Privacy, Surveillance, & Security – Page 26

Essays: Economist Debates: Airport Security – Schneier on Security

The current TSA measures create an even greater harm: loss of liberty. Airports are effectively rights-free zones. Security officers have enormous power over you as a passenger. You have limited rights to refuse a search. Your possessions can be confiscated. You cannot make jokes, or wear clothing, that airport security does not approve of. You cannot travel anonymously. (Remember when we would mock Soviet-style “show me your papers” societies? That we’ve become inured to the very practice is a harm.) And if you’re on a certain secret list, you cannot fly, and you enter a Kafkaesque world where you cannot face your accuser, protest your innocence, clear your name, or even get confirmation from the government that someone, somewhere, has judged you guilty. These police powers would be illegal anywhere but in an airport, and we are all harmed — individually and collectively — by their existence.

Source: Essays: Economist Debates: Airport Security – Schneier on Security

RE: Economist Debates: Airport Security

The Advertising Industry’s Definition of ‘Do Not Track’ Doesn’t Make Sense – The Atlantic

Do Not Track should mean what users think it does: that data, by and large, will not be collected.

61 percent of people expect that clicking a Do Not Track button should shut off *all* data collection. Only 7 percent of people expected that websites could collect the same data before and after clicking a ‘Do Not Track’ button. That is to say, 93 percent of people do not understand the [advertising] industry’s definition of [Do Not Track].

Source: The Advertising Industry’s Definition of ‘Do Not Track’ Doesn’t Make Sense – The Atlantic

UK petrol station CCTVs will check insurance/tax status before you are allowed to fill up / Boing Boing

Under a pending proposal, the license-plate cameras at UK filling stations will soon begin to trigger automatic lookups of every motorist’s insurance and tax records. Drivers whose insurance and tax records can’t be located or verified will not be allowed to fill their tanks.

Source: UK petrol station CCTVs will check insurance/tax status before you are allowed to fill up / Boing Boing

RE: CCTV at petrol stations will automatically stop uninsured cars being filled with fuel – Mirror Online

Austin’s Other Event: A Class Action, Mobile App Privacy Lawsuit Filed Against Facebook, Twitter, Apple, 15 Others | TechCrunch

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but it looks like all the heated conversation we’ve seen over user privacy in mobile apps has now finally boiled over into a class action lawsuit

The suit’s intention is summed up in a quote that kicks off the 152-page complaint: “Don’t take things that aren’t yours,” from Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.

Source: Austin’s Other Event: A Class Action, Mobile App Privacy Lawsuit Filed Against Facebook, Twitter, Apple, 15 Others | TechCrunch

The Right to Be Forgotten – Stanford Law Review

At the end of January, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, announced the European Commission’s proposal to create a sweeping new privacy right—the “right to be forgotten.” The right, which has been hotly debated in Europe for the past few years, has finally been codified as part of a broad new proposed data protection regulation.

Source: The Right to Be Forgotten – Stanford Law Review

If someone is tired of their photograph showing up online because they want to be a private individual, or whatever, should they be allowed to demand that Google and Facebook (and by extension, their friends and family) prevent anyone from posting pictures of that person, sharing pictures of that person, or tagging pictures of that person? What if they are possibly not the primary subject in the image? Is it okay to let technology permit revisionist photographs wherein people who do not want to be in the image may opt out of being displayed in it?

Technology should, at least in theory, permit either extreme in this case (anything from amazing privacy to complete free speech), so our collective choice (for a “default setting” plus what we are permitted to opt in to and out of) may fall anywhere along a very long/wide spectrum. The issue is complicated enough that some public discourse should take place, since otherwise policy will likely be pulled only by those who have the most lose (celebrities and other people of public interest) or gain (media organizations) rather than by what is on average best for everyone.