Category Archives: Privacy

The privacy paradox and Google

Posted on by
1

At the New York Times BITS blog, Brad Stone reports on a study about to be released by George Loewenstein and several other Carnegie Mellon researchers about people’s parodoxical attitudes towards privacy and personal information.  In one experiment, some people were given express assurances of privacy whereas others were given none.  Strangely, the people given no assurances of privacy were twice as likely to admit to copying someone else’s homework.

In one sense, that’s paradoxical because assurances of privacy are intended to foster open communications, as with the attorney-client privilege.  But in another sense, the behavior is not paradoxical at all.  Express assurances of privacy may serve the socially useful prophylactic purpose — albeit sometimes unintended — of reminding people of the risks of volunteering personal information.  Even if people don’t really read privacy policies, seeing a conspicuous “privacy policy” link may serve as a cold glass of water to the face, reminding people that they are volunteering personal information, and that they should look before they leap.

That brings to mind the scrutiny Google has recently garnered for its refusal to put a conspicuous link to its privacy policy on its homepage.  Is Google concerned that a link will remind people of the implications of continually using the myriad Google services?  C’mon.  How many times did you use Google today?  And when, if ever, did you think about how much information Google may have about you?  As noted by The Register,

The company still indexes your email.  It still stores your IP address alongside your search history for at least 18 to 24 months.  And if it does “anonymize” your IP address after 24 months – and that’s a big if – it still refuses to anonymize the whole thing.

So if conspicuous reminders of privacy concerns are important, why won’t Google put a simple link on its homepage?  According to another post at BITS, a Google competitor stated that Google co-founder Larry Page “didn’t want a privacy link ‘on that beautiful clean home page.’”

I rather doubt that Page’s concerns are fueled by aesthetics.  One more link won’t change the site’s minimalistic look.  But the starkness of the Google homepage may largely explain why Google doesn’t want that link.  On most e-commerce sites, the visual clutter — think Yahoo — makes it unlikely that a privacy policy link will stand out.  But on Google’s “beautiful clean home page,” such a link would be significantly more conspicuous.

And paradoxically, perhaps more likely to serve its purpose.

What about mail surveillance?

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday’s posting on unconsented cell phone surveillance reminded me of an excellent column that Peter Shane wrote a while back in Jurist where he pointed out that any technical legality of the NSA surveillance program is besides the point.  Shane asked, what if the Post Office created a database with the addresses contained on every piece of mail it handles.  Even if, hypothetically, such a program were legal:

An America in which ordinary citizens have their mail “surveilled” would be a different America from the country in which virtually all of us think we live.  Our freedom would be lost not because a law was broken, but because of the breakdown in respect for the norms of liberty and government self-restraint.

I think much the same could be said of the ends-justifies-the-means thinking of the Northeastern University researchers who got a European cell phone provider to give them individualized location information on 100,000 unknowing customers. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.

Ends, means, and cell phone surveillance

Posted on by
Reply

As Wired.com reports, researchers affiliated with Northeastern University “secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.” In the report on their study in the journal Nature (excerpt available online), the authors stated:

[O]ur understanding of the basic laws governing human motion remains limited owing to the lack of tools to monitor the time-resolved location of individuals. Here we study the trajectory of 100,000 anonymized mobile phone users whose position is tracked for a six-month period.

There’s no doubt that such a study is useful.  As one of the researchers noted, “[k]nowing people’s travel patterns can help design better transportation systems and give doctors guidance in fighting the spread of contagious diseases.”  Important and useful.

But information’s usefulness does not alone justify its acquisition.  What about privacy and ethics? This isn’t simply a study of aggregate data (such as how many people saw Iron Man), but rather a study of the specific movements of numerous individuals.  As noted in the New York Times, “The location of the user was revealed whenever he made or received a call or text message; the telephone company would record the nearest cell tower and time.”

So was an ethics panel consulted?  No.  According to Wired, one of the researchers stated no ethics panel was consulted, and another said they didn’t have to (a quote here, but apparently a paraphrase in Wired) “because the experiment involved physics, not biology.”

Say what?  Ok, so the study concerned the movement of people.  People are objects.  Physics studies the movement of objects.  I get the “physics” connection. But how does that justify tracking individuals’ cellphones and movements without their permission? Although the researchers took steps to anonymize and secure the data, how does that justify intrusions into the personal activities of 100,000 people?

According to Wired, FCC spokesman Rob Kenny stated that such unconsented tracking would be illegal if done inside the United States.  Instead, says the New York Times, the surveillance was done with the cooperation of an unnamed European cell phone provider.  But why should it be ok for an American university to go outside of the United States to do what would be illegal within?

The electronic leash: whatever happened to trusting your kids?

Posted on by
Reply

Verizon Wireless now offers a service that allows parents to track their kids’ movements through cellphones. According to News.com:

Parents can use the service to set up geographic limits and receive text alerts if their children, who also carry phones, go too far from home. The service also lets parents check where their offspring are via a map on their cell phone or computer.

The service — “Chaperone” for location tracking, and “Child Zone” for a boundary-setting add-on — is available for now only on a four-button phone designed for young kids, such as 5-9 year olds. (Who buys a phone for a 5 year old?) But News.com indicates that Verizon Wireless might develop a version of the program for older kids, with more sophisticated phones.

What a great way to train kids for a lifetime of submitting to technological surveillance from authorities. If you really want to be creeped out, go here on the Verizon Wireless site and watch the animated cartoon family whose kids cheerily acquiesce to their parents spying on them.

Whatever happened to trusting kids and letting them make decisions (and letting them learn to live with the consequences)?

And to be clear, I am a parent.

Thanks to Slashdot, where I first read about this.