An Epidemic of Snooping

Travoltus writes "Privacy advocates are frequently confronted with the rhetorical question, 'If you don't have anything to hide, you don't have a good reason to worry about losing your privacy, right?' This AP story uncovers a vast, distributed, decentralized epidemic of snooping into databases of personal information by workers at major utilities, the IRS, and other large organizations. In a number of cases these incidents have led to real harm. One striking example involves now ex-Mayor of Milwaukee Marvin Pratt, who had a pattern of being late paying his heating bills. This fact was leaked to the media by a utility worker and may have led to Pratt's losing a bid for re-election. As one can imagine, the harm becomes much greater when this same snooping is done by Government officials to deal with political enemies, or by corporations to uncover whistleblowers."

Comments

Q&A

[calebt3]

How's this for an answer:
I do have stuff to hide. It's just not illegal stuff.

Re:Q&A

[MindKata]

"A truly privacy-free world would be better for the person in question"

That's true only in a utopian world of total equality. But it has two major problems. First the world doesn't work like that, its got a hierarchy. Secondly, a lot of people in power would consider this kind of open, flat, everyone equal, utopian world, as their idea of a dystopia, not a utopia. They want power. They don't want it flat and open. They want to be higher up than others. They want to be the centre of attention. They want more money than others. They want more power than others.

So that kind of totally open world is a scifi only utopian world, that cannot ever exist in a world that has some people who also seek power and that will never change. Plus these people who seek power ultimately make the rules, so they will not allow it to go that far, where everyone becomes equal.

Political ideologies are ultimately driven by the psychology of personality types, as with all human patterns of behaviour. These personality types will continue to exist, regardless of how technology evolves in the future. So the personality types will shape what technology is allowed or disallowed and how it is used.

I am sadly convinced however that Big Brother in becoming inevitable. Too many people want the power it gives over others. Its becoming a scramble for who can grab as much of that new power faster than others. The examples of Google's chess moves show this to be true. Google's "do no harm" PR smoke screen marketing theme is sounding more hollow, every new move Google makes. Their goal is to become some kind of marketing version of Big Brother, but with the total knowledge they are building up, they will also have immense political power as well. Google data mine everything they have. Each new chess move of Google reminds me of the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Google is becoming Big Brother. Yet few people seem to be able to see its slowly happening.

Given the kinds of personalities that can easily dominate in corporations, its hardly surprising.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=448546&cid=22377974

So I think the question is becoming not if we will have a Big Brother, but what the form of that Big Brother will take. Google definitely are becoming a marketing Big Brother and others are racing to try to grab some of what Google are grabbing for themselves. Then again, its not simply just marketing products. Marketing of anything can be helped with market research. So selling ideas just as selling products is still selling. So marketing a product or marketing a political ideology using these kinds of new technologies is going to happen, regardless of what that ideology the people want to market. The more market research that can be grabbed, the more power it gives to the people with that knowledge

Knowledge mining is the new gold rush and with it brings power over others. Its the nature of the game. But that has existed in some form, for centuries. But now we have the ability to monitor and mine everything people are interested in and what their thoughts are when they for example post emails etc... Not only that, the Internet is a growing database of these ideas on blogs etc... Give it say another decade or two and imagine what kinds of data mining can be done on archived data, to work out what people think thought out their lives.

Its like the old saying, "Knowledge is power".

Easy Answer

[SRA8]

A co-workers once made the same statement to me regarding warrantless wiretapping -- why hide anything if you are not guilty. The response is simple:
- Do you have a daughter?
- Would you mind preparing a binder with photos of her, along with all her diary entries, emails and phone conversations and sending a copy to every police officer in the city?

This will shut up most people. -----------
/. Mathematics:
+1 Insightful for encouraging killing of Muslims
-1 Troll for Muslims responding to such messages

Re:Easy Answer

[X0563511]

We can sure try!

People are stupid!

Re:Easy Answer

[The Master Control P]

If you truly think you have nothing to hide, you must lead a terribly boring life.

Re:Easy Answer

[dgatwood]

Yes, it does. The original logical fallacy is that if you have nothing to hide, you should not worry about snooping. The reason it is a fallacy---the reasons we should all worry about snooping are:

1. Bad people can get the information. Even relatively trustworthy businesses have their information stolen by hackers, etc. Can we really trust the police to do a better job at information security than major internet stores? I don't think so. Some bad person snags a copy of that information, and suddenly this person's daughter has a stalker.
2. Information can be embarrassing if seen by others even if it is not anything illegal. The things this person's daughter keeps in her diary aren't embarrassing as long as the only people who see them are her friends, but if some perv read her diary while... doing that which shall not be named... every night, that would be completely different. She'd be horrified at the very thought.

The point was that it's not about whether you trust the police to do the right thing and not abuse the information. It's about whether you trust the police to have the most private information about yourself---information that could be extremely embarrassing or even dangerous if leaked more broadly. And of course, if you have a clue, the answer is no. People have to earn that sort of trust, and they have to earn it as individuals. Granting that level of trust blindly to any group of people, including the police, is foolish.

Re:Easy Answer

[misanthrope101]

Well, yes...they meant other people. People never mean "I want to give away all of my privacy." It's just when they dismiss privacy as superfluous, they have a mental picture right then of someone, probably a minority (if they themselves are a minority, it will just be a different minority) doing something shady, probably involving kiddie porn or something similarly without redeeming merit. If we actually started randomly selecting people and posting their entire browsing/chat history online, people would just get pissed without going through the intellectual effort to articulate why that is wrong.

They want their own privacy and that of their friends, and by extension for those they admire, but not for anyone else. The entire concept of rule of law, that we need to find rules that can apply to everyone yet still maintain law and order, is alien to them.

Re:Easy Answer

[jimbojw]

Pointing out security flaws is never a good idea - especially by way of demonstration. Just look at that kid with the boarding pass generator

The unfortunate truth about vulnerabilities is that those who report them are rarely rewarded, often interrogated, and occasionally imprisoned.

Perfect response to "nothing to hide" people:

[erlehmann]

"Everyone poops, but it takes a special person to do it in public."

(Dunno where I read it.)

There's a couple of reasons.

[thezig2]

First, things that are legal are not always socially acceptable. Your weekend bar escapades and porn habits are probably quite legal, but it may not be in your best interests for the outside world to know about your attraction to midget transvestites.

Secondly, and more importantly, things that are legal and/or acceptable now might not be in the future. Look at drug use, for example. There was no point in hiding it back in the 70's, because "everybody did it", and now it's coming back to haunt people (like politicians). People shouldn't be scrutinized because they have the brains to foresee that stuff they're doing today might bite them in the ass later.

People are the worst...

[SystematicPsycho]

I'm an Oracle DBA and from what I've seen sometimes people don't even know they're breaking the law. The worst case of data theft without people knowing is when they take an export of production data to development for testing. You're not allowed to do that! I've seen organisations not even know what data they have or that it should be audited. And when it was audited the level of auditing was totally insufficient. Mainly because some clown set it up and didn't understand the requirements from management, or management let some clown set it up and didn't understand the requirements themselves but were glad to hear "it has auditing enabled".

I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way but since alot of companies have been outsourcing their systems to India data theft has increased (google for 'inda data theft'). for example - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/05/india_exposed/

Heh, I saw someone on the Oracle forums post a question, "how do I take an export of Production to import to my home PC" and judging by the name... and he even mentioned he's allowed?!
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=2289794&#2289794

A Word on Privacy and Human Dignity...

[flajann]

The problem with having private details of your life exposed are multifarious. You can't always expect to know how the information may be used against you in the future.

One case in point that I often beat to death (among those who know me, of course!) is the case in California, where "Megan's Law" resulted in quite a few gays being put on the list because they were considered "sexual offenders" by an earlier set of laws, and their names remained in files sitting around in the office of the bureaucrats for years.

Do we all have stuff to hide? Yes! But what is wrong with that? Just because we have stuff to hide doesn't mean that it's "illegal" -- just that we don't want the entire world knowing about it as all. People tend to judge you on the basis of their own morality, and their own expectations. If you happen to simply not "fit in", you could be harassed by the very private information on yourself were it to be exposed.

So the whole sneaky argument of "do you have anything to hide" becomes a semantic one, one in which we all

privately answer "yes" to, but because of the implication we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Even the very question is in and of itself an invasion into our privacy. That very question turns privacy upside down and invites further inquiry. Instead, the question should be answered with a question -- the same question -- thrown back at the person asking it. And if said person says "no", then start asking that person really private questions and see how they respond. Questions like, "do you do cunninglingus with your wife" or similar. That act, by the way, is still considered illegal in some states!

So, the truth is, if you are human at all, you have something to hide. That is nothing to be ashamed of. There is nothing wrong with that. Privacy, by its very definition, is all about "hiding" details of your life you don't wish the world to know -- and of course, is nobody's business, anyway.

So, really, the question is really saying "Do you have anything to be private about", and nearly everyone of course will answer "yes" to that. If you have something you wish to keep private, then you have something you wish to keep hidden. Period.

Re:Nobody likes a Nerd, or to be proved wrong

[Stanislav_J]

Kind of bothered some of them, but instead of learning crypto basics, they yelled at me. I do not understand this behaviour...

Nobody likes a Nerd, or to be proved wrong. You put them in the position of being proved wrong by a nerd. Surprised they aren't happy?

It's the difference between the few souls in this world who think rationally (like the nerd) and most of humanity which tends to let emotion rule the day (like those students).

I am in the former category. And I do not mind being proven wrong. In fact, I welcome it. I want to understand life, the universe and everything a little better each day, and the clearer and better informed my thinking, the more useful and accurate my knowledge becomes.

Many people, however, seem to have a huge emotional stake in being "right." They cannot possibly begin to admit the thought that they might be wrong -- I dunno, maybe it's a basic self-esteem thing. That's why almost a decade into the 21st Century, we still have people who believe such things as the universe being created in 6 days, or that the moon landings were faked, or that Barry Bonds just worked out a lot.

My experience has been that most discussions of this sort go something like this:

Other guy (we'll call him "Joe") states a misinformed opinion.

I show Joe the error of his argument and point out his factual errors.

Joe pauses, then merely repeats the same line of "reasoning." (The last two steps may loop several times in succession with Joe becoming more and more flustered.)

Joe at some point abandons any pretense of rational argument and, having quickly exhausted his arsenal, starts to use phrases like "you just don't understand" or "that's just the way it is" or the like. (Optional phrases include "But God says it, so I believe it" or "Well, that's what my mother taught me -- are you calling my mother a liar?")

Final phase has Joe (a)attacking my character and the circumstances of my birth, usually accompanied by various words and phrases on the FCC's no-no list.

This is why it does not pay to argue about anything with anyone. When warning signs of the early phases of the above conversation begin to appear, quickly change the subject. When someone prefers to wallow in ignorance, there is little you can do. Pressing the issue will just make you an asshole in their eyes, and in extreme cases may result in the proverbial and venerable knuckle-sandwich being applied to your nose.