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Did We Lose the Privacy War?
eihab writes "I've been a fanatic about my online privacy for the last few years. I've been using NoScript and blocking Google Analytics, disabling third-party cookies, encrypting IM and doing everything in my power to keep data-miners at bay. Recently, I've been feeling like I'm just doing too much and still losing! No matter what I do, I know that there's a weak link somewhere, be it my ISP, Flash cookies, etc. I've recently gotten AT&T U-Verse, who, according to their privacy statement, will be monitoring my TV watching habits for advertisement purposes. I'm extremely annoyed by that, yet I love the service so much and I don't think I can cancel it. I just can't take this anymore. I have nothing to hide, but I do not want to be profiled and become member #5534289 in a database somewhere that records everything I do. I know I'm not that interesting to anyone, but the idea of someone being able to pull up everything about me with a simple SQL SELECT statement and a couple of JOINS makes me cringe. One of the reasons I hate data mining is that data security is not understood and almost non-existent at a lot of places. Case in point: I changed my life insurance two years ago, and the medical firm that conducted my health screening was broken into and computers with non-encrypted hard drives and patients' data were stolen. That medical firm didn't really need my SSN, but then again neither did AT&T when I signed up for U-Verse. Am I just too paranoid? Is privacy dead? Should I just give up and accept the fact that privacy is not the norm anymore (like Facebook's founder recently said) or should I keep fighting the good fight for my privacy?"
Given how interconnected our world is, if you want to participate, you have to do it in public. You have to connect to someone else's machine, hook up to someone else's fiber, talk to someone who you can't immediately trust, and you have to do it in the open.
That is to say, SSL, TOR, NoFlash, NoScript etc, still don't have a place in our lives as geeks. Just, forget privacy.
Besides, I think we live in a world where we have obscurity through density, instead of obscurity through privacy. Billions of people on this earth, nearly a billion of them connected to the 'net. Embrace it. Eventually, if enough personal data gets out there, it may become worthless to mine it due to the sheer volume available.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
You are agreeing to give up your privacy. You are not losing - you surrendered.
Indeed. I like his whining about them not needing his SSN. Then why did you give it to them? Phone and cable service is regulated in most states. I've yet to read state regulations that allow them to deny you service you refuse to fork over the SSN. If they refuse to give you service without the SSN then contact your state regulators and open a case.
I did this here in New York with Verizon and the public service commission compelled them to turn on my service within two business days of my filing a complaint. All they can do is ask you for a deposit -- the law usually requires them to return it to you after a certain number of timely payments (usually a year's worth) have been made.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It's not the war of privacy- it's the war of privacy vs. convenience.
Facebook lets me keep in touch and aware of what my friends are doing. On the other hand, photos of me doing something that may reflect poorly on myself to an employer or other friends. I have pretty strict privacy settings on Facebook, but the reality is that something bad could easily be associated with my profile and seen by many before I could get it pulled.
On the other hand, if I didn't share quite a bit of personal info on Facebook, I wouldn't even be aware when I was tagged in a photo.
Today, people are accepting convenience at the sacrifice of some privacy. It's nice when I can call up the cable company and have them able to see what services I have, that I'm paying the bill, and the modem has the wrong DOCSIS file. On the other hand, I'm in a database that is easier to access than ever. I accept the sacrifice for convenience when I have to work with the cable company.
Or credit cards. The majority of my purchases are now associated with my SSN in a database. The ability to track my spending and have some degree of purchase security is worth the sacrifice for me, so I choose to use electronic payment.
So did we lose, giving up so much? On one hand, there are plenty of alternatives- I can buy online with a Visa Gift Card, registered to whatever name and address and purchased in cash. I can buy in cash in person. On the other hand, it's virtually impossible NOT to be in a database- even if you were to forego electricity, television, cable, etc., you'd still be in a government tax database. Someone I know got a letter last year saying "an IRS employee with your and a couple million other taxpayer documents, including your taxpayer ID number, full name, and address, lost their laptop. We'll try not to let it happen again. Here's a year of credit monitoring from one of the three bureaus, then you're on your own. Seeya!"
So, yes, to some degree we lost. It's hard to avoid changes that the rest of society is fine with. Living like a hermit in a powerless shack in the woods is still possible, but for the average person, it definitely has been eroded.
Temkin's u-verse tip... Turn off the TV using the native remote. The box stays on, and continues to stream for hours. It eventually turns off after a timeout of roughly 6 hours. But they can never be certain where I stopped watching. Just adds a little noise to their data.
In the US, they want your SSN in order to run a credit check. Want to know where the real privacy problem is: credit. It's virtually everywhere. Want cable, they run a credit check. Go to a new dentist/doctor, they run a credit check. And then try reminding these businesses that by law they have to offer another way around it. By law, the only people you are supposed to give out your SSN to is the government for Social Security and tax purposes. No one else is supposed to have access to it. The credit system is broken and required by just about everyone these days.
Oh, and god forbid you pay cash for everything and live within your means. I have 1 credit card, but I've carried a balance of a few hundred dollars for 3 months out of 10 years. Apparently that doesn't help your credit score. I paid cash for my last car and now drive "company" cars. Company provides my cell phone and cell card and I've always rented. Even then I've tended to pay the lease upfront just so I don't have to bother with it.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
You're being too exclusive in your list of those who wield the real power. It's not just the old money... there's plenty of (relatively) new money there too.
It's not even a small, select list. It's the ultra-wealthy -- same as it has always been. I'm not one to advocate class warfare... but it's an entire socio-economic class on the top reaping the rewards of control of the political system. Don't exclude the Bushes or the Kennedys from your list. Don't exclude the wealthy in the banking and energy industries who are relatively anonymous. It's misleading and harmful to think that the list is limited to a few families with old money -- and it makes you seem like a conspiracy theory moonbat. Far better to "Do. The. Research. Yourself." and discover that it's a wider problem with no easy scapegoats to blame.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The poster's problem is that he's going about protecting his privacy the wrong way. Trying to hide all personal information is a losing proposition, as he's noticed. The best way to protect your privacy is to drown the real bits in a sea of fake information.
If AT&T wants to monitor his viewing habits, write a script that will chose programming at random and switch the U-Verse box to that station while he's not watching it himself. Web analytics and ad servers are equally easy to poison with fake data. The health insurance records are a bit harder, but that's an area where we have more rights and is easier to push for laws that protect privacy.
If enough people did this, data mining would be almost worthless since you couldn't get reliable results. Of course that's a pipe dream, since not enough people have the technical acumen to do this, but those of us who can should be doing our part.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"