PRIVACY

There was a tweet about GOOGLE:

"@msnbc_tech Creepy Google stalker proves your online privacy is an illusion http://bit.ly/bzkImU "

But it's not just Google (and Facebook). It's not just "online".

Everyone should be aware that every business you deal with -- your bank, your credit card company, your movie company, your book company, your college, etc. -- They all keep records (and they did before the Internet was invented).

Many employees from the company have access to data about you which tells a lot about you. They use it properly when they field a customer service call. They may use it semi-un-properly when they notice something about you, while doing, for example, a customer service call, or IT testing on new computer software: they may have proper access to it for proper reasons, but use it improperly after they have had access. They may access it improperly simply because they can.

"Many employees" includes loyal employees, disloyal employees, transient consultants, and foreign workers doing outsourced projects.

It did not start with the Internet. Before electronic privacy abuses, for example, many organizations handled social security data improperly on printed records.

Now, many people are storing confidential records in online data bases, private photos in online phone banks, secret messages in e-mails (all of which are archived somewhere someplace). There is no way for any individual to prevent someone at some time from gaining access to these data stores, and finding something that was done or said and archived there. Electronics leaves a persistent trail.

It is safe to assume that any information stored online, and any transaction (business or social) conducted over the Internet, or conducted with someone that keeps any records at all, is retrievable.

TOTALLY SCARY

A research team at Stanford University is pursuing a project that would allow small flying drones to meander around, identify targets, land on walls and sit there (aka hide) . Such devices deployed by a government -- or by anyone else --would facilitate surreptitious espionage, surveillance, and physical attack on ordinary citizens -- that is, on everyone.

(For example, in Arizona, legal citizens could be able to get RF tags that would wave these drones away, while anyone not possessing a working tag -- battery's dead, too bad -- would find themself in a scene out of Hitchcock's "Birds," attacked from the air, from nearby walls, and even have these things land on their backs and hang there.)

As it says in their white paper: these devices could "identify suitable locations, execute controlled, low-speed landing maneuvers on arbitrary surfaces, cling and crawl to save power while conducting surveillance, and jump to regain airborne mobility".

Surveillance...They could also murder.



Here's their white paper:
http://bdml.stanford.edu/twiki/pub/Main/PerchingProject/SU-perching.pd

To be "fair" to these particular researchers, this kind of development is inevitable.

New technology creates new opportunities. Politics must shape and control whether these are opportunities for good or evil, opportunities to "serve mankind" for good or for supper.

DO NOT POST THIS ONLINE

Once upon a time people thought the Internet was anonymous. There was a famous New Yorker Cartoon (during the early days of the Internet) in which two dogs are talking next to a computer and one of them, looking very happy, says something like, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

Once upon a time (and even now) there are statements about how the Internet guarantees that people can express themselves freely without authorities having the ability to prevent it.

Well, that's true, but only up to a point: Nobody may know you are a dog now, but they can find out.

Authorities may not be able to crack down on opponents who post hostile material online immediately, but they can be traced. And, if they wish, the authorities can control the Internet, because there are limited pathways, and limited routers, so communication could be shut down by choking it off. Authorities can create "laws" to punish creating "hostile" posts or passing them on.

But an even greater threat to privacy is the fact that almost all electronic communication is essentially eternal. Everything you entered onto your hard drive is still on your hard drive after you trashed or sold it. All those photographs you stored on some networked hard drive picture storage site are still there. All that financial information you sent to the bank may be available to people who have some legitimate reason for looking at the system -- system analysts for example. And the backups are around as well.

Sooner or later some of that might become fodder for a lawsuit, for example (as Microsoft discovered in its anti-trust trial). Or it might pop into the hands of some ex (or possible future) lover. Or a crook or blackmailer.

As mores change, material which was acceptable (or seemed acceptable) when it was written may become a serious problem later. The simplest example is college follies becoming job search hazards. More complex examples include sexual and political statements or actions.

Here is an excellent article on some of the ways that you can avoid some of the currently popular ways of having fun now and getting into trouble later:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358402,00.asp