Curiouser and Curiouser! on privacy

ID cards? Orwell would be proud...

Wed, 03 Jul 2002 21:42:54 +0100

British ID cards to revolutionise crime. But not in the way the gov wants... [The Register]

» Once again the government I voted for is doing the Orwellian thing.

Some highlights (courtesy of Copernic Summarizer)

Home Secretary David Blunkett announced the start of a six month consultation in Parliament today on plans by the government to introduce "entitlement cards" (that's ID cards to you and me).

Lobby group Privacy International reckons the proposal for a national identity card has little to do with the government's stated objectives of reducing the threat of crime, terrorism and illegal immigration.

Its real purpose is part of a broader objective outlined in the Cabinet Office report "Privacy & Data Sharing" to create a new administrative basis for the linkage of government databases and information systems.

But worse, the government's ID card plan could backfire and become a tool for criminal syndicates, according to Privacy International which argues that a national ID card- whether voluntary or mandatory - will compound problems of illegal immigration, fraud and identity theft.

According to Simon Davies, Privacy International's Director, criminals now have access to technology almost as sophisticated at that used by governments so that "even the most highly secure cards are available as blanks weeks after their introduction.

Some more of our freedoms to be sold in the name of fighting crime. Are they just tilting at windmills or is this really sinister?

We can fight this!

Privacy's end?

Mon, 09 Sep 2002 12:40:42 +0100

Karlin Lillington: "What society keeps its citizens under greater, round the clock surveillance than any other? Russia? Indonesia? North Korea? Why no -- it's Great Britain." [Scripting News]

» It's true. It's also a fact, although not well understood, that the recent RIP act was not a snoopers charter at least not the way people seem to think. As one Home Office minister admitted the snoopers are already at it and sharing their information with anyone who cared to ask. RIP was an attempt to legitimize this activity. As such we should still oppose it (because it is too broad), but we shouldn't forget that the violation of our privacy continues unabated.

Karlin also points to a piece by Simon Davies in the Guardian which is very worrying indeed.

I am NOT a terrorist. Please don't treat me like one!

Wed, 29 Jan 2003 20:58:16 +0000

This is a copy of a letter I have faxed to my MP this evening (using the excellent FaxYourMP service). It is in response to a piece today in The Register about the UK government forcing ISP's to keep a log of every page visited and every e-mail sent by anyone using the net in the UK. Another bonehead scheme to stop terrorists.

Don't get me wrong. I want to see an end to terrorism but who really believes this is where the solution lies?

So from a technical perspective where does it get us?

Keeping a log of all pages browsed: I guess that the terrorists and I will start using anonymous surfing services hosted in countries that don't have this kind of legislation. You have to pay, but that's okay the terrorists will probably be using stolen credit cards anyway. Maybe it will be your credit card?
Scanning my email headers: I and the terrorists will use non-local ISP's to forward our mail and we'll find ways of encrypting it. The terrorists will probably also use anonymous remailers to hide their identities.

Still think this will work?

Okay so how do you stop terrorists? Maybe we should take a lesson from Israel's no-nonsense PM Ariel Sharon? Then again, maybe not. Maybe we should try something radical: Maybe we should actually figure out what it is these people want, and give it to them.

We in the West keep saying the Israeli's should offer the Palestinians "land for peace." Isn't that dealing with terrorists? And if it is, so what? Are their grievances not legitimate (even if their methods are to be abhored). If you take away all hope don't you create a situation in which people do not value their lives but are angry enough to join armed struggle?

If we want peace with the world we need to find a way to give these people what they want. Take away the motivation to blow themselves up and us with them.

Just a thought.

Government snooping doubles in under 2 years

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 17:23:31 +0000

Bugging warrants double under Labour. I spy with my all-encompassing eye [The Register]

Why aren't more people bothered by this?

Are there only a few of us who think the government shouldn't have such an easy time of it snooping on it's citizens? Where is the oversight? Where is the regulation?

Who cares right?

The New TIA

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 17:57:44 +0000

The New TIA

President Bush renamed the much-criticized Total Information Awareness program during the State of the Union address. Now that the TIA was effectively shut down by Senate action, the president said he will create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), which is effectively the same function the TIA was designed for: domestic surveillance. This came in close proximity to Bush's bizarre hint that assassination is part of the war on America's enemies.

Expect the Administration to continue to use the TIA to distract the public debate from the TTIC. TIA hasn't been completely killed and can serve as a convenient whipping boy while TTIC grows.

Since its founding, the United States has struggled to prevent domestic surveillance and, with exceptions like the domestic persecution of dissent during World War I and the Hoover years at the FBI, it has done a pretty good job.

Why write about this on a business, technology and investing site? Because the freedom to speak and communicate without fear of persecution is one of the main reasons the U.S. economy has prospered and given rise to so many new ideas.

[RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing]

What he said.

(This week seems to be developing a theme...)

Shrinking liberties... it doesn't wash with me

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:46:47 +0000

Smart Mobs picks up on a report by the ACLU which argues that surveillance is increasing, civil liberty guarantees are shrinking, and the combined impact of surveillance data from multiple sources is far greater than the sum of its parts.

Although I only follow the issues from the sidelines, I have growing concerns about corporate and governmental prying. The more my life is easily traced by following electronic trails, the more I worry about who is sniffing those trails out. Whether or not my career as a criminal mastermind is tediously pedestrian is beside the point - the fact that I have nothing to hide makes me more concerned about my actions being watched, logged, collated, catgeorised and cross-referenced.

Sometimes I take comfort in the thought that the more data the government has, the less it will know what to do with it. Trying to integrate it meaningfully will be way too complicated - trying to see and understand patterns across all the disparate data streams is just a cyber-spook's wet-dream.

But then I get back to cold reality. Just because they can't do it, won't stop them trying. The integration may not be meaningful - the patterns may not be understood - but patterns there will be. And in the paranoid world of the cyber-spook, an excess of false positives will be a fair price to pay for tracking down the bad guys.

So my real concern is not that they're sniffing my electronic trail. Sure, it's an invasion of my privacy but it's rather an abstract invasion. My real concern is what cock-eyed conclusions someone will draw from matching this parameter with that pattern and what real-life, concrete actions they will take against me (or you, or any of the other millions of people whose profile just doesn't smell right).

Paranoid? Maybe. Except, they are watching us...

[Making Connections]

Simon neatly identifies the conumdrum facing most of us in relation to privacy issues. We see our rights being eroded on the back of claims of this or that (today it's terrorism) but we have no trust in the custodians that they will not betray us.

That the government cannot possibly assimilate all the information it eventually hopes to hold does not, however, make me feel any happier. This is, I think, for two reasons:

We have seen many times how a single idea (or cluster of related ideas) can revolutionise an industry completely. Today they may not be able to use the data in aggregate, but they will keep it and, who knows what they will be able to do tomorrow?
The data may not be useful in aggregate but it will be open to targetted abuse. That is, if my data is separable somehow from everyone elses then what is to stop corrupt officials from selling it to those who, for their own reasons, would wish to use it against me.

Even if these massive TIA style super-databases are a boon in the fight against crime (and I have yet to see the cogent and persuasive arguments for this) I would, I think, still be find the countervailing arguments for liberty more compelling.

Total Information Awareness and it's ilk are sledgehammer solution to the wrong problem. We should not be asking how to catch more terrorists but how to avoid situations in which terrorists want to kill us.

Owning our identities

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 10:40:33 +0100

Well here's an idea:

Lets take this further. One of the most awful aspects of identity theft is the damage it does to your credit rating. You can have a hundred fraudulent transactions taken from your bank account in a day, but you cant repair your credit rating or your reputation for years. This can be devastating if it stops you getting a mortgage or a credit card. So why shouldnt we start charging credit rating agencies for the information they gather about us? If we all got shares in a credit-rating agency in return for our data, we could vote out directors who refuse to modernise, and get a better service. [Camilla Cavendish

The full article is well worth reading.

The Belgians seem to have got it wrong

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 10:27:03 +0100

The Identity Corner reports on problems with the Belgian e-ID scheme:

Belgium is the first European country to roll out identity chipcards with digital signature technology to all its citizens. The current Belgian ID chipcard, which was approved in July 2001 by the Belgian Council of Ministers and in February 2003 by the Belgian Parliament, is valid until 2007. The card provides strong security against traditional outsider attacks, but unfortunately has not been designed with privacy in mind. In fact, it features one of the worst privacy designs imaginable.

Read on for the full horror!

Is it time to can unrepresentative democracy?

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 12:21:34 +0000

Just been reading a story from Ed Fosters Gripe Log about a proposed new act in the US (H.R. 4127, the Data Accountability and Trust Act) that is intended to override state laws on disclosure of privacy violations (e.g. ChoicePoint, CardSystems, and the newly brewing scandal). The key attribute of the US DATA law:

Rather than emulating California's privacy law, the DATA act would preempt SB 1386 and similar privacy laws enacted in other states. It would also essentially leave it up to the company that suffers the data breach to decide if the risk is great enough to warrant disclosure to the public.

Leave it up to the company. Right... I guess it's fitting that, a year ago today, I wrote about the ChoicePoint scandal. How likely is it that we would have heard anything about that if US DATA had been on the books. How can any responsible person think this is a good idea? I don't think they can. I think the only way this could happen is because government is corrupt and politicians collude with business to further their own political and/or financial ambitions.

In the short-term it is cheaper for companies to ~~bribe~~ lobby those few policians who can bend the laws to their advantage than it is to put their houses in order. And the short term is all most CEO's care about these days. Who cares about the long term?

This is yet another inditement of the system of representative democracy. A system whose heyday is long past and, if it ever was representative, is no longer so today. Indeed I find the very idea of representative democracy ridicuolous. How can one person even attempt to represent thousands of others on a range of issues? And, criticially, why should it be necessary?

I can imagine how in days past, where education was rare and communications slow and unreliable, our system of government may have seemed viable. But I wonder whether representative democracy was seen as the best way forward, or whether those conditions simply made it easier for the better educated, richer, men to grab power and create a system of patronage to keep themselves and their friends wealthy and powerful,

Whatever the true origin people need not be uneducated today and communications have reached the point where nobody should lack for information on any subject. What is required today is discernment, judgement, and a willingness to question.

Yet we continue elect representatives to take part in a corrupt system of government, divesting ourselves of our own power and with it, seemingly, our responsibility for what these people do in our name. Afghanistan? Iraq? Iran? We didn't do it, our politicians did. But we conspire to make them what they are.

This is the terrorists message "There are no innocents." We may not have personally gone to Iraq and shot people but we conspired to make it possible. We just don't learn. "Hey, next time let's time let's vote for the guy on the left!"

I don't know what the answer is. I tend towards the idea that our democracy really should be "one man, one vote." That we should represent ourselves and our own interests. A pessimist might wonder about just how horrible such a world could be: mob rule writ large. But could we really live with it?

Exposure to the consequences of such a system would surely teach us sorely needed wisdom, wouldn't it? If we could survive the first years wouldn't we necessarily learn to take responsibility for our decisions? Wouldn't we gradually become a better and more enlightened people? Isn't this the kind of path we must follow if we are to have a future?

Or would you rather continue to be ruled?