Difference between revisions of "Privacy"

Revision as of 09:58, 3 September 2018

Full Title or Meme

Privacy is the right to be let alone. ^[1]

Context

Everyone wants some privacy, but no one can explain that in a way that matches anyone else's desire for privacy. Privacy is associated with liberty, but also with privilege (private roads, private schools), with confidentiality (private conversations) with nonconformity, with dissent, with shame, with embarrassment, with the deviant, with the taboo, with subterfuge and concealment.^[2]

In his dissent to a 1952 Supreme Court decision^[3] Justice Douglas issued this stirring defense of the right to be let alone:

"If liberty is to flourish, government should never be allowed to force people to listen to any radio program. The right of privacy should include the right to pick and choose from competing entertainments, competing propaganda, competing political philosophies. If people are let alone in those choices, the right of privacy will pay dividends in character and integrity. The strength of our system is in the dignity, the resourcefulness, and the independence of our people. Our confidence is in their ability as individuals to make the wisest choice. That system cannot flourish if regimentation takes hold. The right of privacy, today violated, is a powerful deterrent to any one who would control men's minds."

The above statement seems to state that the people's character and integrity will be enhanced by the right to pick their own sources of information. There is ample reason to doubt that statement in light of the environment in 2018 where populist demagogues are again persuading people to vote against their own interests by manipulating news sources that appeal to the peoples' prurient interests. ^[4] But the statement does seem to clarify that privacy is about liberty, the right to do what you want with yourself and your belongings.

User and Web Site Acceptance for Privacy Seals

Back in 2000 the FTC had the following to say.^[5] There is no evidence to-date that things have changed for the better.

The 2000 Survey also examined the extent to which industry's primary self-regulatory enforcement initiatives online privacy seal programs have been adopted. These programs, which require companies to implement certain fair information practices and monitor their compliance, promise an efficient way to implement privacy protection. However, the 2000 Survey revealed that although the number of sites enrolled in these programs has increased over the past year, the seal programs have yet to establish a significant presence on the Web. The Survey found that less than one-tenth, or approximately 8%, of sites in the Random Sample, and 45% of sites in the Most Popular Group, display a privacy seal.

Problems

• Privacy has no real basis in history or law before the Warren and Brandeis article^[1] in 1890 as it does not exist in the tribal societies which predated civilizations nor in the autocracies that dominated until the enlightenment of the mid 1800s when access to the posting of private mail became available to every citizen in the developed countries of the world. Since Hebb's experiments starting in 1951 we have known exactly how complete isolation can dive anyone into insanity,^[6] so extreme Privacy should not be considered to be healthy, even if it were possible. Nor can Privacy be considered an absolute right since we also want to support the state in bringing malefactors to justice. It will most likely be many years before we learn to strike the right balance, particularly in view of the many other changes still underway is social structures.
• Users or Consumers have always been a real asset to any business and access that provides user attention (aka eyeballs) to a message is now a commodity to be bought and sold on the internet.
• Technology, and social media in particular,^[7] record nearly every transaction that we make, and can retrieve it for any purpose not explicitly disallowed by regulation. The amount of information that Facebook has accumulated about people is far more that most people understand.^[8] The constantly evolving problem is to keep the laws protecting citizens from depredations by large organization up-to-date in the face of rapidly accelerating change.

Solutions

The number of governments that have proposed "Solutions" to the invasions of "The Right to Privacy"^[1] is large^[9], but the results are meager and most law enforcement agencies are often in court trying to use any loop-hole to strip away privacy even where products have been specifically designed to maintain privacy.^[10] The same laws that protect privacy also protect criminal behavior. Not that privacy laws always make sense; US federal law prohibits the National Tracing Center from using a searchable data base to identify the owners of guns seized at crime scenes. No privacy advocate has yet recommended that law be repealed.

Technology Solutions

Privacy Enhancing Technology Providers have been proposed and are actively available from Microsoft and IBM. Their uptake has been negligible because of two factors: they are clumsy for users and they don't provide much privacy. The real problem facing users today is how to stop digital agents from using your information once they acquire it. The GDPR is designed to control the movement of users private data from one enterprise to another. The State of California now has a initiative scheduled for ballot that focuses more on places where your data exits. But neither of them addresses the problem of your data in some third world country, or island nation, from misuse. In some ways the GDPR is a scam in that it is more about penalizing corporations in California for the benefit of bureaucrats in Europe than helping with existing loss of privacy.

Personal Recommendations

Like many people, there is a tendency for Enterprises to try to project their own failures elsewhere and proclaim their own innocence. Privacy concerns are just another case where they try to blame the user for not solving the problem. Here are some ideas that Users can take to protect their privacy, not that it should be their obligations, but because Web Sites continue to be so poor at helping. Some of the ideas come from the past president of the Direct marketing Association.^[11] who seems to think that any solution "has to start with consumers". Other commentators are more forceful like Ellen Pad's article in Wired^[12] who "thinks they don’t care about their users and how their platforms work to harm many, and so they don’t bother to understand the interactions and amplification that result. They’ve been trained to not care." In any case you are the only person who really cares about your privacy.

• Don't use Facebook to buy things. As a part of their effort to stop "Fake Users" Facebook will abruptly terminate accounts, so any place you use a Facebook sign-in might suddenly become unavailable.
• Don't stay logged into Web Sites like Facebook that track your every move.
• Don't take surveys or tell Web Sites about your preferences. The pollster may be selling your options to those who want to market to you.
• Run an "Ad blocker" that stops the ability of third party sites, present as ads on your screen, from loading, or from storing cookies on your device. This will also speed up your download times often by huge amounts.
• Help efforts like the citizen initiative^[13] filed with the secretary of state in California to limit the sale of user data.^[14] Did not even need to go to the ballot because the CA legislature acted first.
• Pay attention to security and privacy notifications on your computer; often you will be able to "just say no".
• Never click on a link or call a phone number that you cannot validate as legitimate, most especially in an email supposedly from "a friend" who may have provided access to their contacts lists.
• Be kind to your fiends by never giving any but your trusted email app access to your contacts list.

International Regulations

• See the page on GDPR which went into effect on 2018-06-24. It's primary focus is on Web Sites that store User Private Information (GDPR calls them Data Controllers) and they may they move your data around among themselves.
• The EU Data Protection Commissioners’ Opinion on data protection for Mobile Apps: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/documentation/opinion-recommendation/files/2013/wp202_en.pdf
• Japanese Smartphone Privacy Initiative II (2013): http://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/joho_tsusin/eng/presentation/pdf/Summary_II.

US Federal Regulations

• ACM's U.S. Technology Policy Committee (USACM) this week (2018-07-02) submitted recommendations to the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance, and Data Security that focus on protecting personal privacy in the wake of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal. USACM urged Congress to immediately act to protect the public good and the integrity of the democratic process by addressing technical and ethical issues raised by the data breach. Specifically, USACM wants Congress to draft and adopt comprehensive personal privacy protection legislation extending beyond social media to meet nine critical goals, including limiting collection/minimizing retention of personal data; clarifying and simplifying User Consent processes and maximizing user control of data, and simplifying data-sharing policies and assuring data-flow Transparency. USACM chair Stuart Shapiro says the organization has significant expertise in the technical and ethical aspects of the case, and looks forward to serving as an apolitical resource for Congress in pursuit of solutions.^[15]
• The tech industry lobbying group "Information Technology Industry Council" is aggressively "lobbying officials of the Trump administration and else where to start outlining a federal privacy law." to "overrule the California law and instead put into place a kinder set of rules that would give the companies wide leeway over how personal digital information was handled."^[16]
• HIPPA and COPPA offer legislative protections respectively to the sectors of Health Care patients and children under the age of 13.
• The financial sector heavyweights have banded together with the law firm Venable and former NIST senior executive Jeremy Grant, to form the Better Identity Coalition" to focus (in their own words) "on developing and advancing consensus-driven, cross-sector policy solutions that promote the development and adoption of better solutions for identity verification and authentication." It seems like every sector wants to offer their own sector's version of a cross-sector solution.
• The Federal Trade Commission’s report on mobile privacy: Mobile Privacy Disclosures: Building Trust Through Transparency

US State Regulations

• First-in-the-nation consumer privacy rights are the law of the land in California!^[17] I guess they mean first among the 50 states.
• The California State Attorney General’s recommendations for mobile privacy: Privacy on the Go: Recommendations for the Mobile Ecosystem

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Warren and Brandeis The Right to Privacy Harvard Law Review http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/Privacy_brand_warr2.html
2. ↑ Louis Menand Nowhere to Hide: Why Do We Care So Much About Privacy? The New Yorker June 18, 2018 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/18/why-do-we-care-so-much-about-privacy
3. ↑ Public Utilities Comm'n v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451 (1952) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/343/451/case.html
4. ↑ Eduardo Porter, Is the Populist Revolt Over? Not if Robots Have Their Way https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/business/economy/populist-politics-globalization.html
5. ↑ FTC PRIVACY ONLINE: FAIR INFORMATION PRACTICES IN THE ELECTRONIC MARKETPLACE A REPORT TO CONGRESS May 2000 https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/privacy-online-fair-information-practices-electronic-marketplace-federal-trade-commission-report/privacy2000text.pdf
6. ↑ Michael Mechanic, What Extreme Isolation Does to Your Mind. (2012-10-18) Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/donald-o-hebb-effects-extreme-isolation/
7. ↑ Sarah Igo, The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America 2018 ISBN 978-0674737501
8. ↑ Brian X. Chen https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/personaltech/i-downloaded-the-information-that-facebook-has-on-me-yikes.html
9. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy#Privacy_law
10. ↑ Jack Nicas Apple to Close iPhone Security Hole That Law Enforcement Uses to Crack Devices https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/technology/apple-iphone-police.html
11. ↑ Linda Woolley, Letter to the Editor. (2018-09-02) New York Times Magazine p. 7
12. ↑ Ellen Pad, Let's Stop Pretending Facebook and Twitter's CEOs Can't Fix This Mess. (2018-08-28) https://www.wired.com/story/ellen-pao-facebook-twitter-ceos-can-fix-abuse-mark-zuckerberg-jack-dorsey
13. ↑ Mary Ross, Alastair Mactaggart, The Consumer Right to Privacy Act of 2018 https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/17-0039%20%28Consumer%20Privacy%20V2%29.pdf
14. ↑ Daisuke Wakabayashi Silicon Valley Faces Regulatory Fight on Its Home Turf May 13, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/business/california-data-privacy-ballot-measure.html
15. ↑ USACM Calls on Congress to Enact Comprehensive Consumer Privacy Protections 2018-07-02 https://www.acm.org/media-center/2018/july/media-advisory-us-tech-policy-ctte-letter-on-data-privacy
16. ↑ Cecilia Kang, Pursuing Law on Privacy, With Caveats. (2018-08-27) New York Times p. B1,ff
17. ↑ CA Privacy Web Site https://www.caprivacy.org/