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PRIVACY Forum Archive Document
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PRIVACY Forum Digest Wednesday, 5 January 2000 Volume 09 : Issue 02
(http://www.vortex.com/privacy/priv.09.02)
Moderated by Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com)
Vortex Technology, Woodland Hills, CA, U.S.A.
http://www.vortex.com
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The PRIVACY Forum is supported in part by
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Committee on Computers and Public Policy,
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These organizations do not operate or control the
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CONTENTS
British Looking to Slow (and Track?) Cars via Satellite
(Lauren Weinstein; PRIVACY Forum Moderator)
U.S. Customs Service to Expand Airport Body X-Ray Scanner Usage
(Lauren Weinstein; PRIVACY Forum Moderator)
Re: Banks and check amounts (John R. Levine)
Re: Web Tracking and Data Matching Hit the Campaign Trail
(private@mariana.net)
Re: Web Tracking and Data Matching (Timothy Hinds)
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VOLUME 09, ISSUE 02
Quote for the day:
"Let's play something else..."
-- Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen)
"The Thomas Crown Affair" (MGM/UA; 1968)
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Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2000 16:44 PST
From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein; PRIVACY Forum Moderator)
Subject: British Looking to Slow (and Track?) Cars via Satellite
Greetings. In one of the more misguided and potentially dangerous ideas
I've seen in quite awhile, the British government is considering the
installation of devices on all autos which would automatically limit their
speed via GPS-linked systems programmed with local speed limit data. Deputy
Prime Minister John Prescott is reportedly in charge of this evaluation.
A prototype device for this function has already been developed.
While the safe-driving groups who are promoting this concept no doubt have
admirable motives, the risks are obvious. While it could be argued that
most speeding is "casual" in nature, there are certainly times when drivers
are in life-critical situations where exceeding the speed limit may be a
necessary tradeoff. Cases such as reaching a hospital in an emergency,
escaping from potential carjackers, and other unfortunate situations are
examples. While it's certainly true that speeding even in those situations
does involve risks, there simply are times when human assessment of a
situation must be in control. Imagine the outcry the first time that an
infant or mother dies when such a system prevents them from rapidly reaching
medical care. In another scenario, the "impact" of pulling out into the
opposing traffic lane for (legal) passing, only to find a hard limit on
speed, could also be rather dramatic.
Another point--since the temptation to tamper with such a device would be
significant, it seems logical that practical implementation of such systems
would need to include some form of logging system to track operations, which
presumably could be interrogated at vehicle inspection/licensing times, etc.
The variety of data that such a GPS-based system could maintain is very
extensive, introducing a range of directly privacy-related issues.
While speed governors are not uncommon in the trucking industry, their
application to passenger vehicles, especially in conjunction with
the tracking capability of GPS, seems to be both unwise and unsafe.
--Lauren--
lauren@vortex.com
Lauren Weinstein
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Co-Founder, PFIR: People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
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Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000 20:32 PST
From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein; PRIVACY Forum Moderator)
Subject: U.S. Customs Service to Expand Airport Body X-Ray Scanner Usage
Greetings. The PRIVACY Forum has previously discussed the issues of
"body scanners" (using either x-rays or non-ionizing radiation such as
microwaves, as in http://www.vortex.com/privacy/priv.05.20). The U.S.
Customs Service has announced an expansion of the program that already has
"low dose" x-ray body scanners in use at six major airports around the
country. The plan is to have such units operational at all major U.S.
airports by this June.
Concerns about these scanners have been raised both due to the radiation
exposure involved ("low dosage" notwithstanding) and due to the units'
ability to display "private parts" with considerable clarity (though
apparently not in sufficient detail to show body scars, for example).
The scanners are not currently planned for routine passenger use, but rather
for situations where particular passengers are singled out for suspicion of
carrying contraband, as an alternative to physical pat-downs. According to
Customs, passengers would still have the alternative of a physical search,
but Customs says that many persons have objected to being touched during
those searches, believing that they were being specifically targeted due to
sex, race, or physical characteristics.
--Lauren--
lauren@vortex.com
Lauren Weinstein
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Co-Founder, PFIR: People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
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Date: 1 Jan 2000 00:41:05 -0500
From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine)
Subject: Re: banks and check amounts
It's absolutely true that banks make no effort to verify any of the
information on incoming checks beyond what's coded on the stripe at
the bottom. I'm evidently one of the three people left in the world
who balances his checkbook every month, and once or twice I've found
checks where the amount was coded wrong. Usually the error is only a
penny or 10 cents (evidently my 1 and 2 look similar) but in one case
it was off by $50 due to a 4 being coded as a 9. I dropped by the
bank to complain, they weren't at all surprised and instantly credited
my account. I'm not sure whether they tried to recover the $50 from
the payee's bank or not.
But really, getting the amounts wrong is the least of our problems.
Almost without exception, they don't look at the handwriting or
signature, either. If someone forges your account number in MICR ink
at the bottom of a check, writes a check with a scribbled signature
completely unlike yours, and cashes it, your bank will pay it. This
is a major change from traditional banking practice -- until the
advent of automated check sorting in the 1950s, bank accounts didn't
have numbers, the only printed number on most checks was the Fed's
routing number for your bank, and the only way to tell who wrote the
check was for a clerk at your bank to look at the signature. There
are still a few tiny banks that look at signatures, but for the most
part, the last human who looks at your check is the clerk at the
payee's bank who codes the amount. And through the magic of OCR, even
that human is going away.
--
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl,
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail
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Date: Sat, 01 Jan 2000 19:12:41 +0800
From: private@mariana.net
Subject: Re: Web Tracking and Data Matching Hit the Campaign Trail
I believe Mr. Gurvits is missing the point. By collecting the information
companies (and others) can indeed provide us with more relevant information,
which is good. However that same information can also be used for many other
purposes, not all of which are benign. Many of which are harmful, or
potentially harmful.
The main issue, which Mr. Gurvits ignores, is choice. If I want the benefits,
then I should explicitly allow the collection of the data. I should also be
explicitly informed how the information will be used, who has access to it,
what steps the company is taking to ensure against unauthorized access and
for how long it will be stored. The collection and use of data about
individuals and their habits should depend upon the individual. Always.
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Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2000 15:10:24 -0500
From: Timothy Hinds <tim@thinds.com>
Subject: Re: Web Tracking and Data Matching
Mr. Weinstein,
Your recent invitation to let you know my views on Web Tracking and Data
Matching give me the opportunity also to let you know that I very much
appreciate the work you do on the PRIVACY Forum Digest. Your summaries and
updates are invaluable. Please keep up the good work.
I am deeply concerned about the amount of data matching that is being done
today on the 'net and the vast expansion of it likely in the future, absent
meaningful restrictions or regulation. In short, "There oughta be a law!"
We desperately need legal protection against the gathering and use of
personal information without the permission of the subject whose
information is being used, bought, and sold.
Until such legal protections emerge, I advocate the use of technological
solutions to fight the technological abuses of our privacy. One intriguing
tool is "Freedom" from Zero Knowledge Systems, of which I believe you are
aware. It has recently been released out of beta, and I plan to adopt it
in order to maintain some degree of online privacy through the use of
multiple identities ("nyms" in ZKS's parlance).
While technological defenses are philosophically more compatible on the
surface with my conservative/libertarian beliefs, I see a legitimate, in
fact essential, role for government's police powers here. The U.S.
Constitution & Bill of Rights are clearly designed to limit government's
unnecessary intrusion into the lives of the citizenry. However, they also
clearly provide for government's wielding of what the Bible calls "the
sword" in defense of the lives and property of the people. Indeed, both
Biblically and constitutionally, only the state can exercise police power
with ultimate legitimately. Private police and armies will always be
subject to the appearance, and the fact, of motivation by private
interests. Individual States within the U.S. could act here with
legitimacy, but not with effectiveness, given the national and even
international scope of the data correlation and web tracking efforts and
organizations. Hence, reluctant as I am to call for the federal government
to do ANYTHING, I believe it must enact legislation to protect the privacy
rights of our citizens.
Thanks for asking. - Timothy Hinds, thinds@acm.org.
[ Thank you for your message. I am in general very
unenthusiastic about the various services promising
"anonymizing" capabilities. Since they require people to
take explicit actions to use them, they will never impact
most persons, nor do they address the root causes of the
problems in any manner. I am also unconvinced of their
reliability, and am concerned that they may well give
users a false sense of security. The problems related to
abuse of such systems by persons with genuinely libelous,
fraudulent, criminal, or just plain evil motives are also
potentially very serious issues.
Some degree of federal legislative action is an absolute
necessity to even starting to get a handle on these
problems, even though it's true that legislative
approaches are also never without some degree of risk.
-- PRIVACY Forum Moderator ]
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End of PRIVACY Forum Digest 09.02
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