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View Full Version : You never had any privacy to begin with.



Harold Mansfield
06-12-2013, 04:02 PM
With all the news about PRISM and Government funneling pretty much all communications into their own servers (which we knew about 10 years ago),
I thought it would be a good time to discuss privacy in the information age.

Plain and simple, you never had any.



You don't own your phone number. Or the phone lines. Or cell towers. You don't own the frequencies. The FCC allows you to use them through a 3rd party and they don't own them either.
If you use free email addresses, you don't own them. You are merely using them with permission.
If you have your own domain and email address, you still don't own that. You are renting that URL.
You don't own the IP address given to you by your ISP or Communications Company.
You don't own your Facebook or other Social Media accounts. They are merely letting you use it.


So you see, you never really had any privacy to begin with because none of these things were ever yours. You're just renting the service from someone else.

Furthermore, most people willing give up their privacy on Social Media anyway. They volunteer who they are, thier birthday, maiden names, where they live, went to school, where they are, what they are doing, where they work, who their family members are and what they look like.

If you spend a week on Facebook, odds are most of your Facebook friends give up enough information in a week to have their identity stolen, get robbed, and have their kids kidnapped from in front of the school they go to.

What privacy?
This is the anti privacy age. Has been ever since the phone book was invented and people willingly listed their name, phone number and address in a free book that got distributed to the general public full of thieves, con artsts and serial killers.

Freelancier
06-12-2013, 04:22 PM
Of course. The best you can do is reduce your visible "footprint", but there comes a point where if you want to participate in society, you have to share some information with someone somewhere. Does your power company really need your social security number? And yet, if you want power, you have to give it to them. The very act of getting your social security number -- something that happens at birth -- starts the whole process rolling.

As for people worried about internet security, go into a restaurant, have a great meal, then hand your credit card to the waitress earning less than minimum wage. Think about it.

Some people worry about whether a web form is secured with SSL. Seriously, why worry about that when corporations aggregate your personal data and that gets hacked regularly and you have absolutely no control over that?

Eventually, you have to figure out what your real privacy risk is and deal with it.

billbenson
06-12-2013, 05:22 PM
At some point you have to determine if it's more important to prevent things like the Boston bombing or loose your your personal privacy. You can't have it both ways. The reality is you don't have a choice in the matter anyway. If the US government isn't spying on you, China probably is.

Some people may say that the government didn't prevent the Boston bombings. But how many did they prevent that you will never know about?

vangogh
06-12-2013, 05:52 PM
Harold I disagree. I don't think the issue was ever whether or not others could physically read phone records, etc. It's about what reasonable expectations we have as citizens. By your logic most every lock can be picked so should we get over the idea that we won't wake up to others in our homes?

The issue is the rights under which we live based on the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't specifically list privacy as a right, but several amendments in the Bill of Rights address it. From the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law (law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html)


The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

With the latest news about Prism many people see it going against the 4th amendment. I think most of those same people are fine with the government being given the information if they can show probably cause, but it's a different matter without probable cause. The government wants us to believe it's all being done in the name of security and that the records help them prevent potential terrorist acts. I would that's true. The ultimate question is where's the balance between protecting our rights and giving up some of those rights in order to protect them.


most people willing give up their privacy on Social Media anyway

Most and all are very different things. Just because some people are fine giving up their privacy doesn't make it ok to take privacy away from everyone else.

I think long term we're going to see privacy erode. I think younger generations are less concerned about it and as they get older and those of us already older get even older and cease to exist there aren't going to be people who object to a lack of privacy. It's hard to see anything other than this happening. I couldn't say for certain whether or not it ultimately matters and whether the tradeoffs in giving up privacy are worth it. I don't particularly like that companies might know so much about me, but at the same time I can understand how they can deliver me better good and services by having that information.

What we're seeing now is technology making it easier for our privacy to erode and those people who grew up with reasonable expectations of privacy being uncomfortable with it. I happen to be a private person. I don't share any details with Facebook and I don't search Google while logged into anything Google. I give out the minimal information I have to when doing anything. At the same time I realize more and more information about me is going to be out there and it's inevitable there will be more. I'll do what I can personally to keep it from happening as long as possible, but I understand I'll eventually fail in doing that.

Harold Mansfield
06-12-2013, 06:13 PM
The 4th protects your person and property. All of the things I listed we don't own, we are merely using with permission.
The Supreme Court ruled on phone records back in the 70's and ruled that they were not private. Conversations? Yes...however...

Combine that with our apathy back in 2002 when The Patriot Act and that whole group of Warrant less wire taps, and secret courts legislation was passed with flying colors, and we have no one to be mad at.
We let this happen. We actually applauded it as it was happening and re-elected the people who passed it.

nealrm
06-12-2013, 06:15 PM
I think there is a big difference between what i choose to share on social media and what is monitored without my knowledge. If I post something on a social media site that is something I choose to share with others. There is a big difference between that and having the number called, my location, the call length and every web page I visit recorded by the government.

This is supposedly being done in the name of national security. However, I question the premise that collecting all the data does any more good than collecting data on specific targets after receiving a court warrant. This is the equivalent of recording every person that enters a bank, the time they entered and left, what branch they used and the amount of the transaction in order to catch any potential bank robbers. In short, it is overkill.

For those in the government reading this. The above was not posted by me, but by someone else. I really think you do a great job. Please don't audit my tax return, trash my SS account or put me on a no fly list. :)

Harold Mansfield
06-12-2013, 06:23 PM
I think there is a big difference between what i choose to share on social media and what is monitored without my knowledge. If I post something on a social media site that is something I choose to share with others. There is a big difference between that and having the number called, my location, the call length and every web page I visit recorded by the government.


But marketers have been recording this information for years. It may not be attached to a specific name in every instance, but the internet is one big tracking device.

ericw
06-13-2013, 11:07 AM
At least now you can own your own genes (http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/13/18935727-supreme-court-says-natural-human-genes-cant-be-patented?lite).

kerrylinux
06-13-2013, 11:25 AM
Today I dug out a very interesting essay by Bruce Schneier titled The Eternal Value of Privacy (https://www.schneier.com/essay-114.html) which was written in 2006.
I don't have to add anything to this analysis.

Harold Mansfield
06-13-2013, 01:04 PM
At least now you can own your own genes (http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/13/18935727-supreme-court-says-natural-human-genes-cant-be-patented?lite).

Actually the ruling is that you can't patent human genes. That's what drug companies were doing and then charging rediculous amounts of money for drugs that targeted human genes, claiming they owned the rights to parts of Human DNA.

KristineS
06-14-2013, 10:43 AM
The reality is that the government has been spying on people for years, the Internet and cell phones and all the rest just make it easier to do on a larger scale. It used to be the FBI kept paper files on individuals they thought were of interest, and had to send people out to do research and watch the subjects. Now they can sit in a room and get information on a computer. Yes, the scale is larger and yes, it's easier to do, but it's not anything new.

nealrm
06-14-2013, 01:20 PM
The scope is the issue. Before they kept files on those people that were of interest. You may dispute how they selected those individuals, but is was limited. In addition, the number of individuals that could follow 24/7 was very limited. Now they are collecting data on every body and know your location every time you make a call or leave your cell phone on.

Most people don't have an issue with the government collecting data or surveillance, provided there is a specific need. It's the collecting of data on everyone and then finding a use for it later that bothers them. It is that specific action that is the reason that the founding fathers put in a clause specifically against unreasonable searches.

patrickprecisione
06-14-2013, 03:03 PM
What we're seeing now is technology making it easier for our privacy to erode and those people who grew up with reasonable expectations of privacy being uncomfortable with it. I happen to be a private person. I don't share any details with Facebook and I don't search Google while logged into anything Google. I give out the minimal information I have to when doing anything. At the same time I realize more and more information about me is going to be out there and it's inevitable there will be more. I'll do what I can personally to keep it from happening as long as possible, but I understand I'll eventually fail in doing that.

Right on, Van Gogh. You wrote what I was thinking, but way more eloquently.

What concerns me is that, while I realize I need to share certain information in order to participate in society, when I share something with Google I expect to only be with Google and not with the government.

Most of your arguments are pretty flimsy.

patrickprecisione
06-14-2013, 03:07 PM
Also, I'm not sure what your point is by saying this. Are you saying that "well the government has been spying on us forever so who cares?". I think more likely you're just telling us how much smarter you are then the people who are suddenly very angry about this. We really should be focused on how wrong this is, rather than anything else.

Harold Mansfield
06-14-2013, 04:14 PM
There is one aspect of this that I can't wait to see how it plays out. Apparently the NSA is not just syphoning the information floating around in cyberspace, they doing a direct server tap, without the permission of Microsoft, Google, Apple and so on.

I'd be interested to see who sues.

billbenson
06-14-2013, 09:51 PM
Also, I'm not sure what your point is by saying this. Are you saying that "well the government has been spying on us forever so who cares?". I think more likely you're just telling us how much smarter you are then the people who are suddenly very angry about this. We really should be focused on how wrong this is, rather than anything else.

This is really growing into something that should be moved to the political thread, but why do you say this is wrong? The CIA has been doing domestic spying to protect national security for decades.Unless the decontamination of this information has changed, I don't see how anything has really changed other than technology.

nealrm
06-14-2013, 10:06 PM
This is really growing into something that should be moved to the political thread, but why do you say this is wrong? The CIA has been doing domestic spying to protect national security for decades.Unless the decontamination of this information has changed, I don't see how anything has really changed other than technology.

The scope has changed greatly. Before the CIA collected information on a limited number of individuals. Now they are collecting information on everyone. There is a big difference.

billbenson
06-14-2013, 10:22 PM
The scope has changed greatly. Before the CIA collected information on a limited number of individuals. Now they are collecting information on everyone. There is a big difference.

But before they could collate the information. Today there is so much information that collation can't be done manually.

I'm not so concerned about the collection of information which I feel is necessary for national security. I'm concerned about it being done by the private sector or falling into the wrong hands. Of course both will happen. But both will happen in Iran, China, and Korea as well.