An Epidemic of Snooping

Travoltus writes "Privacy advocates are frequently confronted with the rhetorical question, 'If you don't have anything to hide, you don't have a good reason to worry about losing your privacy, right?' This AP story uncovers a vast, distributed, decentralized epidemic of snooping into databases of personal information by workers at major utilities, the IRS, and other large organizations. In a number of cases these incidents have led to real harm. One striking example involves now ex-Mayor of Milwaukee Marvin Pratt, who had a pattern of being late paying his heating bills. This fact was leaked to the media by a utility worker and may have led to Pratt's losing a bid for re-election. As one can imagine, the harm becomes much greater when this same snooping is done by Government officials to deal with political enemies, or by corporations to uncover whistleblowers."

Re:Encrypted files?

[Bios_Hakr]

You don't have to give them the keys. Then again, they don't have to let you in the country. And if they do let you in, they'll probably never give the laptop back.

In any event, I read one article about a girl who did give them everything they wanted. This was years ago and she never got her laptop back anyway...

Re:Q&A

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with your principle, the Kohlberg Stages of Moral Development [plts.edu] explain why most people do not understand the argument you just made.

Re:Personal story

[Chrisq]

Before we were married, my wife used to be a secretary in a police department. When she met me she once said "well, of course I knew you must be OK because working fore the police is like having twenty big brothers. As soon as they know I am going out with someone they check his record and let me know if there is anything dodgy".

About the Internal Revenue Service

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I note that the summary feels the need to mention the IRS, even though the IRS had only a brief paragraph in the article saying they had taken action against some snoopers. Some things you should know about the situation at the IRS:

The IRS was misused by Richard Nixon. Congress responded with certain privacy protections aimed right at the agency. As a reslut, for the last 30 years or so the IRS has been better than most places when it comes to snooping. Not perfect, but generally ahead of the curve.

25-30 years ago, when online data was just becoming ubiquitous within the agency but auditing protocols were laughable, snooping was more common. Nowadays, things have swung the other direction. Some, particularly the Union, would say too far. Currently, if you work at a Taxpayer Assistance Center helping the public, it's entirely possible that an investigation will be triggered when you assist someone (a complete stranger to you) who, it turns out, happens to live in your apartment block or your subdivision (along with a few thousand other people). The data mining that goes on, matching people's database accesses with any possible connection with their lives, is thorough to the point of ridiculousness. I have no doubt that the majority of people at the IRS who snoop get caught. I would not be surprised if the 219 disciplinary actions referred to in the article were 99%-plus of the perpetrators in the reported time period.

And the penalties are *harsh*. Disciplinary actions are taken for inadverdent accesses. Deliberate accesses get you fired. Flagrant deliberate accesses result in jail time. Yes, jail time. I've seen employees hauled out in handcuffs for this stuff. (I've also seen a flagrantly deliberate access case that resulted in jail time that was a total miscarriage of justice. The perp was previously a rising star as an Officer. She was a wonderful young woman. Then, she had a major stroke and lay on the floor of her apartment for three days over a weekend before she was found. Afterwards, her mental capacity was severely reduced and she could no longer do the Officer job, so she was moved to a support position. The organization really tried to keep her employed so she could keep her health insurance. People really went out on a limb for her, even though if you knew her before and after, you could have easily concluded that she should have left the Agency on a disability retirement. Given her reduced mental abilities, it just didn't click in her mind that it was a serious violation of the law to look up the tax records of every one of her coworkers so she could compile a list of their birthdays so she could plan parties. She was that far gone. When she was prosecuted, her lawyer was strictly forbidden by her family from using any sort of diminished capacity defense. They were too embarrassed that their superstar child had become...well...what she had become. They preferred she go to prison rather being forced to publicly admit they had a less-than-perfect daughter. So she went to prison for a while, lost any shot at a disability pension, and God only knows whatever became of her. It was rumored that her parents took her back to Korea but I never found out for sure.)

Finally, why the big increase in incidents? Simple. Up until about 7 years ago, the IRS was a very convenient political punching bag. Politicos loved to cut funding to the IRS because that always played well with the constituency. As a result, the agency hired damn near nobody for about 15 years, from the mid-1980s to about 2000. Recently, though, we've started hiring in droves. The newbies, who don't yet appreciate the culture and public service mission of the agency, are doing things they figure no one will care about. They're getting caught. That's a good thing.

219 disciplinary actions out of about 100,000 employees is, in the real world, pretty damn good.

Yes, I work for the IRS. No, this is not official communication; it represents my personal feelings only.

Re:Easy Answer

[Agripa]

A lot of state gun control laws were passed to disarm various minorities and African descendant Americans with the thought that they would never apply to good upstanding white people. The specific ones that come to mind include limiting purchases to specific and expensive manufacturers [wikipedia.org] and requiring letters from prominent citizens (bankers, store owners, etc.) attesting to the character of the purchaser which Missouri had until relatively recently. Later these laws were applied much more indiscriminately.