Does Loss of Privacy/Wiretapping/ Invasion of Personal Info

[leftyladyfrommo]

Even matter any more?

Our privacy is gone. It's all over. All of our personal info is available on the internet. So why even bother with kicking up a fit. It is just too late.

I don't know how to get my privacy back except to limit everything I do that is connected to computers. Try not to use credit.

I just figure its all out there and there is a good chance that someone is listening in. So I'm careful what I say.

Sad but true. We have no privacy anymore. So if we are going to smoke our pot in peace we better not talk about it on the phone. Use a code. Leatrn Navahoe and use that laguage.

[Gormy Cuss]

1. If you are willing to let your privacy go, it's gone.

Don't forget that both politicians and marketers react when the majority of us protest.
If it mattered to enough of us, voters could choose politicians who support a right to privacy, and consumers could demand true privacy policies or refuse to do business with companies.

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. I'm saying it's already too late - it's already gone.

I have no idea what it would take to get it back. I don't think there is probably anyway to get it back.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. Here are some ideas.

First and foremost, put severe restrictions on the use of SSNs by anyone but the IRS and SSA. No private company can use that number as a primary ID.

Second, enforce existing laws and enhance them for modern modes of surveillances. Many states have laws that make it illegal to tape a telephone conversation without the consent of all parties. The same sort of rule should be applied to video surveillance, email, etc.

Third, as consumers, we should have the unrestricted right to demand that companies do not store data about us beyond our purchasing and service usage history. This includes no SSNs except when required for IRS or SSA reporting, no data mining of outside sources without the express written permission of the customer, no renting, selling, or sharing of customer data without the express permission. Privacy policies should always include a summary chart like the reference charts for credit card terms to make it easier for consumers to pick companies based on the strength of their privacy policies.

I worked with confidential databases (public and private) for other 20 years. We had to scrub data from individual records if there was no informed consent document. We were required to strip individually identifiable data as soon as possible after merging data sources. We used algorithms to define unique study IDs and purged individually sensitive data from the main server. The decoder was kept off line and access was restricted. When the final report was approved, the decoder was sent to storage and kept for seven years, then destroyed.

On government sponsored studies, we were also prohibited by policy from doing cross-agency data matching at the microlevel. For example, if we were looking at the long term effects of a welfare to work program, a good source for measuring earnings would be the IRS or UI data, but there was no way we would be approved to access it as a third party vendor. This sort of brick wall happened routinely. It made it harder to do the work, but the confidential, private data on individuals was considered to be more important.
From my experience I know that it's possible to respect privacy. -- it takes more effort and costs more to do so.

[LiberalEsto]

4. Many colleges use SSNs as IDs

and I think that they should change. When I went to Rutgers University in the early 1970s, everyone was issued a student number. I can't see why that can't be done today.

[Gormy Cuss]

5. That's a good example.

If they couldn't use SSNs, they'd go back to issuing student IDs. No big deal. In the 1970s school IDs were rarely, if ever, SSNs, because most of the administrators had social security cards that said right on them "not to be used for identification." SSNs were considered to be for the sole purpose of reporting income that would eventually be used to compute your benefits.

Today's "ID theft" scandals happen specifically because the government has allowed the use of SSNs as primary identification numbers. Also back in the 1970s, your landlord wouldn't dare ask for an SSN, nor would the gas or electric company. Kids didn't get SSNs until their first job (unless they were from well to do families and had investment accounts or other taxable assets.)

I remember when most driver's license numbers were unique to that state's system too. Some of those states mandated a substitution to SSNs in the 1980s or so, and most have gone back to at least allowing drivers to opt for a different number. The states shouldn't even be allowed to ask for SSNs, quite frankly, since they are unlikely to be involved in paying income.

[LiberalEsto]

7. Maryland driver licenses use Soundex numbers

Soundex is a system that uses the first letter of your last name, then groups of numbers according to the vowel sounds, etc.

I could never figure out how Soundex worked until I did some genealogy research in the National Archives a few years ago. But it's indispensable for looking up names that might be spelled differently than you thought they were.

Say you thought your ancestor's name was Brown, but it was actually Braun or Brohn. All three of those names and other similar sounding ones are assigned the same Soundex number. So if you're trying to look up, say, an Alphonse Elijah Brown of Trenton, NJ in 1910, and his last name was actually Braun, you've got a good chance of still finding it despite the different spelling. (If you're looking for John Brown, you're out of luck because there's too many of them.

Incidentally, SSNs are assigned by location. A woman recently told me she could tell I was originally from the NY-NJ area by the first three numbers of my SSN.

[Gormy Cuss]

8. True, SSNs are assigned regionally.

The first three digits do reveal state where issued. For years SSA would not confirm that publicly but I noticed the pattern the first time I dealt with government databases that had SSNs (the ones we had to strip out later, as I said in my earlier post.) The SSA no longer tries to hide it. The general scheme is the lowest prefix numbers are issued in New England and they progress as to the south and west. Northern New Englanders have numbers that begin with two zeros, southern New Englanders with one zero, and most NY/NJ area numbers begin with one (some parts of NY state have numbers with a leading zero.)

It used to be one of my parlor tricks to ask someone for the 1st three digits and then tell them where they were living when they applied for it. I can't recall them all any more.

Interesting that MD uses Soundex as the basis for its ID scheme. Very efficient way to categorize because there is a fixed length of 4 characters for the Soundex portion no matter how long the person's surname is.

[AndyTiedye]

6. Use Encryption

The way to keep your private stuff private is to keep it encrypted.

[Gormy Cuss]

9. And force businesses to do the same. n/t