Speaking of Surveillance...
This report into various governments' unease at the way Google has made satellite imagery of this and that easily accessible to the masses is interesting. At first blush, I'm not all that sympathetic since it's not clear to me that breaking the veil of secrecy around, say, Indian missile facilities doesn't do more good than harm for the world as a whole. But maybe that's wrong, and I'll have to confess to not having thought all the ins-and-outs of this through. One tends to think of Google as a benign hegemon since they mostly seem to just make tons of cool toys available to everyone to use for free, but maybe the privacy implications of corporations compiling all this information are just as grave as concerns about government snooping. Or maybe not. I'd be interested in the views of others who may have more insight into these issues since my guess would be that, Bush's misdeeds aside, this sort of thing is more likely to be the big deal of 21st century privacy.
Comments (8)
Nah, the Google image stuff is nothing- as they say on their site, these images are often years old, and it's nothing that can't be seen by flying over in public airspace (at least in the case of private citizens- military installations are a separate matter). The more concerning sort of information is financial, not just because of privacy, but because it can by itself be used to screw up your life. Add to that the fact that companies don't really protect financial databases, and you should be worried.
December 20, 2005 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's a vast amount of geographic data-- imagery, maps, statistics-- publicly available on the internet, coming from all sorts of sources-- some public, some private-- and stored on servers everywhere. Google Earth has only made this fact apparent to a wider audience than before. One can theorize about possible privacy or security issues of all this data being available, but I think that it's way too late to do much about it. The cows are out of the barn, and so are the horses, the pigs, the sheep, the ducks, and et cetera and so forth.
December 20, 2005 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Privacy implications for large corporations are unlikely to ever enter the same ballpark as for governments for one simple reason: Apart from the owners and some (top) employees, no one segment of society has an interest in the ongoing success of any particular corporation. In this environment, a discovery that a particular company has horded and is using private information against individuals is likely (though not necessarily) to lead to the collapse of the company as customers take their business elsewhere. The risk of colllapse is enough to ensure most companies steer clear of privacy concerns.
Governments, on the other hand, have, by definition, a certain segment of society with an emotional (think values!) interest in its ongoing success. In this environment, there will always be some people willing to rationalise government snooping, particularly if the snoopees can be labelled as 'terrorists' or 'traitors'. By "some", I include the possibility of a 'majority', which is disturbing. If a government thinks it will get away with snooping, then it will snoop.
The only disturbing situation I can think of involving a corporation occurs when it attempts to co-opt the government. In that case, the corporation may be able to 'borrow' that segment of society supporting the government and get the rationalisations that go along with it. This is less a concern for big states like the US, EU etc, but smaller states with weak governments are suseptible.
December 20, 2005 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hard to find anything bad about Google's image system. A similar search debunked administration stories of Saddam massing forces on the Saudi border pre-Gulf War.
Bigger worry would be any government restricting it beyond current limits.
December 20, 2005 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matt, the book you need to read is <em>Database Nation</em>, which argues that it's private business and not government that is the biggest threat to civil liberties. Further, by setting clear rules, the government can actually protect us from the abuse of all of this information that is out there in the private sector. It's a little dated now but I highly recommend it.
December 21, 2005 4:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think a more interesting book is Brin's "Transparent Society" which sort of gropes around with the technical and policy issues around the corner. It is clear, all sorts of data about ourselves - both realtime and stored - will be collected and shared. The areas where we can enforce privacy will shrink. Who controls what data and how shall we enforce technology barriers so individuals have some degree of control? A quick but worthwhile read.
Don N.
December 21, 2005 7:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
sjk: "In this environment, a discovery that a particular company has horded and is using private information against individuals is likely (though not necessarily) to lead to the collapse of the company as customers take their business elsewhere. The risk of colllapse is enough to ensure most companies steer clear of privacy concerns."
Ever heard of Choicepoint? A major aggregator and holder of personal financial information. Did you hear of what it did when it was ripped off of data a few months ago? It notifed those California 'customers' whom it was legally required to. The rest were out of luck, until the publicity hit. At which point Choicepoint notified them of the breach, and offered, for a fee, to help monitor their credit information. Which is a great scam, if you can do it.
I use 'customer' in quotes, because those people hadn't signed up with Choicepoint; rather, a company with whom they had dealt signed up with Choicepoint. Or a company with whom that company had dealt with did.
December 21, 2005 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Barry, what happened with choicepoint makes my, er, point. As I understand it, the company itself wasn't misusing the information, but was on the receiving end of a scam.
Nevertheless, what happened when the scam was exposed? Did a large segment of society with an emotional investment in the company come to the aid of choicepoint and provide rationalisations for it's behaviour? No - the company was hauled before committees and forced to pay out large sums of money.
Now compare and contrast this with the ludicrous rationalisations provided by the wingnutosphere for the behaviour of the current administration.
I am not saying companies won't try to pull fast ones, just that the structure of our society means there is no institutionalised cover for them if they're found out. This is completely the opposite for governments. Therefore, of the two, governments still remain the greater risk wrt privacy.
December 21, 2005 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink