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Scott McNealy On Privacy
howardjp writes: "Scott McNealy's editorial, The Case Against Absolute Privacy", appeared in this morning's edition of the Washington Post. He seems to think keeping records on the public is a good idea..." McNealy is famous for his "You have zero privacy anyway, get over it" quote.
While people may like privacy, if, as Scott says, you don't have any anyway, then there's two ways society can go - towards a big-brother like police state, or a much nicer alternative outlined by David Brin, in his book "The Transparent Society", the first chapter of which is available on-line at www.kithrup.com/brin/trans_chap1.htm Basically, he says that if the police/government/freemasons/etc can watch your every move, we'd better make sure that we are free to watch their every move too...
I assigned some students, in response to his quote, to find his drivers' license number, home address, etc. He's right.
Your predictions about a future "sane," privacy-free society, however, are ludicrous. We already have (had) an example of that society. It was called Soviet Russia. If you sincerely believe that it is possible to have any sort of sane existence in such a society, I highly recommend that you go live in one for a while. Unfortunately the Soviet Empire no longer exists in quite that form, but there are a few other places that are close: China, possibly Cuba, and several others. Go read Arthur Koestler's "Darkness At Noon," then think about it for a while. Unless you have firsthand experience with the logical extremes to which your ideas lead, I would consider your post an ultra-naive troll at best.
And before you flame off a response, I was born in Russia and immigrated to the U.S. twenty years ago, so I have a pretty good idea of how things really work in both places.
-HR
p.s. You may also want to think about the fact that if the situation were reversed, i.e. you lived in a place which had no privacy, and you publicly and severely criticized several of the fundamental principles of that place as you've done here, you could very well be tracked down and hauled off to prison for your post. {sarcasm} On the other hand, I'd never have to hear from you again, so maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing after all... {/sarcasm}
Every human right is socially constructed. The right to life is not "fundamental"--what would that even mean?
Fundamentally, there are no "universal" (intrinsic, whatever) human (or animal) rights; only rights a human or animal has are the ones he/she/it can obtain and uphold. This doesn't mean other rights don't exist; they just aren't fundamental and are "granted" by society, that acts as a unit to uphold those rights independent of individuals powers to do so. At least that's the basic idea. Still, it doesn't make these rights any less valuable, weaker or unnatural.
http://www.privacyalliance.org/ This has all the paid experts, phoney studies, ponied up opinion polls, Sun is a member. Just like Tobacco, Asbestos, Nukes, whatever. All have these propaganda organizations lobbying to get advantages. I bet the article was written by the Online Privacy Alliance flacks not Scott of Sun.
He's not doing a very good job of it:
http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/05/29/markets/markets_ne wyork/
... and we should respond by publishing all his private personal information in all the newspapers and websites in the nation. he obviously won't mind.
Folks, to understand Scott's comments, you need to understand Scott's world. He never uses wintel machines, he strictly uses SunRay connected to a Sun Server, or else a Power Mac, no poorly thought out clients for him. But more importantly, he only does business with RESPECTED online businesses. That is, businesses with a well thought out and clearly stated policy on such matters, deployed on a well thought out infrastructure. So no cruising crappy fly-by-night websites giving out all your info in hopes of getting some bullshit freebie, just to be upset six months later when the business goes under and sells off your info.
As always, you need to be smart about these things, this isn't a flaw with computers, this is a flaw with your fellow human beings who sometimes try to get over on you. Use your head, or else go be a hermit in some shack in minnasota.
Any company that doesn't properly safeguard people's personal information will suffer the same fate as a bank that doesn't safeguard people's money. It will go out of business. Properly administered, the online environment offers more privacy protections, not fewer.
Properly administered, perhaps. But 'properly' can mean a lot of things, including who judges what 'properly' translates to in the real world.
In exchange for a little information, you can get an online experience that's more in tune with your interests and needs.
Certainly that's self-evident. The question is, am I aware of what information I'm divulging, and with whom it's being shared, and do I consent? Furthermore, if there is any money to be made from the sales of that information, am I going to get some of it? Or just your buddies?
for that level of service, most people would gladly reveal their personal preferences
I'm glad to see that you recognize that while most people MAY, not WOULD (again it's a question of evidence -- and you don't display any), there is a group of people that would NOT. That is their prerogative, and they should not be unduly penalized for exercising that prerogative.
Your buddies may be happy about a world where they're free to romp and profit as their desires dictate, but the question is whether the side effects are going to be substantial enough to inconvenience and even harm a significant number of people. So far, the evidence I see indicates that there is a lot of potential for real harm, which is hardly counterbalanced by a little convenience.
Nealy fails to discuss the most glaring immediate outcome of a privacy-free society, which is that a few people will make a shitload of money from it. Apart from that, the big question is whether we really want to allow the junk-bond mentality into our intimate lives, along with the enormous potential for criminal abuses, like scamming, identity theft, blackmail -- and yes, even Big Brother.
Similarly, the FBI insisted on tracking the location of cellphone users, on the justification that they could be found if they dialed 911. But the cellphone, too, could send its location only upon dialing 911.
In another editorial in the tech press, a writer recently argued for tollbooths collecting an ID from everyone who passes through. At the cost of a privacy loss, you don't have to wait at the booth. But in Europe, they're using an anonymous digital cash system to get the same benefit, without tracking people's movements.
I'm suspicious of people who argue for massive privacy violation, for the sake of benefits that can be obtained without such violation. It makes me wonder what they're really up to.
I'm quite surprised that there hasn't been an attempt from the private sector to create a complete database of personal information similar to records kept by various government agencies.
With cameras in supermarkets tracking what people look at, various security cameras and microphones posted around cities, car tracking systems, software registration system, huge mailing lists, and other monitoring, a well funded company should be able to track virtually every person in the US from 18 (or younger) to death.
I can imagine voice and face recognition systems identifying unknown individuals and entering them into a system. Various conversations recorded with others that would pick up information about their name and other vital information. Taste in music, movies, clothes and what have you can be obtained via various department store camaras.
You could track friends and form associations between individuals. Even with minimal monitoring a company could get a wealth of information about a person.
Once home networks become popular, chips in your CD player or receiver (or a combination) could report how loud music you are playing is and you could automatically be billed if your neighbors can hear the music (public performance) or if more than a certain number of people are at your house.
Of course, there are a lot of good that could be accomplished with this information as well. Advertisements that come would be tailored to you so junk mail you are not interested in would cease to exist (track comments about items you made in a department store about a TV for instance).
Of course there are legal issues that would need to be removed. I could see this company acting as a proxy for all other companies to collect personal information. If Sun, for example, wanted to mail everyone who had blue eyes between 20 and 30 years old with at least $40,000 in the bank working in the tech industry about a new monitor made for blue eyed people, they could hand over the mail to this proxy company to send out instead. That would avoid the need to transfer the personal information between companies.
Interesting world we live in.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Any company that doesn't properly safeguard people's personal information will suffer the same fate as a bank that doesn't safeguard people's money.
Safeguarding money is the primary thing you expect a bank to do, so your decision of a bank will be based on its ability to keep your money safe for you. Privacy is rarely one's primary concern in picking a company. Most people will pick a privacy-violating company to save a couple of bucks, to the point that companies with fair privacy policies will be playing at a disadvantage.
Take medical records. If you're in an accident, do you want an ambulance driver to be able to access your medical records online? I think you do.
Yes. That does not imply that I want my medical records on the public Internet. Here's a better idea: carry your medical history around on a (possibly electronic) tag, physically on your body. If you're in a wreck, the ambulance driver can scan the tag to find your medications, allergies, etc., but no cracker or spammer can steal or buy your information without physically approaching you.
Even if I did want my medical records on the Internet, that doesn't mean I want my buying habits, my physical location, and my web-browsing preferences tracked, too.
One of the chief benefits, to use a more routine example, is personalized service. In exchange for a little information, you can get an online experience that's more in tune with your interests and needs.
Keep it optional, and only collect the information you need. Merchant sites shouldn't need me to establish an account and shouldn't remember my address and credit card number unless I ask them to. A portal site doesn't need your e-mail address or a clicktrail just to display a stock quote or a weather map. Many people are willing to trade convenience for privacy -- just because McNealy isn't doesn't mean the entire industry should follow his suggestions.
I have agreed to let my car company, for instance, track my every move through GPS satellites.
GPS is a lovely system in that only you know your location. OnStar (or whatever similar system) only reveals your location through its cellular-network connection. GPS itself is excellent from a privacy standpoint.
I find it comforting to know that, should my air bag deploy, they know where I am and can send help.
Obviously, you should only have to reveal your location if your air bag deploys. Unless you crash or specifically ask for directions, your car manufacturer has no reason and no right to know your location.
Someday soon you could find yourself in a strange city and your Web-enabled wireless phone will be able to recommend a nearby restaurant based on your fondness for French, Italian or Mexican cuisine
Slow down, cowboy. I'd rather not share my food-purchasing habits with just anyone within cell-phone range, just so that restaurants who want my business can spam me with "click here to make a reservation" ads. The right way to do this is to have my GPS-enabled phone do a search for "Mexican restaurant Boston" when you tell it to. I don't want every Mexican restaurant in Boston to start sending me pitches as soon as I get off the plane.
To put this in context: lots of people seem to think I'm interested in pyramid schemes, weight-loss programs, pornography, and laser printer supplies, at least judging by the contents of my e-mail inbox. Merchants are not very discerning about who they think will be interested in their ads.
Letting restaurants send my ads through my cell phone primarily benefits one entity: my cell phone provider. You can be sure that they'll charge a healthy fee per ad forwarded, even though it costs them essentially nothing. Your location is valuable information, and your cell phone provider has no right to discern it (let alone sell it!) without your permission.
most people would gladly reveal their personal preferences, as long as they feel certain the information won't be misused.
Do you suppose Scott has actually gone out and surveyed people, or do you think he's just speaking for himself? Again, I don't want Scott's windbag opinions dictating the service that companies offer me. Also: how does Scott propose to guarantee that information won't be misused? Companies violate (and change) privacy policies all the time. Companies' credit-card databases get broken into. Does Scott have a magic bullet to fix these problems, or is he just dismissing them as irrelevant? I'm in no way "certain" that my private information is being safeguarded.
So far the industry has done a pretty good job of regulating itself.
Bull. Amazon changed its privacy policy without letting people opt out. eToys sold its customer list to the highest bidder. One company I deal with told me that they "do not, ever, sell customer lists to third parties except when it's legal to do so." Cute. When money talks, privacy walks.
Most companies now post formal privacy policies on their Web sites
Ten pages of dense legalese isn't very helpful. Privacy policies are rarely customizable in any meaningful way. I'd take a lower interest rate on my bank account in trade for the assurance that my banker isn't selling my banking habits to any credit merchant who asks, but I don't have that option. Posting a "we can screw you, here's how" policy isn't much help, even assuming that the company actually follows it and has no security breaches.
allow visitors to have a say in how information about them is used.
Is he talking about the "don't send me junk mail" opt-out check boxes, or about the not-yet-implemented P3P? Either way, it's a token gesture.
Maybe some enterprising magazine will start publishing an annual list of the companies with the best policies and practices. The Privacy 500, perhaps.
Consumer Reports has started writing about privacy, and from their stories, the picture looks bleak. They've concluded that the best option is to complain publicly and lobby for legislation. Informing consumers isn't enough, because there aren't meaningful privacy options availble.
Ugly privacy policies I can't change, just off the top of my head: my grocery store tracks my purchases so that they can design store layout and coupons to compel me to buy more. My phone company tracks my calling habits to pitch long distance plans that I don't want. (And they typically call at 8:30AM with such pitches.) My credit cards all track my purchases and sell the information to merchants. My bank sells information about my mortgage so that third parties can try to sell me insurance. Many of the web sites I visit track my click-trails to find ways to manipulate me into spending more time at their site. Many web merchants that I buy from insist that establish an account before I can buy anything, and a few even remember my credit card even once the transaction is over. I'm currently healty, but once I have a medical record worth selling, I'm sure my health insurer will find someone to sell it to.
I should have the right to demand that information about me be protected while it's needed, destroyed when it's no longer needed, and never sold to third parties, ever.
It's impossible to have privacy- he's right about that. It reminds me of a Rex Stout ('Nero Wolfe') story I've read, in which the detective, Wolfe, is being consulted by a woman who claims someone is trying to kill her husband. Wolfe's response? "Go talk to police. I can't stop anyone from trying to kill your husband- killing a man is the easiest thing in the world. That is why we have the social contract to protect and defend each other- because the practical difficulty in killing a man is nil."
Well, it's the same with privacy- the practical difficulty in violating privacy is nil. Buy something, there's a record. Make a remark to somebody, there's a record. Make it by email- a spyable record! It's completely ridiculous to expect there to be technological, mechanical means to protect privacy. Privacy is a myth. You _can_ know pretty much whatever you want, to a greater or lesser extent. You could probably get Scott's credit card records if you had the money to pay for the process- go through banks, manufacture a likely reason why you'd need to audit them and no problem.
However, what people are really concerned about is not literal privacy. It is being singled out and attacked based on some cross-correlated weakness. If you have some gene out of place, or bought a friend a bottle of whisky before you left for a long road trip, you don't want to have your driver's license revoked. Maybe if you're very wise you want your car to go dead intentionally if you get behind the wheel while drunk, but you don't want it to go dead because someone in another state determined that your statistical likelihood of having an accident increased beyond acceptable limits: that would be a violation of a personal liberty based on an impersonal criterion.
By the same token, you don't want to be tracked down and killed/beaten up by gaybashers/basherbashers/Microsoft employees/opensource zealots/abortion activists/antiabortion activists/etc. There are loads of potential reasons why someone might want to injure or kill almost any specific person, and loss of privacy simply means that anyone with a serious bone to pick has the technical ability to hunt down any such target- just the same as, if you're cooking dinner and cutting up food with a knife, you technically have the ability to leap out and sink the knive into the chest of any or all of your dinner guests. But you don't... it's not about _ability_ to do such things, ability is assumed.
Loss of privacy must be assumed, too.
Which only means that, perhaps to McNealy's chagrin, the social contract's gotta be taken seriously. 'Free behavior' ain't gonna cut it. In the no-walls world of the future, people will have to be _forced_ to show respect (including respect for privacy in another sense- akin to how Japanese houses can have paper walls: if you're not in the room you must fail to notice anything going on behind the paper wall).
Failure to do this will have roughly the same effect as leaping out and plunging a knife into your dinner guests: the important thing is to address the problem appropriately. Putting everyone at the dinner party into straitjackets and handcuffs is NOT the answer, even though it IS the only way to technically stop knife attacks on dinner guests.
Privacy is a right, privacy along goes hand in hand with Liberty, and Liberty is protected in the Constitution of the United States numerous times.
Had there been no Privacy, there could have been no Revolt against the United Kingdom in 1775.
As for the ownership of Firearms, yes, that too is a right, laid out in the Constitution of the United States as well. Any right held by a Democratic-Republic, even your right to life, has been "invented", most of them invented in the last 300 years. Like the right to vote, the right to own land, the right for women to vote, the right for women not to be bought and sold like livestock, the right not to be enslaved.
If you look upon the Bible for your basic rights, like in Genesis for example, you will not find many rights at all. Was there a right to life? No, there was not. Was there even freedom of worship? No, there was not.
While The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance, Liberty also must include Privacy, for every absolute government is at heart a tyranny, and only through privacy can the people avoid being ruled by a tyranny.
The current status is: McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334 (1995).
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
The airbag's deployance (is that a word?) triggers some extra info to be sent somewhere, notifying that the airbag went off. This is apparently a bit of electronics to send this signal, why not just include the GPS info with it, rather than send it ALL THE TIME?
We're also speculating that a loss of signal is NOT interpreted as an accident, otherwise the 911 folks would show up at a lot of parking garages.
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Ok, let's see, there are HOW MANY Chinese restaurants in Manhattan? And if it knows I like pork fried rice, I'm going to get like 2000 emails on my web-phone?
No thanks, Scott.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Actually, the right to bear arms is given to a much larger group.
Even assuming that the phrase in the Bill of Rights is intended to limit those who are eligible rather than to simply give a reason for the inclusion of the 2nd Amendment (and I think that assumption is false) your statement is false.
According the the U.S. Code, Title 10, Section 311 the definition of militia is:
Title 32, section 313 covers who is eligible for enlistment in the National Guard and who is eligible for appointment as an officer.
OpenSourcerers
Guns work by propelling a lead bullet at supersonic speeds. This can only cause harm to something, whether it be a tree or a human being. Therefore, guns are good.
Hmm, we seem to have some disagreement about the definitions of bad and good.
OpenSourcerers
Tell that to the millions of unarmed and oppressed people of the world.
OpenSourcerers
Actually, since I was careful to include a link to the Section of 311, perhaps I didn't quote it as a space consideration. I notice that you carefully avoided quoting it in its entirety, preferring instead to edit it.
Paragraph (b) was clearly not required as we are discussing the definition of who is in the militia, not how those people are allocated in the militia.
Paragraph (b) says:
Which is simply a statement of how the militia defined in paragraph (a) as:
are distributed. There is the organized militia in the form of the National Guard and the Navy and then there is everyone else who qualified under paragraph (a).
If I say in paragraph (a) that swans are large water fowl that shall be fed corn and then in paragraph (b) I say that swans consist of the white ones and the not white ones, that does not mean that only white swans shall be fed corn.
You also failed to quote much of Article 1 Section 8 which says:
Since some of the militia are employed in the service of the United States it is clear that some of the militia is not. I.e., some of the militia is organized, receiving paychecks, and being given government issued weapons while some of the militia is not organized, not receiving paychecks, and is providing their own weapons per the 2nd amendment.
Your argument trying to use the absence of orders from the President fails basic logic. He also did not issue orders to launch ICBMs, that does not that mean they can't be launched.
In fact, the President does have the power to:
So in the event of an insurrection or invasion that was beyond the capability of the organized militia to handle I would expect the President to issue an order for the unorganized militia to step forward.
The fact that the Supreme court has made certain rulings does not obviate my right to share an alternate interpretation with millions of citizens. The Supreme Court and the the rest of the government (in fact, all governments of free people) operate at the largesse of the citizenry which may revoked at will as demonstrated in 1776.
OpenSourcerers
David Chaum invented blindable digital credentials in the 80's and 90's for precisely the reason that McNealy is talking about here -- so that you can do things like let the movie theatre know that you like scifi flicks and you are 3 blocks away without letting the movie theatre know who you are.
The idea that McNealy is pushing, that you can give out information about yourself in little bits, and make the recipients promise not to share it, is stupid, as should be obvious to anyone who knows about previous attempts to prohibit the free exchange of information.
If mega-corps can't prevent average users from trading information against their wishes, then how well do you think that average users will fare trying to prevent mega-corps from trading information against their wishes? Or, for that matter, other average users. There are already profitable small businesses whose sole job is to collect and organize and sell information about normal users.
The "give us your information and we promise not to mis-use it" model is just idiotic at the technological level. (That is .NET's laughable "privacy model", too.) However, there is a technological alternative: Chaumian digital credentials.
Regards,
Zooko
Now, that's a nice strawman.
He said he would be willing to give up some privacy for greater convenience. Most of us do. I give up some privacy by using my tivo. I give up some privacy by shopping at Amazon. I give up some privacy by using credit cards for purchases. I give up some privacy by using the safeway club card to get grocery discounts. I give up some privacy by buying an airline ticket, renting a car or checking in to a hotel.
When McNealy said you have "zero privacy", he was using a literary device called hyperbole. I don't think he was expecting it to be used against him by fallacious arguments such as yours.
The issue isn't whether information is going to be shared or not. The issue is who controls the process: individuals or large companies?
Of course I want my medical records available to doctors if I collapse. But that problem is solved quite simply with a medic alert bracelet. Lots of people use them. Lots of people CHOOSE to use them.
But does a guy who had psychiatric treatment want a potential employer to know that he took prozac for 14 months two years ago?
McNealy's piece is an argument against a straw man. As someone who uses Sun products, I'd feel better if he took his head out of the clouds and tried to fix problems with Java Web Start and the Solaris download process. It seems that more and more often Sun stuff is broken out of the box.
Fix that stuff, then tell us how to run the world.
Scott M isn't looking for support because his
uncle raped him when he was five, or because
his government wants to hang him for doing a
certain type of exercise. If he were an individual in such circumstances, his comments
might have some merit. But he isn't. He's
a billionaire, who lives in a bubble of illusion
that the world is a friendly place.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
if( supreme_court > state_court ) {
sc00ter.has.clue = TRUE;
Anonymous.coward.idiot = TRUE;
}
In a world without privacy, the born-again Christians would be a tad more realistic, indeed, there'd likely be less born-again Christians, because for the most part, their squeaky clean expectations are unrealistic, and they wouldn't be able to maintain the charade.
>Would you like an amulance driver to know your medical record?
Of course.
>How about your prospective boss when he goes to hire you?
Sure, why not?
>Would you like to have a web site offer you choices based upon past purchases?
Yep
>How about if they sell that to every spam vendor an his brother?
If they mention that on the web site as a condition of the service, and I still want that service, sure.
>Do you run your network without a firewall?
No, but not because I don't want people reading my email. I do it because some people are malicious and would destroy my data.
>Do you park your car with the keys still in it?
Nope, see above. I don't care if someone climbs in my car, looks around, listens to my CDs and reads my insurance and registration, but I want it to be there when I come back.
>If you trust everyone with your personal information why then do you protect it?
There is a difference between someone knowing something about me and stealing my car. If you don't realize that... then I just wasted time responding to a troll.
Unless I am mistaken, OnStar does not track you constantly. How would it? As far as I know OnStar uses PCS (or similar cell based technology) to send information. For those that are not aware, GPS is a one way technology. No data is sent from your GPS unit to the sattelites only from the sattelites to you. As far as I know, the way that OnStar works is that certain events cause the system to "call" OnStar, send some information and disconnect. I don't think the $10.00 a month or whatever the cost is affords you unlimited, constant cell/PCS air time.
So, you want the protection from your illness, you just don't wanna pay for it? Keeping that kind of information from your insurance company is why everyone else is paying for your problems. There is a difference between privacy and fraud.
The problem is that you are wrong. People DO want it. YOU might not, but I am guessing you are a geek (like me, and a lot of people on Slashdot). You have the ability to think intelligently and logically about what you want and find it. I know a lot of people who couldn't use a search engine to find the location of Yahoo.com (it's www.yahoo.com). Searching doesn't work for the masses, only the people that know how to use it effectivly.
I assume you mean dumb laws like, "It's illegal to steal stuff that isn't yours?"
Downloading Gameboy roms *is* illegal, whether you want to believe it or not. Stopping theft isn't a dumb law. You will realize this the first time you produce something that you want to sell.
*sigh* What are you going to provide Scott for that information? He uses OnStar so he can be found before he dies and it's HIS CHOICE to use it. By providing you with all that information what are you giving him? Is it something that he would choose to give you information for? If not, your point is invalid.
Once again, for those not paying attention. Onstar doesn't track you in real time. It only tracks when you call em say "Where the hell am I?" or when your airbag explodes (and other similar events).
And this tirade has /what/ to do with stealing Gameboy roms?
The "thought police"? Please, give me a break.
Or maybe that phone that you bought (or the particular wireless service you use) has deals with certain restaurants in the area. Possibly, it might match your tastes against the highest value deal they have. If I have a taste for Italian, is it going to just point me to the nearest Fizzoli's (utter crap) or will it reccomend the little restraunt right in front of me that doesn't have some multi-million deal?
Here's are different ways to find the best restaurants in a strange town: Look for the one with the most cars, but ignore the ones with all out of state license plates. Avoid fast food.
McNealy's proposal does nothing but screw the little restaurant on the corner and direct your tastes to the highest bidder. If this idea became reality, we all would eat McCrap on our travels. Blech.
Taos
If, as you might expect, the air bag deploying is a result of some kind of impact, the GPS may suddenly cease to function. Knowing that it has suddenly ceased to do so may be enough to save your life.
_____
My Journal
Then what is your real name, Lovers_Arrival_The at americanwicca.com?
Actually, McNealy doesn't get it yet but he
is shooting himself in the foot because he
is promoting MS vision of the internet and
thus trying to play on MS terms. Microsoft
is trying to build an integrated network
experience and trying to lock customers to
store their prefs in MS formats. McNealy's
arguments today will inevitably drive his
company out of business once it becomes
impossible to do e-commerce without MS software
(oh, about 3-10 years, I'd guess).
His point is valid, releasing some private information can generate a highly personalized experience, and this is of great value to many people. I enjoy watching Amazon try to recommend things to me with my diverse and odd tastes.
The problem I see with current privacy online is threefold--you often are not given the option to not generate personalization, the information gathered is often, if not always, shared, and most importantly, cross referencing can destroy all limits.
This last point he didn't really touch on in the article--but with just a small amount of xref work, some good logic and a bit of human input, even very small data points can be combined to generate a detailed profile. Evidentally, even mouse click patterns can help ID an individual.... This is why we jumped up and down and shouted when doubleclick wanted to link its databases.
Until we get this last problem solved, I will continue opting out and bitching about privacy issues at every corner.
I don't have any hope it will happen anytime soon, or through any technology-only method (it's a societal problem, you can do it with public records and develop a similar profile if you have a lot of time).
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
He's famous for being the CEO of Sun. If he weren't CEO of Sun, no one would have cared about that quote.
The problem with his article is that most of his examples are invalid. The ambulance-attendant one is the only valid one. The others can be accomplished without giving up any personal information. The car, for example, could transmit it's GPS location only when the airbag did deploy. The phone doesn't need to know my preference in restaurants when I can just ask it for the list of Mexican restaurants within a certain distance of this street corner whenever I'm in the mood for Mexican food.
He starts out by asking what personal information you need to give up to an outside entity to let them do a certain thing. It'd be better to start by asking whether you need to give up any personal information to have them answer a particular question. More often than Scott would apparently like, the answer will be "No, I don't.".
What a great troll!!
The only rights we can have are truly fundamental - the right to life, for example.
As Heinlein pointed out, there is no such right.
Privacy is not a right, it is a manufactured abomination, a cover for the dishonest and unnatural.
Clothing is the most immediate practical example of privacy-protecting technology. Do you practice what you preach?
:)
Actually when I got to thinking more about the troll, we don't even have the right to life. If we were living in a purely Darwinian society, the weakest member would just be kicked out of the group and left to die.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Not to pick out one point from an otherwise "interesting" point of view, but in the US, bearing arms *IS* a right. At least according to the constitution.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
end of line
If this is indeed the case, then let's turn this thing into a big nudist colony and have everyone naked. Make all the data available to everyone. How about full sunshine laws for every goverment office, NGO, and corporation?
I drank what? -- Socrates
oh boy, here we go.
BilldaCat
If SUN, as a Corporate Entity, chooses to ignore privacy, which consumers are demanding, then the market will quickly remedy that situation. . .
To quote the Constitution of the United States, 4th Amendment:
Now, I realize that the USA isn't the entire world, but the EU also places a high value on privacy. . .
On a Sun box of course!
All rights are socially constructed. That doesn't mean that they aren't real -- they're real as long as we (as a society) continue to value them. The right to privacy is becoming controversial because it is highly valued by a lot of private citizens, but many corporations see it as an outdated concept that's a hindrance to higher profits.
This doesn't really make enough sense to respond to.
This pretty much ruins your troll, unfortunately -- you should have toned down the retoric a bit and someone would have fallen for it.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Completely agree with your observation. I think that what we'll see (if it isn't already happening) is that people will start to develop tools to allow them to provide a different electronic persona.
Privacy became a US constitutional level issue with the Roe v. Wade decision. That's where an imputed right of privacy was originally made up. So whether you think Roe v. Wade was an abomination or a cause for celebration, that's where US constitutional privacy guarantees come from - the justices claimed it was "implicit", and their decision made it explicit (unless it's overturned some day).
John 17:20
I've heard this idea plenty of times before. My computer knows I like to do X and finds me the closest place and scheduals me for it. But I can easily see a lot of people running around doing things without thinking about them because thier PDAs told them to. While it's an interesting concept (machines getting people to do their bidding in the name of fun) it's not for me.
Well, yeah. I want control. Control over who gets information, and what information. Control over whether or not my phone alerts me to the presence of nearby businesses that want my money.
I'd love to be able to file prescriptions with a central database, then walk into *any* handy pharmacy, insert my smartcard, and have my prescription filled (after the usual checks, and debiting the amount prescribed). No more of this "transfer" stuff. (You can imagine how much my neighborhood pharmacist likes that idea.) But I want it under my control. Most of the ideas I hear about are controlled by someone else, who just assumes that everybody wants to be known intimately everywhere and drenched in non-stop advertising.
He/she's been trolling around slashdot for a while, check out his/her posting history.
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McNealy seems to forget that while some people (such as himself) may not mind too much having no or limited privacy, OTHERS DO, and that each individual should be able to choose. He is essentially arguing that nobody should have the right to choose their own level of privacy, simply because it may sometimes be beneficial for others to have your information. Individuals should be in complete control of what happens to their own information and who should get it. He is saying 'give up the control, give the control to us big businesses, and then just trust us, because so far "the industry has done a pretty good job of regulating itself"'. This is complete BS. He seems to want to thrust his own personal views onto everyone, and it sure as hell isn't for everyone elses good, as he implies it is.
I don't want some corporations software making reservations at restaurants for me supposedly based on my tastes (more likely, in reality, based on what the restaurant paid the corporation to ensure that his/her restaurant always comes up top of the list) - and I don't see why I should be subjected to systems like this simply because Mr. McNealy liked the idea.
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There are a lot of concepts and algorithms that make it possible to exchange information without giving away everything - zero knowledge proof etc. Bruce Schneier's cryptography book explains some of this. Unfortunately, this will probably not get used. Corporations have an interest in collecting as much data on a customer as possible, while most consumers are too lazy to even use things like PGP / GPG. So, I'm not optimistic ;-(
Anonymity isn't the problem. It's the immature dolts who abuse it that are.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I have could my medical records on my own site, or better yet imbedded in a ring or a watch or even in my body. Then I can have both privacy and access on my own terms. When it comes to services I can access offerings myself (or have a program to do it for me) why do I need to give someone else my likes and dislikes to get these effects.
(I use the work effects here because it is the effect that customers want not the service.)
What this comes down to is will me (or the programs under our control) do these things or will others that any not have our interests at hart do them tofor us?
So when can I stop by to take pictures of you and your girlfriend having sex and mail them to your mom? And paste them up around your office. And can you point out to me where you make your mail publicly available to your neighbors? Id like to read your tax returns. By the way, if you could e-mail me a copy of all your medical records, just cause I'm nosy and want to see what kind of birth control you use. Oh, and I see you're wiccan. I'm sure your conservative catholic boss and the local born again Christian association would love to have your home address. Ill send them a copy of your medical records also, they're sure to want to know if you've had an abortion because of that case of herpes you caught. I'd call you a troll, but I think you're serious.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Privacy is not a right, it is a manufactured abomination, a cover for the dishonest and unnatural.
In that case, please give me your name, home address, and phone number.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
You see, absolute privacy is INCONVIENT. We are not talking about credit card information, or Social Securtiy information here, we are talking about the fact that if you have a heart attack, you will be very happy that the ambulance driver has the ability to access your Medical Records on the spot to save your paranoid ass.
If the only people who could get access to information about me were the people who really needed it, I'd be comfortable with McNealy's vision. For very good reason, I'm not, and neither should you. There's a reason I usually fake my information when filling out forms on the web, regularly reject cookies from most sites when I don't need them, and at least try to obfuscate my e-mail address - or, even better, fake that, too. I don't mind medical personnel having access to my medical information; in fact, those are the only people who should have access to that. No one else. Unfortunately, providing any sort of personal information to anyone seems to be blanket permission to sell it to the highest bidder.
Having all of my personal information readily available will be nice and convenient...when I can believe that such information won't be sold and misused without my knowledge. Until then, no go.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
He said he would be willing to give up some privacy for greater convenience. Most of us do. I give up some privacy by using my tivo. I give up some privacy by shopping at Amazon. I give up some privacy by using credit cards for purchases. I give up some privacy by using the safeway club card to get grocery discounts. I give up some privacy by buying an airline ticket, renting a car or checking in to a hotel.
I loathe using credit cards, for the very reason that I know a near-permanent record of every use of it is being made, and such information - even incorrect - can be sold or handed over to, say, the FBI, or your favourite direct marketers, without letting you know, without even cutting you in on the profits from said sale.
Now, why should you give up some privacy by buying an airline ticket, renting a car, or checking into a hotel? Such information should be shared between two entities; you, and the company you're making the purchase from. That information shouldn't be shared with anyone else, outside of family and proper authorities in an emergency. It sure as hell shouldn't be sold to marketers, advertisers, and the highest bidder.
If people and companies could be trusted beyond a shadow of a doubt not to give other parties that have no business knowing your/my purchasing habits or medical history such information, I'd be more comfortable with McNealy's vision of convenience over privacy. Unfortunately, giving up privacy often means making oneself a wide-open target for "marketing research" and "data mining." We just aren't civilized yet to properly use personal information, instead of abusing it and whipping it around to anyone who will pay good money.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Dear Mr. McNealy:
It seems you think we should be willing to give up privacy for convenience.
To that end, please publish your home address, all phone numbers you can be reached at, your bank account balance, all credit cards you have and their limits, your Social Security number, all of the websites you've visited over the past 9 days, and everything you've purchased using anything but cash in the last 2 years. Please be sure to provide timely updates to the above information, as well as any additional information I request, so I can conveniently ask you important questions and inform you of exciting offers on a regular basis.
Please do this willingly, so I don't have to go running around, collecting the information covertly using cookies, purchased databases, "tracking" software, and other data-mining techniques. It's so much easier providing for your convenience when all the information I might need is at my fingertips, whether you really like it or not. After all, we have no privacy, and we should get over it, right? Or does that not apply to you?
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Can't someone come up with better future scenarios than the nearest place to eat Italian or the next movie I might want to see? How about when I'm grocery shopping, an agent scans the ingredients of products to make sure they don't contain something I'm allergic to? Or from today's headlines, how about showing me where my kids are at this moment in proximity to the nearest sex offender? Or that my daughter is at that dope's house? The problem with the question of privacy in our online world is all about free will and society's determination that it, not God, will determine whether you exercise your free will properly. Increasingly, our society plays the role of God in mandating behavior and thought.
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
All he says is WE should be able to give up some privacy for convience.
Very good one line summary. Except for the short argument in paragraph 2 about medical records, he spends the whole time talking about how convenient it will be to give up our personal information to the great digital void. Which makes me wonder; why is the article titled, "The Case Against Absolute Privacy?" I would expect that title to appear over an article on terrorists and kiddie porn, not convenient services. Are we supposed to agree with him that convenience is, um, convenient, and then conclude that privacy isn't such an important right after all?
First give me back my right to privacy, and then let me choose how to disclose my information.
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
And his insurance policy will be cancelled or his rates raised before the ambulance even arrives. What's chilling is that this will start out "innocently," with a "discount" of, say 10% or so, for allowing real-time GPS tracking of your car. Eventually, the "discount" will get higher and higher--it will never be called a "surcharge" for not allowing real-time tracking, but that's what it will be. Only the rich will drive without their whearabouts centrally tracked and stored.
1. What methods are being used to obtain the data?
2. What agreements are made when the data is obtained, and how well are these agreements kept? 3. Is the infrastructure set up to support privacy protection, to support data-gathering, or to strike a balance between the two?/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The Constitution only applies to actions that the government takes towards people and the states. The actions of people towards other people are not restricted by the Constitution. We have a right to privacy in regards to the actions of the government. Not to actions taken by Sun Microsystems.
Best Slashdot Co
Another Problem I've thought about, would be that of identity theft. The less information you have out there, the less people can pretend to be you. With your 'Smart Card' idea, If you were pickpocketed, or lose your wallet, you immediately lose control over every information. if you're going to control information, you have to reduce, not compress into a chip, the amount of information about you that can be looked up.
The problem is: the Tighter you control information about yourself, the less modern convieniences you have. Technically, you don't have to give your job your social security number. They don't HAVE to hire you. You don't have to give personal information to anyone. Of course, you don't HAVE to have a credit card, bank account, etc.
Oh Hush... ;-}
Personally, I think that one should have the ability to choose weather or not any personal information is able to be viewed and by whom. If I'm Joe Paranoid, I want the ability to turn off all access to any information about me by anyone.
Of course this will be giving up the ability to have credit cards, GPS emergency tracking or driving directions.. But if I'm willing to lose these 'convieniences', It should be my choice..
Ok, but "Europe" is commonly used to mean "The EU" (much as "America" usually means "The USA"). Member countries of the EU do have many things in common: a common bill of rights (and hence no death penalty), common competition law, converging regulatory frameworks for business, etc.. Yes there are differences, but I don't think it's unreasonable to refer to the EU in general.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
That's what the argument tends to boil down to: If they're allowed to track my every move, then they can personalize the spam they send me on my pocket phone/browser. Please forgive me if I'm not impressed. McNealy tells me I can be in a distant city and they'll notify me when I'm near a restaurant of a genre I like. So some awful cockroach palace will purchase the spam rights for "Mexican" food and my phone will disturb me to tell me that bad salsa is only two blocks away? Hey Scott, try this for size: If I want to know where Mexican food is, I'll ask! And it might not be where I *am*, it might be where I *am going*. So don't query my GPS. I find it slightly annoying when spAmazon tells me what I might like, based on whatever book has been purchased on my account for my wife, kids, or as a gift to somebody. Too much personalization is annoying. I'd rather read a magazine; the ads, if I'm interested, are in the same place each time. That's the trouble with the "m-commerce" crowd. They don't care what people want. They just care that they can. Can spam. Hey, what a good idea. Let's can spam once and for all!
how many times have you asked the cute blonde waitress at the restaurant what she might be doing after work? and, if she was interested, wouldn't she hand over her home phone number so you could call her later? wouldn't you tell her your name, maybe where you work? and might she talk about you to her roommate when she gets home?
there is no such thing as absolute privacy. your personal information will be shared among people you do not know and have no control over. your personal information will be shared as a matter of course as you interact with other people and systems. you get the bad things about that one way or another. as scott is pointing out, it's up to you to decide if you want to enjoy the benefits.
after all, information wants to be free.
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
People certainly can be prejudiced about alcoholism and cancer. A recovered alcoholic can be an excellent worker. A current alcoholic probably isn't. But how do you know?
Likewise with cancer. Some poeple will miss excessive amounts of worktime, some not. How will you know? And I've certainly nothing against firing someone for excessive absences. Or do you favor European-style "rights-to-the-job" that makes firing difficult? Think twice, because it also makes hiring difficult!
He conveniently neglects to mention the darker side of "information openness" -- companies using it to extract profit from their customers [variable pricing]. Or employers using it to exercise their personal prejudices.
Not that privacy isn't without it's faults. Alot of "medical privacy" could be used for insurance fraud.
But let's have a rational debate. Not trade polemics. There really is a difference between default openness with nondiscrimination safeguards, and default privacy with info-verification safeguards.
All he says is WE should be able to give up some privacy for convience. Oh really? You mean like I can choose to have an unlisted number, or a listed one in the phone book? Well, duh. I really don't think he's saying anything new here.
What scares most of us, and he doesn't address, is when other's take some of our privacy for their convience.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
How do we subvert the processors of the information by either
Producing false positives or
Hiding the identity of people who are being looked for?
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Privacy is about protection. Privace is about not allowing people to prey on others.
Would you like an amulance driver to know your medical record?
How about your prospective boss when he goes to hire you?
Would you like to have a web site offer you choices based upon past purchases?
How about if they sell that to every spam vendor an his brother?
Do you run your network without a firewall?
Do you park your car with the keys still in it?
If you trust everyone with your personal information why then do you protect it?
Yes privacy is also a part of security. You need privacy. You want privacy.
One of the more annoying things about americans is how they think Europe is one place with one culture. Europe is 50 very different countries with very different cultures and political systems. There is pretty much nothing you can say that is true for all of them.
/. you may get the impression that Europe is hard core on privacy since they report on some EU legislation from time to time. That's merely scratching the surface of one of many different sides of that issue.
/. reader would be stunned and horrified by the lack of privacy in my home country. The government knows pretty much everything about you. Just one example: everyones tax return is a public document that can be requested from the government by anyone. Books are published with the details of the incomes of the wealthy and famous, and the press routinely digs out those facts.
If you read
The average US
Dont get me wrong. I'm a Swede who has been in the US for 6 years, and I like the place and the people.
The 15 EU countries are a bit more homogenous than the entire continent, but not by all that much. A bit richer and more democratic tradition on average. Culturally they are pretty much as diverse an any collection of countries.
They do have the EU membership in common, obviously, but that doesn't mean all that much. EU holds about 1% of the power over the members as the US federal government, and it's "directives" are routinely ignored by those states who feel like it. There may be a bill of rights somewhere, but I've never heard of it. I'd guess every country already had abolished the death penalty, so they could make that an EU rule and pretend they had achieved something.
Usually when you actually can say "But all over Europe they don't have X", that only means that the US is pretty much the only place where X is common. So it's more a statement about the US than about Europe.
Thanx for letting me rant. I feel better now.
Don't get me wrong, I love open software, but this is one aspect I've never quite understood -- Which information wants to be free and which doesn't. In a 1990 interview with Denning RMS states:
He makes clear that private information, credit card information, et cetera isn't 'generally useful'.
This has always been a difficult point of the open source community for me to fathom -- where is the line in the sand between information which is useful and should be free and that which should be kept proprietary. Is it limited to these two ideas RMS hits upon, or is their other `sacred data' that should be left unknown and inaccessible to the general populous?
Personally, I'd tend to believe that the algorithms themselves, the building blocks of devices, are what want (and should) be free, and that information / ideas / implementations of such shouldn't necessarily be free. I.e. If I encrypt my password in an MD5 hash[?], information about the algorithm to my password should be freely available, but the actual contents should not. I don't know how well this analogy holds to all things in real life, but I'm interested in others' perspectives.
This article uses a sophist trick that seems to have flown over most of the heads of people here. What people want is control of their information, not absolute privacy. McNealy (and most here) equate absolute privacy with control of information. While that may be true, what *most* people want i control over their information - who gets what and what is shared among people, groups, and companies.
McNealy is right that most people want physicians to have access to medical records. What he seems to neglect is that most people don't want medical purchases automatically sent to their insurers or doctors. That is a big difference and one McNealy doesn't seem to grasp in it's entirety.
Since Scott can't argue against *control* of user information, he uses the extreme example of absolute privacy as a red herring. Too many people have fallen for that.
I cannot trust whomever I give my info to. I really wish I could, but I can't. Why is that? Because no one has your best intrests in mind except for you. A company may tell you that your information will be held confidential. They may actually mean it until there is a management shakeup and the new stallions re-define what "confidential" means. To business, your info is a commodity. And to not capitalize on a commodity such as that is, to most, irresistable.
--
McNealy may like it when he gets sold out so that marketoons can read him like a book; he shouldn't assume we find any value in it though. I believe it's called "being at a disadvantage."
Is madness a syptom of genius or vice-versa?
>>> McNealy/SUN AMEX Corporate Account #45223567684
>>> MCNEALY/Visa Gold Account #223356-44558961
(Search order: newest first)
(Showing 7 out of 232 possible hits)
Tsk, tsk. Aren't you the party animal, Mr McNealy? Oh, and about that escort service, don't you think Ms McNealy should know about this?
You mean, she can't have access to this information? Well, due to the fact that it's legal in the USA to sell (quite detailed) consumer information, our crack team of net expert were able to obtain this little report for her for a small fee from the above companies. US$200 for 1,000 names. Cheap, eh?
Please, let us recommend a martial counselor or a divorce lawyer in your neighbourhood -- and may we interest you in a nice French restaurant, for that ?
Have a good day, Mr McNealy, and thank you for contacting NetSnoopers(tm). Remember: your satisfaction is our goal, and we value your business!
NetSnoopers(tm): Whatever it is, we'll find it for you! (tm/sm)!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
He's used to having less privacy than normal. In his case, he gets compensation for it - he's got the power and perks of a giga$ CEO. His office staff controls his calendar, but they also handle his travel arrangements, meal reservations, golf dates, etc.
I don't have those privileges, and the ones he mentions as examples (your PDA can send you tailored ads - bleah) aren't enough to make me want to give up what little privacy I have left, thanks.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
People have a right to privacy, and governments should respect and protect that right. People should also have the right to choose to allow some of their private information to be used if they want to do so. In order to properly protect people's privacy, no company should be able to give out persoan information without explicit permission to do so. This means that the default has to be that they don't give out personal information, and the customer/user needs to specifically select to have their information provided to others.
Why does Scott McNealy care about this issue? What does he have to gain by taking/promoting this position? I don't understand his motivation. Anyone have any ideas?
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
It seems obvious to me that he's ignoring the reason people worry about privacy in this country. I won't expand on it since other people have.
This guy is a typical example of how money is considered more important than people in this society. Since information is basically a form of currency, opinions like this are bound to be the most common. Or, at least, those that are most often heard.
In Europe, they have a more balanced view of privacy rights. Opt-in instead of opt-out, your data is your property, etc. They don't put as much of a priority on economic growth and money as we do, and that's not a coincidence.
I would suggest the difference is that I would not I want to speak my mind without acknowledging myself. I only want to have all my personal writings, medical records, legal records, etc to be broadcast when I walk down the street.
Laws restrict mostly just the government control and violations of privacy and freedom. But control will, always, find a way, and then comes the running and the screaming. A new form of stricter-than-ever control is emerging fast.
More and more companies are joining in the trend to put all new workers to tight psychological personality tests. They don't just test your ability to work, but also ask about your family, your childhood, and what not.
The problem in most psychological tests is that they weren't designed for companies, but for psychiatric analysis. A question: "Are you planning to get many children?" may be quite fine for a medical test, but not for a work psychologist, who works for the hiring company. (In one company to which I applied for, one of the interviewing psychologists even worked in the same room where I was supposed to work. Well, I didn't answer questions which I considered too private and irrelevant for work, the psychologist didn't like that, and I'm still an unemployed Linux hacker. *sigh*)
Then there are the permissions to get criminal records. Hey, there are laws why they are private, and those laws have reasons! By giving the permission to companies, you make the possibly very good and well-reasoned laws effectively useless. You also don't know what records they get - perhaps also those where you were just suspected, and you can't influence how they interpret them. There's also no time-limit; that 20 year old DUI sentence might not be so unfavourable, but if you've even been caught of smoking grass...well, byebye to ever working again.
Oh, and then there are the mandatory drug tests. One Very Big Finnish company (not Nokia, but might apply to them too) even does mandatory AIDS tests to workers. Not that the tests help the companies any bit, as they are usually done only once, and usually just kick many very productive people out of work.
They can tap your keyboard, read your emails, put tv-cameras everywhere, watch where you drive your car, snoop in your home as they wish (didn't you read the fine print in your rent contract?), and everything.
This is worrying because it's "voluntary", and gives an illusion of freedom. Of course, "You can always go to another place." Yeah, right. In practice, it's mandatory.
The companies and other institutions do, of course, have their reasons. So what? Everybody always has "good and sound reasons" when they violate your privacy or freedom, to "protect our children's safety" by killing the evildoers. Really, the reasons are usually "good." But they are often against the freedom and privacy, which are often too abstract concepts to understand in relation to most everyday problems. "The safety of our children must not be endangered by the 'human rights' or criminals and drug addicts." Nevertheless, even these abstract human rights have reasons too, you know.
"Those who give up their freedom don't deserve it." (One of the rare ideals which those silly Americans got right...and then forgot.)
McNealy says So far the industry has done a pretty good job of regulating itself. Most companies now post formal privacy policies on their Web sites and allow visitors to have a say in how information about them is used.
This is pure unadulterated bull. Amazon sells records on its customers. I've yet to find a single closed source internet app that doesn't track the moves of all its users. The basic finding of the internet era is that companies WILL abuse your privacy for their own financial gain, and you have to go to great lengths to stop them.
I agree with McNealy that selective access to private records is a great concept. However, in its current unregulated form, we can expect NO privacy of any sort in the future. Companies with an interest in you will be able to contact your ISP and get all the web sites you've hit in the last 6 months, the things you've bought... This will happen because people will violate your privacy for money. This I know because it happens every day. Real networks just released a new unzip free (as in beer) software app - the catch is that Real tracks every zip archive you download just as they currently track every media download you make.
Real legislation needs to be crafted that protects the privacy rights of the consumer, and allows it to be unprotected at his request. Currently, it just is not working, and it is rapidly turning into a morass.
Human being. Do not bend, spindle, or mutilate.
"If you look at simple stone age peoples, they do not hanker after privacy - they have no idea what it is"
Stone age people didnt have 10 million people living in one village, or the ability to instantly communicate with one of hundreds of millions of people at will.
Stonage people had great privacy, nobody outside the small tribe would know much at all about them.
As comminications and transport technologies become greater the world effectively becomes smaller, bringing more people into our influence.
Its only natural that people will want to protect there own private space from "outsiders".
Providing information to a company can help them lower their prices. That is incentive enough for many people to authorize use of their information. If I do release my info, I would like to limit the use of the information in some circumstances however.
Consider the same problems surrounding the DMCA. Company X distributes something (information, music, video, etc..) but would like to limit its use in someway. We can observe that once their information enters the public stream, as a matter of technology, policy and law it's difficult to reign back in what has been given away.
How is the privacy advocate's desire to protect their information different from content producers desire to limit use of their information. What can be learned from the latter's efforts.
-- This is not legal advice or solicitation. See an attorney for legal advice. My views, not anyone else's..
--
Free Mac Mini
- The fact that company X happens to know that customer ID 939392-2349493-1343 likes to play ping-pong on Tuesday nights and prefers green pullovers to blue is not equivalent to being spied upon. The information is used in an abstract fashion: crunching statistics, determining customer needs, etc. Not one person at DoubleClick or any other "Big Brother" company gives a flying flip at a rolling donut *what* you do in your spare time.
- How does a computer thousands of miles away knowing that you're interested in travel, politics, and fine art *really* affect your life, except that the spam you receive is tailored for your interests, instead of being completely random?
- People are naturally observant by nature. When you go out in public, you notice what people are doing, wearing, saying, etc. After a while, you come to conclusions based on those observations. Have you invaded those people's privacy? A library keeps track of what books people are reading so that they can keep their library stocked with books that will be useful or interesting to the local population. Have they invaded those people's privacy? The notion that what someone is doing is EVIL because they are company is absurd, yet that seems to be the party line here on Slashdot.
Privacy issues like this come up because people are still reeling from paranoid fantasies of adolescence: They're parents are going to find their porn, see them making out with the boy/girl from next door, find out about their secret "anarchist" identity, walk in on them pleasuring themselves, etc., etc. They carry over into their adult technological lives as rants about "privacy", "big brother", etc.Got Rhinos?
Anyway, he then goes on to give examples about how I will find myself some day in a far away city and the computer will know enouh about me to recommend movies and food in the locale. God forbid. He thinks that most people actually *want* this invasion of privacy! *shudder*
The risks of digital information are significant, and the rights of ownership have yet to be answered in a satisfactory manner. Scott definately has an agenda here, and for reason, his pocket book gets bigger everytime someone buys a massive Sun to store personal information about me and you!
...is it always makes for good conversation.
Alright, so let's disect this pig.
It seems to me that privacy is only desired by those who have something to hide. Furthermore, everyone pretends to be squeeky clean, which means that we have unrealistic expectations of others.
Close, but no cigar. You are half-right, that many want privacy to hide who they really are or what they might have done, but there's the other half: people want privacy so that others don't assume they have something to hide, and what it might be.
Classic example: how much should your insurance company know about you. We've argued it to the death, and everyone already has their opinions on it, but say they knew that your were genetically predisposed to heart failure. Would you like it if they assumed that you would have heart failure and that your premiums would cost $200 more per month than the Joe Smoe next door? It isn't something to hide, because it hasn't happened yet -- there is no guarantee that it will happen.
Better example: Just by looking at your e-mail address, I see that it belongs to americanwicca.com. Perhaps I should assume that you are a wiccan, and/or practice it on a regular basis. Perhaps you like to practice witchcraft...cast spells on people you don't like...sacrifice goats in your basement...do that voodoo that you do. What if you happen to send me a resume for a job offering and I see your e-mail address on it and jump to these conclusions? Yes, I know that Wiccan and Witchcraft and Voodoo are entirely separate practices, but who says that everyone does? Your personal knowledge of who you are does not stop the prejudice of others.
In the future, privacy will not exist. This will create a more sane society - politicians will not be expected to be perfect, we will have more realistic expectations. We will be able to check up on our prospective spouses, find out everything about them before even meeting. It will be a wonderful way of meeting new people and finding love.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Realistic expectations? Listen, ever since George Washington took office, people have been trying to follow his standard for serving their country. Check out prospective spouses? Who is going to want to marry you if you already know who they are, what they like to do, what they've done in the past, and who they've slept with (the fun in dating is finding that stuff out...well, except for who they've slept with)! That's not the way you find love! (would you like it if I assumed that you don't date much since you made that statement, or would you rather keep that private, hmm?)
I have noticed, seem to think that privacy is some sort of fundamental right, when in fact it is socially constructed...The only rights we can have are truly fundamental - the right to life, for example.
This is completely twisted. You're saying that the right to privacy is socially constructed (which you're right), but say that the right to life is fundamental. I'm afraid that both of those "rights" are socially defined. There was no right to life in periods of war, dictatorships, anarchies.
You presume we have a right to life because it is defined in our society. And it is, through the Declaration of Independence. But so is the right to privacy, in the 14th amendment (and Roe vs. Wade).
The problem with the right to privacy is that it has never been solidly defined. President Bush may support Roe vs. Wade in defending a woman's right to privacy, but he stands up for businesses in their continuing "economic progress," even though it's business that's really hacking away at privacy issues. Everyone sees this right in their own sense, but because everyone looks at it differently, there's no way that we are going to be able to defend it unless we know what territory to defend.
The whole point of that quote being important is not that someone said it, or that someone famous said it, but that someone famous for being in a position of great power is that stupid.
But of course, after having accepted "things" such as R Reagan or GW Bush, it seems OK.
It doesn't matter that the Constitution doesn't make specific reference to privacy. Besides eavesdropping, that wasn't much of an issue 225 years ago. The intent of the founders was to protect and dignify the individual human being by making certain rights available to all. I'm sure the founders would have included privacy as one of those rights had they lived in today's culture; because privacy enhances humanity.
Our founders experienced kings and tyrants and set out to see that their abuses didn't happen again. That's why the US has it's system of government. And so privacy is one of those ingredients that creates a check on the powerful.
Playing devil's advocate: In the 70's, Lauren Nader (sister of Ralph Nader) pointed out that when you live in a nuclear era, you by definition live in a police state, and therefore cannot expect privacy. Her point is that the dangers of modern technology (a nuke in a suitcase) almost necessitate constant surveillence, the ultimate end of the privacy spectrum.
However, I'd rather live with some risk in life rather than live in a police state. It's analogous to some people seeing a bug and feeling compelled to kill it rather than seeing that this is just life and it's not always clean and sanitized like an indoor 30th story office. Similarly, if there is risk in a nuclear age, I'd rather live with some of that risk rather than lose what seems to me to be god given inalienable right to privacy.
From reading the article, I wonder just how much effort McNealy put into it. It's short, barely touches on the subject, and does so with broad examples that hardly assay concerns.
(Just as an aside, I doubt that the people who don't want their movie preferences revealed are the same people who want a computer to suggest new movies!)
The article reads like a sidebar. McNealy glazes over the real issues. By what standard are medical records going to be selectively revealed? Are they going to be given out to every Dr. Nick? Are we allowed to decide?
The article is highly disappointing.
Scott McNealy would have to stand on his mother's shoulders to kiss Bill Gates' ass. Mod me to hell, I don't care. If indeed we don't have any privacy then our revenge is weenies like Scott McNealy could very well find out what we actually think of them.
You're using her as bait, Master!
This doesn't really make enough sense to respond to.
Not to mention the poster contradicted himself/herself. If Adam and Eve had no need for privacy, why did they need "fig leaves?"
I think McNealy's right... partially. For the most part, privacy is gone, and there's a case to be made for having less privacy. BUT...
A database of peoples personal/medical/financial information is a tool. Like any tool (especially the powerful ones), it can be used to help or harm people. I can use gasoline to drive my car -- or to set someone's house on fire. Few if any worthwhile tools fail to possess this dual characteristic.
What this means is that those who collect and distribute information have a moral obligation to use the information responsibly. If my doctor can view my genetic profile and conclude that a particular drug would be especially effective, that is responsible use. When my insurance provider views the same profile and uses it to deny coverage for a variety of conditions, that's irresponsible.
This should be the focus of new legislation. There ought to be stiff penalties for the abuse of people's personal information. It's clear that not all information belongs in everyone's hands and that people often will make judgements in their own self-interest that cause me personal harm. As a government, we need to pass laws which motivate individuals and businesses to behave thoughtfully and responsibly about whom they give my personal information to and what they do with it.
What that completely ignores is the fact that there are many cases where you don't necessarily wish your opinions and information to be tracable. I believe that Slashdot has a rational behind the concept of the Anonymous Coward. Some information is just too important to be shared for people to have to worry about being tracked down for sharing it.
The downside is that people are more likely to say and do irresponsible things with anonymity. However, that is really a small price to pay to avoid the loss of freedom that comes when everything is monitored.
The whole point of that quote being important is not that someone said it, or that someone famous said it, but that someone famous for being in a position to greatly help or hinder privacy rights said it.
First thing that strikes me is that he talks about medical emerancies, which I do agree. I *do* want the EMS people to know my medical history while rushing me to the hospital.
What I don't want, and what he does not talk about is how Americans made the faustian bargin on tracking and collecting of personal data, and the details which can then be used to learn about your habits to better sell you services and the like.
Direct Marketing sorta works. I've worked for Epsilon (Burlington, MA) which is a data mining operation / DMA. I've seen the data silos, heard about the size of the credit card databases (one goes all the way back to the card's inception with every transaction), how the data is used to find customers, spot fraud, and gain new users.
It's scary. Very scary stuff. But you watch it with the fasiation(sp?) like you would a car accient in the making.
If you want to maintain any sense of privacy, toss the credit cards. Use plain old cash, which is nice and anonymous.
You then refuse any awards / redemption cards (like the coupon cards at Stop-n-Shop here in Boston, Airline Freq. Flyer Cards, Blockbuster rental cards, etc.)
<rant>
Credit cards in this country are too easy, and the laws do not cover the data created by the transaction; and in many ways the government has made easier to work with the credit card than with anonymous cash. (Such as the paper work when dealing with any amount of money over $10,000 dollars).
</rant>
Sorry for being so disjoined, but this nation really does need a privacy czar; the wants of the corporation must be balance with the privacy of the consumer.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Better question;
Why Can't I have more privacy online than in the real world ?
Why should you be able to harass people or doing various types of crimes with the possibility of being anonymous?
Who do you trust more to do the right thing, the Government and Big Business or Individual People ?
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Ah.
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Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Any company that doesn't properly safeguard people's personal information will suffer the same fate as a bank that doesn't safeguard people's money. It will go out of business.
The problem starts with this analogy. Although this might be true of the company, it is NOT true about what is being safeguarded. The bank will only lose the money the gave them, while if the personal information is lost, it the same as if every company you gave it to lost it. By analogy, the bank would have to lose all of your money forever.
What MacNealy and lots of others don't want to address is the downside risk and mitigation. From my point of view, it isn't enough for the company to go out of business. I want my "released information" to be restored to "unreleased information". This is impossible. In some cases, no amount of money is going to make up for the loss.
If he wants to follow this line of reasoning, he should think about what regulations and standards he would require if he had to put all his money in one bank forever, so that if that bank lost your money, you would lose it all forever. This, of course, isn't a perfect analogy either, but it's going to help the thinking process along more than his analogy.
The situation is analogous to computer security: there are a zillion non-obvious paths of attack, so unless you've designed the system with scrupulous attention to security, one of them will find a crack. Have you controlled every channel of information about yourself since before you were born? If not, "you have zero privacy" in that anyone determined can find an "exploit". I don't know how to find out information about people, but I bet once you know, it's child's play (like writing buffer overrun exploits).
I'm not saying that there is no cause for concern about the loss of privacy; I'm saying there's not much you can do about it, so "get over it". Think about how much effort it takes to make a single purchase at Amazon without compromising your privacy. Now, think about how relatively benign Amazon's abuse of privacy is, compared to what someone really nasty could do. I just think this battle isn't worth fighting.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
The more info about costumers is available the more and bigger machines are needed to mine it.
Plus: It is believed by some that to be sucessfull as an e-business (or an m-business) companies need provide personalized services to costumers. The more information a company has, the more targeted can be the services.
Who do you think wants to sell machines to run all those Costumer Relationship Management programs?
Learn something from history. Don't let an industry self regulate on something it makes no direct profit over. Privacy policies need to be backed by such legislation as
I'm sure people can fill in others
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
The problem is that trolls, even though they my not realize it, sometimes have good points. And because they usually take the point of view diametrically opposite the average slashdot reader, in order to enrage them, sometimes these points are the one that need to be heard most so that slashdot doesn't become (remain?) just another old boy network.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Most of his argument is right - talking about the potential benefits of giving away some privacy. He even appears to acknowledge that to some degree the user must have some control over how much is given away - it is a basic principle of law that no person may be forced to pay for a benefit they didn't ask for, regardless how much the person forcing that benefit and payment thinks the beneficiary should have it. Giving up privacy is a kind of payment.
His case really falls down, however, in his commentary on the industry's performance on privacy. A good track record on this issue is necessary to support his underlying argument, that the government should not intervene, which is a point he tacitly acknowledges by arguing the record of industry:
So far the industry has done a pretty good job of regulating itself. Most companies now post formal privacy policies on their Web sites and allow visitors to have a say in how information about them is used.
Unfortunately, the second sentence does not support the first, at all. It is not enough to have privacy policies. The privacy policies have to do something other than say "You have no privacy, get over it". The corporations also have to adhere to their privacy policies. It does not good to have a privacy policy if the policy is "no privacy", or if it's not followed. On both these critical counts, the corporations have an apalling track record.
The failure on this issue is fatal to McNealy's argument that government intervention is not required.
I read an Asimov Story about people getting to see everywhere using nutrino's. The story tries to tell you that not everything in science is good. But I tried to think of what worst could happen with the device. You get absolute lack of privacy. Anybody can look at what you did and even if it was done in the past. What you have is hell, for us who have had privacy. Initially this condition will create a lot of problems. But when everybody gets used to everybody finding out what you did. It will eventually lead to I believe more honesty. When you know that you cannot hide behind a lie you have not enough motivation to lie. It would also need people to be infallible. But that really is not necessary because people will become a lot more tolerant of others mistakes. Because everybody would make some mistakes. Life will become much more simple. You cannot play politics, because if you say something at one place and something else at a different place you could get caught. I don't know about you all but I think that this could be good.
This requires absolute lack of privacy anything less would not be helpful. Everybody should be able to peer into everybody else, and very easily. If only few get the power to peer into everybody else it is the worst possible way of losing privacy.
Read this, and it will all start to make sense...
(No, this isn't goatse.cx, either)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
This article starts off with a loaded question (Q:"do you really want to be completely anonymous?") and uses the no-brainer answer to draw unwarranted conclusions. Obviously no one wants to be a complete nobody; but that doesn't mean we want Joe Q. Citizen peeping into our bedrooms. This is not far from one of those abortion/meat-is-murder arguments. "Do you approve of murder?" "No." "Then why are you murdering babies/animals?!?"
The online environment provides more privacy protections, not fewer. Online, you can encrypt things and provide conditional access. Yes, you could, if it remained in your possession, or you could somehow retain control over the information you give out; but you can't. Once it's gone, the holder's incompetence is your privacy's demise. And these days even apparently competent companies are getting cracked. That would be OK if you could pick and choose who you give your information to, but nowadays people want all sorts of information on you which is irrelevant, even for the most piddling transactions, and is later used only to target you for marketing purposes.
I have agreed to let my car company, for instance, track my every move through GPS satellites. Whoop-dee-doo. McNealy already gave up most of his privacy when he decided to become a loud-mouthed celebrity CEO. Once you go that far, relinquishing the rest of your privacy is not a big step.
So far, the industry has done a pretty good job of regulating itself. Where has this guy been the last two years? The amount of spam in my mailbox every morning, the most recent credit card crack headline, the opt-out/opt-in controversy, the passing on of private information from companies that get bought out---they all tell me otherwise.
On the Internet, even more than in other areas of our lives, trust is the real currency. Squander what you have and you'll find out how hard it can be to get more. Yeah, that works for large, well-established corporations like Sun, but it sounds like it would put smaller start-ups in a "you need credit to get credit" situation.
BH
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
There was an article on this a few months ago, also with Scott McNealy's quip about privacy being dead. I wrote my own short expose on it as well, so I figure I'll just link to it instead of regurgitating it all over a comment.
I'm kind of curious how other people feel about being a private citizen (always using aliases, fake names, online) -vs- being a public citizen (never hiding your true identity or information. Don't get me wrong, there will always be privacy at a certain extent because of security (bank accounts, credit card info), but is it really necessary to hide everything?
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Hammer of Truth
It could even recommend a movie based on what you liked and didn't like in the past -- and, by the way, it's playing three blocks away, starts in half an hour and only a few tickets are left, so would you like to purchase one now with your credit card?
This is just about the worst way to use computers. People are good at these things, and computers are bad at them.
See Why Smart Agents Are A Dumb Idea for further analysis.
It does not restrict companies, private citizens, or any other non-governmental group in any way. Unless there are specific laws created by the US government (and in many cases there are) limiting the activities of these groups, they are largely free to collect whatever information they want about you and use it for whatever purpose they like. This being the case, we have a hodge-podge of various laws limiting certain types of behaviour by certain types of groups and companies. But there is no particular rhyme or reason to them since they have been created to deal with individual problems as they arose. The problems that are getting attention here on /. are simply new problems that haven't been dealt with by US law yet either through legislation or judicial review.
Putting it another way, there is no Constitutionally assured right to privacy in the US except with regard to the government itself. Whether that is a good thing or not, is a separate issue.
Should the paramedic be able to know that much about a patient from a computer in the back of an ambulance? What kind of security does that ultimately provide the patient with HIV, or something else as stigmatized? Does he need to know about a genetic skin condition when I am bleeding to death from a car accident? I believe that McNealy's argument here is flawed in this respect, since he assumes that we all -want- the ambulance driver needs to have this information. This is generally not the case at all.
Medic-alert tags that say things like "Diabetic" or "Allergic" to something on our person are often much more effective, especially when you cannot be guaranteed that computerized records access is going to be there to save the day. Before we had computers, this -was- how things were done, and anyone smart would still be doing it.
Which brings me to 'customized experiences'. Okay, so you can get your web-enabled celphone to find the restaurant and make the reservation for you. Is it necessarily a good thing to let someone else decide where you'll eat? Do we lose somethn in not adventuring and discovering the world on our own? The problem with McNealy's approach is that it lets someone else, or a machine, or something not you, make choices based on a limited set of inputs. You can't be sure that you'll like or dislike a movie or a restaurant based soley on a previous experience. Reality isn't that contiguous or even predictable. "Blood Simple" isn't the same on a TV screen as it was in the theater, and not everyone who might suggest a video offering via web-gadget is going to grok that.
Which brings me to the point about some of the best experiences I've had in life resulted from happy accidents like a flat tire or a wrong turn. First, you can't remove chaos from life, and being wired seems to only make life more chaotic. I also tend to think that life is diminished when we want everything done for us. I mean, when the car broke down in the sticks of Florida, I watched my husband and my eldest daughter spend some very meaningful time together playing in the surf. In fact, I think our whole approach to family vacations has been altered by that breakdown. We'll probably go back to that little town again, because we found a great little bungalow on the beach and got to sit and watch the surf for 2 days.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
You fallaciously assume that this hypothetical million need to be watched continuously, 24x7, by real people. On the contrary, the beauty (or terror) of today's fully-automated surveillance combined with ultra-cheap long-term storage is that zero people are needed to track a populace indefinitely. Why pay a person $15/hr to (for example) scour months of video from hidden cameras when face recognition software can do it for pennies a day and "good enough" for most purposes?
Your statements seem to indicate you have no idea what's going on in the UK these days wrt privacy and long-term surveillance.
Sun developed and promulgated NFS, which stands for No File Security. As it was originally shipped, it was ridiculously trivial to break into NFS. When an NFS client tried to mount a file system from an NFS server, in the request the CLIENT would TELL the SERVER what its host name was, and the server would BELIEVE it, and only check it against the list of allowed hosts in /etc/exports. Whatever hostname the client CLAIMED it was, the server BELIEVED it without question or bothering to check the IP address. So if you wanted to mount any NFS file system with full read/write permissions, all you had to do was find out one of the host names in the NFS server's /etc/exports (say "doober", which was the name of Scott McNealy's workstation), and go "hostname doober ; mount securemailserver:/ /mnt", and you would have complete access to the server.
I found this out when I was a summer intern at Sun in '87. Most of the engineers at Sun knew about NFS's complete lack of security, and thought it was hillarious and convenient, and many used it to get their work done as well as to read each others email and private files. But Sun would still fire anyone who got caught, or read the wrong manager's scheming email and warned the victims about it.
Sun thought their customers should have the same convenience, so they shipped NFS with that wonderful security hole enabled by default, so anybody in the internet could guess or use tftp to get a copy of an NFS server's /etc/exports file, and mount any NFS directory from any NFS server on the Internet.
One of Sun's biggest government customers is the NSA, and I'm sure they appreciated that feature in NFS. Sun has utter contempt for most of their customers, but makes an exception for the NSA, whose ass they kiss on a regular basis (they have a big department dedicated to that onerous task).
[Disclosure: I quit my job at Sun in '91, when they told me repeat their prima facie lies to our customers about the future of NeWS.]
NFS is quite a convenient security hole, huh? That's the real meaning behind "the network is the computer" and "open systems": the computer is insecure, therefore the whole network is a wide "open system". The slogan "write once, run everywhere" should be rephrased: "Write once, there's nowhere to run".
When Scott McNealy says "get over your privacy", it's for his own profit and convenience, because the NSA told him to say it.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The point is, for that level of service, most people would gladly reveal their personal preferences, as long as they feel certain the information won't be misused. On the Internet, even more than in other areas of our lives, trust is the real currency. Squander what you have and you'll find out how hard it can be to get more.
I know that I have real privacy issues with many companies. That is why I use things like webmail and dummy browser proflies. If nothing else, if they scam the email address from the browser, they spam someone I don't like [joke!]
if you took a random poll, you would likely find that the list of companies that people trust is a bit shorter than the list of compnaies theat they do not trust.
Companies do not realize how precious the commodity of trust is. Squander it, and you will have people painting you as the devil decades later.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Some electronics device triggers the gas cartridge in the airbag. You rely on that mechanism to work, why not rely on the other one as well? I suspect the number of false positives would be way to high if loss of signal were interpreted as an accident.
You heard about the information society and about how information would be valuable. All the time you thought they were talking about movies, songs, books, or news. You have since wondered why you were given so much information for free on the internet. Only to now recognize that it wasn't movies which they were calling valuable information. They were talking about you. The data that is the customer, the employee, the voter. Information is not entertainment, it is a control instrument.
Clearly this is bait. Very well written bait (save for the token gun-ownership button-pushing), but bait nonetheless.
Seriously, though, haven't there always been hermits and misanthropes who migrate deep into the woods (or high into the hills) to avoid any unwelcome contact with others? Didn't Siddhartha spend a few years alone in that cave? If he had no right to privacy, who would've been within their right to set up a webcam there?
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
It doesnt even makes sense - you cant look at stone age people because nobody knows if they liked privacy or not. Privacy a western concept - pure crap, if anything eastern cultures are MORE interested in privacy. The whole post doesnt make any sense
The irony is I used my mod points up this morning or I would have given a -1 troll instead of getting steamed up
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no sig.
For the definitive discussion of the right to privacy, see Hanna Arendt's The Human Condition and her distinction between public and private life.
Greatly simplifying her argument, she says that the essence of totalitarianism is the intrusion of the state into the private life of the citizen, in effect abolishing the distinction between public and private. Without a private sphere, there can be no freedom.
Until recently, privacy was protected by mechanical considerations. Aside from outright intrusions by the state, the effort to collect and distribute private information was so expensive that it was impractical.
The digital nature of data now reduces those mechanical barriers that protected privacy so that things in the past that were de facto private now are de facto public. The main threat to privacy is not the state but the irresponsible use of technology. To take just one example, tapping a telephone line was once a complicated process. Now, using readily available scanners, tapping a cell phone or a cordless phone is cheap and easy.
One solution is a new, more precise legal definition of what is private with specified legal sanctions. The effect of this law would permit someone whose private information was revealed or used without his permission to sue for damages. It would also open those who used private information without explicit permission open to criminal charges.
In effect, personal information becomes private property and people can post "No Trespassing" signs on their lives, enforceable by law.
We already have a situation where cars have computers in them that record information before you crash. Now imagine the insurance company demanding you have that GPS system you like installed.
You parked in a bad neibourhood that voids you contract. Whoops you were going 3 miles over th limit contract voided. And so and so on.
Or better yet the government contracts out work to a private company whose duty of care is not as rigid as the governments. Don't belive me look at prison'.
Unless I can be reasonably in control of handing out my private information, I want it kept with me at all times.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
The examples McNealy quotes of giving up a little bit of personal info for a greater benefit are good ones, and no doubt many people would be happy to make those trades. The thing is, I choose in each case whether to make the tradeoff or keep my personal info to myself. If I choose not to allow ambulance drivers to access my medical record (one of McNealy's examples) that's my decision, not some bloody capitalist or bureaucrat deciding for me. And I need to have available to me the info required to make a free, informed choice.
...by the samples given.
They're is a mix between life and death issues, where a little less privacy can be an efficient mean to provide a better vital service, and instinct buying, based on the more and more repeated conception that the consumer need to consume to be happy.
Go out and get a life!
Perhaps, you miss business oportunities, but I tend to think those are opportunities only for businesses.
My main criticism is that we have a system where the corporate entity has more and more power and protection, and the human person less and less.
From the article (if you read it):
Properly administered, the online environment offers more privacy protections, not fewer. Online, you can encrypt things and provide conditional access. You can know where your files are and who's looking at them through audit trails. Try that with a paper file.
On this I agree this should go right along with OptIns and OptOut policies. There are lots of features and conviences technology can bring us but in order for them to do so they will need some presonal information.
As long as we are able to control that information ourselvs as well as know who has access to and who has seen our information then I belive that this can be a good thing.
Of course I am speaking in terms of a "dream world" currently as most of our technology and legistrative processes have yet to develop to provide this however these are the initiatives we should take.
No man/woman is an island unless he chooses to be. We should build things not to one extreme or another but to one where each man/woman has the choice and power of controll and audting over thier own data.
Discuss, Argue (Intelligently), no flames
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
This is the most intelligent comment in this page. (not THIS comment; the one I'm responding to...)
GM will happilly sell the data gathered from your GPS to insurance companies ("No, we won't sell you insurance: you visit your parents in a state with a high accident rate"), Restaurants ("We heard that you drive past our fast-food joint every day at 5:45; here's some coupons to get you to stop in."), and pharmacies ("We already sold your prescription history. Now we're selling this too.").
Many reasonable people will choose to use Onstar, or what ever GPS system you can get in your car for it's very real safety benefits, but they won't even know the price they are paying if corporations continue to define the debate over privacy.
The fact is, GM offers OnStar to make money, not save lives (yes, I know that's why corporations exist...). They can NOT be trusted to manage our privacy better than we can. Many rational people would
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A person of moderate zeal
So far, various replies have made it clear that Scott Macneal's examples all have counterparts that would allow for privacy while still meeting the needs of the human.
It's nice to see the GPS example refuted; essentially, Scott's arguing for all of us to wear tracking devices. (After all, if I get lost on foot, wouldn't I want the same service. Maybe if my shoe's deflate from being too pumped up.)
It's nice to see the medical example refuted; which is more convenient: a medical bracelet with the pertinent stuff on it, or a medical file that has to be transmitted across a network and browsed through, after they figure out who I am.
The personal preferences examples I'll ask a question, albeit somewhat off-topic: How many of us really eat the same type of cuisine day-in, day-out, and never try something new? I usually opt for what sounds intriguing that day...whether I've ever tried it or not. This way, I can broaden my tastes and have a better scope of criteria for selecting things in the future. The device Scott suggests would not only be useless to me, but annoying. The same goes with movies: if I hated Armageddon, would my little electronic buddy skipped over Pearl Harbor. If I liked Usual Suspects, would my little buddy have recommend Urban Legends 2.
By always limiting oneself to recommendations based on what you've done, it would seem like this could stagnate personal growth and experience. And I'm more worried about that than my privacy anyday.
-Foggy, feeling way too much like a Luddite these days
Beware typoes.
Those who read the article (which at this time appears to be the minority of the respondents) who know that he considers Privacy an economic issue.
"Any company that doesn't properly safeguard people's personal information will suffer the same fate as a bank that doesn't safeguard people's money. It will go out of business."
It appears McNealy thinks that ecomonic theory will control how privacy taken care off. If someones love for inflatable dollies gets out in the wild, noone will buy inflatable dollies from that company again. Fair enough. But McNealy seems to believe people will want thier phone to reccomend where to eat in a new city and its this reason that absolute privacy is wrong. Let me say exactly why I don't want my phone to do that.
Technology like this treats the user like an idiot who doesn't have the mindfulness to remeber what they want to do. It's why people are terrified of Computers and its also why Apple can sell computers at a premium. MS has a habit of trying to predict what the user wants to do, and fails miseribly at it.
Technology like this doesn't offer the consumer choice. Great example is AOL. AOL gives a very convient place for thier consumers to find news, stocks, games, chat, IM, and community building. Are the sites on AOLs main page there because they are the best? In short, no. They are there because those sites signed contracts with AOL, where by they pay AOL to direct users to thier site. The cell phone of the future that McNealy is talking about will operate in the same exact way.
Furthermore, he is wrong in thinking that its a truely economic issue. If ALL companies are selling your buying habits, your address, your name, your dogs name, your phone number, what pr0n sites you read, and that you like little inflatable dollies, what choice does the consumer have? What happens when your boss buys a data base for "market purposes" and notices two years ago you buy some inflatable sheep on your credit card, even if you bought them as a joke?
No thank you McNealy, I don't want my Cell Phone to tell me where to eat, but you are right about one thing: If I have a heart attack, I do want the EMTs in the ambulance to have access to the entirity of my medical records, which is why we need a standardized Medical ID that I carry in my pocket. Then all they have to do is open my wallet and slide in a machine and they know everything they need to know to save my life.
Burn Hollywood Burn
It could even recommend a movie based on what you liked and didn't like in the past -- and, by the way, it's playing three blocks away, starts in half an hour and only a few tickets are left, so would you like to purchase one now with your credit card?
so, essentially, i'm expected to give up chunks of information about my life because it's too inconvenient to ask for directions? yeah, right.
please tell me there's other motivations.
also, why is it that mr mcnealy assumes that the information will be secure if you just want it to be? the example of the medical records at the beginning assumes everything is stored and retrieved perfectly according to plan. i would think that with his experience, he realizes that everything breaks and that there is no real security either.
'course, that probably wouldn't sell too many sun boxen...
--saint----
While it's true there's a business incentive to self-regulate, this only works in industries where there are high bariers to entry (ie: there is market concentration). In cases where there are such high bariers to entry, the chances, the costs associated with market entry will deter unscrupulous indeviduals and companies because the amrket is not one where they could cut and run if their practices were discovered to be too questionable.
Online business has torn down the bariers to entry for many businesses and markets where previously, the high bariers to entry, made thode markets condusive to self-regulation.
A great deal more care needs to be taken before making blanket statements like McNealy has here...
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
The constitution gives us rights so the government can not strip us of them, although constituents are losing their grip on the ability to keep the government from circumventing the right to our rights.
As far as my second amendment rights to bear arms are concerned, yes, I have that right. That right is slowly being stripped. But it's also backed by the right to property. The reason you we're able to post your comment is because of your right to private property. As far as the constitution is concerned, the government can not take away my property, and since MY guns are MY property, they will not get them, no matter how hard they try. If the US existed by your logic, you wouldn't have posted your opinion because there would be nothing for you to post it with.
Just a note, I am a NRA Life Member, and damn proud of it.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
The problem is that we have less privacy. And we expect it.
...
But, until the day that the Net is flooded with all the personal data, financial transactions, investments, love letters, and downloaded naughty pix that each and every member of the US Supreme Court, the White House, the US Senate, and the US Congress is broadcast to the entire world, noone will do anything about it.
Unless someone does the same thing to all the CEOs and other executives - I believe, as a direct shareholder, that I have the right and the duty to monitor both workplace and home actions of all my employees, and that means the CEOs, the Board of Directors, the Presidents, the Vice-Presidents. And their spouses, mistresses, children, and golf buddies. And they should be published on the open market, in all their lurid details.
... then we'll see change
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Think about it. If all we need IDs for are so we can get medical care, why not a smart card medical ID? Then outlaw any and all people from using our Driver's License Number (except for car rental agencies and employers who have us drive, and outlaw them sharing it) and our Social Security Number (except for our employer and the IRS, and outlaw them sharing it).
...
And why should my cell phone or PDA rat on me to the movie theater? They don't need to know it's me that wants to know about movies, they just need to know that someone who likes french films, romantic comedies, and SciFi with a plot is nearby, not "who" I am.
Take back the American right to privacy! We're in a Privacy Arms Race with the EU, and we're losing, just like when the corporations bought Pearl Harbor TM (R) (C)
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Of course I want my medical records available to doctors if I collapse. But that problem is solved quite simply with a medic alert bracelet. Lots of people use them. Lots of people CHOOSE to use them.
I agree totally. There's no reason to build databases for 'society's good', which looks like Scott wants to do. It's always better to allow individuals to control their personal information in the style of 'medic alert' bracelets.
I have a wide array of allergies, some of them life-threatening and quite a few that require emergency medical treatment. (Adrenaline shots, anyone? I hate it when my throat closes up.) I would really rather *not* my insurance company to accidentally stumble across that information, because you can be sure my rates would silently start to rise if they did. In the event I pass out on the street and start turning blue, I *do* want that information in the hands of the paramedics on the scene and the doctors in the ER. They don't even have to wait for a database query. They can just pull the bracelet off my arm.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
ALLOWING someone information about yourself is not giving up privacy. If I allow an EMT access to my medical records, I am not giving up privacy. If I disallow the EMT my medical records, and he looks them up anyway THEN my privacy is breached.
I don't think that when people argue for privacy they are referring to ABSOLUTE privacy as Scott McNealy seems to think. The topic generally refers to anyone-and-their-brother being able to find out anything they want about you, reading your emails, private conversations, online activity, etc. Of-friggin-course I want my doctor to see my medical records! What a ridiculous argument.
I'm kind of surprised that his article was taken seriously enough to be allowed in the Washington Post. Don't they have editors that can recognize sophomoric editorials?
I can see his next argument....."Don't you want your bank teller to have access to your account balance when you ask her?". What does that have to do with my privacy?? On the other hand, I don't want everyone to have access to is.
He is comparing apples and oranges.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Ok, I like McNealy. He's a hoot. But what special insight has he got into this issue? I think the article looks bad on him. Consider:
Ol' Scotty M. may be right that we don't have the privacy we think we do, but computers (and the humans who drive them) really aren't as smart and far-reaching as he'd have as all believe. In the end, I think I'll protect my privacy whereever I can, thank-you. The unsavoury alternative is to roll over and eat the French cusine my PDA suggested rather than pizza I really crave right now.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
What McNealy seems to forget is that current databases, even if they are regualted by laws that mandate granting access and corrective rights to people being catalogued, already fail to provide the ammount of tracing and accountability that is required.
One blatant example is banking and credit history. While most countries require firms like Equifax to divulge what they have on any individual that wants access to their files, such companies have been known to provide thined-down versions of the files whose content does not even amount to 10% of what the person's bank manager has access to. Also, several compnies, while they will comply with allowing someone access to their record, will not include the access log with it, pretexting protection of their customers' right to confidentiality. In effect, this means you get access to: 1) partial info and half-thruths someone has accumulated about yourself, 2) nothing about who has shown interrest in you in the past, why and when.
The disaster doesn't stop there. Several credit gathering companies have become generic data gathering companies that catter equally to your medical records, banking history, criminal record, employment history, and so forth; any data ever amassed somewhere about you by anyone is in their database, protected by laws that may or may not require them to grant you access to your own file and request corrections on incorrect data.
Therefore, if Scott McNeely wants a Z80 in his phanny, so his doctors, bank manager and the CIA can track him 24h, let him have one but count me out.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Take his example of the embedded GPS transmitter in his car. "I have agreed to let my car company...track my every move.... I find it comforting to know that, should my airbag deploy, they know where I am and can send help." But why does anyone need to make that kind of bargain with their car company? It's just as easy to design a system that transmits your location only when the airbag deploys, or manually at the push of a button, as one that transmits continuously. With such a system, your car company may not be able to tell you where the nearest restaurant or gas station owned by one of their marketing affiliates is located...but they also can't inform your insurance company of your habit of driving 85 mph on the interstate.
And the latest Amazon privacy debacle illustrates that contrary to his claims, the industry has not done a pretty good job of regulating itself, when a company can decide to change their privacy policy with minimal notice, removing customers' ability to opt out, and retroactively abrogating all previous opt-out requests.
McNealy asserts that companies that don't protect privacy will go out of business, but that's just one of many factors that determine whether people will use a company. I would bet that 90% of Internet users do not bother reading privacy policies, assuming often incorrectly that they are reasonable. I would bet that 90% of those who do read a company's privacy policy statements do so only once, assuming that it won't change on future visits. In that climate, companies can pay lip service to privacy while trampling the concept into the ground with impunity.
The current standard is unacceptably low. An opt-in policy is the only appropriate standard. Information provided by the user is to be used only for the specified purpose, distribution to other parties is prohibited without the user's explicit consent, and if the company goes under, the data may be sold off only with the same restrictions on its use. Then make that standard legally binding with the same kind of statutory damages as unsolicited commercial faxes.
Damn.. hit the submit button instead of preview.. meant to say that Scott exercised his shares last year and made 20 million. Looks like the privacy-concerned (note sarcasm) NSA was sweet to him last year.
I'm a big Sun fan though.. don't get me wrong.
Ok.. we know for a fact the NSA is a big fan and spends a lot of money at Sun (although they are not allowed to disclose how much of their income comes from the NSA)
l =SUNW )
We know that Echelon is out there spying on everyone anyway. That's a lot of E10000 and massive disk arrays.
Scott wants to sell more stock:
05/02/00Mcnealy, Scott G. Chairman Exercised229,8561.38 317,201 option 05/02/00Mcnealy, Scott G. Chairman Sale229,85691.0720,932,985com D 27,743,797 (from http://www.quicken.com/investments/insider/?symbo
(2)Even if the federal legislature were to pass laws creating a certain minimum threshold of protection from the unauthorized commercial exploitation of private information, large companies would circumvent these laws forcing web-visitors to agree to limit their rights - just the same way software developers currently circumvent fair use copyright law allowing backups through software licensing. In other words Amazon would say: "let us collect certain information or shop somewhere else" [in fact Amazon does say this if you read the contract] Most people will agree.
Belief in privacy is like belief in God - a conviction suspended above logical enquiry. In an ideal world those who want their privacy [ie. personal details] protected should have their wishes fulfilled. The meaningful question is not "Are they correct?" but rather "Is it feasible to prevent corporations from commercially exploiting personal details?" I think the answer to that question is no.
*This message is void where prohibited*
I think I would care less about companies collecting information about me if they didn't try to sell it.
Imagine the protests if a proposed law required companies to give a copy of that information to anyone who asked for it without restrictions, for free.
It seems to me that privacy is only desired by those who have something to hide. Furthermore, everyone pretends to be squeeky clean, which means that we have unrealistic expectations of others.
In the future, privacy will not exist. This will create a more sane society - politicians will not be expected to be perfect, we will have more realistic expectations. We will be able to check up on our prospective spouses, find out everything about them before even meeting. It will be a wonderful way of meeting new people and finding love.
The transparent society that is coming will mark the ascendance of our species. In the beginning we were innocent and naked and had no privacy, like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, naked but for a fig leave each. Later, with the rise of agriculture, information became power and the notion of privacy as an absolute right was eventually invented (about as absurd as stating that gun ownership is a 'right').
This is not the case. The only rights we can have are truly fundamental - the right to life, for example.
As we evolve forward into our new Eden, where privacy once again will be a silly idea and we can frolic openly and honestly, we must remember the ills that privacy has caused.
Privacy is not a right, it is a manufactured abomination, a cover for the dishonest and unnatural.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
I've heard this idea before, and always fails to impress me... that if devices learn our tastes they will provide useful services like suggesting dining spots, hotels, etc. This Amazon.com approach to filling your life with more of the same is totally not what people want, it is what the gee-whiz prognosticators think people will want. They're full of it. If I'm in Chicago and I like Chinese food, I can do a simple search and find a list of restaurants in very little time, without anything profiling my tastes and "predicting" what I will want. Yet another cousin of Clippy and MS Bob, if you ask me. Blow it out yer A-'OLe
The airbag detonation system is (or at least was five years ago when I learned about them) far simpler than a GPS. The airbag is basically a switch or two attatched to a very small bomb, whereas the GPS is this complicated electronical doodad that has a mugh higher number of failable components. I'd trust the bag over the GPS.
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
So far the industry has done a pretty good job of regulating itself. Most companies now post formal privacy policies on their Web sites and allow visitors to have a say in how information about them is used.
It is unreasonable to expect people to read pages and pages of fine print every time they go to a new site. And just having a privacy policy doesn't equate to having a good or fair privacy policy. Also - how much is that policy going to be worth when the website goes bust?
People need a clear understanding of what their rights are wrt privacy, and therefore what they can expect from each and every body that holds their details. Without legislative backing industries cannot be trusted to be self-regulating.
Say it with me - the private sector exists only to generate profit for its shareholders. All other considerations are secondary. So long as privacy has monetary value, it will be open to exploitation.
*sigh*
I don't want corporations to 'tailor' information to what they think I need to know/have/see based on some randomly, statistically munged informaton they think they 'know' about me.
If the ambulance driver needs to know about my medical history, I'd rather he ask me or my companions, or check my med-id bracelet. If my air bag deploys, I would hope some bystander or person has the presence of mind to call 911 on my behalf rather than wait for my car manufacturer to alert the authorities. If I am driving through a strange city.. chances are I'm not really planning to stop and see a movie. And, if I am then maybe, just maybe, I'm perfectly capable of finding a theater on my own.
All of his arguments sound like lame justifications to track marketing information for the benefit of the corporation, not mine. Which may be fine with me, but I dislike people who try and pick my pockets all the while telling me how much I should appreciate them.
Just my
Granted, there is certain information you don't want people to know about necessarily... such as your medical history, your income, your financial status in general, your social security #... things that, if found out by someone, could cause you a lot of trouble. However, there are things which just do not make a sh*t of difference. What kind of movies or music you like... or where you are in the country. Why do you care, really, if someone knows where you are as you travel? You have something to hide? And who cares if some company knows that Robert De Niro is my favorite actor! Sure, if Paramount wants to notify me that he's in a new movie coming out, YES, I'd want to go see it... so tell me. It's funny. One thing I realized from the Matrix... a line said by Agent Smith was something similar to "we made everything perfect, but you rebelled because you couldn't believe it was so good." This is what you're thinking... your thought process is "if they can track me they know where i'm always at and they're gonna track me down and it's an invasion of my rights." There are how many people in this country? Let's say, for figures sake, if you had 1 million people the Gov't was tracking around the country... and let's say a single person could track 100 people (I dunno depends on the person on what they're doing this number could fluctuate, probably be even lower)... it would take 1000 people, 1000 GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES WITH SALARIES to track those 1 million people. And guess what, there is a HELL of a lot more than 1 million people in the country... or the world (6 billion in the world... that's about 60,000,000 people *watching* and paid to do so) God! That's expensive! Give them a decent salary of let's say $15/hr that's like... $900,000,000 per hour... or $1,872,000,000,000 PER YEAR. That's right.. almost 2 trillion dollars just so each and every one of us can be watched. And ya know what's even more erroneous? You really think they could keep 60 million people from TELLING on "big brother"? You don't think that SOMEONE would rat out the see'er of all? Even if 1% were to rat out, that would be like 600,000 people! Wholly shit! Some religions don't have that many people! In other words, GET OVER IT.
I think you need to flash your brain's firmware.
If you're stupid enough to do this, then you deserve to have your car stolen. This has nothing to do with privacy or lack thereof
Again, what does this have to do with privacy? ONLY a stupid person would do this. In fact, I notify my neighbors when I'll be out of town. This way, they CAN look after my house (even loosely) so that I can stay protected. If I didnt tell anyone I was leaving, then they'd assume I was dead and have a party (can't let that happen)
I do not recall making a biased against Mexicans or any bias whatsoever. And again, why would you announce how much money you had? Besides, I said there are certain things you want to keep private, such as your financial situation. It's obvious your reading skills aren't past the 3rd grade level, that may be why you posted anonymously
And the point of this would be...? Again, I've said it before.. financial information should be confidential
What world of crack addiciton did you pull this statement from?
I think you need to flash your brain's firmware.
...have more privacy online than in real life?
Why should you be able to harass people or doing various types of crimes with the possibility of being anonymous?
So, on the one hand, commercial data must be kept secret:
"Don't look at the source code."
"That information is proprietary."
Non-disclosure agreements
Intellectual property black boxes that you can't touch, or even discuss how to touch.
On the other hand, my medical records, surfing habits, shopping history, demographic info should be open to anyone who wants to use it to make a buck..
And when some of us protest, then it's "no..you can't stop the free flow of information. Once your data hits my servers, I own it, and you can't tell me what to do with it. We'll police ourselves."
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
- You're arguing that the GPS suddenly failing is sufficiently important as a consideration that it requires continuously sending your location to a central repository, BUT
- You're depending on the continued operation of the vehicle communications system to alert the network to the fact that your airbag deployed?
Why can't the vehicle remember where it was for the last 2 minutes, and only send this information to the network if the airbag goes off (along with the "airbag" message)? This eliminates the issue of surveillance, and the last-received GPS coordinates are going to be just as good in either case.Oh, yeah. It also deflates the argument for the desirability of Big Brother. Too bad you couldn't spend two seconds thinking about that.
--
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
What if the government starts making more dumb laws? Then they find out you're downloading Gameboy Pocketpull roms. Then they come to your house and arrest you for a few years. There are actually lots of dumb laws out there already, and lots of people in prison from these dumb laws.
God spoke to me
Sure, it would be nice if my cellular would tell me if my preferred type of restaurant is nearby, but what if i wanted to try something different than french, italian or mexican?? And what's wrong with pulling up a list of restaurants on your cellular and choosing one yourself?
:) ) gives (bad) examples that are only convincing to lazy people who don't want to decide for themselves (ie. M$ costumers...), if he thinks that consumers are like that,well imho then he is no better than Bill Gates!
Same holds for the movie-example, plus another thing comes to mind here: most good movies are the ones that are completely different from the ones you've seen before, so based on your previous cinema-visits you're going to see the same type of movies over and over...
Mr. McNealy (cowboy Nealy??
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein
In a prepared statement, Patrick Naughton says that he also supports the drive for more online privacy, and intends to launch an online privacy initiative in three to ten years.
Invisible Agent
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
Take medical records. If you're in an accident, do you want an ambulance driver to be able to access your medical records online? I think you do.
I would prefer that the ambulance driver focuses on the driving rather than trying to access my medical record online. At least I would have a better chance to be alive when the ambulance arrives in the hospital ;-)
There hasn't been much press (needling?) lately about the FBI reading of e-mail for some reason. Maybe they have enough media coverage over the delayed lethal injection!
What he fails to mention is that your preferences are going to be supplemented by paying clients of the personalized services. Sure, your personal area network devices might suggest a nearby restaurant, but you can bet that the restaurant suggested has paid for its favorable placement... And, even more disturbing, do we want corporations, governments, and more nefarious organizations knowing all about us? Who's to say that data theives, terrorists, over-zealous law enforcement, etc, won't divine ways to steal information about us and use it in ways that are not to our advantage? What if our data suggests we are not supportive of the current regime? Might party appartichs use that info to subvert our influence, attempt to change our minds, or silence us if we become too vocal? What if we want to strike back at tyranny, either corporate or federal through boycotts, protests, our other extreme means in the future? Our prefences, from book selections, to taverns, to affliations might rat us out and lead the protectors of such organizations against us, even before we've raised a finger. Our data is ours; the good of profiling does not outwiegh the potential evil.
Disclaimer: There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood
"I have agreed to let my car company, for instance, track my every move through GPS satellites. Some people might consider that an invasion of privacy, but I find it comforting to know that, should my air bag deploy, they know where I am and can send help."
What he fails to mention is they will send lawyers, an airbag repair service and a tollbooth squeegee guy long before they refer any medical personal to the scene.
RC
RC
What the author of this article doesn't mention is that although information is convenient, information is also power and anyone who has information about you has a potentially dangerous power to use that to their advantage. In a perfect world, having our medical records and the fact that we like movies about space invasion out for the world to see would work okay. In the real world, there are bad people, dangerous people, who aren't going to use that information for your advantage. We need to protect ourselves, the world can be an evil place and we've been making sacrifices to account for that since the beginning of time. (it's why communism fails as well, but that's an entirely different post.)
spacefem.com
is that it suddenly becomes even easier for companies to decide what we like by being suggestive.
I don't trust an industry where they produce movies like pearl harbour and music like Britney Spears to decide what I like, and lord knows they keep trying to tell me.
-PYves
McNealy writes:"Web-enabled wireless phone will be able to recommend a nearby restaurant based on your fondness for French, Italian or Mexican cuisine -- and then make your reservation for you."
That means the phone will be in control; or better, the one who controls the phone, will be in control. Or better, the one who controls the script that runs the phone, will be in control.
McNeally's idea seems to revert to the one and same idea: yield control to your phone, your PC, your car, or any other device, who will turn into a benevolent dictator and take control in your best interest.
I'm sorry, Scott, it's just too easy. We will not yield control to your devices.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagrees with you.
Note that the petitioner carefully neglects to quote the rest of Section 311, which clearly distinguishes between the "organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia" and the "unorganized militia, which consists of all members of the militia not members of the National Guard and the Naval Militia"; the latter, not being "well-regulated", are not included in the Second Amendment's "well-regulated militia".
The U.S. Code is, of course, trumpted by Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states that "The President shall be commander in chief [...] of the militia of the several states" -- which means that unless you took orders from Bill Clinton last year, you are not a member of the militia.
Further, under Article I, Section 8, "The Congress shall have power to [...] provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States" -- which, combined with the preceding, strongly indicates that the militia was meant all along to be interpreted as a military body. This is the basis for the Supreme Court rulings cited by the esteemed AC, ruling that the National Guard now fills the role of the constitutional militia.
[And yes, I'm well aware that the NRA has become quite skilled in tying these rulings in pretzel knots trying to argue that they don't mean what they plainly say...]
The gun lobby has never won a Supreme Court case based on their interpretation of the Second Amendment.[*] An unbiased observer would conclude from this that the gun lobby's interpretation of the Second Amendment is wrong.
[*] And only one federal court case (out of dozens before and since that rejected its misguided lead), which is currently under appeal.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
sed 's/In Soviet Russia/In NSA America/g' < yakov-smirnoff-jokes.txt
In all other cases, I should be able to furnish personal information on a case-by-case basis, and I should have the expectation that the company does not store the information beyond the business transaction we are engaged in unless I give my explicit permission.
I can't quite figure out why McNealy is so stupid about this. Giving people tools to protect private information is actually good for Sun's business: it benefits from lots of little smart devices that negotiate with other smart devices.
Perhaps McNealy isn't very sensitive to any of this because he is pretty well off. If you have sufficient amounts of money, you don't have to worry that much about privacy. For example, mere mortals have to file insurance claims, which distributes their records far and wide throughout the insurance industry. If you have enough money, you just pay out of pocket and only your doctor will know.
In any case, the Europeans will not fall for this "we'll just regulate ourselves" stuff. US companies better get used to conforming to some simple privacy rules or they won't continue to do business in Europe.