Privacy

The US House of Representatives got one step closer to online privacy legislation last week. According to Republican Representative Joe Barton of Texas, “I think it's a big deal if someone tracks where you go and what you look at without your personal approval. We wouldn't like that in the non-Internet world and I personally don't like it in the Internet world." And yet the government of Japan decided that photos of people’s homes and streets did not violate their privacy as long as faces and license plates were obscured when posted on Google Maps.

It is almost impossible to live without the internet these days, and most people have no idea that while surfing and shopping online they are subject to an “opt-out” approach to collecting their personal information. In other words, they have to make an effort to hide where they browse and what they buy. Corporations and marketing companies would like to keep it that way. This might not be a problem if the information itself was safe—but its not.

In February 2005, ChoicePoint, Inc.inadvertently provided personal information on 145,000 customers to criminals posing as legitimate businessmen, and that June, Discount Shoe Warehouse had 94 millions records stolen.

There are many ways data can be stolen or compromised - insiders can make off with a laptop or backup tape, or hackers can breech the company’s network and steal the data that way. Thumb drives and iPods are great tools for data theft. Sale of black market personal information is relatively safe and very hard to prosecute.

Google has done its part to answer all of our questions and keep us from getting lost. Google Earth, launched in 2005, brought satellite views of our planet to the masses. A side effect of the online mapping war between Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo and Mapquest is that highly detailed photography of where we live and work available to everyone, including US and foreign governments. One of Google’s latest innovations is Street View, where teams are hard at work photographing the world, road by road. A company called Immersive Media is using “360° georeferenced spherical video.”

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/06/01/take-a-look-at-the-vehicle-thats-taking-a-look-at-you/

Some of the results are downright hilarious, but privacy advocates are concerned. Google will remove photos if asked and has made an effort to not photograph domestic violence shelters, for instance. Yet, the courts regularly reject photographs of public spaces as invasions of privacy.

So how do we stay safe while online? As with personal security, online security is an individual responsibility. Don’t mix personal and business emails; maintain separate accounts. Use encryption software like that available from PGP to encode everything you don’t want the world to read. Ignore all SPAM mail you get and delete it immediately. Turn on “cookie” alerts in web browsers (these files track your online activities.) Also, purge your web browser regularly of history, cookies, and anything else in the cache. Keep anti-virus and firewall software up to date on any computer you use. Opt out of all surveys and read any site you visit’s privacy policy. www.the-cloak.com is another good option to hide online activities. This type of technology has been successfully used in repressive regimes like Iran and China to circumvent government censoring and monitoring activities.