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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."
I knew a girl who had a cop look up her name and address from her car's plate just to flirt with her. She was a bit freaked out by it.
Table-ized A.I.
I did his at school. When I urged people to encrypt their communication, several said they had nothing to hide. So I started Wireshark and proceeded to read some of their more interesting instant messages to them and everyone who was interested.
Kind of bothered some of them, but instead of learning crypto basics, they yelled at me. I do not understand this behaviour, can Slashdot explain ?
... again and again and again and ...
I'm always amazed just how often this and other nonsense comes up. Then I remember that today's people have attention spans of chronically depressed Lemmings and it all comes rushing back... along with that deep sickening sinking feeling.
At any rate, here's a good essay (found it linked to on Schneier's blog) that destroys the argument:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
Just used it on my parents a couple days ago. Spread it around!
That the police probably really may watch Jerry Springer with a beer when they're done at work?
It's not that they're super humans, nothing says they can actually handle the power they have in terms of this.
I *know* that every now and then, these sort of regulations are broken at hospitals, why would the police be different?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Some years ago, I had a very strange medical problem. A very severe auto-immune response. The doctors ran through the gamut. Rheumatoid Arthritis, Rheumatic fever, Lupus, Lyme's Disease, Lymphoma, Steve Johnson syndrome, eventually long shots, like HIV, advanced STDs. Nothing, nadda, zilch.
Eventually it was concluded it was a rare allergic reaction, just the right combination of things.
Well, about 3 weeks after the hospitalization, guess what comes in the mail?, a big splashy vivid orange package for fucking Rituxan (a lymphoma/arthritis medication). Is that any of my neighbors fucking business? No it's not.
A far more insidious (in my book) example. I racked up some debt taking care of my mother when she was dying. Anyway, for Valentine's, I send my girlfriend flowers at her work. Three days later, guess what? Creditors calling her work, asking for my girlfriend, and asking about my whereabouts. When asked how they got this number, they replied "We heard you were dating".
Outside of that one credit card transaction, there was no other paper trail connection to us otherwise, anywhere on earth. It's obvious they used the records to call her and harass her at work. That's not fucking right.
Now let's extrapolate that. Let's say I was a married or taken man, and that was not my wife? Would they have the right to potentially destroy a family or otherwise cause such destruction in someone's life?
Sure, some people will say, they would be getting what they deserved, but it misses the point, I'm of the mind that if business is allowed to get that personal, then it's a two way street, including grievous, personal harm in return.
On this subject, this was posted last summer, so some of you probably read it. Quite worth the read though, it makes valid points.
"I have nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/2054219
No wit here.