Ask Slashdot: How Do You Protect Your Privacy When It's Out of Your Control? 174
An anonymous reader writes "A week ago, Slashdot was asked, "How do you protect your privacy?" The question named many different ways privacy is difficult to secure these days, but almost all of the answers focused on encrypting internet traffic. But what can you do about your image being captured by friends and strangers' cameras (not to mention drones, police cameras, security cameras, etc.)? How about when your personal data is stored by banks and healthcare companies and their IT department sucks? Heck; off-the-shelf tech can see you through your walls. Airport security sniffs your skin. There are countless other ways info on you can be collected that has nothing to do with your internet hygiene. Forget the NSA; how do you protect your privacy from all these others? Can you?"
When it's out of your control (Score:5, Insightful)
...you can't. That's what "out of your control" means.
It's debatable that you can (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe that technological privacy is achievable, and I'm skeptical that it's valuable. Whether cryptography actually works (an interesting mathematical question in itself), cryptosystems fail fairly often. Even when they do work, to truly be untraceable or private with them you have to effectively opt out of commerce. Don't logon to anything when you're using Tor, kids; also, don't use Google, since they can always watch your referer tags and see 3/4 of your pages that way. The problem with privacy as we normally talk about it is that it is extremely fragile -- what we've historically taken as 'privacy' was really laziness -- going back to my example from the detective firm above, all this information was already there, it was just split into a couple of dozen different archives and databases. Beforehand, it took time and effort, so you had privacy because unless something was really important, it wasn't worth the effort of searching. Now, it's very easy to record and archive, and we've been focused for many years on making recording and archiving easier, and we elect to be recorded and archived in order to participate with other people -- bank won't serve you if you're wearing a ski mask, visit vegas and you'll see that any table game has very specific gestures and rules to make what you're doing camera-friendly, want a loan you need to have a credit rating.
So, privacy has to be implemented, which means its going to be a combination of legal, technical and social elements. Technical in the same sense as breaking and entering -- the definition of B&E is that the breaker has to make -an- effort, regardless of how trivial. Lifting a latch is considered B&E, and similarly you need some indication that you're trying to achieve privacy. Legal in the sense of limiting the consequence when your privacy is breached.
Re:When it's out of your control (Score:4, Insightful)
Some laws like that, and our privacy will return.
But such laws would be great for the people and bad for the billionaire business owners who exploit personal information. So it'll never happen until Americans stop voting for Democrats or Republicans.
keep a low profile (Score:4, Insightful)
There's something to be said for blending into the background, being "down in the noise", not being whomever they're looking for. Pay cash when possible. (It's still allowed, although maybe not for too much longer.) Be less distinctive in appearance. Build up a really boring persona. Don't make it worth anyone's time to follow you.
Practice safe computing. I think this is probably more important than CCTVs everywhere. Don't open or click on anything unless you know exactly what it is. If you must do porn or warez, do it on a virtual machine, not the same one on which you do your banking and pay your utilities.
Beware of social engineering. It works so well that I would be really surprised if it were not used as a surveillance tactic.
But in general, just be uninteresting.
Re:When it's out of your control (Score:4, Insightful)
Here ya go [wikipedia.org] It's been on the books since 1974. The Federal government is prohibited from collecting personally identifiable on you without notifying you, etc. How's that working out?
Re:It's debatable that you can (Score:4, Insightful)
Until the last few hundred years, at most, the vast majority of humanity lived in small villages or tribes where basically everyone knew everything about everyone else, at least within their village. Secrets could be kept, but only with difficulty and usually not for a long time.
And there was very little creative output. Cities enabled the privacy that comes with being just another face in the crowd. Some people like to complain that in the city no knows their neighbors. But that very lack of societal pressure enables people to be more adventurous. It lets people take risks because if they do something stupid it won't haunt them for the rest of their life.
When the pressure to conform is lifted people naturally see the world in new ways because they don't have to worry whether their neighbors agree or not. Take away the freedom that comes with privacy and progress - both artistic and scientific - will come to a near standstill.
Re:When it's out of your control (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, privacy is a part of dignity, a human rather then corporate/political quality. To value dignity is important for people, and corporations/politicos have no need for dignity. The value is important, and it is fought in many marketing memes, PR, and values-- where the almighty currency rules.
Re:When it's out of your control (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is, we're better if we go with the flow and take control of the situation. Live more in the open. (...) All data about what people do should belong to the public.
You're part of the "we" that like to dictate for everyone else. No, all data about what I do should belong to me. My life is my own and in general it's nobody else's business, I accept that in certain ways aspects of my life is in less than perfect secrecy because it happens in public or around other people or with private or public institutions but my bank account is a private matter between the bank and me. My pay check is a private matter between my employer and me. Where my cell phone is located is a private matter between the cell phone company and me. Life is full of small compartmentalized exchanges of information which together make up the bulk of what we consider privacy. Having sex isn't "private" because those you have sex with can tell other people about it, but I think most would consider an organized collection of that information was an invasion of privacy.
I'm not interested in living my life "fully in the open" as long as there as busybodies, bigots, rumormongers, besserwissers, peer pressure and so on. It's human nature to meddle in things that are none of their business, even if the NSA was wiped off the face of the earth I'd still want my privacy. Apparently you totally disagree since you want to go in that direction anyway, good for you. Put up webcams and broadcast your life to the world if you want, just don't drag me into it. Don't pretend it's something I want to, should have to or need to. And if you want to share video from a private establishment using Google Glass and is asked to leave, please make a scene so I can cheer when they throw you out. The NSA, well we might not win that fight but everyone with total access is a worse nightmare than just the NSA.