Anyone who feels the need to toss the old “why worry if you’ve got nothing to hide” crap, you are required to post here every detail about your life, what you think on every issue, your most hidden secrets. Why not? You’ve got nothing to hide? Do you?
UPDATE: I noticed this link on the right side news feed about recruiters checking up on job applicants online.
Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites
“I AM continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves.” So says Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software. He is far from alone in noticing that fast-growing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster are a snoop’s dream.
New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology – specifically the forthcoming “semantic web” championed by the web standards organisation W3C – to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
By adding online social networking data to its phone analyses, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels, through shared activities, such as taking flying lessons. Typically, online social networking sites ask members to enter details of their immediate and extended circles of friends, whose blogs they might follow. People often list other facets of their personality including political, sexual, entertainment, media and sporting preferences too. Some go much further, and a few have lost their jobs by publicly describing drinking and drug-taking exploits. Young people have even been barred from the orthodox religious colleges that they are enrolled in for revealing online that they are gay.
Bottom line, if you post something personal on a web site that’s open to the public, you do NOT have any expectation of privacy…at all.
So all the whiners complaining about how their schools are looking at their myspace pages should just STFU. YOU put it there, YOU provided all the info, YOU knew that anyone could see it.
It would be different it you were on a private website between your friends that required membership and a password to get into. If your school or the NSA were hacking into that website to find info on you, THEN you would have something to complain about. Actually, something major to complain about.
The government continues to concentrate on collecting information from the communications of its citizens. In typical gold mining, a huge volume of ore is processed so that a relatively small amount of gold can be extracted, after which the remaining dirt and rock are relatively useless. In data mining, the equivalent of the gold would be the data about suspected terrorists, but I think our intelligence agencies have far too much interest in the “remaining dirt” that represents the personal information of ordinary citizens. Are they really going to learn about terrorist plots by collecting data from MySpace.com? Let’s not miss the clues about the government’s intent.
We often give out bits and pieces here and there, even on Dvorak Uncensored, because none of these tiny portions represents a significant threat to our privacy. The danger comes when an organization with the virtually unlimited resources of our government has the ability to consolidate these bits and pieces into a single profile, including all the financial information collected by the IRS. The complete profile that’s possible would probably scare you.
This is information that, in the wrong hands and without sufficient safeguards, could easily be misused for political purposes, including blackmail and coercion. Just think of how valuable political polling data is, and multiply that exponentially. Information is power, and our government is on a power consolidation binge.
I recently created a website for a plastic surgeon. He wanted biographies of this entire staff posted on the site. Instead of writing a couple of short paragraphs about themselves, most of the staff just gave me their resumes which listed their birth dates, maiden names, children’s names, etc. I tried to tell the doctor that this information shouldn’t be posted on the internet, and they should just write up something specifically for the webpage that didn’t include any sensitive personal data. He wouldn’t listen. He made me post it exactly as it was given to me. You would think a doctor would be smarter than that. I guess the old saying about having book smarts but not any common sense is true in some cases.
Gary (4), yes, there is public info out there, but it would only be really useful when combined with private info. I’m a private type of guy, and try not to give out personal info on this blog (for one, Bruce isn’t my real name, just online) but someone looking through my old comments could probably piece together a decent amount of info about me. would it help them? – likely not. For instance, I am a religious fundamentalist (and proud of it), as anyone can see by reading my comments, but anyone wishing to market to me on those grounds would have to know my e-mail, phone #, or snail mail, which are private. Frankly, anyone who gives away their personal info over the public net deserves to have it used against them.
#6 Bruce, yes, that’s precisely what I was talking about — the combining of public social data with the large amount of private data to which the government already has access, although not for any marketing purposes. And regarding your comment that “anyone who gives away their personal info over the public net deserves to have it used against them,” wouldn’t it be a shame if Big Brother agrees with you? He just might. On the other hand, maybe we should all continue to have faith that he only wants to keep us safe. I don’t pretend to know, but I’m skeptical of so many claims of benevolent intent behind the veil of secrecy.
I stopped posting anything under my real name seven years ago. I stopped using email for correspondence about personal matters six years ago.I sure as hell do not blog about my real life. I used to mix it up with the Scientologists online; it taught me that if you post anything anywhere, they can backtrack it and make you pay.
If I have something important to say, it’s face to face, usually. And nowadays, I’d probably make sure that a voice recorder isn’t on their person somewhere. In the future, I’ll probably make sure the phone is in a soundproof compartment with a faraday cage — there is no reason to believe a phone is not transmitting like a personal bug, with things going the way they are.
1: since all phone conversations are now monitored by the phone companies, is not a phone conversation now a public forum with no expectation of privacy? Using the cell phone also broadcasts your location with e911. You’ve no expectation of being untracked, either.
And where exactly do we have such an expectation of privacy now?
Nowhere. Sneak and peek, hidden mics, anything is possible.
This is hell. Stalin never had a police state like this.
4: The government is forbidden by law to data mine. SOOO. They ordered private corporations to do it, and then hand it over, in a childish endrun of the law.
Since the corps own the data, they can resell it. E911 info is now being sold to buyers.
But the government isn’t doing it. they just order others to do it, then buy the info.
5: a libertarian would tell you that you had the choice of refusing and then perhaps finding a new job. but as one of the founding fathers said, if you own a man’s purse, you own the man. you were ordered to broadcast people’s private information, and you complied because the alternative was unemployment and loss of insurance, or at least coverage for existing ailments. free, as in: not at all free.
11. You make a good point. However, what he was asking me to do wasn’t illegal. If it had been, I would have definitely refused. The whole situation was very stressful because the guy was a complete egomaniac that wouldn’t listen to reason.
On a positive note, most of that data has been taken down or modified. A few of the girls in the office (as well as their husbands) complained after they realized what the broader implications of posting that kind of information could mean for them and their families.
[W]e’ve had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I’ve spoken out consistently against them, and I want to know who the leakers are.” George Bush, —Chicago, Sept. 30, 2003
One point to remember, when you send an email or visit a website (or post to a blog like DU), you’ve left a footprint of who you are either as a trace back to where the email came from or the IP your request for a webpage came from. Proxies and forms of multiple and annonomous routing can obfuscate that, but if someone wants to figure out who you really are, the technology exists to do it. And if the tech hits a brick wall, subpoenas and bribery work, too.
Well I tend to post on various blogs and forums using the same username/password, so if you could gather together and analyse all of the posts that I’ve made you’d have an almost perfect picture of what my interests are and what my general world view is… gather a bit more info using the traffic from my MSN messenger account and a few other protocols and you’ve also determined the nature of all of my personal relationships… privacy is a thing of the past. We just have to hope that someone doesn’t decide to use it against us :\
my nothing to hide post would be too big
Gary (7), good point. Lucky I’m not American 🙂 … well, lucky for now at least ….