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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.
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.
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.