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Decode Your Barcode, Get Your Personal Info
Chris writes "The Swipe Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses. Check out the Data Calculator, which shows how much your personal info is worth, and how the data brokers get it. It's all part of the Swipe Project, which will be on exhibition at UC-Irvine in March."
You can easily see that with a service such as MSN Hotmail, who already sells your personal info, your standard "I had best enter the correct info, or else bad things could happen" person can easily give them (as this project puts it) about $10 worth of personal info right in the sign-up boxes. MSN could then do a search through some of these free services and get even more money, as the information gains value if it is all stored in one location. We can then see how offering free email to the unwashed masses can be very profitable.
Accessing critical information is as easy as point-and-click. Using ChoicePoint Online's powerful search capabilities, you can easily search more than 14 billion records on individuals and businesses. Whoopdeedoo. Choicepoint and companies like them probably have more than you can spend your life trying to hide. Personally I blame it on utter laziness. Here's a day in the life of Avgjoe...
Avgjoe wakes up everyone morning and turns on the radio to hear the news while he gets ready for work. He uses XM satellite for news... (subscriber info sent)
As he gets into his car after getting ready he joyously turns on his car. "Welcome to OnStar" (userinfo sent). Driving over the Triboro bridge, Avjoe happily avoids crowds and goes through the EZPass lane. (info sent). Upon entering Manhattan he decides to fill up the tank at Mobil with his credit card. (info sent)
Driving down 1st avenue he eats a yellow light (snap snap go the cameras). Avgjoe is sent a ticket. "Hey I can fight this..."
Do the math if Avgjoe committed a serious crime he could be tracked to the minute if needed. If Avgjoe was Avgjoe do gooder who happened to be a politician who pissed off other politician, do gooder Avgjoe's information could also be abused.
You want what privacy or ease of use? Privacy? Dump your credit cards, and all other forms of digital clutter so you can complain less, unless you're just a whiner complaining while typing this with a what? UID... Ah yea a UID.
MoFscker
Its idealists like you that are source of the problem. Get it in your head once and for good: "People are not equal! People will never be equal!"
Once you get this little bit, you might stop dreaming about people being all equally screwed since that will never happen.
And when you stop dreaming, you might start to adjust to a world where people are not equal and start to vote for politicians that are aware of the issue and start asking for laws that will protect the weak from the strong and for society that works for both. And stop get abused by people that try to ram this strange concept down your throat to make you feel good about yourself.
And when you put all this in context with the US Supreme Court decision that Corporations are for all the legal matters "people", you get closer to my point.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Your address alone is worthless. Unless they're specifically looking for you... a marketer doesn't need your address. If they've already got your name, then the address is free with the bargan. Your name and your address, associated with some random fact about you... you like golf, you TiVo "Friends" every week, you read Slashdot, you hate marketers, or you are 23 years old... starts to be come of value, particularly if presented in the form of a list of people who share the same attribute. That's where the direct marketer can come in, match that group up with a product that people who have that attribute would possibly buy, and send junk mail to that group. The more refined the profile, the better the ad is going to be targeted... and therefore the more sales that are likely to result per person bothered. Addresses alone are pretty worthless, but grouped together and with other information, that's where the value kicks in.
Yeah, but the definition of a compliation isn't going to cover facts about one person. The only compliations that are going to ever get protection are those about multiple people or multiple thing... think 2 or more database records in a table. If it can be properly expressed in one record, it's not going to make it.
:)
Remember, it's the people who compile lists of data who are behind the effort to make sure copyright protection extends to what they do. They're not gonna be dumb enough to propose a law that puts themselves out of business.
You really think politicians and others of power would get treated the same way?
Would never happen, I think. The control of data collection would have to be in the hands of an entity (a) not under the control of the government, politicians, or police but (b) subject to regulation which the people, or at least attorney generals, can enforce.
It is the same problem with security cameras. Alot of /.ers say they are ok so long as everyone is treated equally. But, for everyone to be treated equally, wouldn't the people have to have equal access to the tapes?
I agree in principle with you that if everyone is treated equally, it should be ok. I do have a caveat, though (and this is something that alot of /.ers will probably have first hand experience with, as IT personnel). As more and more data is aggregated about people, it will be easier for those in power to abuse others. I've seen people at work get fired for viewing pornography when I know the bosses did it at work as well. The inequity in access to the company records in that case means the employee has a tough battle to fight such abuse. As privacy declines, these abuses will become easier. It is nothing new, just easier.
- Bankruptcy: $26.50
Court records bring in some big dough:- Felonies: $16.00
But the biggest payoff comes for Military Records: $35.00.When I got out of the military in the early 90s we were strongly encouraged to take our DD-214 (summary of military records) and submit them to the county clerk when we got back home so they'd become public record, that way if we ever lost it we could go look it up. I'm REAL GLAD(tm) I worked with Privacy Act information for my whole career and developed a healthy reluctance to hand out the juicy tidbits contained on my DD-214, e.g., SS#, DOB, education, and of course your whole military career.
I am honest in all my dealings except the occasional shoplift from Barnes & Noble.
Did you know that there are these places where you can get books without paying for them? They are called libraries. If you went there, you could consider yourself honest in all of your dealings, without an "except..."
Really the best tool is a Bulk Eraser designed for standard audio cassette tapes. They are very cheap on ebay and only about 20 bucks new from a [real] A/V supply shop.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
If you're handing your license to an officer you're way beond anonymity. Your best hope at that point is to keep a low profile.
What we're saying (and what Libertarians, Objectivists, Capitalists, and generally people of such bent have been saying for decades) is that people are NOT equal in terms of: intelligence, looks, motivation, parental fortune, geographical accident, etc.
Do yourself a favor, it will take only 5 minutes of your time. Carefully read the following blockquote and its link.(shamelessly copied from the Idea Channel)
Part of the Second American Revolution!
And you'll get it. After a while some of the cops are going to know you by name AND face - "Yah that one with the broken card again". Plus the cops always have to pull your records from the online database for checks - so you might show up in a DB statistic/log somewhere. They can't just go - "Cards ok, looks like just another Joe, move along now".
If you want some semblance of anonymity, you hide in the herd. Or you go move somewhere else totally.
You don't hang around the herd looking and behaving different from everyone else, unless you want to be singled out on a regular basis. If the herd is chewing cud, you don't go around stomping unless you want to attract attention.
The NSA etc don't give a damn about the 80-90%. It's the unusual ones they watch.
The marketeers are interested in the 80%, but if you behave just like everyone else and hide the bits where you are different, you vanish into one of the Common categories.