11.9.1. "The dossier never forgets"
+ any transgressions of any law in any country can be stored
indefinitely, exposing the transgressor to arrest and
detention anytime he enters a country with such a record on
him
- (This came up with regard to the British having quaint
ideas about computer security, hacking, and data privacy;
it is quite possible that an American passing through
London could be detained for some obscure violation years
in the past.)
- this is especially worrisome in a society in which legal
codes fill entire rooms and in which nearly every day
produces some violation of some law
11.9.2. "What about the privacy issues with home shopping, set-top
boxes, advertisers, and the NII?"
- Do we want our preferences in toothpaste fed into databases
so that advertisers can target us? Or that our food
purchases be correlated and analyzed by the government to
spot violations of the Dietary Health Act?
- First, laws which tell people what records they are
"allowed" to keep are wrong-headed, and lead to police
state inspections of disk drives, etc. The so-called "Data
Privacy" laws of several European nations are a nightmare.
Strong crypto makes them moot.
- Second, it is mostly up to people to protect what they want
protected, not to pass laws demanding that others protect
it for them.
- In practice, this means either use cash or make
arrangements with banks and credit card companies that will
protect privacy. Determining if they have or not is another
issue, but various ideas suggest themselves (John Gilmore
says he often joins groups under variants of his name, to
see who is selling his name to mailing lists.)
- Absent any laws which forbid them, privacy-preserving
credit card companies will likely spring up if there's a
market demand. Digital cash is an example. Other variants
abound. Cypherpunks should not allow such alternatives to
be banned, and should of course work on their own such
systems.
11.9.3. credit agencies
- TRW Credit, Transunion, Equifax
- links to WitSec
11.9.4. selling of data bases, linking of records...
- several states have admitted to selling their driver's
license data bases
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind