Privacy and Information Ownership

Privacy, Anonymity, and the Information InfraStructure

The National Information Infrastructure is evolving on our screens. But behind the scenes another infrastructure is growing, one that threatens to turn the NII not into an information superhighway but into an information prison.... the NII will be a primary mechanism for the transaction of business between companies and customers and between government and citizens [giving rise to] a regime that severly impacts on ... privacy...., [to] a set of practices by government and especially by companies whereby information is gathered from people through their transactions with the commercial system. The information is then exchanged, collated, sold, and and subject to extensive statistical analysis...

-- Alan Wexelblatt
-- How is the NII like a prison?

    Online
    Surveillance     		 

    Every move you make on the internet is recorded somewhere.

    Amazon.com (along with many other vendors) keeps track of every purchase you make to construct customized profiles.

    Cookies. Information stored on your computer recording aspects of your visit to a website.

    Most "free" internet services actually charge a price: information. Your name, email address, physical address.

    Offline
    Surveillance     		 

    1. Credit cards: Records of your movements and purchases
    2. ID card scanner
    3. Toll road scanner
    4. Company databases: Telephone company, utility company, Health insurer, bank (atm withdrawals and payments)

    Of course I'm calling this offline information only because you give it while offline. Ebery single bit of is being stored on a computer.

    Correlation  

    Information is gathered.

    Information is saved,

    Information is correlated.

    Correlated information is far more powerful and threatening.

    Example  

    Type your phone number into Google.

    For those with listed phone numbers, your name and address show up.

    This can be typed directly to mapquest giving a map and directions to your door.

    Click on USGS site and you can also have satellite photos of the house.

    Correlate this with caller ID. Anyone you call can instantly have a map to your front door and a satellite photo of your house.

    Oscar
    Gandy's
    Tailor
    Example     		 

    The Panoptic Sort. Oscar Gandy.

    Your tailor shares your waist measurements with your health insurer, who can now infer that you are overweight.

    Your insurance rates rise.

    Oscar
    Gandy's
    Panoptic
    Sort     		 

    Gandy's temr for the global correlation of all kinds of infromation made possible by the NII.

    Panopticon: Bentham's prison: cells with glass doors arranged in a ring, the gurads at the center, able to observe everyone at all times.

    In other words, Big Brother is watching.

    True Names  

    The key to correlation is true names. Some piece of information that is unbreakably linked to you.

    This need not be a name of course.

    Closest things at the moment: Social Security Numbers. Once a piece of information is linked to your SSN, it can be linked to everything about you.

    Smart cards  

    Technological advances making the problem worse.

    Problem: Fraud with classic ID numbers and cards.

    Solution: Smart cards.

    1. Features
      1. A magnetic strip that can store information (like the one on credit cards, but more information)
      2. A small processor
        1. Update stored information (account balances)
        2. Compute with it (deduct service charges!)
    2. Consequences
      1. Added security
        1. Stealing the number on this card is no help. You need the physical card, with the processor, to execute transactions.
        2. You are freed from the necessity of communicating with any central location to perform a transaction (no ATM machine, no call to the credit card company)
        3. Biometric identification of holder (voice ID, fingerprint)
      2. One card does all: The card is so powerful it can/should perform multiple functions (uh oh)
        1. Finances
        2. Health
        3. SSN, Driver's license number, etcetera
        4. Complete transaction history
      3. May be linked with various proposals for a national ID (illegal immigration, fraud, criminal and terrorist organizations, medical info, national driver's license)
    Market
    Forces     		 

    Driving NII Growth

    1. Telecommunications
    2. Computers (distant second)

    Marketing

    1. Creating need:
      Problem: Design a amchine that makes bread as good as handmade bread
      Solution: Create a demand for a new kind of bread (by advertising)

      The panopticon allows a world in which we can be marketed to with ever increasing specificity, allowing a much more efficient demand-creation machine.

    Ownership
    of
    Information     		 

    1. Patent, copyright: intellectual property
    2. Trade secrets
    3. Other secrets
    4. Anonymity: Ownership of identity
    5. Expansion of the information ownership collides with ideas about the freedom of information, ideas, and speech.
    6. But ownership of information is one remedy for the panopticon.
    Cryptography  

    What is the connection?

    1. The science of hiding information (without destroying it)
    2. Security against fraud (weakening the arguments for solutions such as smart cards).
    3. Anonymous verification: The power to speak out and perform transactions and to advertise and deliver services, and be responsible for your actions, without surrendering your identity
    4. The power to defeat correlation: One person can have many " (online) identities"; we are still able to hold that person responsible for the actions of each, but connecting information across the identities is impractical.
    5. Digital cash. Truly anonymous electronic transactions