The saying goes: “Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.” Just about anyone remotely concerned with individual privacy is feeling justifiably paranoid these days.
It has been a while since there was much good news for anyone interested in privacy, and most of the recent news maintains this sorry trend.
A month ago, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission required telecom companies to support six of the nine wiretapping powers the FBI requested. The FCC dropped the three powers that had the least impact on privacy.
The FCC did delay imposing the same requirements on providers of IP telephony, but given the agency’s track record, you can expect those rules soon enough. The FBI praised the new rules as “going a long way to balance public safety, privacy and the needs of the telecommunications carriers.”
Easy to say if you just got everything you wanted.
The U.S. Department of Justice is asking Congress to give it the authority to break into Americans’ houses to disable encryption systems in their PCs.
A U.S. federal court just ruled that the ability of a telephone company to sell users’ calling records (whom they called and for how long) to anyone it wants is protected by the First Amendment. In a too-rare case, the FCC was the good guy trying to restrict the practice.
Dutch researcher Herman te Riele just announced that a message encrypted in a 512-bit RSA key was decrypted using a super computer and a flock of Internet-based workstations, yet the U.S. government will not let its citizens export technology anywhere near that strong to protect their privacy or corporate secrets.
Amazon.com for a joke added a feature that lets its users see what books are popular with its customers on a per-domain basis (for example, what people at ibm.com are buying), apparently with no thought given to the possibility that some people might see a privacy issue with the idea.
A possible ray of hope is the formation of the International Security, Trust and Privacy Alliance, but nowhere in its announcement is there talk of lobbying governments to protect the security and privacy of individuals.
If lamenting the lack of privacy protection in modern society seems like a recurring theme in this column, it’s because things continue to get worse.
Internet pamphleteer Dave Farber frequently signs his e-mail with a quote from Ben Franklin that expresses my worry: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” But in this interconnected world, if people care so little for their essential liberty that they are willing to give it up, they are also giving up my liberty. And I rail against that.