At 12:53 PM 12/15/02 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: ...
I think this would help, but I also think technology is driving a lot of this. You don't have to give a lot more information to stores today than you did twenty years ago for them to be much more able to track what you buy and when you buy it and how you pay, just because the available information technology is so much better. Surveilance cameras, DNA testing, identification by iris codes, electronic payment mechanisms that are much more convenient than cash most of the time, all these contribute to the loss of privacy in ways that are only partly subject to any kind of government action (or inaction) or law.I think that a law which re-affirmed the rights to be anonymous, to call yourself what you will, to be left alone, to not carry or show ID would transform the debate about privacy into terms in which the issue could be solved. (At least as it affects private companies.) Companies would be able to do what they want with your data as long as you had a meaningful and non-coercive choice about handing it over.
The records are being created and kept by both government and private entities. The question is whether to try to regulate their use (with huge potential free-speech issues, and the possibility of companies being able to, say, silence criticism of their products or services) or leave them alone (with the certainty that databases will grow and continue to be linked, creating pretty comprehensive profiles of almost everyone's reading, musical, spending, and travel patterns, and with anyone who takes serious measures to avoid being profiled having obvious gaps in their profiles to indicate their wish for privacy in some area).
Some kinds of privacy are, IMO, in the process of all but disappearing. Other kinds are being made possible by technology, which would never have even been possible before, but it's not at all clear they'll really come into being for many people. (How many people are sure their machines are secure against the best spyware the feds can come up with?)
...
Adam
--John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
