An Epidemic of Snooping 163
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."
Personal story (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Easy Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
I did his at school. When I urged people to encrypt their communication, several said they had nothing to hide. So I started Wireshark and proceeded to read some of their more interesting instant messages to them and everyone who was interested.
Kind of bothered some of them, but instead of learning crypto basics, they yelled at me. I do not understand this behaviour, can Slashdot explain ?
Argument all ready debunked... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm always amazed just how often this and other nonsense comes up. Then I remember that today's people have attention spans of chronically depressed Lemmings and it all comes rushing back... along with that deep sickening sinking feeling.
At any rate, here's a good essay (found it linked to on Schneier's blog) that destroys the argument:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 [ssrn.com]
Just used it on my parents a couple days ago. Spread it around!
Re:Easy Answer (Score:4, Interesting)
That the police probably really may watch Jerry Springer with a beer when they're done at work?
It's not that they're super humans, nothing says they can actually handle the power they have in terms of this.
I *know* that every now and then, these sort of regulations are broken at hospitals, why would the police be different?
Two personal examples (Score:4, Interesting)
Eventually it was concluded it was a rare allergic reaction, just the right combination of things.
Well, about 3 weeks after the hospitalization, guess what comes in the mail?, a big splashy vivid orange package for fucking Rituxan (a lymphoma/arthritis medication). Is that any of my neighbors fucking business? No it's not.
A far more insidious (in my book) example. I racked up some debt taking care of my mother when she was dying. Anyway, for Valentine's, I send my girlfriend flowers at her work. Three days later, guess what? Creditors calling her work, asking for my girlfriend, and asking about my whereabouts. When asked how they got this number, they replied "We heard you were dating".
Outside of that one credit card transaction, there was no other paper trail connection to us otherwise, anywhere on earth. It's obvious they used the records to call her and harass her at work. That's not fucking right.
Now let's extrapolate that. Let's say I was a married or taken man, and that was not my wife? Would they have the right to potentially destroy a family or otherwise cause such destruction in someone's life?
Sure, some people will say, they would be getting what they deserved, but it misses the point, I'm of the mind that if business is allowed to get that personal, then it's a two way street, including grievous, personal harm in return.
the "nothing to hide" argument (Score:3, Interesting)
"I have nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/2054219 [slashdot.org]
Easy Example (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Encrypted files? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're not in the origination country, you're not in the destination country, so you have no rights of either location. You have exactly the rights that the Customs people choose to give you. They have absolute power, though they generally don't abuse that, because the Press has absolute power, too. (again, according to the current meme)
Re:It's not really surprising... (Score:1, Interesting)
it's not only about what will happen with your data now, but it is about what will happen with society in the future.
If we allow a totalitarian-level watch regime installed on us, pretty soon people liking this sort of power are going to go for community service / policing / politics just to have access to these tools.
Right now it just isnt't sexy for most power-hungry wackos to go into politics in our democracies, but this will change dramatically once we install ready-to-use snooping and oppression instruments. A lot of people will go into public service and politics to use them small scale, and finally someone will think: hey, I can use this to get me to the top once and for all, eh, ever.
No amount of "we want your info just to protect you" will protect you from future misuse by coming beneficiaries of this information, however trustworthy the original proposer may have been.
And that's why every bit we give in to snooping is a bit in the direction of of a dictatorial state.
Re:Q&A (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Q&A (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I believe that those in control of society are getting better at dealing with civil disobedience.
I think they used to be embarrassed by it but are no longer. I also think they are better at spinning it, or suppressing reporting of it, or negating it's impact (in part by say, smearing the person being civilly disobedient.)
Re:Q&A (Score:3, Interesting)
1131 Burnaby St [mapquest.com]
Note the parks within easy running distance if the police should happen to interrupt your B&E and the hospital if you throw out your back hauling all that stuff out to your truck.
Also, Jeff is a contributer to Open Source software so please don't steal any of the media (CD's, thumb drives etc) since you can probably download much of it from Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] or his own website [jdkoftinoff.com]
I found two odd things when googling Jeff; first, that he lives in apt #5 [whitepages.ca], not #4 so perhaps Jeff is trying to arrange that an annoying neighbor get robbed?
Second, he once posted a number of conspiracy theory pages that are now all 404. So perhaps this isn't really Jeff issuing this invitation? perhaps it's the CIA looking to take him down for posting the Truth?
I'd post more but it is really hard to do invasive, privacy violating searches while bouncing a toddler on one's knee and keeping him away from the keyboard.