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."
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.
"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.
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.
Dammit, it's "flout", not "flaunt".
Which is lovely, until all the organisations you necessarily deal with — government departments, financial institutions, employers/clients, and so on — start putting personal data about you on their own systems that you don't control.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
... along with E-mail and trolling Slashdot, and what I write in the latter two are not personal or representative of my meatspace self.
Hallelujah. I'm the same way. When I go home to 1313 Mockingbird Lane and shoot up (with the smack that I buy from my buddy Lance and his wife Jody) and get high with my girlfriend (Trixie, who I rent from the corner Central and Missouri here in Springfield, IL), I'll jump on the Internet but completely anonymously and provide no personal information whatsoever. I don't even log into Slashdot normally, it's just that I sometimes forget and have Firefox v3.0.2 remember all of my passwords, Springfield National Bank account details, and tax return information and forget to block it. (How do you block cookies again? Oh well, I'm sure that the privacy-protection-software pop-up I just clicked on will take care of it.) Moral of the story - If you say nothing about yourself and hide in the shadows like I do, nobody will know anything.
Fuck the internet.
Yeah, what's it ever done for anyone? Personally, I prefer the days when I could call Amazon up on the phone and have them read me a list of everything on the fucking planet until they got to the $15 item I was after.
Seriously though. Set your own level of paranoia. Some people want to be invisible - That's getting tough, but it's possible. Some people don't give a crap who knows what - That's actually probably pretty safe. There are huge masses of people out there putting everything out for public view. Hide in the masses. Then, presumably like most of slashdot, there are people like me who lie somewhere in the middle. I'm in New Mexico. I'm a guy in my early 30's. I'm married with kids. All that's true, and I'm comfortable associating it with the name gnick. Meh. There are so many leaks in the system that leaking a few details is far less scary than the info about you that's most likely being leaked elsewhere. And identity theft is a PITA to fix, but it's unlikely to hit you. We all know somebody who's been bent over a barrel and seriously inconvenienced by it, but even if you're a complete idiot your chances at immunity (or at least minimal pain) are pretty good.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
what I write in the latter two are not personal or representative of my meatspace self.
Surely that's the whole reason why content on the internet is so incredibly banal? Connect people to the web, give them an anonymous persona, and the sense of group integrity and social self-preservation that keeps them from blurting out pointless rubbish at random passers-by vanishes, along with any reward they would get from carefully crafting high-quality verbal output.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
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!
And the day a national newspaper publishes pictures of your private sexual encounters for millions of perverts to salivate over, will you still think we don't need privacy then?
And the day someone steals a silly video you made, publishes it online a you personally become a worldwide joke, will you still think we don't need privacy then?
And the day you are arrested for urinating behind a bush and are now subject to the all prying eyes of termagants and vigilantes the world over, will you still think we don't need privacy then?
People's private habits will always be a source of derision, ridicule and contempt for others, even those with habits of their own. People will used any excuse to laugh at, mock and inflict violence on others. You go find the nicest homosexual couple in your town and put up a big sign outside their house saying "Nicest gay couple in town reside here"; I guarantee you they will be egged, stoned, assaulted or killed with a month, no matter how placid the local populace. Now ask yourself, how easy should it be to put that tag up in Google maps?
Privacy means more than just keeping your private details a secret. It means keeping yourself safe from other human beings. We are social animals, and that means we will gang up and rip someone apart as easily as we gather together and cooperate on anything else. All we need is sufficient excuse.
You say people don't need privacy. Well I think that Max Mosely needed privacy. I think that the Star Wars Kids needs privacy. I think that people who were caught taking photgraphs of themselves in high school need privacy. I think these people were vulnerable and needed our protection from newspapers, databases and the crowing mobs howling with delight at their misfortune. I think they needed it and we let them down. What right should any of use have to any privacy whatsoever if we can't protect the people that need it most?
May the Maths Be with you!
And then when people search for you, you can be sure that all they'll find will be inaccurate information published about you by other people--who probably dislike you, or else why would they be motivated enough to write about you--and information published by corporations and government bodies.
Yeah, that'll show them.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
In other words, "People who are doing something unethical deserve no legal cover for their actions." 'Unethical' may be defined as "belonging to a class of activities that my peers and I disagree with or find distasteful." Your argument, and the fact that many others have similar positions, actually makes an excellent case for privacy.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!