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Questions and Discussion | | | Privacy Guarding Post Office? | |
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< | Even though the 4th Amendment is pretty much dead because it gives no protection to identities, Eben mentioned that savvy individuals could overcome or evade the invasion of privacy through methods of self-created privacy and pseudonymity. When it comes to purely digital exchanges in the network society, these tools include encryption and the like, but is there a ready analog to prevent the linking of network and physical-world activities? Obviously, if digital cash had succeeded, it would be much easier to de-link one’s online and offline activities, since credit card information and shipping addresses (in the case of online shopping) can be accessed with a subpoena blank. | >
> | Even though the 4th Amendment is pretty much dead because it gives no protection to identities, Eben mentioned that savvy individuals could overcome or evade the invasion of privacy through methods of self-created privacy and pseudonymity. When it comes to purely digital exchanges in the network society, these tools include encryption and the like, but is there a ready analog to prevent the linking of network and physical-world activities? Obviously, if digital cash had succeeded, it would be much easier to de-link one's online and offline activities, since credit card information and shipping addresses (in the case of online shopping) can be accessed with a subpoena blank. | | | | |
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< | However, would it be possible to establish something like a private post office/purchasing agent? For the sake of this example, let’s call it the Privacy Guarding Post Office (PGPO). The idea would be that customers would put money in an anonymized account (through some simple encryption) that would generate temporary credit card numbers for use online (and probably with the PGPO listed as the purchaser for credit reasons), such that any tracking would only lead back to the PGPO, which would retain no personal data whatsoever. Any products that would be shipped to customers of the PGPO would be mailed to a "P.O. box," again determined through encryption methods and possibly re-routed internally or from office to office to further anonymize the pattern of delivery. Ideally, such a system would be engineered such that the PGPO retains no knowledge of the customers' identities or the contents of their activities. | >
> | However, would it be possible to establish something like a private post office/purchasing agent? For the sake of this example, let's call it the Privacy Guarding Post Office (PGPO). The idea would be that customers would put money in an anonymized account (through some simple encryption) that would generate temporary credit card numbers for use online (and probably with the PGPO listed as the purchaser for credit reasons), such that any tracking would only lead back to the PGPO, which would retain no personal data whatsoever. Any products that would be shipped to customers of the PGPO would be mailed to a "P.O. box," again determined through encryption methods and possibly re-routed internally or from office to office to further anonymize the pattern of delivery. Ideally, such a system would be engineered such that the PGPO retains no knowledge of the customers' identities or the contents of their activities. | | | In terms of weaknesses, I anticipate that there could be significant transaction costs that might make the service too expensive to attract a sufficient customer base to meet even its fixed costs of operation. After all, as Google has readily shown, people don't mind selling their rights for a nickel. However, if there are enough people who value their privacy, that might not be the biggest issue. The more likely weakness is that such an institution would drive the state (and especially national security people) insane, and the institution would not survive the need to inspect the contents of delivery (for fear of terrorism and child pornography—after all, why else would you use such a service?). Of course, the last point is precisely why the 4th Amendment is probably going to stay dead: the exceptions have swallowed the rule. | | | -- KateVershov - 21 Feb 2009 | |
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> | I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that the government's failure to possess and coordinate citizenship information on everyone currently or potentially within U.S. borders is such a bad thing, even if you were to grant a lot of leeway in accomplishing the professed security objectives.
For one thing, by assuming a valid need for access to information on everyone by any part of the state at any time, you necessarily justify unlimited increases in surveillance used to monitor the people who either intentionally or unintentionally avoid interaction with the government (e.g., illegal immigrants or people born within the U.S. and feel no need to get passports, who amount to something around 70% of the population based on my back-of-the-envelope calculations). This is the equivalent of switching from an opt-in to an opt-out (even though you can't really opt-out, so maybe a better term would be "you're-in") system of information collection and handling, which you might think is appropriate for "homeland security" purposes, but imposes huge costs on privacy because all of this information possession can be used to limit individual autonomy through whatever form of intimidation a cop or prosecutor or federal agent wants to apply, if given access to a you're-in system. An opt-in system, of course, could still exist and satisfy most homeland security objectives if the opting-in were merely some kind of activity that actually implicated some kind of security threat, rather than just sweeping everyone into the surveillance system at once. While the immense practical and logistical implications of collecting those amounts of data used to be prohibitively costly, today those costs are trivial, and consequently the state now has no natural backstop to prevent total information collection.
All this being said, as Kate's father's experience indicates, we are in the midst of that very transition from opt-in to you're-in, and are in a position to determine what happens in that transition. Regardless of whether or not the homeland security hawks get their way and the state is directly collecting all this information, the information collection will happen as it is already being done by private entities subject to subpoena. Our job is to figure out how it will be used. As I suggested, one way to keep the system limited in some respect might well be to impose these "Chinese Walls" and prevent information sharing that would enable the state's use of information beyond the "concededly valid" goals of homeland security.
-- RickSchwartz - 22 Feb 2009 | | |
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