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Privacy Concerns Moving Into The Mainstream
Realistic_Dragon writes "The BBC today ran a thoughtful radio article (website, transcript, real audio) on the issues of privacy vs practicality in our modern society. An ideal primer for those that haven't given these things much thought before, with a balanced treatment of the subject and very few technical errors to drive one up the wall.
Listening to the narrator's acerbic comments in reply to those that advocate the innocent have nothing to fear mantra is worth the download alone. Is this the kind of image that is presented in the media in the rest of the world, or are they still running with the 'big brother is your friend' party line?"
A lot of people can't accept that if you go out in public, you lose privacy. It really doesn't matter if your mobil phone company can find your position, because you're transmitting RF to their towers. I EXPECT them to know roughly where I am from which tower I am connected to.
CCTV cameras? They can't be serious, how much damage do CCTV cameras do? How much damage would have been done if the shops can't see who's stealing stuff? Privacy is important, but if CCTV cameras are a problem, then don't go into shops. If camera phones are a problem to you, don't go out in public. They can't invade your privacy unless you let them.
We don't trust the government or corporations becuase they have gone from "protecting our rights" mode to "enslave the entire population" mode. How can we trust them when they're using the technology to enslave people instead of relieving us of work so we have more time to do other things?
Candy-Coated Knowledge
From the transcript:
The response of Scott McNealy, boss of Sun Microsystems and one of the most outspoken figures of Silicon Valley, to the challenge from
electronic devices was famously blunt. "You have zero privacy," he said. "Get over it."
Much as this is the unpopular stance to take here, I think we do have zero privacy, and hopefully more people can learn what this means for them.
What has alwauys comforted me in the past, however, is that to exchange informatation about my purchases, my bank details, my crimial record and my health records would be rediculously complicated with vastly different systems of data storage being used.
Mibby I'm just sticking my head in the sand, but there's a difference between being watched and having data stored about me, and it being available to different people beyond it's intended purpose.
That's why I opposed the RIPA extensions act.
Sorry, got OT there...
What do you define as innocent on the net these days. Just by simply clickin on certain web sites malicious users have just marked you, obtained your ip address and have more than enough effective tools to obtain information from your computer. Sadly, there is no fool proof method of security. One can easily setup most firewalls these days with little understanding of what's really going on, but is a firewall enough? Should there maybe not be some kind of anonymous connection from the users ISP to the world outside his ISP?
There are many facets to the electronic snooping being done today. Mobile phone locators can be both bad and good - take for example an elderly gentleman having chest pains. If he cannot communicate his location, then the signal-tracking might save his life. My employer having the ability to see I visited the nudie bar 20 times a month is a privacy invasion.
The government being able to thermal image a 'warrant'-ed drug house is OK. Using it whenever is not. To go further into the paranoia realm, some states in the US still have arcane laws on the books like '2 unwed people shall not engage in sexual activities' OR '2 unwed people shall not co-habitate'. With advanced thermal/spectral imaging law enforcement can 'snoop' and arrest said people.
If I choose to give my personal information away (or walk in public where cameras are present), that is OK. If I am on my own property and no one has a warrant for illegal activity monitoring, it is privacy invasion and the invaders should be arrested/fined/flogged with a noodle.
Time for more tin foil...
With respect, it's rubbish.
There's no need to violate privacy any more than it already is in order to stop terrorism, nor to do it in unreasonable ways.
All of the "anti-terrorism" privacy arguments tend to hinge on how xxxx communication method "could be used to plan terrorism", "could be used to set up terrorist actions", yadda yadda yadda.
All of which is totally irrelevant if the terrorists a) can't get the weapons, or b) can't then use them in public to kill people.
a) doesn't require anything other than voluntary breaches of privacy which the vast majority would consider reasonable. b) doesn't breach privacy at all, since a public act by definition can't be subject to privacy.
The whole basis of using criminals' plans to "target" law enforcement is a shaky one. Law enforcement needs to be everywhere, all the time - otherwise criminals will inevitably learn the prediction strategies and work around them.
Your assumption here is that no-one will want to use this info unless you're doing something bad, right? That's kinda wrong. Think stalkers, think terrorists ("lets see how many casualties we can acheive by monitoring who goes into that building"), think the petty-minded official who you annoyed once and now he's out to make your life hell.
Even as far as breaking the law goes... to quote Terry Pratchett, probably the only way to avoid breaking a law is to spend all your time locked in a dark cellar with your hands on the table in front of you. And even then you'd probably be guilty of loitering.
I'm in a society called the Assassins' Guild, which plays games based around a kind of controlled, mutually-consensual stalking. It is truly horrifying how easy it is to track any given person down. This is why I value privacy - the games we play are harmless, but there are more than enough crazies out there who are perfectly willing to use this information maliciously. And any system that relies on respecting thy neighbour is, in my opinion, in deep trouble.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
And people want this? Can't people make up their mind for themselves?
Sure they can. But if you are in "dating mode" (or whatever), why shouldn't you be willing to broadcast the fact? Apparently, this is happening anonymously via bluetooth, mostly. Why shouldn't you go into a singles bar or use any of the other ways of communicating the fact that you are available, interested in someone who wants to go with you to a concert, need someone to eat dinner with or whatever. You are the one who chooses to make this information public, and you get matches only from other people with the same stated interest (although not necessarily the same goal) as yourself. This is not the system choosing for you, this is an attempt to link people who are broadcasting something similar.
According to the media, this has also gone to the point of people broadcasting "willing to have sex". If two people are both interested, they find out who owns the other (bluetooth-enabled, mostly) phone by arranging to meet somewhere. I assume this is something every male geek out there has dreamt about.
It is up to you to choose to broadcast your intent to do something. I can't see what is so wrong about this, or why this stops you "making up you mind for yourself". You still get to see the girl/guy/whatever before you are dragged off to meet their family, you know.
Next time you pass a gorgeous girl, ponder what might happen if she actually _had_ the same interests as you instead of you coming across as a complete jerk trying to pick her up with some old pick-up-line.
No, I am not using these services. I just think you are judging a service without knowing enough about it.
The two statements:
There's no need to violate privacy any more than it already is in order to stop terrorism, nor to do it in unreasonable ways.
and
Law enforcement needs to be everywhere, all the time - otherwise criminals will inevitably learn the prediction strategies and work around them.
seem contradictory. I'm not sure of your point here.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
I loved the interview with the saudi bod (ambasador? minister?) the other morning. After he sniffily said he was there to talk about Iraq, not the diplomatic immunity squabble, the interviewer politely said `yes I know' and asked him aboput the diplomatic immunity thing again. You could hear the guy's blood pressure going up. He was clearly not used to being actually expected to say something meaningful.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
The real trick is to get Score: 5 Troll. (Modded up to 5, Troll down to 4, then an Underrated bump.)
I guess the police won't mind if I pull the GPS data from the police car MDTs and put it up on a map in real time. (Passively, it's part of their data transmissions.) If they're not doing anything wrong, they have nothing to hide.
First off, I think that privacy is good and agree w/ the spirit of the parent. However, who's to say that the US Constitution is some magically ordained super-document that is completely infallible and utterly trustworthy? It was written by men. Smart men, true, but still just men. It's great to have a common root for our legal/government practices, and to keep a (relatively) clear and concise record, but why this continual return to "the Constitution from 225 years ago says so!"? If we dropped some of the stigma around the Constitution, it could be _changed_ and actually be a living document that helps the US develop into the future. /rant
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
Look, it's simple. There is public life and private life. Public life is where I go to interact with others to help me form identity and have discourse on the subjects that matter for us all. Private life is where I sustain myself in order to participate in public life. The tradition of this distinction is from the dawn of democracy from Plato and Aristotle, through Hobbes all the way up to Arendt and others in the 20th Century.
Now private life is constantly being eroded and it is time to stop. I want to DESIGN my society so that when I choose to interact in public and in particular with the state then the state should be able to demand that I authenticate my entitlement to do so, however this does not require that i identify myself. This is what technology can bring. We can have both. A completely accurate entitlements system that does not require the revelation of identity to the organs of the state (except in order to establish the entitlement).
My health care records can be kept on a big central database but they should not be able to link that with my social security records. It is _I_ who provides them with that link when I authenticate my entitlement to free health care because of my social security status. Further that big database needs to know _nothing_ about my identity specifics other than they are the file 61272123. I know that the records for 61272123 are mine but the state does not need to know. Similarly the state can know that medical procedure 2453/CD/2321 for file 61272123 received an entitlement token, MPET23/5T from the Social security entitlement system and that is all it needs to know.
Technology of the kind that all the centralists love can completely enable their utopian vision of eliminating fraud for public services etc etc, but it can be done without even having to compromise my right to privacy, and it doesn't even need law it can be done technically. there are logistical issues for this vision, but they are not an order of magnitude different to the ones that exist for the current idea of "biometric id cards".
The fundamental thing is for us to decide what we want. And what I want is to be able to walk out of my house without having to carry a card that enables the state to prove _who_ I am because until I choose to enter the public sphere about which I spoke earlier, the state can just fuck righ off out of my private life.
On the flip side, it is up to me to price the value of my privacy wrt to banking, mobile phone etc and decide whether using these services (or specialised privacy enhanced version at a premium) is currently worth the cost. the examples of how this can be implemented are many and varied _already_ technology can only make them more effective.
As for preventition of terrorism, crime, even fraud, I am all for it, but not at the expense of designing a state that is built around knowing every facet of my life. I want the privacy. It should be _my_ choice as to when I leave my mark in public (so to speak) not the state's.
Sorry for the rant.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Or, dare I say it, political stooges. "Fair and balanced", haaaaaahahaaa. Fox, CNN and ABC are all *appalling* and I, for one, am glad that the BBC exists, and that the (unfair) grilling they got in the Hutton report hasn't taken all of their bite away. It's a shame that the Butler report didn't get quite the same coverage, but the Iraqi invasion is already old news now. Funnily enough, that reminds me: I was listening to the Bill Hicks's Chicago 1991 bootleg (Google for the Bill Hicks archive and you'll find it) and I swear that if you didn't know the date that it was recorded you could well believe he was talking about Dubya.
:( Considering that we both have what is basically a two-party race, and the state of the opposition... oh dear...
What's tragic is that I think the general public have such short memories that by the time Bush and Blair go to the polls it'll all have been forgotton, and they'll both get back in
I'm nineteen years old, so I pretty recently finished my K-12 years. And boy did I have a hard time at it. My teachers, especially in the earlier years, were the most incompotent bunch I can think of. It's perplexing when I look back. By the time I was 15, I had already intellectually surpassed the teachers who were "raising" me in younger years. This despite that I was a pretty immature kid at 15, and hardly a genius. That's just not right.
And you know, I don't want to blame them, and I don't hate them for it, but my parents didn't really try to "raise" me. So I was in a sense "raised" by those dumb teachers. In practicality, I had to raise myself.
I think my parents were sort of too confused by the culture around them to raise me. They grew up in another time, in small neighborhoods and towns. They moved to suburbia when they had kids, and they were really out of touch with the suburban life and suburban people. They expected it to be comparable to what they grew up with. It wasn't.