privacy

this semester i'm TAing computer science 320. nice fun class. students write papers about stuff like privacy, and debate all these important technology related topics like net neutrality and then write a paper at the end.

i must confess, i didnt think privacy was such a big deal. but thats just because i take it for granted.

after you read 30 papers on it, your mind might change too.

but i shouldnt. as an american, i know that bush and the NSA are spying on all network traffic (voice and data). do a web search for mark klein, the geek at ATT who blew the whistle that all their data was re-routed through a secure NSA room, in their building. this kicked off a huge political firestorm, and is a all a big mess. of course, bush is at the heart of it, doing exactly the wrong thing. he should be impeached for this alone.

surely theres not someone listening to my calls or reading my emails, but there's a good chance, that they are being data mined. the technology and algorithms exist. so in a sense, i am being spied on, or at the least may be being spied on. all of course, without a warrant, which is mandated by our constitution.

consider a few facts.............

if you want to talk to your friends and families, you're using one of a few big companies to talk to them. google, verizon, telus, shaw, att. thats a serious vulnerability.

the amount that google knows about me is unreal. (this is a google blog). they have all my email conversations, every one of them. my love letters, all the goofiest things i've ever written about, etc. they also have saved my search history for the past 2 years, if not longer. they know more about me than i know about me. if stalin had access to this kind of information there wouldnt be anyone alive in russia besides stalin himself. this is better than what big brother had in 1984. don't think for a minute that the gov't wouldnt hack them, or that the chinese or whomever else hasn't already. now they want us to put our health records online. yippee!

but it doesnt make sense for these companies to sell us down the river, it would ruin their reputation, could put them out of business, they won't do it. (really they already are, they're all doing it) sure, companies are so rational and responsible. consider enron and all the companies that fell around them due to deep conspiratorial accounting fraud. consider the current meltdown over these stupid mortgages. just consider wall street for a second, and their game of heads i win, tails you lose. the money runners over there, have lots to gain by taking big risks, millions and millions of dollars, and nothing to lose save their job. but they already have millions of dollars and can go across the street and get another job. the incentive over there is to do risky and nutty things, WITH OTHER PEOPLES MONEY. and then if they mess up, the gov't bails them out. why do we assume all this rationality and reasonableness? the free-marketers tell us the market will disincentivize this behavior, but it happens all the time, and in the case of wall street, the market is incentivizing it. we need laws to stop it.

here's another one, the chinese won't sell our debt, it doesnt make sense. but the chinese gov't isnt transparent. iran won't use a nuke (if they get/have one). but the iranian gov't isnt transparent, literally iranians aren't even sure who's actually running it. these gov'ts do nutty things all the time. why assume so much rationality?

similarly, these companies which we trust so much are non-transparent and do nutty and stupid things all the time. why all the trust?