Review
of Privacy Law
There is no "right" outlined by the constitution
of privacy. The courts have ruled that privacy is a "penumbra"
right, necessary for the bill of rights to exist. But we can still examine
a couple of rights that we DO have....or do we?
4th
Amendment
14th
Amendment
Mike
Hawash case
Courts in the US have ruled that in
order for something to be freely available it must be anonymously
available.
The US right to anonymity has been affirmed in two court cases: Talley
v. California (1962) and McIntyre v. Ohio (1995). While the immediate
subject of both rulings was the right of people to distribute leaflets,
the courts made it clear that they value the right to anonymity in
general. The "right" to something (in this case, Free Speech)
necessarily involves the right to do it anonymously.
Talley
v. California
McIntyre
v Ohio
Privacy
act of 1974
Amendment to Privacy Act
Recently, a bit of this Privacy act was changed
by the Justice Department to discharge the necessity for the FBI to
ensure "accuracy and completeness" for the records contained
on individuals within the NCIC database.
|
| Error Rate |
Ratio of Guilty/Not
Guilty in General Populace |
Guilty People Correctly
Identified |
Guilty People mistakenly
identified as Innocent
(AKA, the Terrorists Win) |
Innocent People Mistakenly
Identified as Guilty (AKA Big Fat Mistake) |
0% |
n/a |
100% |
0% |
0% |
.0001% (One Error in a Million) |
1/10,000 |
100 |
1/1,00,000 |
1/100 |
1% |
1/10,000 |
100 |
1/100 |
10,000 for ever 100 guilty people found. |
| "The differences
between examples 2 and 3 are striking. In example 2, one person
is erroneously arrested for every 100 people correctly arrested.
In example 3, one person is correctly arrested for every 100
people erroneously arrested. The increase in error rate makes
the database all but useless as a system for figuring out how
to arrest. And this is despite the fact that, in both cases,
almost no guilty people get away because of a database error.
The reason for this phenomenon is that
the number of guilty people is a very small percentage of the
population. If one in ten people were guilty, then a 0.0001%
error rate would mistakenly arrest one innocent for every 100,000
guilty, and a 1% error rate would arrest approximately one innocent
for every guilty. And if the number of guilty people is even
less than one in ten thousand, then the problem of arresting
innocents magnifies even more as the database has more errors.
" |
More
from Declan on the change in the NCIC.
Threats to Privacy
Legal Threats
PATRIOT
Act
This link to the EFF summary of the PATRIOT act outlines the major issues
that come up for privacy. The single aspect that has been pretty widely
reported upon is the requirement of libraries to turn over borrowing
records if requested by the FBI without a warrant. In addition, PATRIOT
makes it a crime for the librarian to notify the patron that their records
were requested. The PATRIOT act has a "sunset" date in 2005,
but legislation to eliminate the sunset and make it permanent was recently
introduced by Orrin Hatch. Luckily, it was also pulled
the same week after public outcry. NOTE:
As brought to my attention, it appears that the Salt Lake Tribune may
have been in error when they reported that Orrin Hatch had pulled his
legislation concerning the sunset of the PATRIOT act. They appear to
have confused several pieces of legislation, and thus it appears there
may be ongoing legislation still to repeal the sunset act. Google search
with applicable stories here.
Domestic
Security Enhancement Act (better known as PATRIOT II)
More fun. See link for concerns.
CAPPS
II (an "improvement" over CAPPS I, passed in
1998 in response to the 1996 TWA 800 crash and the Atlanta Olympic bombing)
Total
Information Awareness
and it's analysis at EPIC.
Commercial Threats
RFID - Radio Frequency Identification
Oddly enough, Alien
Technologies page (one of the premiere commercial providers of RFID
technology) seems to be down.
RFID Journal
Declan
McCullagh on RFID
Benetton
decides to include RFID tags in its clothing.....And then, suddenly,
doesn't.
Travel Restrictions
Problems
with the current travel "cannot fly" list.
Surveillance
The
Path of Least Surveillance
Facial
Recognition and Camera Surveillance
Surveillance
Nation
How
to survive Surveillance Nation
Avoiding
cameras in Manhattan
What can be done?
You can write your Representative
or Senator to
let them know how you feel about legislation such as this.
Join organizations that are dedicated to freedom of speech and privacy
such as the EFF,
ALA, EPIC,
IFEA, ACLU,
BORDC, and many,
many other unpronouncable strings of letters.
Vote locally...all politics are local.
Back to Class
Obviously, the biggest comparison here is with 1984.
The horror in 1984 is largely derived from the seeming omnipotence
via omniscience of Big Brother. This horror is translated into dark
comedy in Terry Gilliam's brilliant film Brazil
based on what happens when an error is made in such a system. How do
you deal with errors in a system like PATRIOT or CAPPS? Assume for a
moment that these are necessary for national security...even given that,
are they worth the risks of errors creeping in?
If we view information as a commodity, how can we measure the
value of systems that eliminate aspects of individual privacy? How do
you measure the value of an error?
Do you view your personal information as "belonging"
to someone?
Can we remake Lessig's network level analogy and look at privacy
the same way? Are there "levels" of privacy? Do you prioritize
some information over others? Who controls which levels?
How do you see some of the other people that we've talked with
this semester (Glen
Otis Brown, Eric
Raymond, Jack
Valenti) on
issues of privacy? How does the DMCA
enter into privacy?
Do we have any privacy now? What areas do you still think are
"private"?
Now that you are armed with this knowledge....will you change
the way you look at your own information?
Tons o' other Links
Internet
Attorney
www.privacy.org
Privacy
Foundation
Privacy Rights
Clearinghouse
FTC Privacy Initiatives
www.boycottbenetton.org
The
EFF on Anonymity
Great
discussion on privacy
Abuses
of Police Databases
RFID
protects the Oscar guests
|
