I just came across this article in the Telegraph - “How Big Brother watches your every move“
It’s another expose into the amount of information being gathered on ordinary citizens - stuff like bank activity, phone calls, internet surfing habits, etcetera. Naturally, you have privacy groups making a hell of a noise about this, claiming that government doesn’t have the right to store that much information, and so on and so forth.
I really only have one question - why does it concern them so much?.
Think about it for a minute. Let’s imagine we’re able to transact in a world where nothing is recorded. The privacy advocates’ dream. Now imagine that something goes wrong. Your bank account is hacked and stolen from.
How do you prove to the insurance companies what happened? If you run a shop, and it’s broken into, how can you prove anything if there’s no camera footage? If your credit transactions are not recorded and analysed, how could theft on your account be caught?
I can’t imagine any one good reason why these companies/government should not be given access to our information. When - and it’s not a question of “if” - the crap hits the fan, the more records there are, the better. It’s all about accountability. The more people that have insight into your private life, the better - you’re encouraged to live a healthier, cleaner one.
Consider also the fact that of the 6.5 billion human beings on earth, about 6.5 billion of them are human, with the same common impulses, drives and motivations. It’s not as if elected government officials are going to behave much differently than common citizens. Some statistic somewhere states that more than 9 out of every 10 men “struggle” with pornography. Count how many men there are in government? Guess what they surf in their spare time? Stories like this one should come as no surprise.
Imagine if the banking records of SA’s government officials were made available to independent auditors. How long would the cases of corruption against them last? It wouldn’t be a week in court, with plenty of hard forensic evidence, before a ruling was reached, saving the state millions of Rands in prosecution.
What would the data be used for, then, apart from court cases and personal accountability? Marketing. And you know what? If Doubleclick (or Phorm, or Google, or whatever) tracked my surfing habits across the board, made accurate estimations as to my interests, tied in to my bank account to estimate my spending power, and presented me with advertisements for products I want, at prices I can afford, in places I can reach, then hell yes - I’m all for it.
Secrecy is one of the reasons we’re still in a relative dark age. The government keeps secrets from the public, companies keep secrets from their employees, and we all keep secrets from eachother. If we lowered those walls, wouldn’t it make for a more open, more enlightened society?
Besides. If you really want to keep a secret, you’d better keep it offline. This is web 2.0 - and information’s the name of the game :)
>So my name’s Wogan, born April ‘89, I live in Cape Town, work in the online marketing industry (still not quite sure where, though), and I have a passion for just about everything related to an Internet connection
Wow. *Yet another* marketing person arguing in favour of Phorm and against privacy. That is a real surprise.
It’s a shame Phorm can’t get anyone to argue in their favour except marketers.
In any case, your arguments are poor and rely on straw men. For example: Almost no privacy campaigners advocate the total elimination of all data retention. They argue for data retention to be done on the basis of sound principles such as only collective the minimum information necessary, only holding it for as long as necessary, and allowing the person whom the data relates to be able to check and correct any incorrect data about them.
Fundamentally, though, they argue that people should be in control of their own data, and it should not be used without their explicit and informed consent.
The rest of your arguments are equally weak: your personal preference for not caring if your browsing data is used to market to you is irrelevant to the argument. Many people do care.
Finally, ‘Secrecy’ is not what’s under discussion. ‘Privacy’ is. The government and public bodies have no right to privacy. They are public servants, acting in a professional, not personal capacity. There is no comparison between government accountability and personal privacy.
Weak weak weak.
Thank you for your concern. Actually, I’m a web developer, who’d love nothing more than to go work for a web development company. My dayjob involves reporting, which any boss anywhere will tell you is a crappy one, and I honestly and truly don’t care for marketing. Check that little blue box on the top right, home page.
I take a simple stance to all of this, Thomas - what have you got to hide? I’m not just talking about marketing - I’m talking about life in general.
Name one - just one, apart from Medical - sphere where information should be kept private, and out of corporation’s hands. If you can give me one good reason why my commercial activities like phone calls, bank transactions and browsing should *not* be recorded and used by automated processes, without using complicated words like “Fundamentally” and “preference”, I’ll hear you out.
~ Wogan
>I take a simple stance to all of this, Thomas - what have you got to hide? I’m not just talking about marketing - I’m talking about life in general.
Ah, the old “If you’ve got nothing to hide” argument…
If you are genuinely curious, try reading this paper for starters:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/187371/-Ive-Got-Nothing-To-Hide-and-other-Misunderstandings-of-Privacy
>Name one - just one, apart from Medical - sphere where information should be kept private, and out of corporation’s hands. If you can give me one good reason why my commercial activities like phone calls, bank transactions and browsing should *not* be recorded and used by automated processes, without using complicated words like “Fundamentally” and “preference”, I’ll hear you out.
Those are complicated words? There are many reasons why corporations should not know everything about me. Firstly, it’s simply none of their business. If some stranger approached you in the street and asked you what your favourite sexual position was, or what was your greatest fear, or your personal hygiene habits, you would quite rightly tell them to sod off. It is none of their business. Likewise, it is not the business of corporations to know the details of my private life.
Furthermore information is power. The more knowledge we have of someone or something, the more we can anticipate, predicate, and ultimately control their behaviour. A corporation or state which truly knows everything about the citizenry ultimately has total control over the citizenry; in order words, it dramatically shifts the balance of power towards the information/knowledge controlling entity.
In the real world, power corrupts, it is frequently abused. Furthermore, information is sometimes wrong and out of date, and important decisions are based on wrong information.
Frankly, it’s amazing that you can’t imagine anything wrong with a world where you are sent personal emails or post office SPAM based on who you visited last night, where you at, what movie you saw, or what you discussed. Most people would find the concept intrusive and frightening.
I don’t ever want to live in a such a world, and I will do my best to fight any such a world come about.
Sorry, in the previous post, ‘predicate’ should read ‘predict’. :P
If you’ve nothing to hide, you obviously won’t mind openly posting your postal address so that i can come round your house, photograph you naked and post the results on the internet.
Just because we’ve done nothing wrong we ALL have something we would rather keep private.
There is a massive difference between the security services/Police monitoring a suspect after obtaining a court warrant, and intercepting all MY internet traffic in order to make someone profit with nothing in return for me.
“Name one - just one, apart from Medical - sphere where information should be kept private, and out of corporation’s hands. If you can give me one good reason why my commercial activities like phone calls, bank transactions and browsing should *not* be recorded and used by automated processes, without using complicated words like “Fundamentally” and “preference”, I’ll hear you out.”
What you totally ignored in this question is tha fact that it may be necessary and even desirable for a specific commercial use of relevant private information - my bank having details of my bank account for example - because they are party to that information and they have a legal duty of care to protect that information. They stand to lose customers if they fail in that duty as well as facing possible legal action.
What is not required is for my bank to have details of my favourite food and for my favourite restaurant to have details of my mortgage repayments.
I’d like to turn your own question around and see how you get on.
Give us one good reason why the owner of a place where I go to eat should be given details of my mortgage payments.
Ok, all of you. You’re missing the point here. I’m arguing - amongst others - in favor of common sense, which I’m quickly getting more and more evidence for not existing in the general population anymore.
Also, I’m talking about commercial privacy, not personal privacy. Weird sexual fetishes shouldn’t form a large part of your spending habits, and as such, won’t be detectable given the scenario I’m trying to put across here.
@roadrunner The “naked” argument is childish at best. It assumes that I would be willing to violate all levels of privacy, not just my commercial activities. All I’ve been talking about all this time are commercial activities!
@Thomas Yes, information is power. Without it, we’d still be in the dark ages. At some point, in order to progress as a culture, some compromise will have to be reached. And if government/corporations are fed a steady stream of it’s citizens commercial activities, that information won’t go out of date or become irrelevant :)
@Peter N - If you’ll allow me to broaden the scope of your question: A restaurant should be given access to an index of your buying power and liability. In English, that’d be “how much you can realistically spend on this meal” and “how likely you are to become a bad debt”. The second - especially when applied to the United States - will severely curtail overspending on credit cards, and may even bring them down from the, what, 3 billion dollar national debt?
Any given commercial establishment, I think, should at least be given the opportunity to level the playing field a little. Since surveys piss people off to no extent, what’s the harm in providing them with basic, topline, arbitrary numbers which could help them make better informed decisions?
If that restaurant knew you had a history of bad debt, for instance, they might restrict you from eating there at all if you try to pay with credit - a move that protects them from loss, and protects you from yourself.
The human race has demonstrated, time and again, that when faced with any sort of power, that it loses all control, and abuses it in ever more intricate and creative ways. And then they blame the banks and the telcos and the government for giving them this power in the first place. Who’s losing out here?
Just, Thomas, by the way - you made it sound in your first comment as if I was championing the cause of Phorm. You’ll notice that I was picking marketing agencies at random there, and that my argument wasn’t for or against Phorm, it was for common sense, thanks.
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A restaurant should be given access to an index of your buying power and liability. In English, that’d be “how much you can realistically spend on this meal” and “how likely you are to become a bad debt”.
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Bad Argument, the trusted credit agency should have the relevant details not the restaurant.
The credit card company should properly check for those details & therefore help reduce the debt level.
You keep going round in circles.
Information, not properly controlled without reasonable enforceable Laws is the Problem.
Randomly collating data & misuse of such data has already caused a major economic headache.
@Jonah I said that restaurants should have access to an Index. Credit agencies and whatnot keep the actual data and do the actual math. Service providers are given access to a relative index that’ll give them buying power and debt-risk details without exposing how much the consumer is actually earning/spending.
Same thing with the market indices. We don’t always have access to all the numbers that go into calculating them, but we have public access to them nonetheless.
Plus, I am talking about controlling information within legal limits. You’re making it sound as if I want to throw open every door there is.
~ Wogan
Some of my Post was not aimed at you in Particular, it is the fact that those responsible for the Data have not properly used this data to protect either their own businesses or their Customers.
Aggregating more data will only continue to add to the problem if the data is not properly collated & controlled.
This affects the whole Business & Private community, whether or not Privacy issues are involved.
@Jonah Ah, I see. Here I thought you were coming in to take down the entire establishment … lol :)
By the way the Nebuad & Phorm type systems have nothing to do with Web 2.0 standards, the processes they use are a corruption of the very standards that are required to protect normal Internet Users.
I will explain, (it is entirely up to you whether or not you post this).
1/
End to end communications are Intercepted without the Users or the Websites Permission, via a very bad transparent proxy which is liable to be attacked/hijacked at some time in the future.
2/ These Systems forge cookies claiming to be a Website that they are not with a questionable UID, & later when visiting a site with a laptop on another connection these same UID cookies can be linked to Personal Information (DPA nightmare)
3/ DPI Software is used to mirror all pages requested, breaking in my opinion Copyright Rules which protect others Intellectual Property, not to mention , passwords & personal details from Financial Sites & Public Forums.
(Data in the wrong hands can be more dangerous than not having enough data(that’s what makes us investigate new ways of doing things))
4/ Lastly but not least, how do I know about the dangers of such Systems, I am on the RAS exchange where the Phorm testing was/is being sporadically performed.
Direct injection of data into a Web Browser & or Application (using a Browser Agent String) is very open to Abuse!
Some of the technicians involved seen at times to be following they own little sub set of Rules.
Fortunately I am well capable of looking out for such problems but many others “are not”!
Not going to publish my last comment, Wogan?
Thomas, your last comment, #193, is published and active. There’s nothing else in the queue … ?
I submitted another comment. It’s strange that it’s not in the queue. When I tried to submit it again, it claims it’s a duplicate post.
Here is my post:
http://pastebin.com/d697f7c2
Oh c’mon Wogan, the Government would never keep anything from you!
p.s. All I saw was “take photos of you naked”…
…I’m in…
Controversial, not thought through fully and frankly, your views are typical of marketeers rather than the general population.
The very idea of bringing Phorm into your article alonside Google and doubleclick… very different beasts in the implementation.
I *choose* to use Google for search. I know they keep records of my searching but I find the implementation of Phorm extremely distasteful but it does not surprise me after reading about their activities as 121 Media etc.
The ISP is the carrier of my communication just as the post man delivers my letters. It would be UNACCEPTABLE for my letters to be opened so they can decide what junk mail to send me.
When I buy something at PC World they always ask for my post code. I NEVER give it. They don’t need it (except to bombard me with more offers of insurance/cover plan etc which I already refused). Unsurprisingly they often lie and say they need it for the guarantee… completely rubbish of course but doesn’t it just show you how they will lie to get the valuable data about me which they have no entitlement to.
18k people in the UK are bothered enough about the Phorm system to sign the petition against it on the Downing Street website. That’s a big number in petitions on the site.