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US Official Urges Americans To Reconsider Privacy
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information. "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that," said Kerr. Kurt Opsahl of the EFF said Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service. "There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties. We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy." Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, requiring a court order for surveillance on U.S. soil. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering.
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties."
The difference being that while I trust no one, I trust the government with the information even less, because they have the power to screw me over to such a greater degree.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
"Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information."
Yes, lets 'redfine' privacy to mean "we know what you do, we will just be responsible with the information"
Next Spring, almost every state will have political caucuses and conventions which will set the state parties' platforms.
Attend your local caucus or convention and try to get elected as a delegate to the state convention.
Introduce resolutions that value freedom and privacy. Lobby to get them passed.
Send a message to Washington: Privacy is important. Anonymity is an essential part of privacy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Also, about googling your own name; I just did that and although there were over 1.5 million results, none of them were about me as far as I could tell
I guess I should be relieved, although I'm kind of disappointed that I'm not important enough to have my privacy violated.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
-- Donald Kerr
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
-- Barry Goldwater
And the penalties for it.
The Bush administration has shit all over the Constitution and this country. They have committed treason.
Yes, there is something fundamentally different: After they take away your rights and screw you over, they can get themselves immunity. Private businesses generally cannot do that.
This guy is basically advertising a surveilance state, were everybody has to trust the government without reserve. Not a good idea. Historically that has always lead to a catastrophy. Unfortunately there will not be any allied armies to free the US population. I advise to stop this now with all possible legal means. A free society has to live with a real risk of terrorism. That is what makes it free: People have the freedom to go bad. If you remove that freedom, you cause much, much more damage that terrorists ever could do directly. All this "war on terror" is really a power-grap in disguise by power-hungry people without even a shred of ethics. You do not want to be ruled by this type of evil.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
On the New Hampshire auto license plates reads one of my favorite sayings: Live Free, or Die. This man would rather capitulate, and is therefore lost.
We will struggle, those that believe in liberty and freedom, against the tides that would try to drown us with rationalisms, excuses, and the madness of fealty to the corrupt and mindless sycophants of government.
There was a reason the founding fathers worded their documents they way that they did-- there was another King George that tried to shove fealty down our throats. This minor duke in his administration would have us believe that liberty and freedom != anonymity. He is wrong.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Really, I don't need to read beyond this. Does the US have a privacy problem with personal data held by corporations without regulation? Yes. Does the US have a privacy problem with novel government surveillance methods without (serious) oversight? Hell Yes. Can one be used to excuse the other in any way shape or form? Hell no!
This guy should not be the standard bearer for the dialog that the US needs to have over privacy in the age of information technology.
"so this kind of thing only works to screw with American citizens and accomplishes nothing of significance"
And this is news? America's biggest enemy is definitely within. It is lack of education and an easily terrified populace that can be manipulated with a few "support our troops" and "with us or agin' us" slogans.
I think Osama bin Laden hit the jackpot with his 9/11 attack. He spent some 19 lives and a few tens of thousands of dollars and in return, he, through the current moronic, paranoid, and opportunistic administration, has thoroughly destroyed what used to be the most powerful and respected Nation on earth.
What this guy Kerr and the rest of the Bush Regime and it's merry henchmen haven't figured out yet is that the real trick is to protect a free society without interfering with it's ability to function as one. This guy fits Mr. Justice Brandeis observation that the real encroachments on liberty come, "from men of zeal, but without understanding." This guy fits that cookie cutter perfectly-- his reach exceeds his grasp. And because that's common in government, they're fast becoming a bigger threat to the ordinary citizen than the often notional terrorists are.
If the government wants to change what privacy means to THEM, they need a constitutional amendment.
The "right of privacy" is a judicial construct. I'm not saying that it is a bad construct, but you'll never see the word "privacy" in the Constitution. In interpreting the 4th Amendment, the Supreme Court has constructed a Constitutional protection of privacy. Maybe the definition of "activist judges" depends on where you sit. Anyway, the courts have acknowledged that this is an implicit, rather than explicit right.
Legislative acts have also defined privacy in their own ways, but the term "privacy" is a difficult one to define with precision when we're dealing with electronic communications. If the limits of privacy are no longer defined by your physical presence, how far does your right to privacy extend? With so much of our lives being lived online, would excessive provisions for privacy actually extend the doctrine further than it was originally intended?
Another question: We place our trust in Google every time we use its services, but why do we place more trust in a profit-maximizing enterprise than in our own government? Ostensibly we can hold our government accountable through elections, but we have less influence on corporations. Sure, we have the power of the wallet, but when's the last time you saw an effective consumer boycott in the information economy?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Instead of "redefining" privacy to mean "we know your private data, but we'll be responsible with it", how about we re-institute actual privacy? Instead of giving our personal information to companies who lose it or sell it or share it, how about we the people guard our own data? Instead of keeping it on their computers, let's keep it on our own.
In my opinion, software as a service and registration based software are two of the biggest perpetrators of data and privacy violations. They take away your right to manage who knows what about you, forcing you to provide whatever data the "service provider" chooses or dictates that they "need".
1) Make it illegal to force consumers to turn over private information unless it's a functional requirement of the process (not just data mining or marketing enhancement)
2) Make it illegal for companies to sell or share ANY personally identifiable data they collect, even names, phone numbers, and addresses.
3) Dismantle companies that violate privacy laws, retain identifiable customer data, or insist on data that is not a necessity to do business.
It's pretty simple! You own YOUR OWN data. No one else has a right to it. No one can force you to turn it over to do business with them unless it's a functional necessity of doing business and not just a preference. Anyone that violates privacy laws is dismantled.
BUT! BUT! It won't happen, because we live in a fascist corporate pathocracy where companies and money rule politics, the individual citizen, nay citizens period, are not considered, asked, or involved in any decisions, and THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOUR DATA ALSO. So they can spy on you. It's all to protect YOU from the "terrists" you know.
Nevermind the true terrorists are OUR OWN GOVERNMENT.
Vague "terrorist threats", data mining, advertising, marketing, and "revenue enhancement" ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE REASONS TO DISMANTLE PRIVACY. Money and fear are NEVER reasons to willingly accept oppression or subordination.
Fight for your rights, America. Our rights aren't what some company claims they will recognize, or what our government claims they will 'allow'. These are inherent to our existence, and they are for US to decide, not someone else. Fight for your rights! Wake up before it's too late.
What scares us is that you shitheads let them get away with it. You almost impeached a president for lying about a blowjob, but you don't take down an administration that is actively dismantling everything your ancestors fought and died for.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is affirmed by the 9th Amendment, although the right exists independently of it.
You're the sort of person for whom the Bill of Rights was added, because you simply don't understand the concept. The Constitution gives the Federal Government no power to intrude on privacy, therefore the right is retained by the people.
-Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, no. 84
Much US "case law," isn't law (in the exact same sense that our current money doesn't have value). It's not founded on any pure principles of ethics or logic, despite the claims of weasly lawyers and congresscritters, but upon convenience and authority through force. It's a history of progressive ursurpations of powers not granted by the people, and is illegitimate. The king has no clothes.
That some judge states "black is white" doesn't make it so, and simply weakens any legitimacy the law once had.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Traditionally, tortious trespass is trespass, regardless of whether or not there is a sign. Now, it's not trespass if you're thrown on to the private property, or if you run there to take cover from an act of god. But if you are wandering around and merely don't know that it's someone else's property, then you are liable. Of course, tort law varies from state to state. But the general upshot is that a "no trespassing" sign doesn't do much.
Secondly, as mentioned previously, some consider that this might fall under "trespass to chattel." I can't remember the case offhand, but there was a case where IBM attempted to sue a disaffected employee who had been e-mailing current employees. They tried to sue for trespass to chattel, arguing that the e-mail was trespassing on their computers, this failed, however, since trespass to chattel generally requires damage to be done. There was no damage done to the computer from the e-mail, only to the workers' productivity. I imagine similar reasoning could be used to negate any such claims then.
To get back to the point, you are suggesting some sort of electronic shrink-wrap license that binds employers to not use information from a social networking site towards hiring practices. I'm not sure if there's some precedent that would endorse this idea, but my own gut feeling is that it would fail. There isn't an adequate public policy reason to disallow companies from using social network information (in fact, there may be incentive for companies TO do such a thing, to reduce their hiring of 'troublesome' workers). Secondly, since people are willingly volunteering this information to the public at large, it would be hard to argue that one special class of people is not allowed to view or use that information. It's kind of backwards compared to most other privacy issues, where people giving information to a specific class of people are trying to PREVENT the general public from viewing/using it.
And ethically, I, speaking personally now, see nothing wrong with denying someone a job based on information that they have willingly submitted to others. If they had broadcast something on tv that made them less 'hire-able,' the law certainly wouldn't protect it. Therefore, if it's your prerogative to post pictures of you drinking yourself into oblivion or complaining about your awkwardness at social functions, I think it's perfectly reasonable for an employer to deny you a position based on that information. Now, of course, if they deny it to you because of your race, creed, etc. then that would be unfair according to our laws. That, however, is already protected regardless of if you post it on the internet or not. So I am not seeing the reasoning behind not holding people accountable for their own actions here.
P.S. This is just my response to the points you have brought up. The main point of contention from Kerr, that of giving up anonymity in favor of having the government 'safeguard' and be 'responsible' for our private data, I find to be completely ridiculous. Our government should not play the part of some wizened patriarch. It is here to enhance our ability to organize (economically and militarily). It should be a moderator, not a bully.
Have you seen Bruce Schneier's opinion on your plugin?
If your plugin still works as described, then I'd say it's very imperfect. I don't think the approach is completely wrong though, but it could use improvements.
This reminds me of the old idea of randomly embedding key words like "president", "nuke", etc in mail and usenet posts, to mess with with Echelon/Carnivore. A mail with random key words inserted in places would work for triggering the data gathering, but look obviously unrelated to a human who reads the message, as the extra stuff would be inserted in nonsensical places.
Now if your plugin happens to google for "raping virgins" how will you prove this wasn't a real search you tried to hide among a heap of a lot of grammatically incorrect ones? Searches that make grammatical sense will be a minority, and with a list like that there's a high chance that they won't be things normal people google about.
Then there's that it doesn't seem it actually follows any links from the searches, so if the ISP is doing logging it's easy enough to tell what is being actually used.
This seems to me like going to a library, and borrowing 20 books at once, including the Anarchist Cookbook and Mein Kampf, to try hide your actual and much more harmless interest in reading a book on say, Neopaganism. If your history is checked, all that extra stuff you didn't read isn't going to help you any, because there's no way to tell that most of your history was intended to be padding and you haven't even opened it.
A lot of people aren't voting for Ron Paul because they believe the same things he does. They're voting for him because he represents the only politician who they believe means it when he says he's going to completely upset the status quo.
If he were elected, I'm not sure how much of his own agenda he'd be able to accomplish since he can only propose new legislation & veto things he disagrees with, but he could make it VERY difficult for Congress to pass things that there wasn't unanimous agreement about, and he wouldn't be giving the protection of the President's Office to those agents of the executive branch who are blatantly violating the Constitution.
NO! Bad! This is not about "feeling" secure, it's about BEING secure. There's a huge difference. If someone can unreasonably search all your papers, effects, etc. then you're not secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, are you? It has nothing to do with how you feel about it. I see people making this fallacy all the time, that it's about feeling secure rather than actually being secure. That's not how it works. There is no rhetorical ground to be muddied.
Not quite what I meant. The constitution lists government powers, not citizen's rights. We always had the right to privacy. Just like we had the right to bear arms before the second amendment was written. Which is why it says the government may not infinge on our right to bear arms and not that the people have a right to bear arms. The right already existed.
It requires trusting the people who will be collecting the information. Experience proves that they are *NOT* trustworthy, and don't have your best interests at heart.
Even if you can't get total privacy, get what you can, and don't give up easily. Those who are trying to replace privacy with trusting large organizations are doing so because large organizations can be threatened by larger or more powerful (or even just more committed) organizations.
P.S.: Remember that "Do Not Call" list? That one shares your phone number with all telemarketers, so they'll know who not to call. It expires next year, and they've got your number.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Isn't it great how with one little change of definition, "privacy" can now mean "we keep private everything we know about you, which is everything."
This guy really should be fired. Out of a cannon. At a wall.
The ______ Agenda
As long as 50% of the voters think it is murder, then there is a basic disagreement about what is the basic civil right (right to live or right to choose).
The basic organization of the US is to recognize that people disagree- and yet we can work together. When you force every single damn issue to the national level, then you leave people no chance to move away from areas they disagree with and they start getting pretty pissy and intolerant.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
After reviewing the summaries of the whole list, the only way I can see you justifying your claim of "whack-nuttery" is if you believe that government exists to allow you to force others to pay for your personal agendas or punish them for doing things that you don't like.
A big problem with that point of view is that it makes the government a puppet for whoever screams most loudly, at the expense of everybody else. And since the loudest voice is constantly changing, we end up with the worst of all worlds, more tangled laws and regulations than a reasonable person will ever read, and a rapidly growing government.
"Ron Paul's Congressional whack-nuttery" is the first real chance to break away from that in a very long time, and his claims are only further backed up by your link. I could run through that list of proposed bills one by one, if you like, but this really isn't the forum for that.
If you have another reason for believing that the misrepresentations on the page linked are evidence of a real problem with Ron Paul's record, I'd love to hear them.
I'm sure there must be some reason why I can't tell whether that blog poster (and yes, the 'site' cited is actually nothing more than the incoherent ramblings of yet another of 10 trillion 'bloggers') is far left wing or far right wing. The only thing I can tell for sure is that they're unstable at room temperature.
Let's get a few things straight:
1) Refusing to finance a given decision does NOT mean you are against having choice in the matter
2) Shifting power from the Federal government to the state governments does NOT equal fascism
3) Refusing to subsidize something does NOT equate to being against it
4) Being thrifty when it's not your money does NOT equate to being a religious whackjob
5) The US Consitution still defines the role of the Federal government. Since the Federal government has proven many times over that it only does well the jobs laid out for it by the US Constitution, it makes sense that we restrict its roles thereto.
Ron Paul isn't a nut - he's just thinking far beyond the average member of the body politic.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."