Privacy Revolution – not quite live-blogging

I enjoyed the panel presentation. Jenny Levine and Kate Sheehan were both there blogging along with me. It was fun to keep an eye on twitter/chat/email and still pay enough attention to manage to ask a few questions and just learn things. Here is a slightly edited version of what I was writing during the event. My apologies of the lateness of this post. As I was heading home my own local library where I am a sometimes employee was dealing with their own privacy and law enforcement issue. Tough stuff. Click through for details, didn’t want to put this all on the front page.

Do libraries still care if their information is being tracked, if they don’t should they?

NOLA ALA Council spurred this initiative. Soros funded.

Dan Roth – Wired senior writer

Privacy from a business perspective. “No one talks about their privacy policy” in business. Talked about a past disaster losing tapes with private info on it. Deep storage place said “that happens all the time”

“if you can’t get journalists excited about this how are you going to get people to write about it and get average people to care about their private information being lost”

People try to say “we’re more private than Google” way of brand differentiation. Ask.com and Microsoft.com

Ponemon, interviews Chief Privacy Officers & Marketers. CPO said we don’t share info, marketers said “oh sure we do”

Free Economy, companies embracing this as a business model “Arms race brewing” as companies who depend on free start competing, they serve up more private data about users.

Fortune tech coverage too

Beth Givens – Privacy Right Clearinghouse

Eleven years as a librarian. Privacy pie: info privacy (PRC, EPIC) vs. constitutional privacy (ACLU, EFF). Small staffing. They give people practical information about protecting personal information. Scott McNeely “You have no privacy get over it” [from Sun]

Informational self-determination is the way they describe it in Germany. Canada and Europe do a better job

Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right of access to your credit report – LEGALLY. Credit report is limited – LEGALLY.

Principles of Fair Info Practices [FIPS]
– access
– consent
– purpose specitification
– accuracy enforcement
– colleciton limitation
– security, accountability & uage limitation

“privacy policies are really disclosure policies”

Giving up is not the answer – suggests taking every opportunity we can to opt out. “Privacy basics and opt-out opportunities”

Identity Theft smartiepants – cares about consumers

Cory Doctorow – author/blogger, BoingBoing & etc.

dystopian novel – Transparent Society – we have to give up privacy but we are allowed to spy on our governments the way they can spy on us.

Architecture is politics, building networked societies and systems we wind up involving the systems that grow out of them.

Social networking – “I’m pretty upset about it in a lot of ways”

How can you say information is private but not secret? [obvious retorts: peeing, sex]

The more raw power you have the more power you have about the disclosure of your personal information.

outsourcing – we don’t even have the option to set policies on, for example, our RFID tags

Discusses regulation being the solution. You could make a brakeless car and it would be cheaper, but

Vendors are not treating libraries as first class citizens w/ its DRM and etc. Libraries have a moral obligation to do this for their patrons.

This is a business model that no one wants.

Undermines personal security and social security. In surveillance societies, no one trusts each other. There’s not enough social cohesion to form societies. We get surveillance instead of policing. “cameras are forensic, they only solve crimes after the fact”

Thinks it’s harder to find information as we collect more and more.

QUESTIONS
Kent Oliver Q What’s at stake overall?

Beth – we will lose it, just like minority report, worries abotu biometrics tracking us everywhere
Dan – what happens when our health records can be read by our employers
Cory – “personal information is like Uranium” a little bit is no big deal but combined in huge databases is toxic. “all this information we’ve created will be like smog, there will be no way to destroy it” “you’re loading the gun and handing it to all their successors forever.”

Minority Report & GATTACA mentioned

Q. Isn’t the horse out of the barn? How do we get back to before we gave away all this data?

Cory – pmog [justin hall’s multiplayer game], sxip
Dan Roth – consumers have no idea why we should care
Beth – check out your own profiles and see what people know about you. Get the “right of access” into law.

Kate – How to be invisible, should we all try that?

Beth – you can’t really do that or you have to rely on other people
Cory – “I don’t think privacy should be a hair shirt” This is the American dream sybaritic. DEFAULTS MATTER esp in the free and open source world .talk to just ahndful of geeks and you can make enormous contributions across the world.
Dan – talking to HP chief privacy office talking about how they took care of privacy issues in the EU where it’s required but NOT in the US where it’s not necessary.

Kent – how do we make the average person care

Cory – Pablo “hackerbot” hacky idea about letting people know what can be known about them [prius example]
Beth – creative ways to educate and inform people “talking the talk and walking the walk” how do we get the message across creatively.

Kate Q. how do we balance users wanting details but us trying to protect privacy?
Cory – encryption

Librarian Q. how do we talk to or administration about this
Beth – data breach will be ugly and expensive to clean up
Cory – best way to avoid a data breach is to not have the data

Q. bought a house, 9/11, now I feel all my data is everywhere. tips how to leave less personal information?
Beth – create a living trust & put property in the name of the trust. “the younger you start, having a PO box and only a PO box…” “working with young people in so important”
Cory – 1. take control of your tech 2. taking control of your debate “this doesn’t make us safer” “if you want to keep people safe you have to keep them safe from the important threats” 3. regime change

Q. surveillance society “the bigger danger to me is more like social control”
Cory – safety and security are not platonically divided. does being safe from terrorists mean being less safe from governments?

Q. isnt there some sort of “cool factor” to sharing all this personal information?
Dan – talked about reading the family blog of a private squirrely CEO

Q. our inconvient truth, we need to be talking about information footprints the same way that people talk about carbin footprints
Dan – people will ignore you if it looks like you’re going to make things more difficult for them, people feel like giving away private information gets them something
there’s a third alternative between being a refusenik and giving in. taking control of the information they can gather from you.