According to this Telegraph article, the UK government is rushing ahead with putting all their citizens NHS records into a massive centralized DB. The rush is apparently intended to beat the next election.
Being the UK it should come as no surprise that they are assuming consent unless told otherwise, and aren’t going out of their way to inform the public that it’s happening and that opting out is even possible.
Beware of greeks bearing gifts, or schools issuing laptops. Of course this situation could be addressed by a simple application of electrical tape.
You have to wonder exactly what the school was thinking would happen. How do you not get sued when you do something so monumentally dumb?
Of course by now everyone in the social networking space is aware of the Google Buzz privacy issues and the corrective steps Google has taken. Not to beat up on Google, but this was a totally avoidable mishap. All Google needed to do was keep in mind one simple rule that inevitable invites disaster when ignored:
Always ask first!
If you look at at many of the recent public relations debacles such as the Buzz roll out and the recent Kindle 1984 flap, companies got in trouble for taking actions that they assumed the customer would be OK with. The when it turned out that they were in large numbers, not OK with it, they had to scramble to make amends.
And as I always say, “when you assume you make an ass out of U and, well U”.
Would you expose your genitals to a complete stranger just to get on an airplane? That is no longer a hypothetical question as plans move forward to install scanners in major airports. And this article should disabuse of any notions that the privacy and dignity violations won’t get abused. They already have.
Images of your total body in graphic details will be taken. Those images will be viewed by at least one total stranger. Those images can also be stored, printed, and distributed despite any reassurances you will be given.
Really, how many indignities is too many? When is enough enough? How about random cavity searches? If we don’t push back now that is surely next.
Hit them where it hurts; boycott any airports that put these things in, starting with Heathrow.
Posted in Freedom, Privacy, Security
Tagged Boycott Heathrow, Full body scanners, Privacy, Security
Bob Blakely is getting a lot of attention lately for this post about a report the he and Ian Glazer wrote on privacy. On the one hand I completely agree with him that privacy is a social rather than a technical issue (which is why I have never been that interested in concepts like the minimal disclosure tokens and identity oracles).
But I feel the Bob and Ian give too much emphasis the how your personal information is handled after it has been disclosed rather than the issue of not asking for it to be disclosed in the first place. In other words, no one can abuse private information if they don’t have it in the first place.
Obviously some information needs to be disclosed to drive the required social interactions. But today there is too much information being asked for and I feel that is also a serious violation of privacy. Let me give you an example, following Bob’s Dr’s office example. Suppose you take your child for a check up and the pediatrician asks your child:
Has your daddy ever slept with another man?
You would be appalled at that for several reasons. First, it not remotely relevant to your child’s check up, and second it’s none if his business. Even assuming the Dr would scrupulously keep secret the answer, he shouldn’t even ask the question. I think we can all agree on that. But what if he asks your child:
Is there a gun in your house?
Now how do you feel about that? How is that any different? This is not a hypothetical question either, but a regular screening question asked today by pediatricians across the country. The American Academy of Pediatrics has instructed your pediatrician to routinely screen for household gun ownership because some irresponsible people have left loaded guns where children could get them, and they feel your privacy as a parent has no value. Further they are instructed to ask your children, not you for this information.
And that is just one of many examples where we are asked to divulge personal information beyond what is needed for the social interaction. At the point of asking the privacy is already being violated regardless of what happens to that information later.
Posted in Freedom, Gun Control, Identity, Privacy
Tagged Data Privacy, Freedom, Privacy
This story from the Electronic Frontier Foundation highlights research that indicates that some ones true identity can often be determined with just the person’s gender, ZIP code, and birth date. According to the CMU study there is a %87 chance that your gender, ZIP code, and birth date are unique.
What is interesting about this is that this kind of data is routinely included in medical records that have been stripped of other personally identifying information (PII) to comply with HIPAA.
This is a rather disturbing story about how police in Idaho are increasingly using forced blood sampling in drunk driving incidents. While the goals are laudable, reducing drunk driving, the violation of personal privacy should be unacceptable to our society.
Apparently the Idaho supreme court has approved of the policy, indicating that they need to go back to remedial law school and brush up on “unreasonable search”.
Identity Woman is talking about the chilling nature of the new everything is recorded society. She makes the good point that this Participatory Panopticon may have the effect of making people afraid to speak their mind. But she could not have picked a worse example in Van Jones.
Van Jones did not resign because of an unguarded moment between friends. There was no purloined letter. No surreptitious cell phone video. Van Jones is no Michael Phelps.
He was forced to resign because of very public statements that he made intentionally to specific audiences for specific political aspirations. Those statements are now viewed as damaging to the political aspirations of his boss so he must go.
Presenting one face to a group of constitutes while presenting a different face to others is much harder under the rules of the participatory panopticon.
That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Posted in Privacy, Surveillance
Tagged Media, Particpatory Panopticon, Privacy, Surveillance
Felix Gaehtgens calls Microsoft onto the carpet about what it is ever going to do with U-Prove. Kim Cameron responds here with a call for patience. Both make good points, but I fear that as interesting as U-Prove is, it is way too far ahead of the market.
There are two reasons for this; first it is patent encumbered technology. Patent encumbered technologies fair very poorly in today’s market. After a few high profile patent fights, any technology that is patent encumbered is treated like nuclear waste by most vendors. Even if Microsoft adopts fair licensing terms it becomes a “get a lawyer first” barrier to adoption. In twenty years this won’t be a problem (so long is Microsoft doesn’t file for any more patents on related aspects).
Second, it solves a problem that the market doesn’t really care about today (although they should). This is the same problem that the notion of an Identity Oracle has. You haven’t heard much about that idea recently and for good reason. There is just no money to be made with it (yet). The use cases usually trotted out for both of these are typically edge conditions, my favorite being the RU/18 one. It’s like the Hello World of Identity.
The only people who REALLY care if you are over 18 when you buy something are your parents and the government.
In today’s world there are two privacy problems, under sharing and over sharing. Under sharing is when you have to fill out the same stupid questionnaire at every new doctor’s office you visit. Now that is an issue that people care about. I know they care about it because non-computer people complain to me about it often.
Over sharing is when you have to put your home address in to register for something even though shipping isn’t required. I almost never hear anyone complain about that and those that do just put bogus addresses in anyway. Maybe in twenty years the average person will care enough about privacy to worry about over sharing. But not today.
So U-Prove will be cool stuff in twenty years. Maybe.
One of the more unfortunate ramifications of the proposed healthcare reforms is that it will inject the IRS into your relationship with your healthcare provider. As John Stossel points out:
Cornell law school professor William A. Jacobson writes that under both the House and Senate plans, the IRS will serve as the enforcer of the rules against individual taxpayers. Doctors will have to report to the IRS the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and coverage periods of their patients.
Both current versions of the legislation slap a %2.5 percent tax on any not covered by medical insurance, so the IRS involvement seems inevitable.
Do you really want the IRS involved in your healthcare?
