cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (03/31/91)
There are several threads floating around the net dealing with the clash between privacy and the "information age". caller id, SS# abuse, use of charge card info, etc, etc. If people talk about the underlying issues at all [as opposed to the specifics of a particular assault], the solutions seem to turn on VERY odd ideas [copyrighting personal data, making laws that make personal data somehow "special", etc]. Well, I've become real pessimistic of late. Let me uplevel the question. Discussing 'privacy' instead of the specific assault is already one level up --- I'd like to move another level up and ask about privacy, itself. CAN one make a case that privacy is protectable, or worthwhile, or even means anything? Here are three conundrums that seem to do a pretty good job of skewering the case for privacy, (and the more I think about them the more despondent I get): 1) privacy is just a cloak for illegal activity [i.e., trading privacy for security is a win] 2) privacy just makes life unnecessarily difficult [i.e., trading privacy for convenience is a win] 3) no single bit of information is really "private" anyway [i.e., the problem is not the data, but its aggregation]. Briefly on each: 1) Just look at the caller ID debate. There is the barely veiled accusation that anyone who would want to make a call under the cloak of anonymity MUST be up to no good, and so the need for anonymity is viewed as an exception, and if it is awkward or difficult to make an anonymous call that's OK. In all the years I've been debating in and around the general topic of privacy, I've _never_ found a persuasive argument to counter this. Why shouldn't police be allowed to frisk people at random on the street? or search cars [or even homes] on a hunch, or less? If you don't do drugs, why do you bitch so much about drug testing? What do you have to hide, anyway? The debate always ends up with the anti-privacy folks having specific, concrete, immediate, seductive _advantages_ of foregoing a bit of privacy, while the pro-privacy folk end up making vague, theoretical, philosophical, "but what if" arguments against. 2) A non-private world could be VERY convenient: just call Domino's, the person answers the phone, and without my having said anything says "Hi Mr. Cosell, just the usual tonight?". How nice it is to be able to buy a book by simply calling and having it in the mail that afternoon. To be able to carry a checkbook/creditcard instead of hundreds of dollars of cash. [and other seductions: if you buy with a credit card, you can block the charge if something goes awry... why pay cash when they make it even NICER to use plastic??]. Many Look forward longingly to a Star-Trek like future where not only could you know that Joe Smith is at the door, but you could whip up a quick dossier to ensure that he really IS just 15 and is a boy scout and lives on the next block... Or, as has been seriously proposed and may well come to pass soon, self-id'ing boxes for automobiles so that you can pay tolls electronically on-the-fly. How convenient! 3) Most of the data we bitch about is, and has always been, 'public' anyway. Again, going back to the caller-id debate, to be sure in the 'good old days', the operator knew everything about who was calling, and that you were really at the Jones's house and could route your calls there without your asking. I doubt that the grocer on the corner ever really thought that telling someone about what you bought was particularly sensitive information. Lenders have always done credit checks and compiled dossiers, so what's the big deal? The big deal, of course, is the magnitude and ease with which data can be collected, and this is the REAL hard part for privacy folk. It is hard to figure out who the culprit is when the problem is a "too big" aggregation. If the data about *one* specific phone call of yours is hardly a big deal, and collecting data on some of your calls is OK [e.g., Dominos keeping track of the pizzas you've been ordering, or mastercard retaining your card-use records], why should the data about ALL of your phone calls not be, too. If the data about a specific purchase you make is necessarily non-private [say, a pay-by-check purchase, and so the merchant must know enough about who you are to verify the transaction], what is the problem with assembling data about ALL of your transactions? Where do you draw the line... HOW do you draw the line? =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Anyhow, so I think the battle is hopeless: the forces of non-privacy will present a constant, seductive pressure to embrace their temptations, and the case for keeping privacy will be more and more tenuous and abstract. And it will only get worse: with the march of technology, the _potential_ for greater security and convenience, and the _apparent_ triviality of the privacy you would cede, and where they'll argue (perhaps correctly) that for this specific case you don't really have that privacy _now_, will all make the lure of the new toys virtually irresistable, and make the pro-privacy folk look more and more like Luddites. And any privacy once conceded is, basically, gone forever. As we've pointed out here, it is ALREADY almost impossible to live an even half-normal life and retain much of any privacy. EVERYONE wants your SS#, your mail address, your phone #... It is now virtually illegal to pay cash for some sorts of transactions, many places _require_ your SS#, etc. And so where do we go as we travel across the electronic frontier? I think that trying to 'patch' the current privacy-breaches is hopeless. Trying to make certain classes of data illegal, or certain uses of data [that was otherwise freely given] illegal, or certain aggregations of data [but not others] illegal all seems doomed to failure. The distinction between appropriate and inappropriate is more in the eye of the beholder than in anything that can be isolated in the activity, itself. Almost every attempt to limit abuses seems sure throw out a LOT of baby along with the bathwater, and many --- hell *most* --- people will WELCOME the security of no-privacy and LIKE the new conveniences in their life [hell, I can hardly figure out how I got along without my ATM card], and so the attempt to rein things in will hardly be viewed as beneficial. Is it hopeless? Where does the trail lead us? /Bernie\
byron@archone.tamu.edu (Byron Rakitzis) (04/01/91)
In article <63473@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell) writes: [discussion about privacy deleted] >CAN one make a case that privacy is >protectable, or worthwhile, or even means anything? >Here are three conundrums that seem to do a pretty good job of >skewering the case for privacy, (and the more I think about them the >more despondent I get): > > 1) privacy is just a cloak for illegal activity [i.e., trading > privacy for security is a win] > > 2) privacy just makes life unnecessarily difficult [i.e., trading > privacy for convenience is a win] > > 3) no single bit of information is really "private" anyway [i.e., the > problem is not the data, but its aggregation]. I am sure you are going to get a *lot* of mail over this one. I just want to throw in my 2c by dealing with a couple of your examples. >Why shouldn't police be allowed to frisk >people at random on the street? or search cars [or even homes] on a >hunch, or less? If you don't do drugs, why do you bitch so much about >drug testing? What do you have to hide, anyway? The debate always >ends up with the anti-privacy folks having specific, concrete, >immediate, seductive _advantages_ of foregoing a bit of privacy, while >the pro-privacy folk end up making vague, theoretical, philosophical, >"but what if" arguments against. This is an *extremely* dangerous viewpoint to hold. I'll grant you that if the police somehow consisted of perfect robots dedicated to upholding the law, and that the law itself was somehow objectively deemed to be just and reasonable, at *best* we could hope for a kind of Brave New World scenario where everybody is continually under the scrutiny of a "benevolant" state. This is alone enough to terrify me, but just consider: policemen, politicians, law, government are in general *far* from perfect. What if our government had this kind of power you are talking about, and then decided, say, that books were illegal, or that Jews could not hold more than $1000 in property, and so on? If you don't grant the possibility that the government is fallible then you are missing the whole point. I take government's fallibility as an *axiom*. I strongly believe that our government should be set up under pessimal assumptions of infallibility. That's why I think it's terrible, for example, that Congress can just vote in a tax raise without asking the rest of us. Just remember what happend when Sen. McCarthy was around, and you will realize that the Good Ol' American Way of Life is at stake here. It's not a "vague, theoretical, philosophical" issue at all. >2) A non-private world could be VERY convenient: just call Domino's, >the person answers the phone, and without my having said anything says >"Hi Mr. Cosell, just the usual tonight?". How about this one: you walk into a convenience store, and pull out your VISA, and they come back with, "sorry, we don't serve Communists here", or worse yet, the government disallows free travel between states. You don't have to go too far to find this one. Just take a trip to the Soviet Union. I won't keep going. I originally intended this to be a very short followup. Please forgive my verbiage. I just hope you can see the other side of the coin also. Byron.
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/01/91)
Here's an interesting idea... What if we make it normal and legal for people to maintain literally thounsands of aliases. In fact, each different type transaction we would make might be done with a different alias. Your phone number is one, your address another, your employee number, your account number with everybody you deal with -- and you might have multiple accounts. Bonded alias houses would store the aliases, and they would know which ones were you in case of criminal investigation, and, sadly, tax investigation. But nobody else would have access without your permission. When you go to the bank for credit, you say to them, "By the way, I am also XJ12312 and KJL234234 and KLJLlkjl and so on and so on..." listing the relevant aliases under which they might check your credit. Your contract with the bank or other credit provider would require them to erase the collection after having verified it. For dozens of different transactions you might group together aliases in different ways, as you wish. Order something? Don't give them your address, give them one of your many shipping aliases, which they can then give to the post office or UPS or any other bonded shipper, and the shipper will deliver it. Of course, if you *want* to be recognized, you give the same alias that you did last time, when ordering your pizza. Credit cards? The bank sends you 100 different credit card nubmers that are all you to the bank, and you give out the one you want. This all assumes a smart-card carrying society, and a computer based transaction system with a terminal in every home. We'll get that. Naturally, most of this aliasing will be invisible to you in most situations. Your smartcard will hand out a different credit card alias each time without you knowing. Your aliases will be classed so that you can easily group them to hand to the bank to get credit. Is fraud more likely under this system? Probably. Is it worth the increased privacy? Is the privacy all that much better? Or would this be a false sense of privacy? Would bribes buy your aliases from the bonded alias clearing houses too easily? Would the NSA be able to quickly learn who you are in your many forms? Perhaps this system, while messy (but hopefully hidden from view) could give us privacy and freedom at the same time? -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) (04/01/91)
Bernie, you touch on serious philosophical issues here. We are here discussing nothing less than the line between society and individual. One philosopher to look at here is Michel Foucault -- look in the *Foucault Reader* under "Panopticism". Basically, I'd say that the less privacy, the more is subject to social control -- peer, family, market, religious, government, and so on. In psychology there is the idea of personal "boundaries" and the idea that too much invasion is psychologically destructive -- that sufficient invasion, even for the best reasons, creates psychological trauma. Experience seems to bear this out -- some of the most stressful situations of our lvies are the most public and extremely public societies tend towards conformity. Now, there are plenty of people who would be only too happy to force conformity on us all. But, even from a strictly utilitarian viewpoint, this is foolish; privacy is necessary for social flexibility and creativity. The only comfortable very public society would be one socialized to an almost unimaginable degree of tolerance -- perhaps a good thing. Finally, there has been some work on cryptographic protection of privacy; Brad Templeton hinted at some of it. The article in this area (you've given me the third reason to post the citation) David Chaum's "Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete". It's in Communications of the ACM, October 1985 issue (vol 28, number 10). Communications is of course published by the Association for Computing Machinery and, if you can't find it, I believe ACM does reprints. nd t ou ui R Press T __Randolph Fritz sun!cognito.eng!randolph || randolph@eng.sun.com ou ui Mountain View, California, North America, Earth nd t
mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) (04/02/91)
Bernie Cosell's posting seems to me to be an excellent articulation of the anti-privacy position (which he makes a point of saying he does not necessarily share, by the way). I believe that John Gilmore's speech at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in San Francisco last week addresses at least one of the anti-privacy arguments. John pointed out that we live in a society in which each of us breaks laws, knowingly or unknowingly, all the time. The easy accessibility of personal data makes it easy for the government to exercise its discretion to prosecute us or otherwise make our lives miserable. It may well be that privacy is "just a cloak for illegal activity"-- the illegal activity that, as fallible human beings, we cannot help engaging in. --Mike -- Mike Godwin, (617) 864-0665 | "You gotta put down the ducky mnemonic@eff.org | if you wanna play the saxophone." Electronic Frontier | Foundation |
dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) (04/02/91)
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: >1) Just look at the caller ID debate. There is the barely veiled >accusation that anyone who would want to make a call under the cloak of >anonymity MUST be up to no good, and so the need for anonymity is >viewed as an exception, and if it is awkward or difficult to make an >anonymous call that's OK. In all the years I've been debating in and >around the general topic of privacy, I've _never_ found a persuasive >argument to counter this. Here's one: (like I posted before) You are at a friends house. You wish to call another friend, but the person whose house you are at does not want your other friend to get his number. You are respecting your friend's privacy (not your own) in making the call with Caller ID blocked. >Why shouldn't police be allowed to frisk >people at random on the street? or search cars [or even homes] on a >hunch, or less? If the police were bastions of integrity, then this would be OK. However, as so recently demonstrated in Los Angeles, they are far from it. Allowing random searches on the street allows the police to frisk an innocent (who may or may not be politically active) and "find" some cocaine (even though the innocent has never done drugs in his life) on him. >If you don't do drugs, why do you bitch so much about >drug testing? Again, if the tests were 100% accurate...this would be OK. However: 1) They aren't. 2) There are people in the world who can function better than you or I and still be on several drugs. WHat do DRUGS have to do with lousy performance? Personally, I don't care what your state is...if you can't do a specific job (for whatever reason) then you don't need to be doing it do you? Drugs are not the issue. They are only meat for the lions of irresponsibility, something to blame the world's problems on. A company that drug tests is obviously ignorant of that basic premise. >Or, as has been seriously proposed and may well come to pass soon, >self-id'ing boxes for automobiles so that you can pay tolls >electronically on-the-fly. How convenient! Yeah...tolls like speeding tickets. Great...that car is going 55.21 miles per hour...send 'em a speeding ticket and increase our revenue. >temptations, and the case for keeping privacy will be more and more >tenuous and abstract. And it will only get worse: with the march of >technology, the _potential_ for greater security and convenience, and >the _apparent_ triviality of the privacy you would cede, and where >they'll argue (perhaps correctly) that for this specific case you don't >really have that privacy _now_, will all make the lure of the new toys >virtually irresistable, and make the pro-privacy folk look more and >more like Luddites. *Sigh* The POINT of privacy is to insure that the government doesn't have too much control over your personal life...so that we don't have a "illusory" set of freedoms which is really a dictatorship. There are too many people in this world (and most of them in this country) who would control the way you think, talk, act, and breathe. You'll find that those same people argue AGAINST privacy...so they can see what you are doing "wrong" and "fix" you. If this is the world you want, then by all means go ahead and embrace it. Personally, I would like to take my own responsibility for my own life....make my own mistakes...and fix myself. >Is it hopeless? Where does the trail lead us? Down the road paved with good intentions... -- Dave Hayes - dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov - ames!elroy!dxh History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
johne@hp-vcd.HP.COM (John Eaton) (04/02/91)
<<< < 1) privacy is just a cloak for illegal activity [i.e., trading ------ Yea, and the fifth amendment only serves to protect the guilty. Lets get rid of that while we are at it. < 2) A non-private world could be VERY convenient: just call Domino's, < the person answers the phone, and without my having said anything says < "Hi Mr. Cosell, just the usual tonight?". ---------- Or if some punks break into you house and steal your checkbook they can call your bank and find out how much money you have in it. < 3) Most of the data we bitch about is, and has always been, 'public' < anyway. Again, going back to the caller-id debate, to be sure in the ---------- It may have been available to the public but no one had the computing resources available to collect and analyze the information. Today you can combine databases from different sources and learn a great deal about someone from their buying habits. You can also make mistakes which is why anyone who keeps data must be responsible for keeping their data accurate. That is really hard to do if the subject has no idea that such records even exist. Suppose your name makes it on a mailing list of "Sex Perverts who spend more than $2,000 a year on porno mags". You suddenly start getting a mailbox full of offers and you have no idea of where this list is, how your name got there or how you can get it removed. John Eaton !hp-vcd!johne
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (04/02/91)
In article <1991Apr01.052655.3549@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: > Here's an interesting idea... > [talk about formalized aliasing] > This all assumes a smart-card carrying society, and a computer based > transaction system with a terminal in every home. We'll get that. But the smart-cards are being designed by people who don't share your concern about other people's privacy. The smart-card systems already in place reduce privacy. They don't enhance it. dan herrick herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) (04/02/91)
Brad, your proposed system can be made more secure if your smartcard is used to decrypt public-key encrypted messages. In that way, even the clearinghouse can't examine your transactions. My guess is the security would (for most people) be comparable to the level of security you could achieve in a major city now -- beyond casual attacks, but breakable by a good dectective or intelligence agency. It would certainly cut down the harrassment use of electronic addresses. nd t ou ui R Press T __Randolph Fritz sun!cognito.eng!randolph || randolph@eng.sun.com ou ui Mountain View, California, North America, Earth nd t
learn@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (William Vajk ) (04/02/91)
In article <1991Apr1.180311.5557@eff.org> Mike Godwin writes: >It may well be that privacy is "just a cloak for illegal activity"-- >the illegal activity that, as fallible human beings, we cannot help >engaging in. Current events have, alas, limited my reading time of late so I've only managed to get about 1/4th of the way through _Privacy, Studies in Social and Cultural History_ by Barrington Moore, Jr. (M. E. Sharpe Inc, Armonk, N.Y. but distributed by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Hello Bennett old pal......1984) I fear the view held by most classicly "law & order" oriented folks dismisses a lot of human nature and human needs with the irrereverance of citing irrelevance. Moore explores privacy issues in several frameworks. He studies the anthropological perspectives, practices in classical Athens, in the Old Testament, and ancient Chinese conceptions of public and private. Ultimately Moore draws in the Great American Dream, the little house with the picket fence, as a bastion of privacy which has been the dream of many. Ultimately, it is this sort of feeling for need of privacy which is demolished when investigations are undertaken. The American response, historically, has been to defend the individual's right to such privacy unless events of overwhelming importance to the state mandate a breach of the promise made to the individual by the Constitution. The legal aspects are not taken lightly. The laws, generally speaking, establish the limits of appropriate behavior for the government when dealing with citizens in an investigatory mode. Sometimes, in spite of the best efforts of the state, events conspire with temperaments with results which exceede the mandated limits. There are two approaches to understanding the human desire for privacy. The first is to be an armchair philosopher, not taking the time or trouble to understand beyond some narrow "within arm's reach" data. The second is to give some real thought and consideration to the problems, understanding that anything about the human being which has cross cultural manifestations doubtless has multiple reasons for being. For those of you who wish to delve a bit more deeply into several of the issues relating to privacy, I offer the following little bibliography as highly recommneded reading (please feel free to add your favorites): ============================================================================= The Mind Managers, Herbert I. Schiller, Beacon Press, Boston, 1973 The Age of Attila (op), C. D. Gordon, Univ. of Michigan Press, 1972 Utility and Rights, R. G. Frey, University of Minnesota Press, 1984 Essays on Freedom and Power, Lord Acton (any number of paperback versions...) Controlling Unlawful Organizational Behavior, Diane Vaughan, Univ of Chicago Press, 1983 The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine, (any number of paperback versions...) =============================================================================== I don't deny the concept that we all violate laws, mostly inadvertantly. But I strongly oppose the notion that such human behaviors result in anything more than yet another reason for desiring privacy. Bill Vajk | Fundamental to our way of life is the belief that when | information which properly belongs to the public is | withheld by those in power, the people will soon become | ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who | manage them, and --eventually--incapable of determining | their own destinies. | | - Richard M. Nixon, 22 November 1972
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/02/91)
Right now smart cards are doing that, but we are in the infancy of the network world. There are lots of people, like us, who are concerned, and we will work to make it happen. We're the people coding up this stuff, and we do have a bigger say than other "activists" might. What I want is to find solutions that don't attack fundamental rights in the name of "fear of the computer." Many people seem to react by saying that we should define laws that let you copyright your personal data, or forbid people making databases of entirely public information. I consider database publishers to be publishers, and I think that "congress shall make no law abridging the freedom..." of publishers. (That's the U.S. version. In my country, it's not so precisely worded.) I consider privacy important but freedom to not live in a privacy protecting police state is also important. I have put forward two solutions that need little in the way of limitations on freedom. One is default implicit contracts of confidentiality on most transactions. The other is the automatic use of different aliases for all your network activities. These all rely on a pluralistic, privatized world where you deal with hundreds or thousands of data agencies and no one agency has all the data on you, or, if you use your aliases properly, even knows it does if it happens to! Yes, it also depends on reliable and unbreakable public key encryption and digital signature. Right now we think we can get those, but who knows what new results in number theory will come by tomorrow. Anyway, it can be done without draconian law. If you propose such laws, I would like to hear why you think it can't be done any other way. I would hope that the burden of proof would be on you. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/02/91)
/Bernie\ may like being a data clone. Some of us treasure our individuality and hope that it will not be snuffed by large institutions equipped with technology to suck up everything there is to know about us, institutions encouraged by the passivity and surrender of the Bernie's among us. Bob J. --
randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) (04/02/91)
Brad, no police state is ever likely to want to protect privacy; police states depend on the invasion of privacy and have since their very beginning. This of course is the reasoning underlying the "search and seizure" (fourth?) amendment of the Bill of Rights. The protection of privacy -- however implemented -- is a considerable defense against several kinds of tyranny: that of the police state, that of the wealthy, and that of the majority. nd t ou ui R Press T __Randolph Fritz sun!cognito.eng!randolph || randolph@eng.sun.com ou ui Mountain View, California, North America, Earth nd t
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/02/91)
In article <4082.27f77d68@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes: >In article <1991Apr01.052655.3549@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >> Here's an interesting idea... >> [talk about formalized aliasing] >> This all assumes a smart-card carrying society, and a computer based >> transaction system with a terminal in every home. We'll get that. > >But the smart-cards are being designed by people who don't share >your concern about other people's privacy. The smart-card systems >already in place reduce privacy. They don't enhance it. > >dan herrick >herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com This is so. Any serious proposal to encrypt data as some sort of ultimate privacy protection must also include a description of the means by which law enforcement agencies, private detectives, banks, telemarketers, finance and credit companies, health suppliers, and on and on of institutions who detest OTHERS' privacy are going to be persuaded to come over to the encryption solution. Conspicuously, these proposals never do. Bob Jacobson --
dfl@aeolus.dev.think.com (David Lively) (04/02/91)
In article <1991Apr2.074250.7456@milton.u.washington.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes:
/Bernie\ may like being a data clone. Some of us treasure our individuality
and hope that it will not be snuffed by large institutions equipped with
technology to suck up everything there is to know about us, institutions
encouraged by the passivity and surrender of the Bernie's among us.
No /Bernie\ doesn't like being a data clone - read his posting more
carefully - he's playing the devil's advocate by stating the case against
privacy. This doesn't mean we shouldn't respond to his points - but don't
attribute those viewpoints to Bernie.
(This isn't meant to be directed solely at you, Bob. A lot of people seem
to have gotten the wrong impression. I've seen enough other posts from
Bernie to know better.)
David
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/03/91)
I disagree. I protecting privacy means that we have "database police" who can enforce laws about what sort of collections of information you can have or sell, then we have part of a police state. I am happy for the government to have database police to police the government and stop it from collecting information on us in one place -- although the cynic in me feels that this will nevery be truly effective. I am not happy to have database police patrolling private citizens. What I do in my own computer with correct public information about you is my business. The solutions are: a) Don't give out that information in a usable way b) Define the information as confidential when you do give it out At first I suggested (b), with implicit terms of confidentiality on most transactions. I still support it, but fear the bureaucracy needed to enforce it if people flaunt it. Now I lean towards (a), which requires a bureaucracy of sorts, but it is a private one, and you can have as little or as much as you chose, at your own discretion and there is an incentive to hide it from the user. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
wayner@CS.Cornell.EDU (Peter Wayner) (04/03/91)
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >I disagree. I protecting privacy means that we have "database police" who >can enforce laws about what sort of collections of information you can have >or sell, then we have part of a police state. >I am not happy to have database police patrolling private citizens. What >I do in my own computer with correct public information about you is my >business. >The solutions are: > a) Don't give out that information in a usable way > b) Define the information as confidential when you do give it out Really, most of this "treasured" information is and always has been "legally" public. The notion of "privacy" was generally soceital. For instance, everyone in the small town might know that "Mr. Smith" was having a fling with "Ms. Jones", but it was not "polite" to "gossip." Most people, though, could just figure it out by watching them in public. In a similar way, a merchant in the small town would know that the Doctor's wife was an excellant target for the new batch of Parisian Perfume he just received and might make a point of mentioning this to her. Why? Because he's seen her walking down the street in high fashion clothes. Now if he used the high-tech equivalent in our global, electronic village, the merchant would roll out the mailing lists that he bought from Bergdorf-Goodman's. I really don't see what the big deal is about the privacy of mailing lists. 99% of the consumption in America is "conspicuous" in that people walking down the street (or coming over to your house for dinner) will realize what's up. Heck, most people buy Porsche cars solely for their bragging value. Next, the privacy people will want to make it a crime to look at someone on the street because you'll be "learning" some "private" fact about them. The real problem is when some sort of data become "forbidden" data. Then the SS and every other police officer will be able to have a field day raiding computers. >-- >Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 -- Peter Wayner Department of Computer Science Cornell Univ. Ithaca, NY 14850 EMail:wayner@cs.cornell.edu Office: 607-255-9202 or 255-1008 Home: 116 Oak Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850 Phone: 607-277-6678
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/03/91)
I apologize to /Bernie\ if I misunderstood his devil's advocacy. He did too good a job! Bob --
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/03/91)
Brad, how do you know the information you hold about me in your computer is correct? And just supposing it isn't, (1) how shall you compensate me for any wrongs done to me by your circulating false or malicious information; and (2) how shall I find you to collect? Obviously, you have never experienced this sort of info-rape. It changes your perspective. Bob Jacobson --
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/03/91)
As to how you'll be compensated if the information about you is wrong, the answer is that you'll sue for defamation. It is already a tort to publish incorrect information about a person. I would agree that we might make this particular tort a little easier to sue over, with perhaps a "small claims" type court, where all you have to do is show that the false information is present and available for basic fines and damages, and you have to show more and have a real lawsuit for additional damages. As to how you will find the wrong information? Are you suggesting that we have database police do this for me? Or simply that we have a right to examine information about ourselves either free or at a reasonable cost. I would be glad to see the latter, but not the former. And as to whether I have been subject to this sort of "info-rape?" Well, the fact that you call it that makes me wonder if you have ever been subject to actual rape. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/03/91)
I cannot vouch that the intensity of the experiences is the same; in fact, actual physical rape is almost too horrible to contemplate and probably beyond the ken of most men. However, "info-rape," like breaking and entering in the physical world, can definitely leave one with the sensation of having been intimately violated. As to having information police: let the person afflicted with false information be his or her own police, by giving him or her the tools to monitor the flow of information about him or her. Government needn't (and probably couldn't) do this job. But putting the individual out there, to duel without legal weapons with institutions who make their livelihoods (and considerable profits) by trading in personal information, is really merciless. Bob Jacobson --
peter@taronga.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (04/03/91)
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: > 1) privacy is just a cloak for illegal activity [i.e., trading > privacy for security is a win] Privacy is a cloak for socially unacceptable behavior (having unpopular political beliefs, being a member of a minority group, having a non- heterosexual orientation, etc...). Is it acceptable to force people to disclose this sort of thing? Why? > 2) privacy just makes life unnecessarily difficult [i.e., trading > privacy for convenience is a win] Security and convenience are frequently opposed goals, too. Yu have to choose your trade-off. Note that my trade-off and yours may differ. The same holds for privacy. > 3) no single bit of information is really "private" anyway [i.e., the > problem is not the data, but its aggregation]. False and irrelevant. Certain types of data are private, other aren't. > 1) Just look at the caller ID debate. There is the barely veiled > accusation that anyone who would want to make a call under the cloak of > anonymity MUST be up to no good, This really fits under slot 2 for me, not 1. My trade off is different from yours: so you can default your line to unlisted... just be prepared to turn on ID when you call me, or put up with my answering machine. This, of course, assumes per-call and per-line blocking, and blocked-ID blocking or smart equipment at my house. -- (peter@taronga.uucp.ferranti.com) `-_-' 'U`
rogue@cellar.UUCP (Rogue Winter) (04/04/91)
I don't do drugs, but I've got plenty of reasons why I enjoy my privacy and why I would object to a cop searching me on the street. 1) I've lived all my life with the experience of having other people know about me than I know about them. Life without privacy is a life in which reciprocity of information is nearly impossible, and creates a situation in which trust has diminished value. The need for trust and privacy is not limitd to criminal relationships - trust comes from the free choice of two (or more) individuals to reveal information to one another, whether that information be personal, professional, or even trivial. 2) Police are not perfect, and there's no guarantee that while some future cop may be able to call up a dossier on me within fifteen seconds that every financial and political action I've made in the last five years, he or she may not know that I've already been stopped three times today and I'm sick to death of being frisked. 3) In a Star Trek world, privacy is still important. And the accumulation of data has less potential for abuse in a society which has fewer cultural and sexual taboos. Like perestroika, which failed by freeing the economy before freeing politics, you cannot diminish the priveleges of privacy before diminishing its need.
epstein@sunc4.cs.uiuc.edu (Milt Epstein) (04/04/91)
In <1991Apr2.213730.1336@cs.cornell.edu> wayner@CS.Cornell.EDU (Peter Wayner) writes: >[responding to some of brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) comments >on privacy]: > >Really, most of this "treasured" information is and always has been >"legally" public. The notion of "privacy" was generally soceital. For >instance, everyone in the small town might know that "Mr. Smith" was >having a fling with "Ms. Jones", but it was not "polite" to "gossip." >Most people, though, could just figure it out by watching them in public. > >In a similar way, a merchant in the small town would know that the >Doctor's wife was an excellant target for the new batch of Parisian >Perfume he just received and might make a point of mentioning this >to her. Why? Because he's seen her walking down the street in high >fashion clothes. > >Now if he used the high-tech equivalent in our global, electronic >village, the merchant would roll out the mailing lists that he >bought from Bergdorf-Goodman's. One problem with this line of reasoning is that things don't scale up well from the small town to the entire society. First of all, consider what would happen if the things that people learned about someone "by watching them in public" were incorrect. The consequences in the small town may not be great (perhaps some gossip). On the other hand, on a larger scale, the consequences could be more serious -- being denied credit or other things due to mistakes on your credit record, being denied employment, perhaps even being arrested or subject to other forms of harassment. Second, if we take the extension of the "merchant contacts doctor's wife" example, then we will be getting junk mail or telemarketing calls from tons of merchants (which may not only be a personal hassle and inconvenience to deal with, but is also a waste of paper and resources, if you are concerned about those types of things). One last point -- most of the people that I have talked to that were from small towns hated the fact that they had no privacy. -- Milt Epstein Department of Computer Science University of Illinois epstein@cs.uiuc.edu
karn@epic.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) (04/04/91)
In article <1991Apr1.180311.5557@eff.org>, mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes: |> [...] John [Gilmore] pointed out |> that we live in a society in which each of us breaks laws, |> knowingly or unknowingly, all the time. The easy accessibility |> of personal data makes it easy for the government to exercise |> its discretion to prosecute us or otherwise make our lives |> miserable. I believe that it is always possible (though not necessarily easy) to draft a law to address a truly legitimate compelling public interest in a way that does not violate fundamental Constitutional guarantees. True, a few unconstitutional laws do get overturned from time to time, but the real problem is with the many more bad laws still on the books. In my opinion, the importance of the Fourth Amendment's implied privacy guarantees comes from the fact that most of the bad laws attempt to protect people from themselves, or involve consensual private conduct with minimal externalities. By making someone's home and property off-limits to government "fishing expeditions" and setting probable-cause requirements for search warrants, most of these bad laws are rendered essentially unenforceable. This at least limits the damage they can do until they can be overturned. The classic example is the law in various states against sodomy and/or fornication. As long as the parties involved are consenting adults and keep their activities private, the government has no way of going after them even though their activities may technically be illegal. Gambling and prostitution are other possible examples. Another (admittedly more controversial) example is the private use of illegal drugs by adults. Although the people who use them may well be guilty of extreme stupidity, I see no justification for making ANY activity illegal unless it has a significant effect on unwilling or legally incompetent parties (e.g., driving while intoxicated, giving drugs to minors). Governments are supposed to protect people from each other -- not from themselves, with the possible exception of minors. Unfortunately, the latter role is significantly interfering with the former. Anyway, a big challenge to us computer privacy experts now is to find ways of keeping the government from using computer technology to collect information (e.g., videotape rental records, magazine subscriptions, telephone call records, shopping receipts, etc) and then digesting that information en masse to uncover private, technically illegal activities. Although much of this information could have been gathered and processed manually without computers, the ease with which computers can do the job may result in a qualitative change in the enforceability of a truly bad law. Granted, it would be best to work for the abolition of the bad laws to begin with. But as a technologist, I think the most effective near-term solutions will be based on technology. And the most effective strategy here will be to keep the information out of the hands of the government to begin with, since it is clear that you cannot control the information once they get it. Phil
new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New) (04/04/91)
In article <63473@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell) writes: >CAN one make a case that privacy is >protectable, or worthwhile, or even means anything? Well, I wouldn't mind having no private information about myself if I would be accepted for what I am. However, even though it is completely legal to be (say) bisexual, people from whom I wish to buy computers might not sell them to me if they found out I was bisexual (which I'm not :-). If I were black (which I may or may not be), then racists wouldn't naturally dismiss my ideas coming as from "one of those". I think that USENET and its future equivalents are wonderful in the sense that it is an exchange of pure ideas usually unencumbered by any bigotry or hatred. Those who are hated are hated because others disagree with what or how they write, not because they are black or female or whatever. We wouldn't need laws like Equal Opportunity laws if it was all done electronically with the proper privacy. If I was in Germany a few decades ago, I wouldn't want PTT records of calls to the local synagog (sp?) made from my home phone to be public information. When you disagree with the government, privacy is very important. -- Darren -- --- Darren New --- Grad Student --- CIS --- Univ. of Delaware --- ----- Network Protocols, Graphics, Programming Languages, FDTs ----- +=+=+ My time is very valuable, but unfortunately only to me +=+=+ + When you drive screws with a hammer, screwdrivers are unrecognisable +
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/04/91)
How about if private actors gather the personal information and GIVE it to the government, either for a fee or out of the goodness of their hearts? Anything wrong with that? Bob Jacobson --
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/04/91)
No, we can limit the government any way we wish. Naturally if we forbid them to collect information on us, we can also forbid them from buying it or using it from private sources. There are lots of things that the government can't do that private citizens can (and vice versa). Nothing new here. I am all for putting as much restriction on the government here as seems necessary. It has no fundamental rights, unlike us. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (04/05/91)
In article <1991Apr02.054249.27643@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: > Right now smart cards are doing that, but we are in the infancy of the > network world. There are lots of people, like us, who are concerned, and > we will work to make it happen. We're the people coding up this stuff, and > we do have a bigger say than other "activists" might. I suspect the code involved in existing smart card systems was written in COBOL and the people who coded it up are not here. Please demonstrate that my suspicions are unfounded. > > What I want is to find solutions that don't attack fundamental rights in > the name of "fear of the computer." Many people seem to react by saying > that we should define laws that let you copyright your personal data, > or forbid people making databases of entirely public information. The fuss over the Lotus/Equifax product that failed reminded me of the "consumer protection" fuss over barcode readers in supermarkets in Michigan when the technology first became available and was outlawed in Michigan to protect me from lower prices. I tried to counteract some of the more egregious mistatements of fact when I saw them on the net. > > I consider database publishers to be publishers, and I think that > "congress shall make no law abridging the freedom..." of publishers. > (That's the U.S. version. In my country, it's not so precisely worded.) Yes, many of the contributors to the net forget that freedom of the press belongs to the person that owns one. > > I consider privacy important but freedom to not live in a privacy > protecting police state is also important. In the southern colonies, the moves toward a police state are not moves to protect privacy. It is now against US law to cross a US border (outbound) with $11000 in one's pocket. One more reason to conduct unwarranted searches. > > I have put forward two solutions that need little in the way of limitations > on freedom. One is default implicit contracts of confidentiality > on most transactions. The other is the automatic use of different > aliases for all your network activities. My proposal here has been that individuals should start modifying the "I own your data" provisions of existing boilerplate contracts before signing them. > > These all rely on a pluralistic, privatized world where you deal with > hundreds or thousands of data agencies and no one agency has all the > data on you, or, if you use your aliases properly, even knows it does > if it happens to! > > Yes, it also depends on reliable and unbreakable public key encryption > and digital signature. Right now we think we can get those, but > who knows what new results in number theory will come by tomorrow. > > Anyway, it can be done without draconian law. If you propose such laws, > I would like to hear why you think it can't be done any other way. > I would hope that the burden of proof would be on you. > -- > Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 how can we get smart card technology to use privacy enhancing designs? The companies creating such things are marveling at their new ability to make great quantities of data about the holder of the card more easily available. There have been some small comments about a magnetic stripe driver's license in California. (I think I saw it in .risks before I started reading .eff.talk.) This is not an attempt to enhance citizen privacy. dan herrick herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (04/05/91)
mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes: }Bernie Cosell's posting seems to me to be an excellent }articulation of the anti-privacy position (which he makes a }point of saying he does not necessarily share, by the way). Indeed! :-) I now understand a bit better about being a devil's advocate: to do it effectively, you really have to not keep disclaiming everything you write [so that it will read persuasively.. you ARE supposed to be defending the other side, right?] On the other hand, it becomes easy for people jumping onto the thread [especially with excerpting] to *put* you on the other side of the fence... I'll disclaim here, just once: I am almost fanatically pro-privacy. I've argued and debated it both on the net and in various other forums for years. But basically, I think we've lost! I'll respond some to the thread [maintaining the d-a position, on the whole], but as I hope you'll see, the arguments _for privacy are mostly very subtle and often just hypothetical; by contrast the arguments _against_ privacy can be very seductive, practical, easy to grasp. Is the 'common man' better or worse off if the police can track every movement of every person? Imagine that you could have "knocker ID"? How about being able to buy an 'intrusion monitor', and in the unfortunate event that your house was burglarized, you could just check the "presence logs" and read out the IDs of every person who set foot on your property. Would you run to embrace it? [think of it as the next step in ensuring the 'privacy' of your home after the world becomes comfortable with caller-id --- answering the phone [and hanging it up] is baby stuff: how about doing something about that person at the door before you REALLY commit yourself by opening it?] Well, arrayed against the philsophical arguments about potential abuses of such "people tracking", one will have to do something the constant pressure of the seductions of such a scheme: just as folks who think they get too many junk calls rush to embrace caller-id, I suspect people who feel threatened in their neighborhoods will rush to embrace it, and call those of us who counsel against such dangerous toys luddites or worse. How do you make the arguments for continued, vigilant asceticism sound as persuasive as the ones for the seductions of taking advantage of some neat new toy if you can get the privacy-sissies to bend just a little, just this one time, and if things go awry we can patch it up later, Back to my Devil's Advocate role.... :-).... }.. John pointed out }that we live in a society in which each of us breaks laws, }knowingly or unknowingly, all the time.... In what way is this a relevant observation [aside that it is true]? Should we deny the police to enforce the burglary/rape/whatever laws effectively because they might use those powers to enforce parking-too-far-from-the-curb violations? Should we let muggers go free so that we don't go wild arresting people for tearing the tags off of their pillows? Why shouldn't the response to John's observation be "OK, so fix the laws, but what does this have to do with the police going after the REAL criminals?" }The easy accessibility }of personal data makes it easy for the government to exercise }its discretion to prosecute us or otherwise make our lives }miserable. This is all very hypthetical. Who gets to decide which are the bad crimes and which are the good? This discretion exists ANYWAY, and crippling the police from enforcing the laws, all of them and any of them, is pretty arbitrary: if you don't want the police to enforce some particular law, shouldn't you be making the law go away, rather than trying to so-cripple the police that they _cannot_ enforce it? Is THIS what privacy is for: to allow us to *knowingly* flout the laws? Should it be personal discretion as to which laws we use our "cloak of secrecy" to hide? What sort of society is that? /Bernie\
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (04/05/91)
johne@hp-vcd.HP.COM (John Eaton) writes: }<<< }< 1) privacy is just a cloak for illegal activity [i.e., trading }------ }Yea, and the fifth amendment only serves to protect the guilty. Lets }get rid of that while we are at it. I think you haven't been watching the current SC very closely. bit by bit, decision by decision, they're doing *just* that. Not to menion the 4th and 6th, too. }< 2) A non-private world could be VERY convenient: just call Domino's, }< the person answers the phone, and without my having said anything says }< "Hi Mr. Cosell, just the usual tonight?". }---------- }Or if some punks break into you house and steal your checkbook they can }call your bank and find out how much money you have in it. Ah, but if you had just bought your "person ID" box, you could get a readout of exactly WHO the punks were and so the miscreants can be easily caught and thrown behind bars, where they belong. And what do you have to hide in your checking account, anyway? Is there some deep dark secret entangled in the rather dull data point of the current balance of your account? }< 3) Most of the data we bitch about is, and has always been, 'public' }< anyway. Again, going back to the caller-id debate, to be sure in the }---------- }It may have been available to the public but no one had the computing }resources available to collect and analyze the information. Today you }can combine databases from different sources and learn a great deal }about someone from their buying habits.... BINGO! That's exactly the point: But the anti-privacy folk can argue that it all worked *just*fine* without that particular datum being protected, and if anyone cared [and clearly you need only worry about the folks that CARE: security by obscurity is no security at all, after all] they could always have gotten the info _anyway_. Can it really make sense to say that a database that is already perfectly legal is OK, but one that merges two perfectly-legal databases might NOT be? }Suppose your name makes it on a mailing list of "Sex Perverts who }spend more than $2,000 a year on porno mags". You suddenly start }getting a mailbox full of offers and you have no idea of where this }list is, how your name got there or how you can get it removed. That happens now: so what do you do about it now? All I have to do is start ordering stuff in your name with your address ... you'll get the mysterious package, of course, and it'll cost me a tiny bit to actually BUY something in your name [although often just simple inquiries will do the job], but once the direct-marketers get that info _they'll_ take it from there. And I can keep doing it... maybe we should take the caller-id arugments and extend them: I've already made the case that their arguments would do much better to argue for knocker-id, and I mentioned above person-presence-ID, so let's go after "letter mailer ID". Who needs anonymity through the mails ANYWAY? /Bernie\
byron@archone.tamu.edu (Byron Rakitzis) (04/06/91)
In article <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: >mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes: >}The easy accessibility >}of personal data makes it easy for the government to exercise >}its discretion to prosecute us or otherwise make our lives >}miserable. >This is all very hypthetical. Who gets to decide which are the bad crimes >and which are the good? This discretion exists ANYWAY, and crippling >the police from enforcing the laws, all of them and any of them, is >pretty arbitrary: if you don't want the police to enforce some >particular law, shouldn't you be making the law go away, rather than >trying to so-cripple the police that they _cannot_ enforce it? >Is THIS what privacy is for: to allow us to *knowingly* flout the >laws? Should it be personal discretion as to which laws we use our >"cloak of secrecy" to hide? What sort of society is that? > /Bernie\ Bernie, (btw, I know you are speaking as the d.a.) I don't think this is very "hypothetical". Maybe it is in the US (though you only have to look back at McCarthyism to see that it is not) but if you take a hike to almost any foreign country, you will find governments that have kept files against their citizens labelling them, for example, as communists, and then denying them jobs, passports, whatever. Unless the people you are arguing against are willing to accept the fact that the law and the government do not always work in the interests of the people, then I'm afraid you are stuck. They're just pig-ignorant and stupid. But to say that these arguments are "hypothetical" and far-fetched makes me want to laugh.
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/06/91)
The seductive order in which large institutions know everything about a person, for the person's own good, of course, is known as totalitarianism. Less politely, it's named fascism, for the strength that comes from every person/reed being bound into a unified worldview/fasces. Bob Jacobson --
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/06/91)
We have a major disagreement (expressed at the CFP conference) between those who want privacy protections and those who believe that these protections inevitably transgress free-speech rights. Interestingly, at hearings on a privacy bill in Washington State, the only party arguing against the bill (which would establish a legislative committee to investigate the issue) was TRW, a true defender of free speech. Bob Jacobson --
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (04/06/91)
My pet peeve is the people who think there is some magical dividing line between Big Government and Big Business. In my book, they're both parts of the State. You have to take them both on or else watch out behind you. Bob Jacobson --
phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (04/06/91)
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: >Is THIS what privacy is for: to allow us to *knowingly* flout the >laws? Should it be personal discretion as to which laws we use our >"cloak of secrecy" to hide? What sort of society is that? I submit that a law which requires privacy to be violated is inherently a bad law. -- The best way to preserve your RKBA is to vote Libertarian.
new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New) (04/06/91)
In article <1991Apr5.201230.5970@milton.u.washington.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes: >The seductive order in which large institutions know everything about a >person, for the person's own good, of course, is known as totalitarianism. I'll agree that that can certainly lead to totalitarianism. >Less politely, it's named fascism, for the strength that comes from every >person/reed being bound into a unified worldview/fasces. Hmm... I always thought fascism was an economic organization wherein businesses are controlled, liscenced and regulated by the government while not explicitly being owned by the governent, not specifically anything to do with privacy. Of course, this applies more and more to the USA as people try to regulate themselves to perfect safety and economic bliss by trusting people who best carry out their jobs via falsehood. Remember In the USA: us=Democracy, them=communist. In the USSR: us=Republic, them=capitalists. (Of course, less now than 20 years ago) I've never really understood why people fall for this doublespeak. -- Darren -- --- Darren New --- Grad Student --- CIS --- Univ. of Delaware --- ----- Network Protocols, Graphics, Programming Languages, FDTs ----- +=+=+ My time is very valuable, but unfortunately only to me +=+=+ + When you drive screws with a hammer, screwdrivers are unrecognisable +
mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) (04/06/91)
In article <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: > >}.. John pointed out >}that we live in a society in which each of us breaks laws, >}knowingly or unknowingly, all the time.... > >In what way is this a relevant observation [aside that it is true]? >Should we deny the police to enforce the burglary/rape/whatever laws >effectively because they might use those powers to enforce >parking-too-far-from-the-curb violations? Yes. The price of privacy is that it makes it harder for the police to do their job. We must be aware of this at the outset. It is always more convenient and more efficient for the police not to be limited in what they can know about you. But that's not the society I want to live in. My observation is relevant in particular because, once the police are in enforcement mode, it's hard to dissuade them from nailing you on whatever pretextual offense they can find. These seems to be an occupational hazard of being a policeman. > Should we let muggers go >free so that we don't go wild arresting people for tearing the tags off >of their pillows? I think it's important, Bernie, that you stick to reasonable arguments rather than rhetorical excesses. Otherwise, I won't respond to them. > Why shouldn't the response to John's observation be >"OK, so fix the laws, but what does this have to do with the police >going after the REAL criminals?" The response to the response is that, in a very real sense, you're a "real" criminal if the police say you are. Real privacy makes it harder for them to say you are. >}The easy accessibility >}of personal data makes it easy for the government to exercise >}its discretion to prosecute us or otherwise make our lives >}miserable. > >This is all very hypthetical. Who gets to decide which are the bad crimes >and which are the good? You can do it, and have done it in this posting. When you juxtapose mattress-tag-ripping and muggers for rhetorical purposes, you demonstrate that you have an intuitive sense of which crime is more serious. What's more, your rhetoric demonstrates that you think your audience shares this distinction. So, let's not pretend this is a difficult philosophical problem, shall we? Or at least be consistent in your own postings. In any case, this is not hypothetical at all. It's happening now. > This discretion exists ANYWAY, and crippling >the police from enforcing the laws, all of them and any of them, is >pretty arbitrary: if you don't want the police to enforce some >particular law, shouldn't you be making the law go away, rather than >trying to so-cripple the police that they _cannot_ enforce it? Dear Bernie: not all limits on police power "cripple" the police. It is the position of the civil libertarian that police can function with reasonable, although not perfect, efficiency in an environment in which their actions are limited by ordinary citizens' rights. Search warrants, the right to counsel, and the privilege against self-incrimination make it harder for police to do their work too, you know. Shall we eliminate those? Are they devalued because they're invoked so often by guilty people to obstruct police work? I think not. >Is THIS what privacy is for: to allow us to *knowingly* flout the >laws? No. Privacy is a value in itself. The right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures was created in recognition of the fact that limits on searches and seizures would make it harder for police to catch crooks. Moreover, you've missed the import of Gilmore's remarks. The question is not whether one gets in trouble for "knowingly" flouting the laws, but for running afoul of the law without even trying. In today's crime-law-happy society, this is remarkably easy to do, and anyone who doesn't think so is probably also guilty of mopery. > Should it be personal discretion as to which laws we use our >"cloak of secrecy" to hide? What sort of society is that? Again, you go to rhetorical excess. Why do this? Some people whose privacy is invaded will be prosecuted and found innocent. But if their privacy had been protected in the first place, they wouldn't have had to defend themselves at all. --Mike -- Mike Godwin, (617) 864-0665 | "Language is a virus mnemonic@eff.org | from outer space." Electronic Frontier | Foundation |
wex@dali.pws.bull.com (Komarimasen) (04/06/91)
Bernie writes an excellent article. Rather than respond point-by-point, let me make a general response, and then repeat one of my favorite quotes. Bernie's thesis both rises and falls around a slippery-slope arguments. In his strawman, he says "why don't we give up privacy in return for <Benefit X>." The argument is that we've already given up so much, plus most people want the benefit more than the privacy, so why are we wasting our time. The objections to giving up privacy (or for that matter, any right assumed to be reserved to the people) is also based on the slippery-slope principle. That is, if we don't resist the attempt to take away the least little bit of <Right R> then we will have no logical basis for attempting to resist further taking away of bits of that right. In essence, once you're past a certain point, it's hard to find a logical stopping point. This is why some debates are essentially unsolvable (abortion, my religion vs your religion). It's also why I tend to be an absolutist in areas like this. In closing, let me re-quote Pat Cadigan who remarked: "What is privacy? Maybe privacy is not having to tell anyone what you're thinking *right now*." This quote shows how far the slippery slope might lead and also points out that it may be worthwhile to radically rethink our conception(s) of privacy. -- --Alan Wexelblat phone: (508)294-7485 Bull Worldwide Information Systems internet: wex@pws.bull.com "People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first."
learn@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (William Vajk ) (04/06/91)
>>This is all very hypthetical. Who gets to decide which are the bad crimes >>and which are the good? -Bernie, (btw, I know you are speaking as the d.a.) I don't think this is -very "hypothetical". Maybe it is in the US (though you only have to look -back at McCarthyism to see that it is not) but if you take a hike to almost -any foreign country, you will find governments that have kept files against -their citizens labelling them, for example, as communists, and then denying -them jobs, passports, whatever. Back to the basics. McCarthyism is far from dead in this country as a way of looking at matters, though the commie hunts are over. The "known associates" biz is still alive and well. If one reads the interperetation our government has made regarding the "Legion of Doom" one cannot avoid noticing the great similarity between Batmanish philosophies and what our paid law enforcement officers have written. I've stated before, and probably will again and again that while the legislators write laws with clearly specified intentions as much as possible, Law Enforcement will invariably read and prosecute to the letter of the law, good, bad, or indifferent. I don't know if there's a better way to state this or not, but it seems as though Law Enforcement believes they are paid to act without thought or conscience, and that our Judges are the only ones to whom legal thinking, and responsible decision making, is left. It also seems as though officers and SA's have one criterion, and only one..... "probable cause." In reading Spafford's commentaries recently, an often played scene came to mind. "Yes, Judge, I pulled him over for speeding and then remembered his cousin was arrested last month for posession of burglary tools. So I asked him to open the trunk, which he did. And there in plain view it was, your Honor, a bar with a flattened end which can be used for prying open doors and windows, so I charged him with posession and locked him up. There it is, your Honor, over on that table.........No sir, the fact that it might be a lug wrench and jack kandle for changing a flat tire never crossed my mind. He does come from a criminal family.......No sir, I didn't recall that his cousin's case was thrown out of court because it too was a lug wrench, all I remembered was the criminal charge.......No! Really ? I was the arresting officer in that case too? Honestly, Judge, I didn't remember that." Bill Vajk
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/06/91)
One of the most interesting aspects of this debate is that computer technology is likely to drive us to extremes of privacy, leaving the middle ground hard to find. The world has worked for some time in this middle ground, where the information about people has been available, but simply hard to get and collect for logistic reasons. If you pay enough, you can find out just about anything about anybody, or so it seems. We are saved by the fact that few can or will pay enough. But the future world will provide two opposing forces: a) Secure cryptography will provide almost absolute security for many things such as phone conversations and illegal business records that can currently be gotten at by wiretap or search warrant. Some things that police routinely get today will be unavailable without forcing people to reveal their secret codes. The mafia will be able to make itself largely untraceable. b) At the same time, ordinary everyday things that you don't go out of your way to protect will be readily and easily available. It will be interesting to see how the two ends of the spectrum react. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) (04/06/91)
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: >I'll disclaim here, just once: I am almost fanatically pro-privacy. >I've argued and debated it both on the net and in various other forums >for years. But basically, I think we've lost! I'll respond some to the >thread [maintaining the d-a position, on the whole], but as I hope you'll >see, the arguments _for privacy are mostly very subtle and often >just hypothetical; by contrast the arguments _against_ privacy can be very >seductive, practical, easy to grasp. This is a good point. Perhaps "we've lost" because we haven't found a good way to illustrate the results of loss of privacy. The real example for this is the recent L.A. police saga...certainly there were a lot of people who didn't believe it was happening or felt it was justified...until they saw the video. >In what way is this a relevant observation [aside that it is true]? >Should we deny the police to enforce the burglary/rape/whatever laws >effectively because they might use those powers to enforce >parking-too-far-from-the-curb violations? Should we let muggers go >free so that we don't go wild arresting people for tearing the tags off >of their pillows? Why shouldn't the response to John's observation be >"OK, so fix the laws, but what does this have to do with the police >going after the REAL criminals?" I think (back to the L.A. saga again) that with the ouster of Daryl Gates and the subsequent threat that the police have made (enforcing all the minor infractions that they can get their hands on) is a wonderful real example of the dangers of out-of-control government. I, for one, hope that the LAPD goes through with it. Maybe some folks will begin to understand what the first Colonists of this country felt against England... >This is all very hypthetical. Who gets to decide which are the bad crimes >and which are the good? This discretion exists ANYWAY, and crippling >the police from enforcing the laws, all of them and any of them, is >pretty arbitrary: if you don't want the police to enforce some >particular law, shouldn't you be making the law go away, rather than >trying to so-cripple the police that they _cannot_ enforce it? We have demonstrated that it is far more difficult, if not impossible, to remove an established law that is obsolete, silly, or downright dangerous. It is far more efficient to cripple the police than to remove these laws...otherwise these laws would no longer be on the books. >Is THIS what privacy is for: to allow us to *knowingly* flout the >laws? Should it be personal discretion as to which laws we use our >"cloak of secrecy" to hide? What sort of society is that? The law, as a system of substitute ethics, is neither functional nor efficient. This system has gotten so out of hand, that it is a rare moment when an upstanding citizen does NOT break the law each day. California's driving laws are written in such a way that it is almost impossible to drive in traffic and not break the law...and ignorance is no excuse, right? Is this the kind of society you are protecting? 8) -- Dave Hayes - dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov - ames!elroy!dxh History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) (04/07/91)
Brad, your observation that life is now being wrenched between near-total publicity and deep, dark secrecy is a good one. Historically, I propose that social openness varies; I'd mark some of the variations like this: Police state -- the gov't tries to collect as much information about you as possible so that they can control behavior they dislike, or maybe just brutally invade people's lives. Society becomes a network of snitches, and personal information is jealously guarded. Travel and communications are restricted so that you are kept in the web of police control. Urban mercantile -- major businesses collect information relevant to behavior in their markets. There are no central files, but there is a vast amount of personal data floating around in local files and in the minds of shopkeepers. Society as a whole is suspicious of secrets. Monitored communication is encouraged; truly private communication discouraged (think of the NSA censorship of cryptographic research). Travel is likewise encouraged as long as it is public. Members of unpopular groups have the choice of staying in their place somewhere on the margins of society or subjection to heavy social pressure (bigotry) and inconsistenly enforced laws. This, of course, is the contemporary USA. Feudal bourgeois -- society is mainly rural, and communications among the majority of population is mainly by word of mounth. In the small cities, information is jealously guarded. A city is not one vast open social network; rather the cities are heavily divided by guild and tribal loyalties. Architecture reflects this: spaces are designed in a hierarachy of privacy; only the markets are truly public and these are heavily controlled -- a historical model for this is the streets of the old Arab cities. The only one of these models that I am sure survivies in cyberspace is the police state. Are the others even possible? And are other models possible? nd t ou ui R Press T __Randolph Fritz sun!cognito.eng!randolph || randolph@eng.sun.com ou ui Mountain View, California, North America, Earth nd t
cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (04/08/91)
mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes: }In article <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: }> }>}.. John pointed out }>}that we live in a society in which each of us breaks laws, }>}knowingly or unknowingly, all the time.... }> }>In what way is this a relevant observation [aside that it is true]? }>Should we deny the police to enforce the burglary/rape/whatever laws }>effectively because they might use those powers to enforce }>parking-too-far-from-the-curb violations? }Yes. The price of privacy is that it makes it harder for the police }to do their job. We must be aware of this at the outset. It is always }more convenient and more efficient for the police not to be limited }in what they can know about you. }But that's not the society I want to live in. But that just begs the question. To first order, it *is* the society we are living in, and whereas the laws are all nicely written down, the bounds of privacy are, for the most part, not. Your statement reduces to "the police shouldn't be allowed to enforce this law because to do so requires that they violate <X>s privacy" [or, if you prefer, replace "shouldn't be allowed to enforce" with "will have an extremely difficult time enforcing".] The question will arise, and it will KEEP intensifying [and so the constant pressure against privacy I mentioned}, as to exactly what sort of societal chaos we are willing to pay in exchange for the preservation of which little bits of privacy. Images of armageddon-around-the-corner are disingenuous. Closer to reality is the CONSTANT pressure to relax the rules for warrants here, allow other types of evidence there. How does one *define* the line, much less draw it. And even if drawn, how does one explain to a grieving mother that because the police are strictly-toeing the privacy line, the person who killed her son will continue the roam the streets, perhaps to kill again. A situation of this type popped up last night on "Separate But Equal": when the reverend's house was burning and the fire truck came by, and then the driver just observed that the reverend's house was _just_ over the line in the next county, and so out of their jurisdiction, and they just drove on. Well, let's replace taht with 'privacy' instead of a "county line": you have people experiencing *real* harm. *real* laws [laws we would both agree are valid, useful and necessary] being pursued at less of a rate than they could be, just because we require the police to honor some almost-arbitrary line-in-the-sand, drawn mostly by philosophers and "privacy sissies". What level of real, tangible, here and now, societal harm will we tolerate in the name of avoiding "just a little bending" of some presumed "right" that isn't graven in stone ANYWAY. }> Why shouldn't the response to John's observation be }>"OK, so fix the laws, but what does this have to do with the police }>going after the REAL criminals?" }The response to the response is that, in a very real sense, }you're a "real" criminal if the police say you are. Real privacy makes }it harder for them to say you are. I can't follow this. I think we should draw a distinction between what *police* says and what "the law" [i.e.,courts, trials, appeals, etc] says. Are you worrying about the ability of a policeman to arrest you at almost any time under almost any circumstances using trumped=up charges [from the tried and true 'disorderly conduct' to 'interfering with an officer' to the famous 'broken taillight'], or that policeman have the ability to 'define' theft, assault, etc as they see fit on the fly? As for what the courts/legislatures can do, I agree: something becomes illegal solely and precisely because it has been so-defined by the legislature, and to first order they can make ANYTHING illegal. Looking more closely at your statement about 'real privacy', what are you saying? If there are too many laws, or laws have made OK things arbitrarily illegal, that, I contend, is a SEPARATE problem: you should fix the laws. If we agree that laws are generally making the right things illegal, then we bring up the question of whether or not a particular method of PROVING that a person committed a particular crime is prudent or not [to protect against incriminating the wrong person, say]. What _is_ this 'real privacy' that you would use as a roadblock to the police trying to do good job and a court system trying to ascertain guilt and get the criminals off of the streets? Do drug tests invade this 'real privacy'? Do phone taps? Does sifting through your trash? Does cross-correlating EVERY _external_ financial transaction you do, from buying a house to paying the paper boy? Does following you around and noting everyone you come in contact with? My question here is a bit complicated [and so I'm sorry that the above is so disorganized]. Let me try it again: are you working from some concrete notion of 'real privacy', and you put that first and then require that the laws work around it, no matter the harm to society for doing so? If so, then you ought to be able to propose the 27th Amendment making that right explicit, so we (through congress) could debate the merits and drawbacks of such a 'wall'. If not, then what is the point about 'real privacy'? WHY is it worthwhile to impede a police officer from pursuing a REAL criminal for committing a REAL crime? }>}The easy accessibility }>}of personal data makes it easy for the government to exercise }>}its discretion to prosecute us or otherwise make our lives }>}miserable. }> }>This is all very hypthetical. Who gets to decide which are the bad crimes }>and which are the good? }You can do it, and have done it in this posting. When you juxtapose }mattress-tag-ripping and muggers for rhetorical purposes, you demonstrate }that you have an intuitive sense of which crime is more serious. What's }more, your rhetoric demonstrates that you think your audience shares }this distinction. So, let's not pretend this is a difficult philosophical }problem, shall we? Or at least be consistent in your own postings. }In any case, this is not hypothetical at all. It's happening now. Wait a minute here. We might share the notion, but almost certainly not the metric: the debate over 'cracking' should make clear that we share VASTLY different notions of what we, personally, would have be legal and what not-so-legal if we were made dictator tomorrow. Of course I have a metric, and it is a real simple one: the laws that I find a pain in the ass to comply with or think are stupid or worse are ones I'd just as soon NOT have so that I'm not at risk when I indulge myself; by contrast, to first order the laws that prevent OTHER People from doing nasty thing to me [where 'nasty' is relative to my personal ethic] are laws that I'd make MORE severe. This is not just rhetoric: at an abstract level, the debate over gun control, abortion, the WoD, the 55mph speed limit, etc are all just disagreements on which crimes are good ones and which are bad ones. How should we and the gov't handle the discretion? I cannot see a world in which the gov't would never have such discretion: there will ALWAYS be lots of illegal things, ranging from the trivial to the profound, and LEOs will always have to make a choice about who to chase, as will DAs have to make choices about which cases to pursue, and courts about which appeals to hear, etc. Who should make all of those discretionary distinctions, and how? And how does privacy fit in anyway: if foregoing some 'privacy' made it EASIER to go after felons, say [e.g., what if the SC agreed to certain privacy-relaxations, but only for felonies], then there'd be LESS need for discretion: wouldn't the world be a better place if: 1) we ONLY had laws we really believed in, and 2) we have reasonable assurance that transgressors would be promptly caught and punished. }> This discretion exists ANYWAY, and crippling }>the police from enforcing the laws, all of them and any of them, is }>pretty arbitrary: if you don't want the police to enforce some }>particular law, shouldn't you be making the law go away, rather than }>trying to so-cripple the police that they _cannot_ enforce it? }Dear Bernie: not all limits on police power "cripple" the police. }It is the position of the civil libertarian that police can function }with reasonable, although not perfect, efficiency in an environment }in which their actions are limited by ordinary citizens' rights. }Search warrants, the right to counsel, and the privilege against }self-incrimination make it harder for police to do their work too, }you know. Shall we eliminate those? Are they devalued because they're }invoked so often by guilty people to obstruct police work? I think }not. I'm not questioning that. The problem is that it is all gray. What if you made warrants a LITTLE bit easier to get [as the SC has already done]? What if they made the right-to-effective-counsel more problematic [as they have done in the asset-seizure decisions]? What if they weakened the right to confront your accuser just a little bit [as they've largely done in many motor vehicle cases]? And what if, in all of those cases, the arugment is that society would gain a BIG WIN in exchange for the almost-trivial bending of the rules? }Moreover, you've missed the import of Gilmore's remarks. The question }is not whether one gets in trouble for "knowingly" flouting the laws, }but for running afoul of the law without even trying. In today's }crime-law-happy society, this is remarkably easy to do, and anyone who }doesn't think so is probably also guilty of mopery. But, again, what is the solution: if there are too many laws, are you so sure that the "best" division of laws-to-keep versus laws-to-ignore is simply those laws whose enforcement doesn't involve crossing some hypothetical privacy line? Maybe society would be better served by using some OTHER criterion to divide the wheat from the chaff? }> Should it be personal discretion as to which laws we use our }>"cloak of secrecy" to hide? What sort of society is that? }Again, you go to rhetorical excess. Why do this? Some people whose }privacy is invaded will be prosecuted and found innocent. But if their }privacy had been protected in the first place, they wouldn't have }had to defend themselves at all. But that's just other side: "Some criminals whose privacy is NOT invaded will run free instead of being prosecuted and found guilty. But if their privacy hadn't been _so_ protected in the first place, they would be still running free to commit more crimes." How should the trade be made? And worse: even in a perfectly private world, folks get dragged into court wrongfully all the time. Who is to say whether better-evidence-gathering would make for fewer false-arrests [since the standard of evidence could now go WAY up, and so random, second-hand, circumstantial, etc, would grow to be just ignored] or for more? We should assume that none of this affects the courts, right? If you are innocent, can we agree that this _ought_ to imply that the state will not be able to find enough evidence to gain conviction, and by contrast, if you are guilty, what does it matter? /Bernie\
louisg@vpnet.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto) (04/09/91)
In article <1991Apr5.201230.5970@milton.u.washington.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes: > >The seductive order in which large institutions know everything about a >person, for the person's own good, of course, is known as totalitarianism. >Less politely, it's named fascism, for the strength that comes from every >person/reed being bound into a unified worldview/fasces. > >Bob Jacobson >-- No, fascism get its name from the fasces, rods bound together. The fasces were handed to the Roman Emperor as a symbol of his power and right to inflict corporal punishment on the subjects of the Empire. SO fascism is an ideology that centers around forcing people by threat of punishment to live by the government's rules. You say, then, what is the difference between that and th good ol' U.S.ofA.?? Well, you aren't guaranteed *any* rights (in ancient Rome you were, it wasn't a fascist government) and most every aspect of your life including thought, speech, etc. is limited by gov't policy. Punishment is always physical rather than incarceration. In other words, totalitarianism -- conservative style. Hmmm. I knew taking 4 years of Latin would come in handy some day!! Louis louisg@vpnet.chi.il.us -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ! "As above, so below; as below, so above" -- The Kybalion ! ! "I don't trust him; he has dark hair" -- My girlfriend's mother ! ! "So I'm stupid; what's your point?" -- Me !
louisg@vpnet.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto) (04/09/91)
In article <49918@nigel.ee.udel.edu> new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New) writes: > >Hmm... I always thought fascism was an economic organization wherein >businesses are controlled, liscenced and regulated by the government >while not explicitly being owned by the governent, not specifically >anything to do with privacy. Of course, this applies more and more to >the USA as people try to regulate themselves to perfect safety and >economic bliss by trusting people who best carry out their jobs via >falsehood. Isn't that socialism? I think it is.... Louis -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ! "As above, so below; as below, so above" -- The Kybalion ! ! "I don't trust him; he has dark hair" -- My girlfriend's mother ! ! "So I'm stupid; what's your point?" -- Me !
karish@mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish) (04/10/91)
In article <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: >Is the 'common man' better or worse off if the police can track every >movement of every person? Imagine that you could have "knocker ID"? >How about being able to buy an 'intrusion monitor', and in the >unfortunate event that your house was burglarized, you could just check >the "presence logs" and read out the IDs of every person who set foot >on your property. Would you run to embrace it? Would you believe it? Sounds like another invitation to a technological arms race. For an illustration of some of the potential problems, take a look at Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Chuck Karish karish@mindcraft.com Mindcraft, Inc. (415) 323-9000
njacobs@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (Nick Jacobs) (04/11/91)
In article <63587@bbn.BBN.COM>, cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes... [preamble omitted] >Well, I've become real pessimistic of late. Let me uplevel the >question. Discussing 'privacy' instead of the specific assault is >already one level up --- I'd like to move another level up and ask >about privacy, itself. CAN one make a case that privacy is >protectable, or worthwhile, or even means anything? > >Here are three conundrums that seem to do a pretty good job of >skewering the case for privacy, (and the more I think about them the >more despondent I get): > > 1) privacy is just a cloak for illegal activity [i.e., trading > privacy for security is a win] [other points omitted] >around the general topic of privacy, I've _never_ found a persuasive >argument to counter this. Why shouldn't police be allowed to frisk >people at random on the street? or search cars [or even homes] on a >hunch, or less? If you don't do drugs, why do you bitch so much about >drug testing? What do you have to hide, anyway? The debate always >ends up with the anti-privacy folks having specific, concrete, >immediate, seductive _advantages_ of foregoing a bit of privacy, while >the pro-privacy folk end up making vague, theoretical, philosophical, >"but what if" arguments against. For me, the question is mainly one of individual freedom from the power of the government. Who decides what is "illegal"? The government decides. Yes, in some states, homosexuals need a right to privacy as a "cloak for illegal activity" - for example. Our real difficulty is simply that for much of the period since the founding of the United States, Americans have not suffered a really repressive government. The founding fathers did an outstanding job on the Constitution; Congress and sundry Administrations have been steadily chipping away at it for two hundred years, and it's only in fairly recent times that they have made much "progress", to our cost. Lacking the experience of very repressive government, many Americans are slow to see the dangers of increasing the government's information resources. As you point out, it's always possible to point to benefits of letting Big Brother look after us more efficiently. And as you did not point out, the most influential, persuasive people in the world (the politicians - including the media) have a strong vested interest in arguing that case, in order to increase their own power. Many people think that the danger is exaggerated, that we're so very far from states like Stalin's Soviet Union or George Orwell's world that there is no need to worry. The problem is twofold. First, a government tends to increase its power exponentially; the more powerful it gets, the more capable it becomes of increasing its power further. As a familiar example, look at US history. The increase in the power of the Federal Government between, say, 1920 and now (~ 70 years) is larger than the increase in its power between its founding and 1920 (~ 150 years). Second, technology has given government the means to interfere in our lives more easily than ever before. Of course Orwell already saw this trend. And in any case, I believe that we already have oppressive government. But that's a subject in itself and off-topic. > /Bernie\ Nick
peter@taronga.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (04/12/91)
new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New) writes: > Well, I wouldn't mind having no private information about myself if I > would be accepted for what I am. A soft-programming-language weeny? Assembly should be good enough for you! :-> for the humor impaired. -- (peter@taronga.uucp.ferranti.com) `-_-' 'U`
tom.jennings@f111.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG (tom jennings) (04/12/91)
> The seductive order in which large institutions know > everything about a > person, for the person's own good, of course, is known as > totalitarianism. > Less politely, it's named fascism, for the strength that > comes from every > person/reed being bound into a unified worldview/fasces. Thank you. -- tom jennings - via FidoNet node 1:125/777 UUCP: ...!uunet!hoptoad!fidogate!111!tom.jennings INTERNET: tom.jennings@f111.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG
tom.jennings@f111.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG (tom jennings) (04/12/91)
(reply to this chain) The law'n'order mentality goes not so quietly nuts when it thinks of all the crimes going unpunished. Kinda like software theft -- "think of all the lost sales" (ie stolen copies). Better to let crimes go unpunished, than to punish one innocent person, otherwise there is reason to have any rtust in "justice" John adams parial quote. -- tom jennings - via FidoNet node 1:125/777 UUCP: ...!uunet!hoptoad!fidogate!111!tom.jennings INTERNET: tom.jennings@f111.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG
tom.jennings@f111.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG (tom jennings) (04/12/91)
(reply to chain) The law'n'order mntality goes not-so-quietly nuts when it thinks of all the crimes going unpunished. Kinda like software theft -- "think of all the 'lost' sales" (ie. stolen copies). "It is not possible to punish all crimes ... better to let crimes go unpunished, than to punish one innocent person; otherwise there is no reason to trust that there is any 'justice' in the system". A bad paraphrase of an ancient John Adams quote. I think. Gets the point across anyways. -- tom jennings - via FidoNet node 1:125/777 UUCP: ...!uunet!hoptoad!fidogate!111!tom.jennings INTERNET: tom.jennings@f111.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (04/13/91)
In article <671217954.20214@mindcraft.com>, karish@mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish) writes: > In article <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes: >>Is the 'common man' better or worse off if the police can track every >>movement of every person? Imagine that you could have "knocker ID"? >>How about being able to buy an 'intrusion monitor', and in the >>unfortunate event that your house was burglarized, you could just check >>the "presence logs" and read out the IDs of every person who set foot >>on your property. Would you run to embrace it? > > Would you believe it? Sounds like another invitation to a > technological arms race. For an illustration of some of the > potential problems, take a look at Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids > Dream of Electric Sheep?" > Back around September 1990, there were two very interesting notes somewhere in these news groups, comp.risks maybe. Then silence. They were both about school administrations that had made very interesting beds for their students to lie in. How about some followup reports about what happened. one was a school with about 3000 students that installed a phone system that would ask for a four digit pid to bill long distance tolls to the student placing the call. Thus making a .30 probability that a randomly chosen code would put a call on somebody's (somebody else's) bill. The other was about a dormitory with an intrusion control system that identified people authorized to enter by reading an id card they were carrying in their pocket. A system as well designed as cellular phones for tracking a person's movements. So come on, were the systems real? Have the horror stories happened? Surely there has been a case or two of toll fraud on the phone system, even if the prisoner tracking, pardon me, resident identification system hasn't been seriously abused, yet. dan herrick herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
rogue@cellar.UUCP (Rogue Winter) (04/14/91)
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes: > The other was about a dormitory with an intrusion control system that > identified people authorized to enter by reading an id card they were > carrying in their pocket. A system as well designed as cellular phones > for tracking a person's movements. > > So come on, were the systems real? Have the horror stories happened? > Surely there has been a case or two of toll fraud on the phone system, > even if the prisoner tracking, pardon me, resident identification > system hasn't been seriously abused, yet. > > dan herrick > herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com The dormitory security is certainly true. The University of Pennsylvania has recently installed card readers in every dormitory that check whether a student lives in that building. (The university has had magnetic strips on their student and staff ID cards for at least six years - prior to the dorm installation, the only use that I know of was in the campus computer store as a means of verifying full-time status.) Whether the card is checked against a datalist in each dorm or a central database is unknown to me, as well as whether logs are kept this way. Perhaps someone at upenn.edu could elucidate. Rogue Winter : "How can you say I only protected people in South rogue@cellar.uucp : Philadelphia? I protected people all over this city; it uunet!cellar!rogue: didn't matter if they were in South Philadelphia or Cellar 215/3369503: Northeast Philadelphia." -- Frank Rizzo, 4/12/91
zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Sameer Parekh) (04/19/91)
Argh. Silly me. My sister goes to the University of Connecticut and they have a PIN system (4 digit) for phone calls. This is so you can call from a friend's room. It is sponsored by AT&T. I am kicking myself that I didn't realize how stupid this is. (I think they have about 10K students, so probably about 3-4K phone accounts.) -- The Ravings of the Insane Maniac Sameer Parekh -- zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM
achilles@pro-angmar.UUCP (David Holland) (04/26/91)
In-Reply-To: message from zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM > Argh. Silly me. My sister goes to the University of Connecticut > and they have a PIN system (4 digit) for phone calls. This is so > you can call from a friend's room. It is sponsored by AT&T. I am > kicking myself that I didn't realize how stupid this is. (I think > they have about 10K students, so probably about 3-4K phone accounts.) Harvard has one of these things also; one wonders what the chances are that a random number will work. A much bigger problem would be contesting the bill that some wise guy runs up for you calling Alaska. You'd have to prove you weren't in a position to be able to make any, or at least some, of the phone calls - which is likely to be difficult or impossible... and the chances of catching the malefactor are just about zero. :( This belongs in RISKS, doesn't it...