ourselves being victimized.
but don't fill out the application. it worked for me a couple times at a grocery store near where i live. They were in a hurry, i asked for a card. They gave me the card and told me to bring the application back on my next visit. I never brang the application back, and the card still works.
although if they really want to they can always tie it to my credit card... same as any other store.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
Hrmm...
If these companies (AOL, Microsoft, Sun, etc)are so concerned about not keeping things "under wraps" or "private" if you will, then why don't they open up all of the source code of all of their major software for everyone to see?
Surely, this would be an excellent gesture of their faith in the idea that Privacy (and keeping secrets) hurts consumers.
;)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Actually, no. I suggest you carry on with the benefit concert, Peter Frampton is fine, see if maybe Tiffany and Metallica are available too. We need to get the word out about how it's bad to try to oppress freedom of speech. In fact, I risk being on topic for once as this story is about freedom of speech, but here goes.
We all learned the story about how Pablo Cruise was imprisoned in 1802 in Spain because he spoke out about the oppression of the Spanish government. We know that Pablo spent 20 years of his life in prison fighting that fight. We also remember back to the early 1900's when a little known man named Bob Segar who ran a printing press was put in jail for 10 years because he stood up for freedom of speech. These are some of the lessons we learned about in grade school as we were growing up, but they don't tell the whole tale. They don't tell about a man from Nicarauga named Ted Nugent who was shot by the federalies because he yelled the truth from the top of buildings...Or the thousands of others who have given their lives for freedom...
So yes, please do continue on and get the word out about how Bob Abooey has been oppressed on Slashdot and had his freedoms taken away from. THE TRUTH MUST GET OUT ! Say, by the way, do these pants make my butt look big?
Yours,
All the best,
--Bob
Personal privacy is the responsibility of the individual, it's that simple. There's no universal rule that gives people the right to privacy, although it's something we obviously aspire to have.
In essence, privacy should, or perhaps has, beceome a technology. It should be treated like one. This, however is difficult because companies and organizations have been given (undue) priveledges that interefere with the ability of people to choose the privacy that they want. Also, regulations and concerns of "national security" have added to the availabilty of privacy.
Sometimes it's in the form of monopolies, or centralized government systems (like hospitals, and even citizenship.)
Clearly, though, membership in society generally involves some compromise of privacy.
So, perfect privacy is unattainable, but that which we do have is truely up to ourselves to maintain.
Steve
[ approaching AI ]
--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Earth, by David Brin, imagines exactly this future. Lots of people carry video cameras which stream live to the web. People who want privacy are regarded as strange, and possibly dangerous. Switzerland has gotten nuked for refusing to reveal the account information of its bank customers. Lots of other stuff in there as well. Good book.
Best Slashdot Co
Just a quick note that the health privacy regs (HIPPA) are going to take effect. Some of the regulations became law in Feb., the rest become law ~ Easter. (The reason for the delay in the second set is some clerk forgot to print them in the federal register before Clinton left office, so it was done ~ mid Jan, and the regulations become law 90 days after publication) Companies then have 2 years after the effective date to become compliant, or they (and the people in the organization that broke the law or should have known about policies not being followed) can be held financially and criminally liable.
from not too long ago. PHB's complained that security is too costly to invest the time and money in because it doesnt realize a tangible return. It wasnt until everyone got hacked that they realized how backwards their thinking was. Once the Thought Police come a knockin people will realize what they lost.
/. readership certainly isnt, realize just what their privacy really means. Until then "The Big Four" are rightly trying to debunk user privacy. Why should they put forth the effort if no one perceptively cares?
It wont be until a majority of people, of which the
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
I think a nice idea would be a anonymous way to buy stuff online. But the reason govt and businesses don't like anonymous people running around is because of the few that abuse that system. The swiss banking system is great, but when you have the Russian Mafia holding their money in it, then you need to change some regulations. The person on Ebay who gets ripped off isn't going to be happy with privacy and anonymous sellers.
Plus, by combining all the info available on the web from different companies you can have exact demographics and know the markets needs and wants. I run a website that has a mailing list which I am sure someone would love to buy. Speaking of that, what Linux/Computer/Geek type site (Hmmm...let me THINK of a GEEK site) wouldn't love to get the mailing list from /.? They know the demographics of the site, they know we like to keep our bawls cool. I see dollars signs already!
The more electronic the world gets, the more personal information will be available to anyone with some cash. It's sad, I don't like it, but that's the way it is. Just remember though, the govt and businesses are there for YOU. If you don't like it, post your comment on the door of City Hall, not just here.
=-=-=-=-=
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
We could choose to make the internet essentially a public utility, like water or a quasi-public utility like electricity, and then one could rationally seek legislation to insure our privacy online. We have not made this choice. The internet is an almost entirely private enterprise and what they do with your information is between you and them, based on the terms YOU AGREE TO when you sign up to whatever. If you get your access through a rapacious corporate monster like AOL or MSN then you deserve what you get. If you spend all your time surfing scummy porn sites then you deserve what you get. If we want privacy on-line, let's ask for it as a value-added commodity and pay for it up front and let idiots who don't know enough to protect their privacy help subsidize the total package for the rest of us. All I need by way of legislation is penalties for stealing information and an assurance that a pre-agreed privacy arrangement cannot be dissolved due to the failure of a business.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Unfortunately, I agree that we're moving towards a world of transparent information on the wage-slave class. But the information will most assuredly not be transparent for those with power, money, or criminal intent.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Imagine, the honesty in society. You can check up on prospective dates. Crime is incredibally low in this environment.
What can I say? Incredibly naive.
Do you honestly believe privacy laws are meant to protect criminals? Or increases crime? Or that in such a society crimals could and would (be able?) not hide their acts?
In an enclosed community where everyone knows each other you don't need privacy laws. Why not? You know who you are dealing with and probably what they do with what they know about you.
Privacy is the right to hide information about yourself from people you don't know, (or don't like), who may use it to meddle with you life against your wishes
I can't keep tabs on everyone who has information about me, or what they say or do with it. I can be affected by it.
If you remove my right to privacy how will this stop people from messing about with me?
It only makes it easier for people to fuck with you!
How much spam, junkmail, abuse do you want?
I don't want everyone to know religion/hobbies/whatever because I can't trust people I do not know.
Privacy is not about dirty little secrets, it's about a horde of little things about you which all add up to you, your persona, your life. Knowledge is power and I prefer to choose who to show my vulnerable side.
Think, before you post please!
"1.To deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility:"
Individuality, compassion, civility. Would such noble qualities survive in a world where others can pry into EVERY facet of your life? Would society "damn forever" people who made bad decisions at an early age? Freedom is the condition of being free of restraints, not having to fear what others think about your past, your monetary position or what colour socks you wear on Sunday. So, then, what is the opposite of freedom? Slavery? Would average people be blinded by the innocent notion that they really do have the right to view information about anyone, anything and believe all that they read? It would be simple for those who control the information to feed false hopes and illusions to the populace, and they would swallow it without question, for in the future as you describe they wouldn't have a choice. Society would perceive itself as free, but in reality they would be slaves to the scourge of Information, clamouring for her favour and cringing from her retribution.
-----
crazy dynamite monkey
America will never keep Corporations in check while all of our politicians are financed by them. How do you think they stay so powerful?
But Corps are not the only problem, citizens need protection from the government too. (think: big brother). Do I sound crazy? Maybe, but hundreds of novelists and movie makers can't be all wrong!
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
I think not. Rather they should consider that what makes it easy for them in the short run, may have dire consequences for them in the long haul.
Most people will not want to know my health history and DNA, but Bill Gates' health history and DNA would be news. How much would he have to pay to keep his and his family's health facts secrect?
Information wants to be free.
want you to have something:
"It's too expensive"... "It's too hard to do"... "oh, and by the way, not doing that conveniently saves my ass on a few issues"
Unfortunately, this time, these corporations should have no choice-- regardless of how much it fucking costs. Privacy is at the very center of everything that allows us to be individuals. If intellectual property is sacred then my most cherished intellectual property, which is my identity and privacy, better fucking be sacrosanct.
Maybe Scott has a vision of everyone running around like Borg drones with no rights to personal thoughts or privacy but I certainly don't.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
How can it cost ME money in form of a "consumer tax" to keep a company on the internet from collecting private information? It just doesn't stand up to reason. I think the only way this "consumer tax" would exist is if they actually started trying to lock down their servers from outside break-ins and keep some 7337 5cR1p7 k11613 from taking my CC number when I purchase from a company stupid enough not to apply security fixes on a regular basis. If that is they case, I'll gladly pay my "consumer tax"...
Burn Hollywood Burn
If I copyright my personal information, can it be distributed without my permission?
If yes, why?
If no, why not?
-rao
This will never happen. Does anyone seriously believe that Dick Cheney or Bill Gates will allow everyone to pick through their bank records, or that Microsoft and McDonald's will allow the general public to listen in on every part of their business dealings?
This is really about determining how little privacy those who are not rich and powerful will have. Ba aa aa...
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Except it won't be equal on all sides liek your predict. Companies will be able to find out anything about you, but youwon't be able to find out nearly as much about corporations or politicians. Sort of like how t is now.
As a simple example, a friend of mine once wrote a program that would alert him whenever someone fingered his account.
Then there's the Webcrawler search voyeur, which lets you see all search requests made to Webcrawler. In this hypothetical future, it is conceivable that any search engine would be required to provide such an interface, and people could set up programs to monitor these streams for their own names, for example.
Except for one big problem...My private life is none of your goddamn business. What I like, dislike, do (and whom with) is none of your goddamn business. If I wanted people's noses stuck into my personal life, I would create one of those lame, ridiculous personal websites with all my personal details up for every buttwipe, geek, dweeb, pervert, psycho, and yes, even normal to dive into. But I don't do this and I wont.
Unless I agree otherwise, my medical history, personal beliefs and attitudes, my hobbies, my preferences, my sex life is NOBODY'S business but mine (and those directly involved). Period.
I'm no gun nut, but I would certainly take up arms to protect my ultimate rights of privacy from the world you seem to envision as desireable. No. It. Is. NOT. Desireable.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Remember that wonderful movie with Peter Sellers, Being There ? (here, too).
Here is a guy with the ultimate privacy: absolutely NO RECORD AT ALL, and when the President of the United States asks the FBI to do a background check on him, and when they come back totally empty-handed, the big-shots really start to shit in their pants, and some even think of having him run for president (I guess that's a prophecy of Ronald Reagan)...
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I can't sell your information so I'm going to charge you extra. Something here doesn't sound right. Like 90 of the "largest financial institutions" couldn't handle 17 billion less in income. Cry me a river.
Calling a group that is working against expansions of privacy a "Privacy Alliance" is just too shameless. I know there never will be, but there should be consequences for companies that participate in such deceitfulness.
The Nazi's had a "Charitable Transport Company for the Sick", which was responsible for picking up sick and elderly people and having them euthanized.
I'm not suggesting a moral equivalency betwen the Nazis and the corporations in the Online Privacy Alliance. But if these sorts of deceitful names are loathsome when tyrants use them, it should be made clear that they are just as loathsome when corporations use them.
So let me see here:
The Napster lawsuit says that I have no right to share corporate data personally across the internet.
This group is saying that I have no right to stop corporations from sharing my personal data across the internet.
I'll make them a deal, drop the Napster lawsuit, repeal the DMCA, and they can do what they want. Fair?
- Twid
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
And to think that less than a year ago, these same corporations tried to state that self-regulated privacy initiatives was the best way to go. They touted their privacy policies in the noses of every customer that visited their website or bought their product.
The sheer volume of mass privacy violations have proven that these initiatives are only PR fronts. The simple fact is that these companies don't care at all about the privacy of individuals.
As far as I am concerned, the US government has given them a chance and they failed. Now it's time to pay the piper.
I have been thinking about the following for a while; is it possible to create a little LCD-display that at the flick of a button produces a random barcode within a given range? This would be a very nice way to f*** the system. It would have to fit in a credit-card sized container ofcourse, and one would have to make sure the person behind the counter would actually accept it. But it would be fun.
2050:
***This is breaking news****
2025: Politicians and Media people are proven to stretch and distort the truth. They are running to 4th world countries that only have basic cable and dial up net access....
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
"Privacy is too expensive" actually means: "We could make a lot more money if we were allowed to sell your private data".
Claus
What value does the Alliance gives to it?
Well we see that:
"The money spent to produce the four studies underscores the importance the industry attaches to the issue. Turner said his study, which examined catalog sales, cost $50,000. Another was funded with a $10,000 grant from the World Bank. The two other studies, funded by Ernst & Young LLP and the Tower Group consulting firm, each cost more than $50,000, but the firms declined to say exactly how much they spent."
That is what they spend to save US$17 billion of expenses and a US$1 billion of a foggy "information tax"... Well US$18 billion that they save us from paying (anyway the consumer pays all)
It looks great...
But they claim that 17 billion will be saved by tacking your privacy. Besides the save is made thanks to the fact that someone sells and another buys such information. So there will be people getting some profit from it... Well, under such a figure, profit will be by the hundreds of millions. May be a billion, what is an interesting coincidence with that "information tax"... Well corps don't like to loose money. Not even that one they expect to get...
Now, let's go back to the citation. They paid nearly US$160,000 for these studies. DAMN! Nearly 0,02% of the profit they may be waiting to get. THAT'S A GOLD POT STUDY!!..
I think its a requirement in most (all ?) european countries that companies give you access to data that they hold on you (although they can charge an administration fee).
What interests me is the requirements are for identifying yourself to an organisation in order to get the information they hold on you.
Can you assign a third party the rights to collect your data ?
If so, I can see a business opportunity for a firm to collect all your data from all the companies with which you have contact. They could develop relationships (and possibly even direct data connections) to simplify the whole process.
Revenue streams could be :
1) Users wanting to collect their own data (if each firm currently charges ~£10 'administration' then this could be reasonably high)
2) Firms wishing to get rid of the hassle of providing customers with their own data
3) Once the data such as telephone / gas / other bills are centralised then a service could be offered where the bills are analysed to see if you could get a better deal with another company (I think both individuals and other companies would pay for this ?)
4) Others ?
Anybody interested in getting started on it ?!!
Corporations in the United States enjoy plenty of freedoms. One being the ability to collect and own information about you. They oppose laws that would aim to curb this?! No kidding!
With Dubya in the White House, you can bet that their concerns will be more important than all of what you whiney pro-privacy anarchists have to say.
Realistically, true privacy is a matter of personal devotion/paranoia. You can whine and bitch all you want about insecure tieclip.com is with your credit card, but most people don't think twice when they hand their credit card to a waiter and he leaves the room to charge it.
There are very few people, some you might consider insane, who will drastically inconveniance themselves in the name of privacy. Scott McNealy's ranting isn't all that unfounded.
Meanwhile, the HMO's consortium is claiming that leaving you outside at night on US soil (like Alaska in January,) would be more effective if they could get the federal guvmint to pay for freight.
Dubya decides that the death tax could be used to pay for shipping if he can't makes states pay.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Let's see... In the last few months we've, so far, heard:
Let's add a couple more. You know they're coming:
It boggles the mind that an entity that exists only on paper and by the permission of the government (You remember the government, don't you? That little thing ``By and Of The People''?) has more rights than ordinary citizens. How long before there is a major backlash by the public against the perks handed out to corporations by local, state, and the federal governments? I'm guessing not too long.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Why do the rich and powerful deserve more privacy than I have? Our current Gov. knows more about each of its citizens than any repressive 19th century leaders did, but since they are held accountable through representative democracy and the Freedom of Information act, we have the highest degree of freedom of any known society. So make the system fair. If Corporations want to invade our privacy, make them face the same.
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
I'm sure it required a good deal of research to come up with the concept that to monitor us is cheaper than not monitoring us. Yes, it makes perfect sense that it is cheaper to gather and retain data than not to gather and retain data. Uh-huh. These guys are comedians that aren't funny at all. It's actually because of things like this, that I push Linux to everyone I know(I use it because it's superior, I evangelize it because the alternatives lead to a dark future where shoddy standards and half assed software is crammed down our throats, like Microsofts laughable and highly insecure VPN implementation to mention one of many many things).
Bunch of bad clowns.
Show me an effect without cause and then I'll believe in chaos.
Thank you sir! I tip my hat at you. Someone please mod this man up. +7 humanity.
I am not a advertising receptacle. I am not a entertainment. I am a human being. I deserve the right to be left alone.
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
So, if you're a celebrity, even a minor one, you're screwed. There's no way you could monitor all those people checking you out.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Marketeers are not your friends. Targeted marketing is not being done for your benefit. These people already know too much about us; they don't need to know any more.
BTW, nice sig.
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
And all of that bloodshed isn't exactly the perfect foundation to build a utopia upon.
To email, do the obvious.
I don't see why not as long as you know the enecoding scheme and checksum algorithim (almost all barcodes have checksums) However, it would be difficult to make such a thing look like a regular card, and the lcd would need a white background. The only way you might be able to get away with it is make it look like you have a card that's in one of those orginiser sleves, and tell them it's stuch in there, and have the circut underneith. Most of the places don't even make you bring the card, you can just give them someone else's name and phone # who you know to have a card.