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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."
"Twenty years ago.... they had to break into your house. Now they can just break into your ISP". They make it sound like that's easier, as though they're getting into your shed. I had someone break into my house last year, and trust me, these Mensa candidates wouldn't have 'just broken into my ISP' instead. They could barely put together a sentence. If you've got an organization powerful enough after you that they can break into your ISP (which is for 99% of us a major corporation with serious security) the locks on your house weren't exactly a challenge anyway. I'm surprised Schneier is comparing two such flagrantly uncomparable things.
Probably, but the optimist in me hopes it will go in a different direction. Maybe the ubiquity of embarrassing photos of people during spring break or whatever will make such things less shocking and less worthy of note in the future, and people will finally learn to lighten up a bit. After all, you can't very well use your opponent's topless photos against her if she can just counter with photos of you doing keg stands in college. Maybe it will force politicians to move beyond these petty personal attacks and actually start debating the issues again. But seriously, your scenario is probably a lot more likely.
Also encrypt. It's not hard anymore.
Good luck getting every other person you send e-mail to to start encrypting or dealing with it. I get more hassles from non-geeks who call me up and say "what's this attached to your e-mail" than you can shake a stick at. Yes, I explain it to them. When I get to the part where they have to remember to click "encrypt" button, then enter their passphrase to send e-mail it all comes to a screeching halt.
I wonder how many mail servers are configured to accept SMTP over SSL/TLS? Every node along the way can't sniff your mail if the server-to-server communication is encrypted. They'd have to actually hack the sending or receiving server, as opposed to just sniff traffic.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Imagine if we ended up in a world where the two most recent American Presidents had admitted to cocaine use and the one before that had a reputation for sexual dalliance.
(Bush's use of cocaine is more controversial than Obama's, but his alcohol related antics are a reasonable replacement if it turns out that he never used coke)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The American fear of their own bodies is borderline psychotic.
Maybe 20 years ago. Thankfully for us chubby-lovers everywhere heroin-chic is no longer a fad. 14 year old girls are willingly sending nekkid pics to entire groups of people with the push of a button. American beaches host chubbies and even fatties, along with skinnies, in bikinis. If there's one good thing the internet did, it's show people how they look compared to other normal people and not models.
Some alarmist religious idiots and other "moralists" used to say that porn caused unrealistic expectations about bodies and behavior. Quite the opposite, it actually made people more comfortable with their bodies! Next time your girlfriend whines about her love handles, just put on a porno and tell her that she's a goddess compared to the women on-screen with the fake tits, beat-up roastbeef pussy, and zit-covered ass. You guys know what I'm talking about. Making a porno is a prerequisite to becoming a celebrity nowdays.
Celebrities themselves are no longer the gods and goddesses people idolized. Now they're just clowns, average airheaded rubes caked with makeup and airbrushing and made famous with "leaked" sex tapes.
One more thing: god dosen't exist.
I would vote for a candidate who admitted he had used drugs and wanted them legalize them. I would NOT vote for a hypocrite who admitted to using drugs and wanted them illegal; what other hypocracies would he bring to office?
Free Martian Whores!
It's not that people are paranoid, but there are occasional events that are creepy, which point to a need for more privacy.
The one that was the tipping point for me actually happened to a co-worker: in the mid-late 90's he was taking AZT (yes, he had AIDS). The creepy part came shortly after getting his first AZT prescription filled...a few weeks after his first prescription he started getting mailed advertisements for graveyard plots. Yes, his pharmacy had sold the fact that he was taking AZT to a marketing company, who realized he was about to die & tried to sell him a grave. It's not that he was being targeted in any malicious way, but I think it's clear (at least, to me) that his privacy had been badly violated by his pharmacy.
That's the sort of thing I use as a model for privacy. In the intervening years, health data has been (somewhat) protected, but I think it's still a valid point for consideration: you may not think of your own information as important, but some of it can still be used to make some very creepy conclusions about you, and will be used in some very creepy ways if you're not careful.
He's not a politician, he's royalty.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
About nine years ago, when phones started to get GPS capability, I was asking people what they thought of having their location tracked. Older people were horrified. Teenagers wanted a live map with all their friends on it.
The cell phone industry was hesitant to roll out GPS-based people tracking applications for years. Helio was the first to really do it, with their "Buddy Beacon" system. (This only worked if both parties had a Helio phone, so it wasn't that useful given Helio's tiny market share.) Now it's a common phone capability.
At my age, 20 years from now, I'll be in a nursing home being cared for by a younger generation of caretakers, who have never had privacy, or have any understanding of why old people (like me) seem to be obsessed with a need for privacy. "But Mr. Robertson the webcam in your bathroom is so the attendants can look after your safety. If you fall down we need to know about that."
"belonging to a class of activities that my peers and I disagree with or find distasteful."
YES. These people don't need LAWS protecting their right to hide such information from public view.
Nobody needs LAWS to keep other people from finding out what they are doing. They need LAWS to protect their right to do things.
The best example I can think of is "Don't ask don't tell". A homosexual man or woman can be enlisted in the military as long as they don't disclose that they are homosexual. This is a protection of ONLY their privacy, not a protection of their lifestyle. The reality is that homosexuals are still discriminated against and if they want to stay in the military they can not even discuss the discrimination as it would disclose their sexual preference which would be grounds for dismissal.
Homosexuals don't need laws to protect their privacy, they need laws to protect their right to live the lifestyle of their choice without fear of persecution.
The same argument goes for nearly all activities which some may find unethical or immoral. You don't need laws protecting your right to hide your behavior, you need laws protecting the behavior itself.
Some may say that privacy laws are a bridge from when society decides something is worthy of discrimination until the day it decides that something actually should be protected. I say it is a crutch people use to avoid taking a side.
Unless some activity is criminal in that it harms your person or your property - the other person should be allowed to do that activity.
This applies to guns, drugs, sex, marriage and any other topic you can think of.
We have laws which govern the use of guns - guns themselves do not commit crimes. Enforce those laws which say that a gun owner must be a free citizen (no felony convictions), must register the gun and add in some mandatory safety and training - we do it for a driver's license, why not for a gun license... and then let anyone who qualifies buy whatever kind of gun they are rated for (not everyone can drive a motorcycle legally on the street, you must pass a special course).
We have laws to prohibit driving under the influence of any drug, marijuana included, and which make robbery, loitering, vandalism, etc. illegal - we don't need special laws just for drug users. Now I am all for adding rehab to the penalty to those crimes if you commit them under the influence. You obviously have a problem and need treatment if you're committing crimes while high. Maybe you're just a criminal who likes to get high. You should go to jail for being a criminal, not for doing drugs.
My point is that we don't need more laws to make more things illegal. We need more laws to make more things explicitly legal and to protect those who participate in these behaviors from any sort of discrimination.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.