Watching the Watchers
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Those who mine data for patterns, solutions to problems, crimes, or any other purpose have tremendous power if the data they use can be drilled down into and focused on a particular individual. The European Union seems to be further along in protecting peoples' rights than the US, but US Senators want to try and close that gap. They are pledging scrutiny of government mining to try and ensure that someone knows what work is being done.
I'm not sure that helps us with private companies' trolling through our lives, but it's a start. Having some type of precedent set and some regulations give us a starting point for future laws to provide protection. And where better to start than with our government data mining.
I'm a little torn between how much data should be used and allowed to be used by companies. I enjoy having Amazon recommend things based on my past purchases and other's similar ones. It's handy and convenient. I like my banker knowing to recommend certain products based on my transactions. Or holding transactions when something seems out of character to protect me.
But I wouldn't want that data shared.
And I don't really want anyone looking for patterns to be able to drill down to the details of my digital life and connect the data to me the person. It's that key final step that I think makes a big difference between useful patterns and intrusive ones.
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It's a tricky one - there's a balance to be struck between privacy / freedom and convenience and law enforcement. For instance, when filling in my tax return, I have to put in numbers that the tax office already knows, because they do not joined up systems.
I have a driving licence number, an online tax account number, a National Insurance (~ Social Security) number, a National Health Service number.... it looks idiotic to me, and a recipe for data errors and loopholes that can be used by fraudsters. And a waste of everyone's time.
It angers me that because of this, people can lie about their criminal record when applying for jobs, health when buying life insurance, driving record when buying car insurance (if they bother getting car insurance), and income when applying for welfare benefits. This means that the rest of, the honest ones, pay extra.
The only thing that would worry me about more integration is that civil liberties groups don't like it. I don't understand why they oppose it, but the fact that they do means there is probably something to be careful of. I guess it could be because government IT is usually, er, challenged. I mistrust the UK government on many things, but I don't think it's trying to oppress me. It's oppressing other people (eg prisoners can't vote - which takes away an important check on penal policy), but not the majority.
But if my company systems were as disconnected as government ones, we'd be in trouble...
Bill.
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I have been a part of this discussion many times. It's always privacy on the one side, and either safety, legality, government, or some other such on the other side. But basically it boils down to privacy vs. information about me.
I tend to be in the minority, when I say I don't really care who knows stuff about me or is listening to my phone calls, or any other such. And truthfully, I understand and respect the privacy side of the argument. I must not be a very private person. I just don't care what people know about me. I mean, I'm not doing anything illegal, I'm not sleeping with my secretary, etc... I can't think of anything anyone could garner from straight up spying on me, that I wouldn't be willing to share if someone wanted to know.
I guess what I don't understand, personally, is what privacy really gets me. I can't see a negative side to having the government, my bank, amazon, whoever watching me, but definately see benefits like those outlined in the editorial.
One of the points I often make in my position is that (especially with government), when you enter into a relationship with an entity, you give up something to get something else (amazon-service, bank-protection, government-tons of stuff).
Maybe I just don't see a tangible value in privacy. Is that where I'm different?
Adam
P.S. Of course my argument breaks down when it comes to identity theft issues. And in the identity theft arena, my only thought is if we as a society realized that your SSN wasn't as private as we once thought, maybe we'd make progress?
P.P.S. Flame me if you want to.
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"Maybe I just don't see a tangible value in privacy. Is that where I'm different?"
That's a fact - there is nothing tangible about privacy. That doesn't make it any less important though. There's another intangible concept that competes with it, and that's Freedom. I deserve the freedom to go about my daily activities without other people knowing about it. I don't care what it is, as long as I'm not engaged in criminal activity, then it's nobody's business what I'm doing, what I'm buying and where I go. I've said this before, but I'm going to say it every time this trade-off rears it's ugly head... Treating everyone like criminals to snare the few that are, is morally wrong and probably illegal. We need to focus our efforts on identifying who the criminals are and stop looking at everyone else. I realise that cursory examination of innocent individuals is sometimes required, but what we're talking about here is an in-depth examination of everyone, and it goes too far. It's a complete reversal of the "innocent until proven guilty" idea. It's treating everyone like they are guilty of something, all the time, every day, and you can never be proven innocent. You will be scrutinized until you do something illegal, or you die.
However, privacy is an illusion. There will always be someone watching us. I prefer to keep the spooking to the dark bowels of the NSA/CIA and other organizations that don't exist. They are going to do it anyway. Does anyone honestly think that there isn't an automated system listening to all our phone calls, reading our emails, and so on? I wasn't surprised to find out about 'secret' kidnappings and phone taps. I prefer that to publicly spying on us. There's a long reason why, but basically I think that if anyone is doing illegal spying on citizens, it should be kept secret. Probing into the minutiae of our everyday lives is probably an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. Best to keep that under wraps.
The argument that "if you're not doing anything illegal you shouldn't care" doesn't hold much water because there's a lot of things people might do that are perfectly legal but which nobody has any right to know about. Boffing the secretary is a good example.
I should also make the point that people do actually change their behaviors because of privacy issues. I won't purchase Sudafed anymore... nobody has the right to know about my Sudafed consumption. If I was running a meth lab, there would be other clues to look at. That whole deal is a good example of what goes wrong. Now honest allergy-sufferers are under scrutiny, and the drug-making criminals are being ignored because of the signing program, they are now getting their raw materials in other ways. So you've eliminated a possible avenue for catching the small-time meth labs and driven the practice so far under ground that you will never find it. Meanwhile honest innocent citizens have to fork over their ID? People who changed their behavior due to that situation are on both sides of the law, and the change benefits nobody.
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I'm in the minority myself and am glad to see the growing numbers..
My theory is the same as yours'..if I have nothing to hide (which I don't) - I don't care who's watching and who's listening so long as it's not someone who actually knows me and is getting their jollies by snooping and eavesdropping..(shudder!) - I wonder if all the people who roar about civil liberties and violations of their rights are the same ones who have no qualms about talking loudly on their cell phones and laying bare their private lives for anyone who cares to hear..
On the other hand we do hear about people who are arrested and imprisoned based on the result of some similar data mining and that's scary...I'm not talking about the Gitmo detainees..."regular" people who seem to be caught in a nightmarish trap...all because they voiced their opinions on foreign policy, present administration etc...
9/11 was so remarkably bizarre and outlandish that to cast a net that's wide enough to catch people with similar propensities to wreak havoc is almost an impossible task unless you do adopt a "big brother" approach..the problem is when the small (& totally irrelevant) fish are caught in the net and then dismissively swept under the rug and into oblivion as collateral damage..
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
The problem is that a connection/collection of seemingly and actually innocent actions can be read as de facto evidence of a crime (circumstancial) and can lead to the conviction of innocent people. It has happened many times through out our lives and as long as the ability of law enforcement/government to gather such things remains unhampered there will be many more miscarriages of justice. Our system was originally set up so that it is "better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man go to prison". I've seen a great change in that concept lately, and it's now "Better that our impression of security be high than we actually do the real work and find the actually guilty".
Freedom always comes at a price and security is often that price. During the McCarthy era it was often said that if you have done nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about. There are people on those black lists that were actually loyal americans (if not all of them) The problem comes that when the witch hunts piece together innocent actions that look like a pattern of what they have decided is a crime (whether it actually is or not) you are guilty. Ask the women who were hanged in Salem about "If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about"
The loss of privacy is a small thing to many people, because they think they have nothing to fear. I'll stick to what Ben Franklin said thanks:
"Those that give up essential liberty to obtain security, deserve neither"
This is of course a paraphrase of what he said as I can not remember exactly how it was said but its the gist of it.
You also might ask the large number of Japanese families interned (imprisoned)in the United States during World War II, That if you lead blameless lives you won't have anything to fear.
I'm not being very eloquent today but I think you can see where I'm going with this.
Oh and literally no person goes through life without breaking a law somewhere, or a statute. These days there are so many laws, rules and regulations that we can't actually know them all anymore, you never know when the authorities will be watching when that happens and in a world where they have to actually work to find the evidence you won't wind up on the wrong end of a judge who thinks that even minor infractions should be hanging offenses.
>"On the other hand we do hear about people who are arrested and imprisoned based on >the result of some similar data mining and that's scary...I'm not talking about the >Gitmo detainees..."regular" people who seem to be caught in a nightmarish trap...all >because they voiced their opinions on foreign policy, present administration etc...
"
The other problem is that dissent is not disloyalty. It is the right of every person in the world to disagree with their government, but in many countries this can get you the death penalty. Lately in the US it has become the fashion to lable every person that doesn't like Bush as a "traitor or loony", though this has lessened recently it is still the mindset of ultraconservatives to label dissenters as traitors.
I expect at least one spelling flame and several grammar flames from this but, there you are. Since attacking the content (or the messenger) rather than the message is popular these days as well.
My $0.02
Scott
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But 9/11 wasn't bizarre or outlandish at all. It made us a lot like the rest of the world. In other countries where terrorism is a problem, they have methods of dealing with the problem.
I think a major issue here is that the American people simply won't tolerate another attack, so the authorities are put in the impossible position of trying to catch everyone before they do anything. This is impossible unless you want to give up values which are sacred to the American people. Giving up your right to have your personal data kept private is only a minor step when you consider what would have to be done to prevent every possible criminal attack, everywhere, all the time. Anyone up for marshall law and a dictatorship, checkpoints in every neighborhood, curfews, warrantless and unreasonable searches, people 'disappeared' by the cops? I didn't think so.
We need to accept the fact that there will be another terrorist attack. It will happen. We are not capable of preventing it. Most likely though, it will not be another 9/11... it will more likely be a small attack, such as what happens in the Middle East on a daily basis. We should not tolerate this, but we should accept it and stop putting impossible demands on our security forces. Otherwise they are going to put impossible demands on us and there will be nobody to blame but ourselves.
I would bet that the reason we haven't had any small attacks is because the very thing I'm complaining about is already being done. Average Americans are already under scrutiny. However, it is being done in secret, and since it needs to stay secret, the evidence gathered by such efforts remains secret until it needs to be acted on. This is the way it should be. Let the Men in Black take care of this stuff... I don't want to know about it (but I'm glad it's going on).
I think it was extremely irresponsible for someone to leak the NSA's phone-tapping effort. They should be doing this, illegally, in secret, like they always have done. If you're planning a terrorist attack and some illegal spying program finds out about it... then you deserve to be 'disappeared' and I don't really care what the NSA does with you at that point. There is a case where a guy was kidnapped and tortured and the ACLU is defending him, but I have a hard time believing that he wasn't up to something... we just can't say what, because the evidence was illegally gathered. I think those folks take their jobs seriously and are not kidnapping and torturing people by mistake. I sleep a little better knowing there really are some Jack Bauer's in the world.
All those folks who say they have nothing to hide need to invite me over to search their house. I will find something you won't want on the nightly news. I can almost garauntee it.
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"Better that our impression of security be high than we actually do the real work and find the actually guilty"
I have been trying to find a concise way of saying that. Thank you. Your post is very good. I don't think you will get flamed on that.
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As one of those persons who nearly disappeared I think you are being very naive.
I was once working for a company on a project that required me to sent to Europe, Germany and Switzerland in fact. Unknown to me one of the other employees at the company was engaged in some highly questionable and actually illegal acts (threats to the President and others via a nationwide network, credit card fraud). This person was a non US citizen and was the person the company sent to Germany to meet me and work on the project. Because of this I was placed under investigation even though I had done nothing wrong. The wire taps were obtained legally in this case, and I was eventually exonerated because due process was in place. This was during the Reagan era by the way.
I hate to think what would have happened today if they had been able to obtain even more freedom to investigate or incarcerate and interrogate. I may not have seen the light of day for months before it was cleared up.
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Funny thing this communications business....you could all be saying the same thing and yet think that each opinion is diametrically opposite to your own..
- kinda like talking to someone from Yorkshire and realizing that you're both talking in English but neither understands the other..(my apologies to any "Tykes" who may end up reading this...
)Scott - am really not sure if you're telling me that "dissent is not disloyalty" or nodding your head in agreement to what I said and merely illustrating your agreement...hopefully it's the former for I DO know that dissent is not disloyalty...sheesh..it's in one of them books they call a dictionary ain't it - also, as I recently quoted you on "communications" in an article of mine I'll desist from flaming you for spelling or grammar..
BTW - that's an awfully narrow escape you had there - glad you came through unscathed!
Jasmine - what's your solution for "finding the actually guilty" in a country this size and being a melting-pot of various cultures and backgrounds ?!
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
This can't be more wrong.
NOTHING corrupts like secret power. Throughout history those that could act in secret eventually used that power for political and personal ends. Those that can hide their actions and motives, couple with political and police powers, have no restraint. The only thing that has kept the US legal system from behaving like the Agentinian one (during the days of 'disappearences') is that authorities cannot readily hide their own corruption indefinitely.
The founding fathers were well aware of this. Especially the 4th amendment (hey, why should you fear a search if you have nothing to hide) and the 5th (why can't we force people to tell the 'truth') were enacted, not to protect the guilty, but to protect the innocent.
I am glad, and applaud the ACLU for standing up to this most profound of government corruption. Perhaps if the judicial system stands up as well, we will make sure that our law enforcement also has 'nothing to hide' and behaves within the law.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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I always wonder one thing about the companies outsourcing their IT development to India, China or some place in this universe. Even the companies claimed that they only allowed those offshore developers using the development environement, it is not difficult for those people hacking to the production environment and get the real data. Since they live in different countries, they are not binded by US laws. They can sell those data to anyone and the US government can't do a thing.
On the other hand, US keep watching decent people in America while people in other countries selling US secrets and it is legal !!!
Am I out of the line?
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Classfied jobs that require clearances (of any level) are never outsourced....even the govt. is not stupid enough to do that..
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
Amazon implementation of prediction modeling shows what money can do for you in BI Amazon hired 25 Walmart Relational Calculus developers Walmart sued in Federal court both later swapped one Calculus for the other Amazon gave Walmart Cargo Logistics for Walmart.com. The people who develop prediction modeling are advanced math users who love math more than live data.
The people Congress need to stop are unskilled data Analyst who need live data in their Lap top at home to analyze data. A skilled data analyst only need a VPN account to company data store nothing more. It is frightening that an employee of VA can load data on 26 million people in his Lap top to work at home, I know there is nothing that cannot be simulated and later modified as need with live data at work.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie -
Yes - it is frightening...but based on the nature of the data is also the level of clearance a person would need in order to even qualify for that VPN account... measures that need to be put in place, are...
Are you talking about specific instances that you have personal knowledge of ?! For each safety net in place, there is always a loophole that someone will find to circumvent the Law...
My personal experience has been that if the data is even remotely of a classified nature/intelligence related, the rights and permissions are heavily restricted!
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!**
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