Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: The end of privacy... and so what comes next?
Message-ID: <63473@bbn.BBN.COM>
Date: 31 Mar 91 12:33:12 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.com
Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies, Inc, Cambridge MA
Lines: 119

There are several threads floating around the net dealing with the
clash between privacy and the "information age".  caller id, SS# abuse,
use of charge card info, etc, etc.  If people talk about the underlying
issues at all [as opposed to the specifics of a particular assault],
the solutions seem to turn on VERY odd ideas [copyrighting personal
data, making laws that make personal data somehow "special", etc].  

Well, I've become real pessimistic of late.  Let me uplevel the
question.  Discussing 'privacy' instead of the specific assault is
already one level up --- I'd like to move another level up and ask
about privacy, itself.  CAN one make a case that privacy is
protectable, or worthwhile, or even means anything?

Here are three conundrums that seem to do a pretty good job of
skewering the case for privacy, (and the more I think about them the
more despondent I get):

  1) privacy is just a cloak for illegal activity  [i.e., trading
	privacy for security is a win]

  2) privacy just makes life unnecessarily difficult [i.e., trading
	privacy for convenience is a win]

  3) no single bit of information is really "private" anyway [i.e., the
	problem is not the data, but its aggregation].


Briefly on each:

1) Just look at the caller ID debate.  There is the barely veiled
accusation that anyone who would want to make a call under the cloak of
anonymity MUST be up to no good, and so the need for anonymity is
viewed as an exception, and if it is awkward or difficult to make an
anonymous call that's OK.  In all the years I've been debating in and
around the general topic of privacy, I've _never_ found a persuasive
argument to counter this.  Why shouldn't police be allowed to frisk
people at random on the street?  or search cars [or even homes] on a
hunch, or less?  If you don't do drugs, why do you bitch so much about
drug testing?  What do you have to hide, anyway?  The debate always
ends up with the anti-privacy folks having specific, concrete,
immediate, seductive _advantages_ of foregoing a bit of privacy, while
the pro-privacy folk end up making vague, theoretical, philosophical,
"but what if" arguments against.  

2) A non-private world could be VERY convenient: just call Domino's,
the person answers the phone, and without my having said anything says
"Hi Mr. Cosell, just the usual tonight?".  How nice it is to be able to
buy a book by simply calling and having it in the mail that afternoon.
To be able to carry a checkbook/creditcard instead of hundreds of
dollars of cash. [and other seductions: if you buy with a credit card,
you can block the charge if something goes awry... why pay cash when
they make it even NICER to use plastic??].  Many Look forward longingly
to a Star-Trek like future where not only could you know that Joe Smith
is at the door, but you could whip up a quick dossier to ensure that he
really IS just 15 and is a boy scout and lives on the next block...
Or, as has been seriously proposed and may well come to pass soon,
self-id'ing boxes for automobiles so that you can pay tolls
electronically on-the-fly.  How convenient!

3) Most of the data we bitch about is, and has always been, 'public'
anyway.  Again, going back to the caller-id debate, to be sure in the
'good old days', the operator knew everything about who was calling,
and that you were really at the Jones's house and could route your
calls there without your asking.  I doubt that the grocer on the corner
ever really thought that telling someone about what you bought was
particularly sensitive information.   Lenders have always done credit
checks and compiled dossiers, so what's the big deal?  The big deal, of
course, is the magnitude and ease with which data can be collected, and
this is the REAL hard part for privacy folk.   It is hard to figure out
who the culprit is when the problem is a "too big" aggregation.  If the
data about *one* specific phone call of yours is hardly a big deal, and
collecting data on some of your calls is OK [e.g., Dominos keeping
track of the pizzas you've been ordering, or mastercard retaining your
card-use records], why should the data about ALL of your phone calls
not be, too.  If the data about a specific purchase you make is
necessarily non-private [say, a pay-by-check purchase, and so the
merchant must know enough about who you are to verify the transaction],
what is the problem with assembling data about ALL of your
transactions?  Where do you draw the line... HOW do you draw the line?


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Anyhow, so I think the battle is hopeless: the forces of non-privacy
will present a constant, seductive pressure to embrace their
temptations, and the case for keeping privacy will be more and more
tenuous and abstract.  And it will only get worse: with the march of
technology, the _potential_ for greater security and convenience, and
the _apparent_ triviality of the privacy you would cede, and where
they'll argue (perhaps correctly) that for this specific case you don't
really have that privacy _now_, will all make the lure of the new toys
virtually irresistable, and make the pro-privacy folk look more and
more like Luddites.

And any privacy once conceded is, basically, gone forever.  As we've
pointed out here, it is ALREADY almost impossible to live an even
half-normal life and retain much of any privacy.  EVERYONE wants your
SS#, your mail address, your phone #...  It is now virtually illegal to
pay cash for some sorts of transactions, many places _require_ your
SS#, etc.


And so where do we go as we travel across the electronic frontier?  I
think that trying to 'patch' the current privacy-breaches is hopeless.
Trying to make certain classes of data illegal, or certain uses of data
[that was otherwise freely given] illegal, or certain aggregations of
data [but not others] illegal all seems doomed to failure.  The
distinction between appropriate and inappropriate is more in the eye of
the beholder than in anything that can be isolated in the activity,
itself.  Almost every attempt to limit abuses seems sure throw out a
LOT of baby along with the bathwater, and many --- hell *most* ---
people will WELCOME the security of no-privacy and LIKE the new
conveniences in their life [hell, I can hardly figure out how I got
along without my ATM card], and so the attempt to rein things in will
hardly be viewed as beneficial.

Is it hopeless?  Where does the trail lead us?

  /Bernie\