Re: Transparency Rant (was Re: Enoughness, was Re: Vicious Racism)

From: KPJ (kpj@sics.se)
Date: Tue Aug 14 2001 - 01:56:08 MDT


KPJ wrote:

|I will not be pushed,
|filed, stamped, indexed,
|briefed, debriefed or numbered.

It appears as if Zero Powers <zero_powers@hotmail.com> wrote:
|
|You already have been, and it don't hurt so bad, does it? You are a number
|(actually several of them: driver's license, SSN, health insurance policy
|number). In fact every business with whom you have any sort of account
|(utilities, credit cards, mortgage, student loans) has numbered you, indexed
|you and most likely cross-referenced you with other databases in which you
|are little more than a number.

In Sweden, every person has a personal number (originally the SSN), used by
the government to control everything about a registered person. And it hurts
in case one does not do something about it.

I have, since I read John Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider" (ISBN 0-345-32431-5)
made sure that my data shadow does not look like me:

  o avoid giving out name information (fake a new one each time somebody
     asks for a name)
  o avoid giving out address information (and no forwarding addresses)
  o avoid ID cards where possible
  o avoid buying anything with a identifiable card (cash works nicely)
  o avoid having an account with any business (or have one with a fake name)
  o avoid using bank accounts (safes work nicely)
  o avoid using a personal number (fake one for each use)
  o no mortgages, no loans, minimum number of contracts
  o no known home address (every year the gov't threatens to define me dead)
  o use several cash (mobile) phones and beepers
  o suppress information about birthday and age (or just fake it)
  o encrypt your data storage and conduits
  o use contra-surveillance techniques
  o avoid having any known habits, distinguishing features or marks
  o change your appearance aperiodically
etc.

|People reflexively say they don't want their personal information available
|for public perusal. The fact of the matter is that given any two of the
|following pieces of data about you, any of the others can readily be
|obtained if you know where to look and are willing to pay for it: birthdate,
|name, address, telephone number, social security number, driver's license
|number.

Yes, they can if you do allow your data shadow to match your real data.
Why should I fill somebody's data bases with valuable data for free?
I see no reason to allow it, and lots of reasons to not allow it.

|Individuals, as much as they hate to believe it, already are about as
|transparent as they can be. The only "persons" who enjoy any semblance of
|real privacy anymore are corporate and government institutions. That is why
|transparency will be more of a benefit than a detriment to individuals. But
|I am a patient man. Eventually the value of transparency will make itself
|known and, although I'm not the type to say "I told you so," you'll know
|I'll be thinking it ;)

Transparency can be defeated by making the "transparent" data invalid, fake,
outdated, and/or missing. It also helps to know how the technologies works.

______________________________________________________________
"You don't exist." (1984)



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