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Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review)Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review)Posted Jun 7, 2012 20:36 UTC (Thu) by bjartur (subscriber, #67801)Parent article: Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review)
Since when did anyone loose whatever information he supplied? Information doesn't necessarily have to be more useful to someone you supply it to than it is to you. But if it might be useful at all, to anyone out there, please, do share it to those who might use it. Uninformed decisions are being made all over the world as you read these words. Help spread information, even if only by contributing seemingly uninteresting data about mundane things for aggregation into useful statistics. For example, my water bill is most useful to me and my water supplier. Same goes for your water bill. But what if either of us ever wondered whether their water usage was unusually high, and if so, what utility was using more water than others could cope with? Then suddenly, a matrix of the water usage of various utilities and anonymous users becomes immensely useful. By Doctorow's logic, I should wonder whether my software is more useful to you, or the firms that might adopt and maintain it, than it is to me. I think I'll keep it to myself, just to be on the safe side. Privacy, whether of individuals, corporations or governments, is inherently harmful. It does nothing but restrict the flow of information.
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Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 7, 2012 22:24 UTC (Thu) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link] Privacy, whether of individuals, corporations or governments, is inherently harmful. It does nothing but restrict the flow of information. I must be misunderstanding what you wrote here because surely you're not saying that keeping certain personal information private, for example your name, phone number, address, workplace, bank, and vacation schedule, is inherently harmful. I'm sure that if you posted all that somebody would find it useful, though most likely at your expense.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 9, 2012 3:25 UTC (Sat) by bjartur (subscriber, #67801) [Link]
The use of such information would at first mostly be useful to people I know;. For example my family and friends could use my vacation schedule (posted in the subthread below yours) to meet me abroad.
Only when a statistically significant portion of the general public has shared some information can the information become generally useful to the society. The worst thing about the current trend of aggregation of personal information for statistical analysis is that the information is collected by a company for future analysis by that same company. Analysis is hard. Just look at what Google and Facebook think about you. The only way to put such information to use is publishing it to the general community of statisticians, and any amateurs of the general public.
And yes, I do believe that the benefit of the availability of information generally outweighs the harm. So if in doubt, share.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 11, 2012 22:21 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] The use of such information would at first mostly be useful to people I know;. For example my family and friends could use my vacation schedule (posted in the subthread below yours) to meet me abroad.And burglars could use it to rob your house. I really don't think you want to provide information publically which can be used to determine the state of occupation of your primary residence. There are too many ways bad actors can use it.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 11, 2012 22:57 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Burglars have much easier ways to check if you're home than by trawling vacation schedules.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 12, 2012 7:14 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The advantage of scanning various not-at-home lists is that you can do it from one location and it is discreet and safe. Other methods either involve looking at a single unreliable data point (e.g. presence of internal lighting or time of day and 'just hope' people are at work) and hoping it is accurate (which it isn't, in either direction), or suspiciously wandering past the house repeatedly to verify its continued state of darkness. Sure, most burglars are doing the latter -- but why make their job much easier by telling them when you're not in?
-- N., not cut out to be any sort of thief so this may be nonsense
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 13, 2012 0:35 UTC (Wed) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]
You're saying what every decent police officer would suggest to a citizen who asks about prevention against burglars.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 1:18 UTC (Fri) by sjj (subscriber, #2020) [Link]
Fine, privacy is harmful. Great. Please reply with details of the last time you had sex, including your and your partner's name, age, phone number and address.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 2:31 UTC (Fri) by bjartur (subscriber, #67801) [Link] I refuse to violate my partner's (r: ex) privacy, even if I think my privacy is not worth protecting. I realize that many people like keeping secrets, and I will not force my, evidently debatable, ideology upon them. I can, however, supply just over half of the information you requested. My full name is Bjartur Thorlacius*, my International telephone number is +3546182195. Either of these could have been used to look up the other as they are registered publicly and probably globally unique. My address is Lundur III. I haven't had sex for up under a year (minus two months, IIRC). As for my vacation schedule, I'll be visiting my family in France and Belgium for most of July, although I doubt that's useful to know for many but my family and traveling buddies that I might meet in Paris. Or an assassin in the continent of Europe that can't be bothered to fly or sail to get at me. Sure. You can actually phone me, and I could even arrange for a brief meeting in Paris if you suspect I'm making all of this up. I'll write a proper, albeit subjective, reply to the post above yours. *This thread can now be found by e.g. future potential employers, or in fact anyone I am introduced to, by keyword search. Make of that whatever you want.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 7:08 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I believe that piracy is not only desirable it is a core requirement for humans to have a functional society.
While it's not as critical as 'first tier immediate needs' such as 'Food, Water, Shelter' it is right up there. Probably second tier of requirements for human life/happiness.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 16:10 UTC (Fri) by bjartur (subscriber, #67801) [Link]
I believe that not having cops around all the time is a prerequisite not only to prosperity and happiness, but also for a functional society. That doesn't automatically mean I'm right, though.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 20:08 UTC (Fri) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link] I believe that not having cops around all the time is a prerequisite not only to prosperity and happiness, but also for a functional society. That doesn't automatically mean I'm right, though.If by "not having cops around all the time" you mean an environment free of institutionalized coercion I would agree with you.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 9, 2012 3:29 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I am perfectly capable of giving lots of good reasons why I am right, if you'd like.
For one, believe it or not there are actually bad people out there that will use information against you. They exist in business and in government.
It is that it's difficult to be politically proactive when you disagree with the people running your country and they can use information to track down your friends, family, and professional associates and make their life hard in order to get to you. Demanding auditing for taxes, arbitrary fines, police harassment, etc. I've seen these things used against people that want to 'rock the boat' politically.
But if you don't want to see what is obvious to most everybody else, there isn't anything I can help with.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 9, 2012 14:52 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] They can do it just fine right now. It's ridiculously easy to find stuff about people you don't like. And besides, it's better to fight against the people that would try to use private stuff to intimidate you. Personally, I'm a privacy pessimist ("You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it") and I think it's better to fight for transparency then for privacy.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 17:40 UTC (Fri) by Otus (guest, #67685) [Link]
Piracy or privacy?
Either I'm missing the point or that was a Freudian.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 10:26 UTC (Fri) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link]
Finally your sex life is not so interesting.
But since you are in such a liberal vain with private life, could you please disclose all your bank account coordinates, passwords etc. so that everybody on this list can have a look at transactions ?
Concerning your vacation time, I know some people (burglars) are interested.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 14:25 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]
>>realize that many people like keeping secrets, and I will not force my, evidently debatable, ideology upon them.
>could you please disclose all your bank account coordinates, passwords etc. so that everybody on this list can have a look at transactions ?
If any of those transactions involve natural persons, then allowing third parties to peruse the account history would be a violation of those natural persons' privacy.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 15:37 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
Actually I know a person who had for about one year posted his bank statements online. You could donate money to him, and it would show up on the public statement next months. Was his way to incentivize people to donate money to his project. Cool, but very weird and intrusive.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 14:36 UTC (Fri) by bjartur (subscriber, #67801) [Link] Haha.
I don't use password-authentication for banking, and I have not made my account accessible over residential IP-networks. I flat out can't be bothered to fetch said list from the nearest bank. I can assure they're even less interesting than my sex life, however. There are a few illegal purchases of alcoholic bevereges in there, but otherwise it's more or less for food.
They could just as well rob my house during work hours.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 10:59 UTC (Fri) by AndreE (subscriber, #60148) [Link]
What're the numbers and security codes of your credit cards? How about your bank account numbers? I also wouldn't mind knowing your passport number and country of issue. Perhaps you could also tell us your current occupation, current place of employment, and your current salary. Who you most recently voted for in national and regional elections could also prove handy. Finally, your date of birth, place of birth, and the stated religion on your birth certificate.
This is all your own personal information I believe, so you don't need to impose your ideology on anyone to provide it. I'm sure you agree that restricting the flow of such information is inherently harmful
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 15:02 UTC (Fri) by bjartur (subscriber, #67801) [Link]
My national identification number is 2112952019. I was born on the 21st of December, 1995, in Reykjavík.
I have no credit cards. For security reasons, I won't disclose my bank account numbers. I will not disclose my LWN password, nor will I publish my secret SSH keys. Those are not personal information protected by privacy. They are cryptographical secrets. Authentication is useful.
I attend secondary (13th or 14th year) education at various schools of various state support. I'm employed as a programmer by Hraðskjár, and my current salary is approximately nil. Hraðskjár is a tiny startup conceived by a friend of my first cousin. My birth certificate states Christianity as my religion. I'm registered as a "protestant reformist" (or something like that).
I have not voted in national, nor in regional, elections. I most likely won't for the next four years (plus one month).
My "informationist" stance is about defaulting to sharing information, in the hope that it could be useful to someone. I contrast it with the stance of privacy advocates, who would rather default to not sharing any information in the fear that it might at some point be or become embarrassing, or enough excuse to get you jailed or executed. I believe privacy is flat out the wrong way to avoid unfair imprisonment, execution or punishment. Privacy may get you what you want temporarily, but it won't help anyone else get it. It is at best a short-term interim solution to something.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 19:09 UTC (Fri) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
But you're restricting the free flow of information.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 9, 2012 10:12 UTC (Sat) by AndreE (subscriber, #60148) [Link]
You've created an arbitrary distinction between "information protected by privacy" and a "secrets".
There is no actual difference. Secrets are in fact information, that people desire to keep private.
More significantly, what one desires to keep secret is subjective, so what might be a secret to one might not be a secret to others. Hence why bland generalisations that "privacy is harmful" and "information must be free" add nothing to the conversation
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 9, 2012 14:49 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Not really. There's a crucial difference: a secret becomes useless if published.
If you publish my Gmail password then it'll become useless - I'll just pick another one. You can use it to publish my mail archive, but it'll be very boring.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 10, 2012 7:45 UTC (Sun) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
I don't think "can be used to gain access to systems" is a good working definition of "useless".
I think you mean something like "changeable" or "able to be made secret again". If someone finds out you're bribing the police and publishes it, you obviously can't change that fact or somehow directly mitigate the damage. But some privacy issues are more like passwords, they cause damage only in the right situations, and the window can close.
So while there are differences, I don't think there are two neat categories like you suggest.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 13, 2012 0:49 UTC (Wed) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]
It's also not always obvious what the potential damage is or can become at the time the "disclosure" happens (e.g. because information might not be harmful on itself, but when combined with other information it can become dangerous).
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 13, 2012 16:03 UTC (Wed) by bjartur (subscriber, #67801) [Link]
Credentials are created only for authentication. Compromising them thus makes them useless for their original purpose.
My vacation schedule, on the other hand, does not become meaningless if published.
This is analogous to using the right to modify a book to erase the original author's name and place yours instead. It's a modification, so it arguably constitutes a derivative work, right?
There may be gray areas. But my point is that you should, if in doubt, make life easier for everyone and default to sharing. Someone might find the information useful.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 13, 2012 16:16 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]
> My vacation schedule, on the other hand, does not become meaningless if published.
That would depend on who you are. If you're a celebrity, for example, then it might not be much of a vacation if people know where and when to find you.
Views like yours seem to result from a complete lack of interest in your personal data. No one else cares about it, so you don't see any reason to keep it private. Or, put another way, your privacy is maintained automatically just because you aren't interesting enough for anyone to bother. Even so, you make exceptions for the private data you _do_ care about, like passwords; you should consider that much of this other information you're so free with can also be used to impersonate you. Enough of it can amount to a form of authentication credential. Those with higher profiles, or perhaps just a better appreciation of how that information can be misused, have reason to put more effort into protecting it.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 14, 2012 7:20 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
I think it is quite telling that your post this from Iceland.
Iceland is a quite nice society, but the total Icelandic population is less than that of many world cities, and people interactions are quite different in countries where truants have whole continents to escape in, and they don't risk that their victim knows someone who knows them.
The smallest the population, the harder it will be to keep any privacy, but conversely the easiest it will be for other social mechanisms to protect individuals. However improving communication means balance is not shifting to smaller communities but towards a huge world-size global entity (where privacy will matter even more than today if people are to live peacefully together)
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 8, 2012 22:02 UTC (Fri) by sjj (subscriber, #2020) [Link]
Now I'm sorry I trolled you. Well played. I still think you're wrong, but I appreciate your consistency.
Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review) Posted Jun 14, 2012 8:49 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (subscriber, #4654) [Link]
I dunno if I can reconcile your viewpoint, but it seems to me that you forgot one aspect in this privacy versus open-access debate: reciprocity.
Personnally, I would also accept to share some information (water metering or financial for sure, maybe not the other kind as easily :-) but with a condition: only if those accessing this information do not do such access anonymously either and reciprocally accept that their access be adequately recorded for me to know [1].
I also think that privacy-everywhere (in the computer hacker sense) may be an impairement in the long run. (Note that some law enforcement professionals even see this as a problem.) But clearly, publishing personal information without asking for anything in return (especially the identity of those who access or use the information) does not sound sensible either to me.
NB: Investigation power organization in the legal system (of democratic countries) may certainly deserve more study from our open source security community.
[1] What about "cookie exchange"? At least we could gather very precise information about companies doing users tracking on the Internet...
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