The Eternal Value of Privacy

[threeringedmoon]

Bruce Schneier: in Wired News: The Eternal Value of Privacy
Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

Comments

Computer security

[nwl.livejournal.com]

After reading Bruce Schneier's short piece, it's pretty much what has been said since the 1980's when I worked on computer security at NIST. The US was behind in computer security at that point and has yet to catch up with the rest of the world. The only difference is that in the 1980's it was hackers making the case that they should be allowed to explore any computer system they wanted and didn't understand that the fuss was about.

When it comes to who has access to "private" info, the government is really the last on the food chain. Your records of anything on computers is passed around to multinational companies and pretty much anyone who has formed a company to buy the info most companies happily sell. Several months ago, there was a flap about phone companies selling (or allowing access to) cell phone records. One wag bought the cell phone records of some bigwig to show how easy it was.

In last Saturday's (I think it was) The Washington Post ran a story about a man who was false accused of being in cahoots with a child molester. This came about due to one neighbor who didn't like that his car was in the neighborhood (he was dating some woman who still lived at home) and ran his plates to get his address. The man was renting a room in a house where a convicted child molester had lived, but moved out before he moved in. Having gained this supposedly private info, the person proceeded to email that his man was working with the child molester. So much for privacy.

When it comes to computers, we are very far behind. Ditto for cameras on cell phones. As far as I know, people can take random photos anywhere, invading your privacy at any time.

We will stay far behind in computer security unless strict laws are imposed on businesses, which seems unlikely.