Did We Lose the Privacy War? 521
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by
Soulskill
from the no-now-finish-your-cheerios-and-straighten-your-shirt dept.
from the no-now-finish-your-cheerios-and-straighten-your-shirt dept.
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?"
Inherent privacy is dead. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:You surrendered. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
No, you're confusing what the war is about. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Yes, privacy is dead. (Score:4, Interesting)
The division between the "public" and the "private" only matters when there is a world of hidden "private" lives (from which the public is excluded) and your public life (with private excluded) has to circulate within and be measured against other public lives (with private excluded).
Once everyone's private becomes public, your own private is no more embarrassing or important than the "private" of most other people.
The same thing applies to thinks like identity theft. The more these things become regarded as "public" rather than private, the more identity theft (a) will happen in volume and (b) will be commonly understood and mitigated through tools and common forms of recourse as a "regular" thing, and others won't hold you nearly so responsible for it.
The reason, in other words, that privacy seems critical is that you assume that you're being marked by and held responsible for everything in your "private" world at a much deeper level than whatever is in your "public" world. Meanwhile, however, the rest of the world continues to increasingly dissolve the "private" into the public, with the inevitable shift that the "private" will be less and less something that people will be marked and/or held responsible for.
Once your boss has a Facebook profile with pictures of their drunken weekend, and friends you with it, your own photos aren't so embarassing.
Once the bank has so much identity theft going on that it's considered a cost of business and made easily reversible, your responsibility for protecting these "identity" records is diminished, as are any consequences of failing to do so.
You've mistaken privacy as an inherent value and end in itself, rather than the means to an end (social success). Increasingly, social success lies along the very opposite path: being as open, public, and omni-visible/trackable as possible.
So hold on to your privacy if you really love it, but realize that society is going to reward you for it less and less, and in fact may even punish you for it relative to much less private others.
U-verse tip... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:You aren't fighting properly (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:privacy is going obsolete (Score:3, Interesting)
It's so much work walling parts of our lives off from everyone around us. I'm glad we're working to move past it and just be honest with each other. Wouldn't it be nice if we knew our family and friends, the teller at the bank, the mayors of our towns were being honest? I'm not giving up the war - I'm buying into the solution.
Re:You surrendered. (Score:1, Interesting)
In related news: Greece is intent on making cash transactions of more than 1500 EUR illegal from 2011 on. (I wish I were joking [reuters.com])
Re:Accept and enjoy! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Err no (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:You surrendered. (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with it is, its the only common identification number an American has. Driver's License number formats vary from state to state, with some using SSN, some using all numbers, some using numbers and letters. Its a mess.
Its primary purpose is to track individuals for taxation purpose, until 1986 you didn't get one until you were 14, I got mine in 1986 when I was 13, because of the new law then. The military phased it in as a replacement for the service number too I think.
Some religious groups opt out of getting them entirely. Its one of the schizoid things about the US, invasive privacy attacks by the government, but no uniform database of citizens or national ID.
Don't borrow money (Score:4, Interesting)
I get very little junk mail and very few promotional calls. This despite living in a good neighborhood in Silicon Valley.
It may be because I don't have any debt. The big source of personal data is credit-reporting agencies, and since I have nothing but a bank credit card, they don't know much about me. I've obtained a copy of my credit report; they see my bank credit card and my cash bank account only. They have no info about brokerage accounts and mutual funds.
I use a local ISP, Sonic, for DSL. They don't seem to give out any info about their customers. I don't have TV cable. I don't have any "affinity cards", other then a Costco membership. I belong to a few organizations, none of which seem to send junk mail. I have AdBlock and FlashBlock installed in Firefox.
But I make no attempt to hide. My phone number is listed (and on the Do Not Call list). I'm registered to vote. My web sites have valid, non-anonymous WHOIS information. Yet I get almost no targeted advertising.
So I think that much of the targeted information is coming via credit-reporting agencies.
Spend less than you earn, and life will be good to you.
Re:Not totally true (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem is, in the case of AT&T, they're doing a credit check. So, give the wrong SSN, it'll error out, and you don't get service.
Obfuscate, prevaricate, and lie (Score:2, Interesting)
You can't hide from Big Brother, but you can confuse the hell out of him.
Do this by behaving inconsistently, in ways that complicate spammeisters from slotting your into a standard bucket.
Leave the TV tuner box set to a channel you hate (e.g. Country Music TV, Fox News, MSNBC, TLC, Family Channel) and then turn off the set. Choose a different odious channel each time. Or choose channels randomly.
Lie on the shopper discount card questionaires. In time, most places will disambiguate you (if you use a credit card), but your misbehavior will probably flag you as a spoil sport who won't be receptive to spam.
Even if this stuff doesn't protect you, it'll make you feel like you're taking arms against being stamped, indexed, briefed, and debriefed.
Re:You surrendered. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.