Slashdot Mirror
Just How Much Privacy Do We Have?
stuffman64 writes: "Popular Science is running an excellent article on just how private our daily lives are. The article chronicles a typical day of a make-believe Graphics Designer from Chicago. Throughout his day, he unwittingly supplies companies with information that can potentially be used against him. And with GPS-enabled cell phones just starting to hit the market, our privacy can only continue to deteriorate from here. A must read."
Is there any reason that a phone could not simply fire up the GPS unit when 911 were called? Do any of these GPS-enabled units do this?
Somehow this feature seems like it would be a major selling point to me.
I have a Samsung A400 (SprintPCS). The GPS can be turned off as a menu function. Right now, it's no good for anything, except emergency 911 locating services, and even that currently works only in Rhode Island.
Personally, I wish the WOULD get the rest of the darn GPS thing working, so that next time I'm lost I can get directions!
Now when "they" decide that GPS will not be turn off-able, oh well, I guess I'll just turn the whole darn phone off. If I'm feeling *super paranoid* that day, I suppose I'll have to go to the trouble of removing the battery too. It's too d*mn intrusive anyway, even when it *doesn't* know where I am.
So, what exactly are the eating habits of a terrorist? Do they all eat the same thing? Can I be flagged as a terrorist because I enjoy Mid-East food? Or, perhaps I am one of those "axis of evil" Korean people because I like kimchi and yaki-niku(ok, so that one is Japanese/Korean food)...
Is anyone else at least moderately (understatement) disturbed by the compiling of a profile of "terrorist eating habits"? It seems insanely useless to me. The idea that someone might get "special attention" because of the way he/she eats...pffft. The sad thing is, I won't be at all surprised if/when this happens.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
For you paranoid people, what's to stop the ATM's from associating the bill numbers with you and then tracking your retail cash spending through your greenbacks' serial numbers?
Ever run a cash drawer? Unless you scan every bill that comes in and goes out, you'd have better luck tracking VD in a dance club.
Say I wander into a Cold Stone Creamery for a bowl of French Vanilla with blueberries. I pay with a 10. and get back a five and pitch the one in the tip jar because the girl behind the counter is cute. The guy in line behind me pays with a 20, and gets my 10 as part of his change.
Unless whatever bill I hand across the counter is scanned as I do it, and likewise, my change scanned as it comes back, how will [insert big brother of choice here] know I spent that 10 bucks on ice cream, and not next door at Fascinations, on a pack of condoms and some strawberry flavored lube?
- billn
Just trying to count the number of technical mis-statements in those two sentences alone makes my head hurt.
Popular? Yes.
Science? Barely.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I believe I can illustrate my point by the following:
How would you like it if anyone and everyone could come in and watch while you're stroking your gonads to goatse.cx? How would you like them to tell your parents?
Peer pressure is a bitch. The point of privacy is to make sure people can still be individuals and not have to 100% conform to social expectations all the time in every way. With privacy, being a good members of society doesn't mean people have to march in line like a bunch of mindless ants.
...I guess I just like thinking for myself.
You say that now. Wait till you try running for office. Your opponent bribes someone to get you spending habits and finds out that you like the gay porn. Your opponent then lambasts you in media as against family values and tradition and what not. You lose. There was nothing wrong with what you were doing, but then again, it wasn't anybody else's business either.
I know I personally wouldn't want some of the strip joints I go to, to become common knowledge. While I may enjoy the naked women, I wouldn't want a potential employer (or even my current employer) to know what I'm gonna be doing with that money they'd be(en) paying me.
Too much information can color an impression of an otherwise honorable person. You may say something like, "I have nothing to hide, so this doesn't bother me." Don't fall into that trap. Something will come up that you would rather not be public knowledge. Maybe you wet the bed till you were in high school. Do you want your boss to confront you about that herpes test you had last week? Do your co-workers know how you REALLY feel about Star Trek/Star Wars/Buffy/Simpsons? What would they say about ALL that memorabelia that you have? What were you DOING down in the seedier parts of town last night? Buying drugs? No...just seeing those stippers...again. Does your Mom know about your subcription to Playboy/Penthouse/Hustler/Big'uns? All those things and more will become easier and easier to discover, just because you say you have nothing to hide.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Just because you get to participate in Slashdot doesn't mean it's a democracy. You are free to post your thoughts elsewhere, even make your own website. Instead you just want to gripe to a captive audience not interested in what you have to say.
The fact is that Slashdot editors have appointed themselves representatives of the Slashdot community, and all those continuing to participate in adding content to the Slashdot website are clearly endorsing that arrangement. Neither cmdrtaco or anyone else is obligated to listen to you or give you a platform to spout your bullshit mean-spirited humor. It is not an act of censorship or a violation of your privacy to use your ip address to kick you out of where you are not wanted. By continuing to hang around, a stronger argument can be made that you are infringing on their right (and clearly demonstrated desire and intent) to be rid of you (or your unwanted additions to the content anyway).
This is not a democracy. You do not have an implicit or god-given right to spout off here. It's a carefully manipulated and engineered community. If you don't care to participate in that community, if it's standards and practices offend you, exercise your right to go elsewhere.
This is Slashdot and banning, moderation, meta-moderation, and editors are part of what makes the site what it is. Yes all those features can lead to situations clearly "unfair": even against the intent of those in charge. Yes like all systems this system is flawed. If you've found something better, go there. If you have ideas about how to make the system better, submit them in a constructive way or implement them yourself.
In the meantime, as far as I'm concerned you should fuck off. I'm sure Alan Cox (and his wife for that matter) is a smarter and better person than you, and more importantly Alan Cox plays a significant role in Slashdot culture. Your comments were hurtful and not constructive or beneficial in any way. You aren't a reformer or a rebel. You are a troll: so who cares about you and your petty complaints?
That's shortsighted as hell. Maybe nothing you do is "bad" now, but maybe something you do will be illegal tomorrow. There are plenty of things that are perfectly legal that are unpopular as hell. Voting is legal, but the idea of the secret ballot is the only thing that makes it work. Privacy is more vital to our lives than simply not going to jail.
Remember: If we let Bush and Ashcroft tear up our Constitution, then the terrorists have already won.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
1. Use cash, not credit cards, for a start. Take out the most the ATMs will allow at any one time.
2. Buy a prepay mobile phone, pay cash for the top-up cards.
3. Set up free email addresses with Yahoo and the like. Use one address to get others.
4. Don't use encryption. Or alternatively, get *everyone* else to use encryption, but don't raise a flag over your mails.
5. Don't bother with store loyalty cards. I mean, are you really bothered about 5p off a product?
6. Support/use your local family grocer or market rather than the big chain stores.
There's more you can do, but doing the above is simple and will reduce your information profile significantly.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I think you just made the previous poster's point. Replace the word Slashdot with America, adapt the text as required.
You may have a right to free speech. But that right was given with the assumption there are no consequences, that you have a degree of anonymity which is no longer there. If you now spout opinions, you must now expect consequences, and those consequences are inescapable. In the past, you would have moved to a different town where noone knew you, you can wipe the slate clean and start again. You no longer have the option.
If you feel Slashdot is too draconian then yes, you can always start your own webpage. But if you feel America is becoming too draconian, how do you start your own country?
Yes, it is a democracy, but the PC brigade hold sway. Would you hire somebody to look after your kids if you knew they were an active poster on alt.abuse.children.doit.doit.doitnow? I know I wouldn't. If they complained, noone would argue in favour of them, because they would be blamed if they actually do abuse (whereas the abuser would be excused, as they were clearly sick and doing only what came natural to them, when you look at all this 'evidence' in hindsight).
Would you expect the government to put someone in charge of the transport of nuclear material if they were part of a terrorist organisation? Of course not, there would be hell to pay IF THEY DO ANYTHING. But do you think they would wait for absolute proof first? Of course not, it's not as if it is a trial! As a student, involvement in any socialist group would exclude you from certain government jobs in the past. Today, if you shared a flat with someone who is a member of a terrorist organisation, they would probably consider that a sufficient risk. With more information they can apply stricter safeguards, excluding people who may have possibly been infected with terrorist propaganda - so don't buy ice cream from a vendor who is a member of a terrorist organisation, just in case. You mean he didn't tell you? Of course, if he does, that may be propaganda infection - Erase yourself immediately.
With no restrictions on use of this data, you can find yourself marked as a second class citizen despite having done nothing wrong.
And I'm only thinking about abuse of genuine information. I don't want to consider the situations where the data is modified - e.g. the lazy cop who wants to track someone he really believes is smuggling liquor but can't get any evidence, may decide to mark him up as a suspected terrorist, so the FBI can do the tracking instead. He gets his conviction, and the man is marked for life!
The fallacy in all this is that the more data you collect the more people you have to hire to process it all. Even with computer assistance, the level of intelligence required to do this job properly is not going to be met by the minimum wage employees they are going to have to hire to make it financially practical.
We either end up in a situation analogous to that described by Bill Burroughs in which everyone is either a criminal or a prison guard or they are going to have to be much more discriminating in what kind of data they collect. The classical example is all the pointers that were collected concerning the loonies who attacked the World Trade Center. They never got around to putting the dots together because they had entirely too many unrelated and meaningless dots. This is not rocket science. But then these are not rocket scientists either.
These are people who are still functioning under the Burger King metaphor that "more is better." I am sorry: More is not better. 50 cameras are not better than 1 camera in the right place. Cameras are no substitute for intelligence, and intelligence (the intellectual kind) is one quality that is severely lacking in law enforcement circles. More could be done to improve crime statistics by testing and raising the intelligence of police cadets than by any fancy technological "fix." The really sad part of this all is the more time these characters spend sitting in front of a monitor, the less time they spend learning to actually detect anything.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
- Martin Niemoeller
"Those who would trade freedom for a little temporary security
deserve neither freedom nor security.".
- Ben Franklin
The question is not why are they watching you now. The question is why they will be watching you in 10, 20, 50 years. The simple fact is, no government avoids tyranny for a very long time, and our founding fathers knew it. With this kind of precedent set, a future, less nice, government basically has free reign over your data.
It's funny, the American revolution was fought over far smaller violations than the current American government commits every single day. I always find questions like "what would Thomas Jefferson do" in regards to current political questions. Thomas Jefferson would overthrow the US government with armed force. Thomas Jefferson was a terrorist / patriot / freedom-fighter.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
There is a difference between checking your ID and taking your personal information without your consent. When I show my ID to the people at the door I am giving them permission to confirm that I am indeed old enough to enter the premises and to confirm that the ID card I have is real. I did not give them permission to store my age / sex / anything else stored on my card so they can better target there market. If they want that type of information they should ask me for it.
"If you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't be concerned with people watching you."
False. You should be concerned with people watching you because they can harm your interests even if you are not doing anything wrong. Just for example, if somebody could see how you voted, they could harass you or bribe you. That's why voting booths have privacy curtains. Privacy is essential to democracy and freedom.
If you buy valuable objects (electronics, jewelry, whatever), you are doing nothing wrong. But if the wrong people get ahold of that information, you become a target for theft. How do you keep information like the addresses of people with valuable items out of the hands of criminals? You keep it out of the hands of companies that collect it. They almost never have your security at heart, and they often have lax security procedures. Privacy is essential for security.
How do you keep your competitor from learning your business plans? You keep the plans secret. You do not want information about what you are buying or whom you are meeting to get into your competitor's hands. How you keep them from learning that information? You keep it out of everybody's hands. Privacy is essential for business.
How do you protect yourself from sexual assault? You don't let strangers know your address. You don't let every peon employee who sees a pretty woman in a store find out where she lives. How do you keep strangers from getting her address? You don't let companies collect it. Privacy is essential for safety.
How do you keep telemarketers from bothering you? You don't let them have your phone number or information about your interests and purchasing patterns. (They may still call randomly, but this decreases targeted calls.) How do you keep them from getting that information? You don't let companies collect it. Privacy is essential for peace and quiet.
There is no right of privacy. No, this isn't a troll. It's the truth. Our expections of privacy are not rights, just expectations. Legally transforming these expectations into rights is a guarantee that the Law of Unexpected Consequences will be invoked.
Throughout most of human existance privacy was a virtual unknown. Communities were small enough that everyone knew everyone else. Everyone knew where you were, where you were going, and what you were going to do when you got there. The only privacy you had was within your own home if you were lucky enough to have one. Back then (prior to a mere few decades ago) privacy meant solitude
Jump to today. We are so confused over privacy it's almost funny. We would be incensed if everyone knew that we were buying condoms online, yet we buy them at the local drug store in plain sight. We display outrage when a website tracks our addresses, yet we post our real estate listings in the local paper. We wonder why PGP hasn't caught on for email with the general public, yet we yack on the cell phone in the clear all day long.
The big disconnect is easy to explain. We think we have an expectation of privacy because we are sitting in a chair in our homes with the curtains closed. But in reality we are online spewing out personal information as fast as we can over the internet. Here's an experiment. Go buy the very same product three times. The first time buy it online using your personal computer from your home. The second time buy it online using a computer sitting in a public library. The third time buy it from a brick and mortar retailer.
We should have, and must have, privacy within our own homes, including the harddrives of the computers within our homes. But that privacy ends at the walls of our homes. Once we engage in communication beyond our house walls, it's up to us to make our own privacy by using encryption, anonymizers or whatnot.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned