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The Value Of Privacy
This FTC release details what can happen to web sites that collect infomation about underage users without parental consent. "The FTC charged Monarch Services, Inc. and Girls Life, Inc., operators of www.girlslife.com; Bigmailbox.com, Inc., and Nolan Quan, operators of www.bigmailbox.com; and Looksmart Ltd., operator of www.insidetheweb.com with illegally collecting personally identifying information from children under 13 years of age without parental consent, in violation of the COPPA Rule." For collecting things like name and age (and in the case of the BigMailbox.com, making the info available to a 3rd party), the three companies were fined a sum of 100,000 dollars. You might like to read more on COPPA as well, and then the Center for Media Education's report on COPPA.
In related news, Spain imposed a fine on Microsoft for violating Spanish laws on data-transfer, for transfering employee information from servers in Spain to the U.S.
The children are underage - they do not have much money. But marjeters have a legitimate interest in them - it has been shown that children under the age of ten make most major purchasing decisions in family homes. If you are selling a car, or a house, or a bedspread, or an Operating System, getting to the children is the thing to do.
But why punish them for this? It is the fault of the parents for listening to their children. If parents had a more Victorian attitude to bringing up youngsters, these problems would not exist.
I think that it is not the children that should be punished, but rather the parents.
In a free market, information should not be a commodity. With this much I agree. Information should be free - by illegalising information, in this case information describing children, we are making it a more valuable commodity than ever.
It is time to let the companies off the leash, and have parents be responsible, not children.
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Of course it is not all bad, since these exact same tools could be used to monitor the monitors. The police may be able to use these tools to watch us, but we will also be able to use them to watch the police.
Rather than wasting time trying to prevent application of this technology (which will ultimately be futile), we should be trying to ensure that everyone has access to it.
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It's like Soupy Sales who said, on TV, "Okay, kids, now go through your parent's dresser and send me all the little green pieces of paper you find"...
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You assume time is free.
See how much extra time it takes at Radio Shack, for example, to purchase something without giving your name, address, and phone number. Even for a cash sale. Just last week I purchased a phone with cash. The clerks working the register couldn't make the sale without collecting information, so I had to improvise.
How about the extra trouble it takes to alter consent forms, for example, at the hospital? It takes time to make sure the hospital doesn't let every insurance company, drug company, federal organization, or private citizen know that you're having a test.
And a few nights ago when I used the pgp freespace wiper... five passes took 12+ uninterrupted hours.
In my experience, privacy has been expensive.
It is time to let the companies off the leash, and have parents be responsible, not children.
What's that? Parents be responsible for their children? Shocking!!
That's exactly the problem, although you stated it somewhat incorrectly. People seem to want the GOVERNMENT to be responsible for raising their children, rather than they themselves be responsible.
Cases in point: the CDA, the V-Chip, government mandating that all cigarette lighters be childproof, the list goes on and on. While I think it's a good idea for parents to create a safe environment for their children, it is the PARENTS' responsibility to do so, not the government's. You can't expect to raise your kids in a bubble. It's a tough world out there, and you will at some point have to teach your kids that and you will have to teach them how to survive in that tough world. Otherwise, they will not be able to cope.
My journal has hot
In my opinion, these are the important words in AlphaOne's post:
sell your information without your consent
Read it again, and you will understand the issue.
I have started calling the practice of selling personal information without consent data piracy or information piracy. Effectively, the companies are stealing your private information and making a profit from it.
It's just like software piracy, except for one important difference. Software pirates are often individuals, and the victims are often large corporations. Data pirates are often corporations, and the victims are individuals. Only large corporations have the finances to lobby effectively for law changes. So it's no surprise that software piracy is illegal but data piracy is not.
Corporations consider the sale of "address lists" to be an "accepted practice". Of course, software pirates would also call the piracy of software an "accepted practice". Having the criminals define what is acceptable behaviour is not very reliable.
Let's not mince words here. The definition of "piracy" in the modern corporate world is usually taken to mean making a profit by selling something that doesn't belong to you. So isn't the sale of someone else's personal details without their knowledge or consent piracy in the strictest definition of the term?
The biggest irony is that the MPAA and the RIAA are pirates because they sell their customer information.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Perhaps we need some better distinction between the boundaries of our personal space and other humans. Privacy is a rather broad term, perhaps we need to think about what the definition is. To take an example, consider a hypothetical 4 stage division
- Personal (I) - inner beliefs, personality, DNA
- Private (C) - habits, likes/dislikes,
- Profile (B) - perferences, purchases
- Public (P) - wider society, politics
So far the eCommerce hype has been focusing on B2C and B2B. However, I suspect that what people are (rightly or wrongly) concerned about is the invasion of the I space and the contamination of the P space. Psychologists note that we we form the major precepts of our identy by late teens/early 20s. As kids, most of us have that isolated playhouse, the hidden cave, or that secret garden where we imagine the world as it could be. As adults, we are rightly concerned about overbearing laws and corruption of the politcal process. As consumers we have learned to negotiate or establish natural boundaries. we don't expect religious institutions to be flogging indulgances (B2I) for sale (cough*Scientology*cough) or desire friendships (I-I) to be colored by pecuniary factors (cough*Amway*cough). With IT we can try to codify some of the interactions (think information waveguides), for example motor vehicle registration where you have to accept responsibility for personal care of a dangerous ton of metal and explosions in a public space. But for someone to use that and influence/divine your B2C behaviour is what we object to. Similarly doctor-patient reationship (P2I) is not something most want to leak into the B-space.
People forget that before our Western concept of civil laws (slowly replaced by commercial lures), we had social lores which were a tribe way of minimising social friction. The legal system is still a codification of social codes (along with economic incentives) which are proving to be increasingly imperfect as more splinter groups object to over-broad provisions. The concept of privacy which was evolved for P2I matters (freedom from trump charges corpus habeus?), torture, self-expression are not keeping up with technology as the I-C-B-P space fragments and wierd combinations undermine traditional assumptions. If you read Lessig books, you'd understand that the concept of privacy as interpreted by courts has morphed over the decades.
In short, the world is becoming a little bit more complex so you're probably seeing new intermeiatories forming (data aggregators, accumulators, agents) forming between B2C plus others (e.g. grass-roots lobby groups (astroturf campaigns notwithstanding) are just I2P intermeiatories. Once we think about it, you can probably be more precise in what you can define as privacy.
LL
I just finished reading "The Wizard of Oz" to my children, a superb book by the way, and all they talked about for weeks was getting the Oz action set, including the Emerald City playset, a full complement of Munchkins, Winkies, Flying Monkeys, posable Dorothy (silver shoes not included) with three sets of clothing, Cowardly Lion with the Kung Fu grip, Rock-em-sock-em Tin Woodman and Scarecrow with Real Action Straw (pins and needles sold separately.
I'm just glad when we read the Hobbit they didn't want the Turbo Smaug with real flame. It was expensive enough buying the Laketown playset, and I waited in line for three hours for the last Bombur figure.
All those old classics are chock full of subtle marketing.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Lighten up, dude. It's a story. Why does everything have to expose everyone to all that is bad in the world. What's so wrong about children being children? Do you think my three-year-old would enjoy the story if the Scarecrow suddenly took 17 slugs in a drive-by shooting? Why is that everyone at Slashdot (most of whom, not coincidently don't have children) think you can treat children like miniature adults. What's wrong with a little fantasy?
Of course, I don't even know why I'm responding since you don't actually site any examples in your gratuitous assertion... that -1 score is there for a reason.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I missed your URL. My eyes automatically tuned it out as a .sig. Still I hardly consider anything Salon has to say as more than the ramblings of self-absorbed, twenty-something intellectual-wannabes. If children were intellectually and emotionally capable of understanding the complexities (and often horrors) of life, they wouldn't be children.
I have also read Lewis and Tolkien to my children and they liked those, too, and while I recognize that their works are superior, I still think that Baum's books are worth reading, particularly to preschool-age kids. I read "The Hobbit" to my older kids when my three-year-old was a baby, I doubt, were I to read it now, she would have the patience or comprehension to sit through it. However, that's up to her. We also read plenty of shorter fare like Thomas the Tank Engine (the originals are also classics, IMO), and light stuff like Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain Bears. Given that my kids have over 100 books, I think there's room for "The Wizard of Oz" among them.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The Victorian attitude is one of fetishizing the child and putting them in cute little costumes. Not something to strive for.
It's certainly better spin / marketing than the truth - which is "We resell all our users' information, but under COPPA, the law would rake us over the coals for it if we didn't have this disclaimer. By continuing to use this service, you agree that you're over 13, and therefore, that we're legally entitled to resell the shit out of anything our spyware can find out about you."
These few cases which made it to court are probably only the tip of an iceberg. And the result of what probably amounts to the data of some hundredthousand Individuals is a 100.000$ fine. Probably the collected data is used anyway, since noone can control how often it was copied. Considering, that probably only a few percent of those cases make it to court at all the data costs about 0.01-0.10$ 'legal fees' per individual.
Well they can even make more money selling that information to spammers.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Unless my definition of privacy is distorted, in this ideal world, no information would be held in secret. Therefore any information that could be used to bring harm to you or someone you know physically, financially, or otherwise would be publicly available. That really doesn't sound ideal to me.
Why is Jesse Jackson signing his name as "Resident George Bush"?
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
When one side has the power to control your behavior under the threat of corporeal punishment, you may find having that camera in your hand a moot point after they take your film away. T
here is no equality when the other side has a gun and the law on its side to use it. Privacy is your only protection against those who would seek to control everything you do.
Your boss can control what you do at work, but has no business meddling in the affairs of your home. Why? Because it's you're privacy.
Why people so complacently give up their rights because "there's nothing that can be done" totally escapes me.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Paying 100,000 dollars wasn't that big of a punishment for these companies.
After all, say you go to a school yard, ask passing children about their personal lives, and then hand the information over to someone else.
You think a fine is the worst you will get?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
that is pretty interesting...i didn't realize bigmailbox did that...I always thought it was a pretty neat service, to set up your own free webmail at your domain with bigmailbox...but I think i will postpone my use of bigmailbox until they change their rules...i don't like the idea of collecting info from kids...especially info that shows who these kids are. However, I wonder how many kids actually state that they are under thirteen and don't have their parents consent? I know when I was under thirteen...i would always check the box 16 or older or something that didn't signify my age...of course...i also ussually put down my address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington D.C. .....
The anti-salmon
Consider this:
It takes no money to encrypt an email.
It takes no money to use ssh/openssh.
It takes no money to disable cookies.
It takes no money NOT to buy something online.
It takes no money NOT to fill in forms.
Privacy is free... violating someone else's privacy is what gets expensive.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Exactly how do you verify this on the 'net? Is it enough with a checkbox that says "Yes, mommy says it's OK"? What about "Please enter dads credit card # and expiry date"? Come on! I can debate the morality/legality of requesting this kind of information from kids, but parental consent? That's just ridiculous.
^]:wq!^M
Companies like Digicash (today eCash Technologies) or Zeroknowledge are having a hard time these days. eCash was shut down completely in Europe with the stop of the Deutsche Bank support (see here), ZKS let go more than 25% of their employees a couple of weeks ago, not many people are using Hushmail's premium service, etc. etc. yada yada. Everybody wants privacy, nobody wants to pay. It costs money to run a mixing network, it costs money to issue and check coins instead of just doing a LUN check to see if you CreditCard# is valid. SET was also a failure in the US. 3D Secure (see here) is coming up, protecting only the merchant, not the sensitive information of consumers. Why? Nobody wants to pay.
Maybe that "this service is unavailable to kids under 13" warning when the Windows ICQ client pops up aren't so stupid after all...
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Maybe there ought to be a law protecting web site owners from children.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
I remember an article when Bill Gate's worth topped 100B and Microsoft was valued at over 500B. It said that Microsoft was now more valuable than Spain's domestic product. Of course, the recent stock slump probably put Spain back on top, but with things starting to turn the corner perhaps they are jealous?
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A world in which goverment and corporations have all the cameras, and give privacy "guarantees" to the private citizens they monitor, or
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A world in which everyone has a camera, including private citizens, to watch anyone or anything they wish, at any time, including someone watching them.
Of course, option (2) is the death of privacy as we know it, but option (1) is the death of privacy, period.The core problem with privacy protection as people conceive it today is that it has to grapple with a fundamental inequality between the observer and the observed. It tries to correct for this inequality by extracting flimsy promises to maintain equality, usually backed with only the carrot of being labeled Good, and the stick of being labeled Bad. The problem is that the ones with the information are inherently amoral; they have no sense of right and wrong.
The primary thing that seems to have kept amoral entities from perform immoral acts in the past is that there has been at least some barrier, some extra work, involved in doing so. With ever accelerating technology, these barriers are now crumbling with exponential speed, making it easier and easier to not only intentionally, but unintentionally, perform immoral acts involving the breach of privacy. When it becomes as easy to correllate people with their detailed demographic information by doing a simple table join, what coropration or government will realistically be able to resist?
Instead, why not base the idea of privacy protection on equality between parties, a fundamental check and balance system which is self-correcting? Sure, this may make you feel like you're living in the Big Brother house, except that now, you get to do the same to Big Brother. Why should we settle for any less?
The only certainty is entropy.
You are too young to fill out this form, please try again
I like meat helmets.
Off the leash? When were they ever ON the leash? Americans have rights, including the right not to have their personal information stolen, and used for someone elses profit. The businesses mentioned here do that, and THOUSANDS of others not mentioned here do the same. Whether you think privacy is a dream, a preference, or a right, you should understand that no one here is a goddamned farm animal that exists only for the purpose of providing for a master. The only despicable thing about this story is that most people aren't young enough to be protected by the 4th amendment.
One would hope some of these laws could be a little less brutal for the companies. Don't get me wrong I'm all for privacy by all means, however lawmakers also have to understand, there is no definite way to ensure that whomever is visiting a particular site is overage.
Somehow I can see this falling into a deep damning fight between privacy groups like the ACLU, EPIC, etc., and companies who could be held liable without true reasons. Negligence? I think not, what are some of these companies going to do, create a webcam, fingerprint, biometric system to check ages?
Lets get real about this, sure you could say, well they could use a credit card which would show they're over 13, but then a 13 year old can run into their parents belongings and enter a valid CC number. So where is the move to protect against those companies from being charged with crimes, from being victims themselves?
Privacy Links
360 degrees of Karma
I've spoken with my kids, of course, about NOT giving out phone numbers, addresses, etc... I only let them use the web browser when I'm in the room with them. But one really can't stand over teenagers and preteens every minute they are online. It's not enjoyable for either party, and you have to be able to teach your kids proper behavior and let them practice a bit on their own at some point before they turn 18.
But, I like seeing that someone is looking out for the kids. It is far more serious for a pre-teen to have someone get their real name, address, and so on, than it is for an adult. We try to train our children how to be safe and smart, but they aren't adults yet. And they aren't saavy.
Then again, how does one inform parents and get their permission? It's true, some kids could just sign up for some free e-mail throw-away account, enter it as their parents address, and then respond to the emails sent there, as though they were the parent. When my children have gone to online sites, such as Disney, or Mamamedia (?), I have cringed when they asked for my email address. I didn't want to give out my email and be getting spam. If the kids want to give out their email, and deal with spam, fine. But I don't want it in my mailbox!
In a perfect world, I'd like to see online companies held to such a restriction, that they can't collect or sell personal data on children. (Heck, I'd like to see that enforced for ALL Internet users, regardless of age, but for children especially.) But this isn't a perfect world. I don't see any easy solution.
Parent vigilance is the only way to deal with this at this point.
Spain imposed a fine on Microsoft for violating Spanish laws on data-transfer, for transfering employee information from servers in Spain to the U.S.
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You stole my data. Prepare to die.