Slashdot Mirror
Schneier On a Generation Gap In Privacy
goompaloompa writes "In the Japan Times, Bruce Schneier writes that a passing conversation online is not what it may seem and that maintaining your privacy is becoming even more difficult as social media and cloud computing become the norm. Furthermore, while users in Japan may think they are secure, their level of protection may vary when the computers that store their data are overseas. At the root of the problem is a new generation gap: old laws incapable of covering current-day scenarios. Quoting: 'Twenty years ago, if someone wanted to look through your correspondence, they had to break into your house. Now, they can just break into your ISP. Ten years ago, your voicemail was on an answering machine in your office; now it's on a computer owned by a telephone company. ... We need comprehensive data privacy laws, protecting our data and communications regardless of where it is stored or how it is processed. We need laws forcing companies to keep it private and delete it as soon as it is no longer needed, and laws giving us the right to delete our data from third-party sites. And we need international cooperation to ensure that companies cannot flaunt data privacy laws simply by moving themselves offshore."
We need comprehensive data privacy laws...forcing companies to keep it private and delete it as soon as it is no longer needed, and laws giving us the right to delete our data from third-party sites...We need international cooperation to ensure that companies cannot flaunt data privacy laws simply by moving themselves offshore."
Fat chance. Just don't write anything on the goddamn internet. Maybe you missed the memo, but MySpace and Facebook aren't cool anymore and Twitter only serves to further cheapen your existence. The internet fads will only devolve in content while they expand their data-mining capabilities. The only way that our leadership (and the corporations who own them) will fix the internet is if enough people get tired of it and withdraw altogether from its data-mining fast-food for the brain. Problem is that there are too many infantile latchkey kids out there who won't last 5 seconds without blinkenlights or deluding themselves into believing that others actually give a shit what they have to say.
My own online presence involves only downloading, passive viewing of news websites along with E-mail and trolling Slashdot, and what I write in the latter two are not personal or representative of my meatspace self. Fuck the internet. The meatspace reigns supreme.
Some 20 years from now, the confirmation hearings for supreme court justice nominations will get to be really interesting. Also the mud slinging and sliming and negative ads during election campaigns are going to be even more entertaining than it is now. We will be living in really interesting times.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sorry, but that's the bottom line. Move your data to the cloud; kiss the privacy of that data goodbye. Move your voicemail to the phone company. Same issue. Get your code developed in [offshore country of your choice], you can rest assured that some of that code will go to a competitor in [insert country of choice].
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Anytime there's an entity between you and your data/property/money, etc. it's no longer really yours. You don't control it any longer.
Sometimes that doesn't matter. Sometimes it does. Big time. Plan accordingly.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
voicemail held by the phone company? only if you dont use an answering machine or you use their VM service. you CAN change your cellphones settings to ring your own VM system at home.
Email, use IMAP and yank it all from the servers. They cant read your email from 2 weeks ago if it's not there.
Also encrypt. It's not hard anymore.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
has lived their entire lives online, they twitter about their bowel movements... I don;t think they even think about privacy as being something desirable.
This space available.
There are two important differences. One, if they break into your home, there is a good chance you would know that someone had, if they break into your ISP, there is a good chance you won't know that someone broke in (even if you do, you probably won't know if they were after your stuff). Two, if someone breaks into your home, they only get your stuff, if they want someone else's stuff, they have to break into their home. If someone breaks into your ISP, not only can they get your stuff, but they can get the stuff of everyone else who uses that ISP.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If someone breaks into your ISP, it's not just your information they get. Say the ISP has the data for N people. If more than 1/N people of loose morals are capable of breaking into the ISP, your odds of having your data exposed are larger this way than your odds of having your data exposed by someone breaking into your house. Making simplifying assumptions like people being equally interested in breaking into houses and ISPs, and one person per house etc of course.
My gut feeling (which may be wrong, gut feelings often are when it comes to security) is that your correspondence is much much safer in your house, unless there is a particular reason someone wants your particular information rather than information to fish through. Furthermore, most people are STILL vulnerable to the house break-in, as there is sufficient information there to fool the ISP through a social engineering vector. Also, the people who broke into your house probably didn't care about your information, from your description they were likely just after the tangible properly.
Finally, the ISP may simply sell the information anyway.
What we need are more clarity about laws regarding basic rights and their nemesis discrimination.
The average person in their average life does not need privacy. They need discretion from their peers and the public regarding their personal life and laws which protect their right to live how they choose without discrimination.
Yes I advocate transparency. The truth will set you free and all that...
The only people who *need* privacy are those who are a) doing something illegal or unethical and want to keep others from finding out or b) doing something competitive and want to keep their progress from their competition.
People in category (a) deserve no legal cover for their actions.
People in category (b) have a thing called security which they should implement to provide a deterrent to unwanted attention or disclosure.
Everyone else just needs to know that their insurance won't go up if they are found to practice aggressive sexual methods or that they suck at cooking and start fires on the range every other weekend trying to cook.
People will be better off when their neighbors know about their weird behavior and learn to accept it (just like those neighbors will be better off when you find out about their quirks). This is called living in a community and it's about time we got back to it instead of trying to live in isolated 'privacy' gardens where we think we're the only ones who have issues and everyone else's lives are perfect.
Think of all the anxiety and social problems this would prevent. It's hard to discriminate against some group of people when you find out that all of your friends are in that group.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Information wants to be free.
That tired old cliche is still around? You could as honestly say that information wants to be private, or information wants to be valuable.
When information isn't free, neither are you.
Free Martian Whores!
IMHO, you're putting an unnecessary strain on the IMAP server of your ISP (70 seconds polling is really aggressive)... and it doesn't buy you any more confidentiality either. A "deleted" file on the IMAP server is merely unlinked, i.e. it is still present in the free blocks of said server, and can be reconstructed. Depending on the load of that server, deleted mails can remain readable many days, of not weeks and months after you've thought you deleted them.
Run your own mail server at home: it provides you with a lot more control and not just w.r.t. confidentiality. You can also fine-tune the anti-spam settings to your heart's desires. You may want to get your own domain and a static IP address though, but it's worth every penny.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.