So what's the deal with online privacy?

[Captain Utopia]

Personally I don't spend much time worrying about it.  Company A might sell some information about me to Company B, who may then send me unsolicited marketing - inconvenient and undesirable but not enough for me to get upset about it.  I don't feel like I have ownership over data which involves me, even though I might prefer to limit its distribution.  Being given a cut out of its sale sounds nice at first pass, but as this affects everyone, any positive effect would merely be short-lived, and thereafter inflationary.  Identity theft/personal safety issues I see as something which need to be worked out since we've moved so much of our lives online, so to me that is a separate issue which does require serious focus.

Am I missing something obvious?  I just don't see what there is to get upset or concerned about.

[The Johnny]

Company A might sell some information about me to Company B, who may then send me unsolicited marketing - inconvenient and undesirable but not enough for me to get upset about it.  I don't feel like I have ownership over data which involves me, even though I might prefer to limit its distribution.  Being given a cut out of its sale sounds nice at first pass, but as this affects everyone, any positive effect would merely be short-lived, and thereafter inflationary.  Identity theft/personal safety issues I see as something which need to be worked out since we've moved so much of our lives online, so to me that is a separate issue which does require serious focus.

Am I missing something obvious?  I just don't see what there is to get upset or concerned about.

Problem is that, "unsolicited marketing" isnt the only thing that can come from that.

Imagine this hyphotetical:

Your future employer has unlimited access to ALL your browsing history of the last 5 years, and can make a decision based on personal taste wheter to hire your or not.

[The Johnny]

Maybe in more concise terms...

Theres information about yourself that others dont need to know about - because that information can create a positive or negative feedback in matters that are not related directly.

Does goatse furry pr0n make you a good candidate as manager?

We don't think so.

[Captain Utopia]

I'm a believer in technology.  I believe that within the next 50 years it'll bring us two things:

• The ability to copy in minutes, and onto something the size of a usb thumbdrive, an amount of data equaling that of all of the data currently on the internet today.  Maybe a "liberated" Google cache, or archive.org backup.  Assuming there are still geeks, there will be interest in preserving history.
• The ability to algorithmically deduce linkages between people IRL and 'anonymous' web personalities.  Writing style, cross-referencing, maybe some "liberated" mail.yahoo.com archives will help.  With a big enough data-source, and enough processing power, at some point in the future all our trolling and schemes will be laid bare for anyone who cares to look.

So I think, privacy wise, we are completely screwed.

But I also believe that within the next 50 years, we're going to have to undergo some change in social perceptions. That we'll have to keep increasing our levels of tolerance.  There's a fuckton of people who have posted compromising shit all over facebook and other forums, and I'm not convinced that pattern will change as we continue to transfer more of our social interactions online.

Currently there are some recent graduates who will comb through their online histories before sending out their resume.  I think in the future if your employer can't find at least one party pic of you stoned out of your gourd with your hair on fire, then they'll conclude you're either abnormal, or hiding something.  The baby boomers will never "get it", but in perspective - they were cool with Obama saying "of course I inhaled, that was the point", whereas 20 years ago before the boomers seized control of the machine, Clinton had to make up the ridiculous "I didn't inhale" line.

It's difficult to tackle the problem of individual discrimination by the hiring manager, but I think employers will become more interested in searching for practical things like "is this guy a complete dick to people he talks to?" - I'm cool with assholes finding it harder to get the jobs they want.  And hey, if less assholes become hiring managers, then that problem will eventually solve itself.

[Rumckle]

Identity theft/personal safety issues I see as something which need to be worked out since we've moved so much of our lives online, so to me that is a separate issue which does require serious focus.

The problem is that this isn't always a separate issue, even if company A doesn't sell you PI to people involved in ID theft, that doesn't mean somebody in the company won't. You can say that there will be all these security measures in place to stop this happening, but security measures are never 100% effective, the only 100% effective solution is to not have the information being gathered by the company in the first place.

Also, the first step on the road to having Thought Crime is knowing what people are thinking.

It's difficult to tackle the problem of individual discrimination by the hiring manager, but I think employers will become more interested in searching for practical things like "is this guy a complete dick to people he talks to?" - I'm cool with assholes finding it harder to get the jobs they want.  And hey, if less assholes become hiring managers, then that problem will eventually solve itself.

Eventually is the problem though, especially with unemployment rates as high as 25%. And just because some one is a complete dick on the weekend doesn't mean he is a complete dick at work. (if that were true most people on PD would be unemployed )

[Captain Utopia]

Identity theft/personal safety issues I see as something which need to be worked out since we've moved so much of our lives online, so to me that is a separate issue which does require serious focus.

The problem is that this isn't always a separate issue, even if company A doesn't sell you PI to people involved in ID theft, that doesn't mean somebody in the company won't. You can say that there will be all these security measures in place to stop this happening, but security measures are never 100% effective, the only 100% effective solution is to not have the information being gathered by the company in the first place.

Okay - and then a government employee leaves a laptop on the subway which has a database containing the PI of 600,000 people.  Or the stakes increase, and now it's corrupt government officials who are leaking the data.

A few years back I worked for the UK tax agency (HMRC), and due to the civil service non-discrimination hiring policy there were quite a few ex-cons working in that office.  About once a week police would burst in, and cart someone off.  Literally, you could get out of jail, and a week later be working on a computer which had all the PI you'd ever need (name, maiden names, address, full bank account details, insurance numbers, spouse and dependent names and full details).  Moreover, all the computer software sucked, so everyone was supplied with a notebook to write the PI down, because you couldn't copy+paste half a dozen fields between different pages of the main application.  I mean, we all signed the official secrets act, and it was common knowledge that most abuses would be caught.. but for some it was too much temptation.

Anyway - I think a crypto-card approach would be a better way to identify yourself to companies which currently use PI as passwords.  E.g. Operator: "Can you press red, blue, yellow";  Me: "Okay, connecting... 2963?";  Operator: "How can I help you today?" etc.  Or a phone-app, which keys against voice/video/whatever.  But if you had a system like that in place, it would hardly matter - in terms of ID Theft as it currently stands (the criminal is never physically close to the victim) - if companies sold your PI or not.

That's why I see companies trading in PI as irrelevant to the long-term problem of identity theft.

Also, the first step on the road to having Thought Crime is knowing what people are thinking.

Then we're screwed.  On the upside, when society is more self-aware - i.e. knowing what people are thinking, with the ability to collate and measure that - then it makes changes in those directions easier to obtain than they would otherwise be.

It's difficult to tackle the problem of individual discrimination by the hiring manager, but I think employers will become more interested in searching for practical things like "is this guy a complete dick to people he talks to?" - I'm cool with assholes finding it harder to get the jobs they want.  And hey, if less assholes become hiring managers, then that problem will eventually solve itself.

Eventually is the problem though, especially with unemployment rates as high as 25%. And just because some one is a complete dick on the weekend doesn't mean he is a complete dick at work. (if that were true most people on PD would be unemployed )

The internet isn't considered (by some people on the internet) to be the greatest social transformation since movable type, for nothing   Attitudes are changing quickly though, so I remain hopeful.  I'm old enough to remember when email at work was considered to be frivolous, likewise I expect irc/social networking will be commonplace soon.

But you're right - there's no way I can extrapolate from the trend, how soon "eventually" will be.

[P3nT4gR4m]

The thing with privacy is it's a pipedream. If big brother wants to find out something about you he'll find it out. Question is how difficult are you going to make it for him. The harder it is the more of your tax dollars he has to invest in getting at it. So the choice becomes - the illusion of privacy + high taxes v's cut the crap and spend slightly less of my hard earned cash on it.

Same holds true for advertising. I'm quite happy for google to segregate my ass into a niche demographic and then send me ads for shit I actually want to buy. The alternative is spam and lower advertising ROI for manufacturers which gets kicked back to the consumer as a price hike. Fuck yeah, I say, tell me about the latest FPS or Driving sim for my PS3 but stick the virtual pet and sims sequels up your arse.

[Cramulus]

We're at a crossroads right now. We're shin deep in a social revolution, but it's being disguised as technology so everybody is acting like everything is going according to plan. The decisions we make about privacy right now are going to impact things for decades. And everything is very volatile - It's not given that it's going to go one way or the other.

Sadly, you're right, privacy tends to move in only one direction. In Texas in the 1960s, they installed video cameras in middle school bathrooms to catch kids smoking. The parents of these kids were horrified and made a huge stink about it. But the parents of the incoming freshman accepted this as normal. The people running the system knows how it works - the public makes a stink about privacy for a little bit, and then they get used to it.

I think Transmetropolitan had a pretty compelling view of the future. Microscopic cameras are everywhere, even floating around in the air. Anybody can buy access to these cameras, and you can even get a peek on restricted cameras through the black market. The final phase of the information age is that ALL information, no matter how arcane, obscure, or personal, is available to EVERYBODY. Are we on a road to that future? We shall see.

Personally, I think privacy is something that we should guard because it protects us. People act differently when they know they're being observed. There is a type of freedom that you only have when you're alone.

But I also believe that within the next 50 years, we're going to have to undergo some change in social perceptions. That we'll have to keep increasing our levels of tolerance.  There's a fuckton of people who have posted compromising shit all over facebook and other forums, and I'm not convinced that pattern will change as we continue to transfer more of our social interactions online.

There is a barter in the information age --

you trade privacy for membership in a community

I think that's okay as long as you get to make the choice yourself.

It's difficult to tackle the problem of individual discrimination by the hiring manager, but I think employers will become more interested in searching for practical things like "is this guy a complete dick to people he talks to?" - I'm cool with assholes finding it harder to get the jobs they want.  And hey, if less assholes become hiring managers, then that problem will eventually solve itself.

I think you overestimate the hiring managers. It is their job to look for the petty little shit that gives them a "big picture" of who you are. These guys are weasels -- I know, I'm living with one. Their job is basically to evaluate whether you are fit to be part of their tribe or not. Your work history is a big slice of this pie, but it's not the only one.

I have known some really dickish recruiters in my time, who have denied people jobs based on what type of socks they were wearing, or the weight of the paper on which their resume was printed. The particular guy I'm talking about gets high on power like other people smoke crack. This isn't going away anytime soon.

[Rumckle]

Okay - and then a government employee leaves a laptop on the subway which has a database containing the PI of 600,000 people.  Or the stakes increase, and now it's corrupt government officials who are leaking the data.

Heh, I wouldn't always trust the government with PI either.

Same holds true for advertising. I'm quite happy for google to segregate my ass into a niche demographic and then send me ads for shit I actually want to buy. The alternative is spam and lower advertising ROI for manufacturers which gets kicked back to the consumer as a price hike. Fuck yeah, I say, tell me about the latest FPS or Driving sim for my PS3 but stick the virtual pet and sims sequels up your arse.

I don't mind that when I'm actually logged into Google, when I'm not it worries me slightly.

Side note, Facebook telling me "may people who like band x like band y" pisses me off. Fuck you facebook, you can't tell me what I should like.

[bds]

Side note, Facebook telling me "may people who like band x like band y" pisses me off. Fuck you facebook, you can't tell me what I should like.

What? That's a suggestion, not an imperative. I love things like that, recommendations and whathaveyou, I've stumbled across so much awesome shit through them.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I have known some really dickish recruiters in my time, who have denied people jobs based on what type of socks they were wearing, or the weight of the paper on which their resume was printed. The particular guy I'm talking about gets high on power like other people smoke crack. This isn't going away anytime soon.

Dicks will be dicks regardless. Short of going to interviews anonymously, by proxy, these assholes will make judgements. That's the thing that gets me about the privacy thing. Like if you hide in a cave, somehow you won't be judged. Ask Osama how that one's working out for him. Doesn't matter how much or how little data is available to them - they will judge you on it.

[Cramulus]

btw, my personal solution to the privacy issue is CHAFF

that is - put out so much info, some of which is blatantly false, that nobody can get a proper bead on you.


My facebook profile, for example, says I'm from Elephant Butte, NM.

At some point I'm going to start a bunch of fake facebook profiles with my name, which identify me as a self made millionaire or something.

[Captain Utopia]

I think Transmetropolitan had a pretty compelling view of the future. Microscopic cameras are everywhere, even floating around in the air. Anybody can buy access to these cameras, and you can even get a peek on restricted cameras through the black market. The final phase of the information age is that ALL information, no matter how arcane, obscure, or personal, is available to EVERYBODY. Are we on a road to that future? We shall see.

I think I need to find Transmetropolitan, I've only heard good things about it.

Is there such a need for an established police force, in such a scenario though?  E.g. I'd be happy to see flash-mob-rule with proven kiddy-fiddlers.  While replacing the court-system with a wiki doesn't sound like a great idea right now, if everyone could easily find out anything about anyone, then couldn't dispensing justice be... simpler?

Personally, I think privacy is something that we should guard because it protects us. People act differently when they know they're being observed. There is a type of freedom that you only have when you're alone.

This has a lot of fluff, however I like the take in this exchange:
  "The employers argument, in as much as they've been looking at Facebook is.. 'anything which is accessible to me, is also acceptable to me', and that seems unsupportable as a social bargain.  If you go down to the mall on any given day you can find a group of teenagers hanging out in the food court, and yeah, you can sit next to them and listen in -- but you're the weird one in that situation"

So perhaps what is missing is logging?  You can put public stuff online, but you also know who has been reading it.  Though I suspect if they implemented that feature, traffic on Facebook would instantly drop by several orders of magnitude.

[Cain]

The Govt over here deported someone without charge because they accessed an Al-Qaeda training manual on the US Department of Justice website.  They were studying terrorism at a well known UK University, someone in the IT department accessed their print orders, noticed the site, noticed the Arabic name of the student and then reported him to the Home Office.

Do you know what they do to suspected terrorists in Algeria?  Waterboarding will be a welcome break from the sort of thing the DRS' professional torturers will come up with.

But yeah, online privacy isn't important.

[Captain Utopia]

That same student could have been fucked if he'd bought a couple bags of fertilizer, or was wearing a backpack while entering a subway station.  The anti-terrorist forces will find ways to meet their expected quotas one way or another, blaming it all on the vector of discovery seems to be missing the point.

The UK Data Protection Act gives that shitneck IT tech a loophole, as you're not supposed to share an individuals data without their permission, unless there is another "overriding legitimate reason to share the information (for example, the prevention or detection of crime)".

Now that's a section of legislation you need to look at if you want to improve privacy laws in the UK, but that's never going to happen while the culture of terror is so rampant.