True horror story. I don’t easily give out private info and when I do it’s usually altered in some way, but even this doesn’t always help your cause.
One day I came in to a local haunt and everyone was treating me differently, in subtle and not so subtle ways. Then as I was commenting on the change to a friend, a person I didn’t know piped up “I googled you, we know you are really (age) your mothers name is (name) and you have been arrested for (crime) (number of times). You served (time period) , Blah blah…
Astounded I wondered aloud why on earth would you say such a thing about me? Not one thing was true!
“But I found your police record.”
“OH well there’s the problem, I have no police record.”
“Everybody has a police record.”
“But I do not.”
“Your mother is not (name)?”
“No”
“You aren’t really (age)?”
“Not even close.“
My friend backed me up, luckily.
Crestfallen, and still not entirely convinced " You don’t live at (address)?”
“Nowhere near.”
“But you are (name)?”
“Yes, did you try it with a ‘t’ at the end like lots of people do?”
“OHHHH"
There were people who were still not convinced and the the next week another person came up with an equally false set of data, right name wrong age.
” Why are you googling me anyway? I don’t even know you!”
” Just heard your name and wondered."
“That’s all?”
“I google everyone.”
“I see.”
!!!
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Like weapons of mass destruction? OOPs, I never said that!
Is it not a choice between complete privacy and the protection of society. Recently a man in our area was convicted of peddling live porn of his daughter. If we forced that everything was ‘private’ and his rights to do this privately the police would have no way to id him and convict him. Only through the searching through records and ips could they find this scumbag. I would gladly give up my ‘location’ on a minute by minute basis to ensure that things like that never happen to defenseless people. Put an rfid on me, I have nothing to hide about where I go, then I can always prove that it wasn’t me who went to jail, went to the pron store, robbed that guy at knife point. Let ‘them’ know that I didn’t go to church on Sunday I don’t care. I don’t understand the cry of privacy when the information that is divulged doesn’t harm me. I don’t want you to know my pin, password or other financial information because people out there abuse it.
/tirade
Privacy is not a right. If you want privacy you must work at it. You build fences, buy drapes and install locks. But what you do outside of your four walls is public. That is a fundamental thing you need to understand.
OK OK I see 3 fingers, no 2, no, how many do I see?"
You misspelled the word hodgepodge.
“…may have worked by default in the hodepodge, sporadically digital worlds…”
I don’t necessarily have an issue with a person being allowed to constantly monitor themselves, in the digital sense. I should certainly hope that people would take enough interest in being able to defend themselves this way, in case the need should ever arise.
However, it’s the public monitoring of people that’s a problem. Put aside the analogy of curtains and locked doors for a moment. Privacy is a self-defense Right against corruption. I may someday want to run for a political office, or want to get a promotion to a management position. My entire personal history being up for scrutiny, including that one strip-club I went into when I was younger, or how many bottles of beer I’ve purchased since I turned 21, would certainly present a problem.
As is, a potential employer can easily do a Google search on someone, and even get the wrong name as D suggested, and have it lead to a prejudice against someone. Something like that is unfortunate, but imagine if this data were available from a government source, and were very comprehensive. Imagine a health-insurance company denying your claims because of “existing conditions” that extend way back into your early childhood.
Jeff this time you did it. You made my all time greats list of blog posts. I am linking to this article perminantly on my website.
We are entering an age when protecting privacy is becoming something we need to do individually in order to preserve a collective value that has escaped our hands. Privacy is a collective good value because it allows us to maintain personal differences amicably. Lack of privacy kills freedom, makes a mockery of personal values, and steals the soul of the individual. Privacy is the only means to ensure that power and control remain in the hands of individuals. Where privacy is not required, power brokers can and will invade that personal space and create an economic or social reality that quickly goes from a convenient possibility to a compelling requirement. I for one think a bit and bridle are good for a horse, but not for a human being. We have far to much control in our society already. If you disagree, simply sit down with your parents or other adults, and ask them how much things have changed. I did it and I was shocked to realize how many things I assumed were ‘right’ and ‘good’ were political innovations that have come along in my lifetime. Most of them have not stood the test of time, and yet we are building a superstructure of regulation and control over all of our lives based on their assumptions. When we discover the emperor has no clothes, he will still be the emperor because we will have allowed no alternative.
So much about the arguments as to what privacy you should be entitled to, what you are or are not hiding, and so on.
Just see the recent stories in the UK press about our government and civil service agencies making a real mess of privacy and security.
Millions of records have ‘gone missing’ on CDs that were put ‘in the post’. Others have been ‘mislaid’ with numerous excuses.
When signing-up to commercial services, there is generally an ‘opt-out’ clause (well, there should be - and it really ought to be an ‘opt-in’ to be at all honest). That means you may give your permission for that organisation to sell on your details for whatever nefarious means they put forward.
I don’t recall seeing anything of this sort on government agency web sites and paper forms. However, some of these agencies DO sell on their information about individuals. Makes you forget that they are there to serve us.
Also surprising to recall that in the UK we have a Data Protection Act, which these agencies do not even choose to comply with!
Privacy, security, what’s that then?
I’m with McNealy. Get over it. “The real choice is liberty versus control”. This article reasons from the basis of fear: they /might/ do something to me, based on what they know about me. Nothing has happened yet, but what if… scary!! Whereas if you reason from the basis of liberty you wouldn’t care one bit about the illusion of “privacy”. If you’re truly free you can do whatever you like and the whole wide world may watch, if they’re really interested. So, get over it! The best medicine against this fear based fudd is to make your life as public as possible.
What is “right to privacy”?
Seriously, everybody has a different definition.
Consider; when you hop in your car, do you require a license? Who verifies that license? Who verifies the verifier?
Somebody, somewhere has access to all your personal information and since you don’t know who they are you cannot possibly judge how safe you are… UNLESS you consider that your safety is not based on what somebody KNOWS.
That’s the key.
The right to privacy is a fallacy. It can easily be divided into 2 important categories:
- The right to not be seen.
- The right to be left alone.
“The right to not be seen” is a very modern idea - logistically it can’t work and fighting for it only means you’re blind to something else. Yet much of Western society seems infatuated with this.
“The right to be left alone” was first covered, in essence, in the Magna Carte early 13th century and was wildly popular. The idea that no agency has the right to destroy you without peer review and that you should not be harassed by anyone without due cause. Americans have lost this right - “extraordinary rendition” means nobody is held accountable, nobody checks the facts, nobody knows your gone. You can be destroyed without trial or process. Privacy? Very private.
What’s more important to you?
Google also made orkut (google’s social networking site) profiles being listed to ``friends’’ in their search pages by default.
Number one I’d like to say that I love Coding Horror; it’s the highlight of my day to read while at work. Secondly, I love how you talk about privacy and yet offer a way to post anonymously to this site. And for what it’s worth; I understand that you will have an IP address that I posted this from. Be that as it may, this brings me to my third point; there are certainly things that really do make our lives better that do exploit our privacy. Things like, for example, Best Buy’s Reward Zone. I love the fact that when I buy something; I know eventually (after I’ve spent my entire paycheck ;)) that I will get some coupons for X amount off.
There is of course the downside to this where the company sells your information to another company for them to spam you with marketing crap. This, at least imho as a network security professional, I believe is the thing that I think should not be allowed. If you provide information to a company, they should be required by law to keep that information private between you and them only. It should be mutually exclusive between those two parties and no one else. And yes, I believe that goes with the government as well.
Using the previous example that Jeff gave, if I buy porn on the internet; I don’t want the entire world knowing that I did it. If I buy “Barely 18”, I don’t want the government to look at it and say “well that’s a potential pedophile.” I’m of course not stating that I watch porn, this is a single example. Let me continue with another example that has been played out as well.
If a College Exchange Student from India comes over to the US and is working on a research paper that deals with Nuclear weapons. Then that student is at risk of being watched by the government. With this pressure the student may not do the research fearing some action by the government and thus might fail the paper. (Of course I’m probably going to get a phone call from the government in a few days for including these words in my statement, but you get the point.)
My point is that there should be no fear about sharing private information with companies, even online. But it should be only available to the person the information originally belonged too and the company that the person shared it with. There are exceptions to this, like the fact that a sexual predator must register and this information is available to everyone. But regardless, I thank you for your time.
Only a couple of days old: The current state of privacy for selected countries. I’m from Germany, btw, which (predictably) had been dropping rapidly since last year :-((
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-559597
The incentive for collecting private information would be diminished if any such data could not be used for trade between parties. Taking out the profit incentive will go a long way to solve the problem.
So Steve you don’t mind being monitored 24-7 in that case I will sell the track of your movements to a direct marketing company so they can send you “relevant” mail that arrives when you are at home
And I’ll make sure the local burglars know when you are not at home as well
Monitoring to prove you innocent does not work, do you really think criminals could not fake it? “Those witnesses must have been mistaken my RFID tag said I was 20 miles away at the time”
Universal monitoring is only for the good if the data is kept private, and as we have seen recently no-one can be trusted to keep even that data they have already safe.
Every time you tell someone any information ask yourself two questions, do I trust these people enough to tell them this, and who would benefit from this information?
@Max Kanat-Alexander: “I think that normal people have every right to expect their personal lives to not be interfered with or published without their explicit consent. And I think that criminals lack the same right. However, sometimes this gets into treating everybody as though they were a criminal…”
The reason this often (not just ‘sometimes’) gets into treating everybody the same is that there is no true distinction between ‘normal people’ and ‘criminal.’
There’s not two separate races subject to surveillance and at risk of intrusion into their privacy, there’s just ‘people.’ People that haven’t committed crimes aren’t necessarily never going to, people who have committed crimes may never have been caught and punished, people have been caught and punished aren’t necessarily going to commit crimes again.
If you start with a falsehood, you end up with absurd conclusions.
Suroot wrote: “There is of course the downside to this where the company sells your information to another company for them to spam you with marketing crap. This, at least imho as a network security professional, I believe is the thing that I think should not be allowed. If you provide information to a company, they should be required by law to keep that information private between you and them only. It should be mutually exclusive between those two parties and no one else. And yes, I believe that goes with the government as well.”
Every great cause needs a champion. Maybe we should persuade Hillary Clinton to be our champion in Washington fighting for our right to online privacy. She is a public official but still manages to keep a lot of secrets from us. And if she can keep hers I should be able to keep mine.