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You’re Not as Private as You Think You Are

Privacy concerns are riding high in the media currently, thanks to the high-profile data breach cases with the Veterans Association, AOL, AT&T and others. I’ll just note quickly here that these events aren’t really new, its just general public awareness is increasing. Which is good.

Privacy is a fickle thing in the United States. Unlike many other first world countries, we have no explicit guarantee of privacy rights, though many interpret parts of the constitution as such. Courts all over the land are involved in cases that (re)define privacy rights and law in the USA.

The single biggest issue with privacy rights in the US is having a clear definition of what privacy is. What sort of actions, information or things
can be said to be private? Privacy is deeply tied to social morés and subjective opinions. Often we Americans will go about our daily business with the assumption certain aspects of our lives are private, and others may not know about them. Yet in reality those parts of our lives are publically accessible. Once enough little pieces of information are put together and correlated, a surprisingly personal view of someone’s life can be presented.

OK, that’s enough musing, let’s get into the fun stuff!

 

 

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Security Balances

From this Yahoo! article: He was sympathetic, but accepted the Transportation Security Administration’s reasons for the ban. “What are you going to do?” he said. “I guess you have to be safe.” Amanda Volz, a TSA screener in Minneapolis, said she hoped more travelers would take that attitude Friday. “There’s some moaning and groaning, and a few people who get angry, but once you explain it to them, they are more lenient about giving it up,” Volz said. “You just try to make them understand that it’s for their safety.” Lots of things are done for safety. But they aren’t always the best choice, or the most useful. And there’s usually more than one way to make something safe and secure.

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A Chaotic Ocean Divided – Part I

If you have never read John Brunner‘s novel “The Shockwave Rider“, I strongly recommend you do so at your earliest opportunity.  Published in 1975, the novel is a fictional story about a man in a future society dominated by computer networks, corrupt governments and social upheaval.  Key to the book’s plot is the division between what information government authorities can access and the information citizens can see.

In many ways the book mirrors the situation we live in today. In fact, “The Shockwave Rider” is so keenly accurate in its predictions that it’s somewhat unnerving (Brunner even coined the term “worm” to refer to a computer program that moves through a network of computers and makes changes).  Vast oceans of data exist across societies throughout the world. Databases compiled by corporations, non-profits and governments store meticulous details about all of us. And in our world today there is no data access balance between “regular joes” and those governmental and corporate entities. Because data about people is so especially valuable, that divide represents a power imbalance.

 

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