On-line Privacy Concerns Grow

[TheMercenary]

Some interesting things to keep in mind as our world becomes more digital.

To Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet law at Harvard, there is an obvious explanation for this kind of repurposing of information — there is so much information out there. Supply creates demand, he argues.

“This is a broader truth about the law,” he writes in an e-mail message. “There are often no requirements to keep records, but if they’re kept, they’re fair game for a subpoena.”

And we are presented with what Professor Zittrain calls the “deadbeat dad” problem. There are government investigators, divorcing spouses, even journalists, who have found creative ways to exploit the material. “So many databases,” he writes, “as simple as highway toll collection records or postal service address changes, lend themselves to other uses, such as finding parents behind on their child support payments.”

Perhaps a more direct explanation is that data collection is part of what Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, calls “the surveillance business model.” That is, there is money to be made from knowing your customers well — with a depth unimaginable before Internet cookies allowed companies to track obsessively online behavior.

“We took whatever was done offline and put it on steroids,” she said, perhaps with the Rodriguez case in the back of her mind. “It requires compliance with the kind of promises that comes with this kind of data collection.”

The foundation argues that online service providers — social networks, search engines, blogs and the like — should voluntarily destroy what they collect, to avoid the kind of legal controversies the baseball players’ union is now facing. The union is being criticized for failing to act during what apparently was a brief window to destroy the 2003 urine samples before the federal prosecutors claimed them. “You don’t want to know that stuff,” she says, speaking of the ordinary blogger collecting data on every commenter. “You don’t want to get a subpoena. For ordinary Web sites it is a cost to collect all this data.”

•

The digital format makes it easy to cling to material that normally would be disposed of or would disintegrate. Storage is cheap and practically limitless. And Ms. Cohn says of the people who dominate the Internet, “the people who design software, in my experience, tend to be pack rats.”

Journalists are sometimes advised to destroy their notes every few months so that they can’t be used in a lawsuit. Yet, somehow you want those notes — you see only how they could set you free, or lead you back to a new story, not prove your guilt.

continues:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/te...link.html?_r=1

[richlevy]

This may have been posted on the Cellar before, but check out the ACLU Pizza Ad to see a 'for now' exaggerated example of this.

Originally Posted by richlevy

This may have been posted on the Cellar before, but check out the ACLU Pizza Ad to see a 'for now' exaggerated example of this.

The ACLU has probably done more than any organization in the country to protect privacy rights....consumer privacy, internet privacy, medical privacy, workplace privacy.....

Sooner or later, everyone needs the ACLU on their side.

[Cicero]

[TheMercenary]

And now we have the latest attempt by the Obama Administration to gain control over our privacy on the internet....

Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans

STANFORD, Calif. - President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_1...37-501465.html

[xoxoxoBruce]

Did you read it? It doesn't say anything of the sort. The assholes in the comments section certainly didn't read it.

He took control away from Homeland Security and the NSA, so the commerce department could come up with a way private businesses could offer people a secure digital ID, IF THEY WANT IT, for secure online transactions. No central data base, not government controlled, voluntary system for commerce.

[TheMercenary]

It strikes me that he is giving more powers to his individual agencies that they do not actually have as understood by Congress in an effort to circumvent the controversy. He is doing it with the FCC and with the EPA.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It sounds to me like he's making the Commerce Department actually do some useful work, that would benefit commerce, helping cut down on fraud.

[Lamplighter]

It's not the government, it's the advertising industry.
Why else would it have been handed over the Dept of Commerce ?

The ad industry has convinced every business person they must advertise.
Ad agencies have filled up almost every foot of publicly visible space,
and you can't look anywhere without seeing ads in one form or another.

So now they are going to track your computer ramblings
and present you with "opportunities" that were selected "just for you".
Cookies and FaceBook are their best friends, but cell phones and iPads work for them too.
The "find my iPad" feature on Apple's iPad has already been hacked for ulterior motives.

Corporations never die, so why should I think that databases ever get erased.
After all, my G-child's day care facility may some day be a key for selling high end golf clubs.

See, I'm only a little bit paranoid about databases

[TheMercenary]

Databases are an industry in this nation. No less a source for the government.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

It's not the government, it's the advertising industry.
Why else would it have been handed over the Dept of Commerce ?

It was handed over to Commerce, to keep it away from Homeland Security & NSA, because that would generate immediate distrust that it's a national identity database.
This isn't about tracking for advertisers, they already have that well in hand, ask Google.
This is about coming up with secure a method, to be implemented by private firms, of online monetary transactions, to cut down on fraud and hopefully identity theft. Or at least the damage identity thieves can do.

[Lamplighter]

xoB, my post was somewhat tongue-in-cheek,
but also pretty much my thoughts about advertising, itself.
With regards to Merc's post and link to NY Times, they seemed
to be focused more on personal data than on $ transactions.

As a retired db programmer, I am interested in your remarks,
and would like to pursue those ideas if you still have a link to share.
My first reaction is along the lines of how ? to know who is the
person using the computer, cell phone, etc, at any given
moment that would be an advantage over the CC's or SSN's we use now.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'm using the link in Merc's post 5, which is CBSnews, I don't see any link to the NYtimes?

Very few are more paranoid about databases than myself, no facebook, linked-in, paypal, ebay, or any other online groups. Alumni groups have managed to find my mail address, but I don't respond. I also don't have a cell phone, won't use EZ-Pass, and refused GM's On-Star, if they want to track me, they're going to have to work at it.

That said, if I want to do business online, I have to use a credit card (I'm certainly not letting them into my bank account), and that means giving up some information, but I try to control how much, and to whom.

Maybe Obama & Co see the mega-banks, with their huge credit card networks, going down the tubes, and they're looking for an alternative verification system to keep ebusiness from being dragged down too.

[Lamplighter]

OK Thx, I was coming from Merc's #1 and had yet not seen #5

[TheMercenary]

Check out how much info there is on yourself on the web already. And this is the tip of the iceberg. Look yourself up in pipl.com. Scary shit.