Re: privacy in public places
Perry E. Metzger wrote, [on 8/28/2008 10:09 PM]: Given this, I think the time for focusing on the privacy implications of payment transponders and fare cars is over. Not carrying a cell phone will not help you avoid tracking when your environment is saturated with cameras. Digital cash toll collection systems will not avoid records being kept of your car's movements when cameras are reading and recording license plates anyway. Unfortunately, I don't see anything technological that people can reasonably do here to provide more privacy, at least short of everyone going everywhere on foot while wearing a burqa and periodically attempting to confuse the cameras. The solutions, if any exist at all, appear to be non-technical. Isn't this essentially what David Brin has been saying for several years now? [1] [2] Udhay [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society [2] http://www.davidbrin.com/privacyarticles.html - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: privacy in public places
Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Unfortunately, I don't see anything technological that people can reasonably do here to provide more privacy, Painting the camera lenses with laser pointers is quite effective, at least as a short-term civil-disobedience measure. Since there's no long-term damage caused (unless you use a really impressive laser pointer) it's a bit tricky to charge you with anything, at least under current law. Or you could follow the lead of Captain Gatso in the UK... Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: privacy in public places
It is hard to argue with Perry's point that privacy in public is an endangered species at best. Suggesting that one confine one's illegal actions to the virtual world is not a particularly appealing response. Robin Hanson considered the problem in this article from back in the 1990s, a response to the heyday of the Cypherpunks: http://hanson.gmu.edu/privacy.html He argued that virtual privacy would not be an adequate substitute for the loss of physical privacy, that people would not be willing to make the sacrifices necessary for a fully anonymous (or pseudonymous) online existence. It's possible nevertheless that online substitutes for many questionable physical activities may arise. People don't need to shop at adult bookstores any more, porn being widely available online. Instructions on making or growing your own drugs can also be found. Not everything we do in the physical world can yet be virtualized but perhaps with increased recognition of the problem, more substitutes will become available. You don't have to buy into the Cypherpunk picture of a set of fully protected nyms using Chaumian credentials to transfer attributes, in order to benefit still from the relatively large degree of anonymity and privacy available online. It may also be helpful to focus more directly on specific harms and specific limitations rather than the rather vague and general issue of privacy and its intangible benefits. Scientific American has a number of articles on this topic in its most recent issue. http://www.sciam.com/sciammag (Also includes a nice article by Anna Lysyanskaya on cryptographic credentials BTW. Her work with Jan Camenisch on this topic remains state of the art for those who still retain hope for the technology. TPM DAA is based on CL signatures and ironically may become the first widely fielded use of anonymous credentials.) Hal Finney - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
privacy in public places
There has been a lot of talk on the list recently about the privacy issues associated with various toll and fare collecting systems, but others have been pointing out, correctly I think, that this matters less and less because of other technological developments. New York City recently announced plans to use license plate OCR to produce and keep records of every car entering and leaving the city and to keep those records for years. Very little attention was paid to this, but I think it is the mark of things to come. Although the huge infestations of video cameras in our cities have had almost no impact on crime, once they are combined with sufficiently potent image recognition software, it will become possible to track people's movements and keep records of those movements essentially forever. It also seems to me that almost anything that can be done will in fact happen in the current opposing the wish lists of the police is the same as being in favor of terrorism environment. Given this, I think the time for focusing on the privacy implications of payment transponders and fare cars is over. Not carrying a cell phone will not help you avoid tracking when your environment is saturated with cameras. Digital cash toll collection systems will not avoid records being kept of your car's movements when cameras are reading and recording license plates anyway. Unfortunately, I don't see anything technological that people can reasonably do here to provide more privacy, at least short of everyone going everywhere on foot while wearing a burqa and periodically attempting to confuse the cameras. The solutions, if any exist at all, appear to be non-technical. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger[EMAIL PROTECTED] - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
