Privacy and the State

[amateur51]

The US justice department has filed criminal charges against fugitive ex-intelligence analyst Edward Snowden who leaked details of a secret surveillance operation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23012317

It remains to be seen if the Hong Kong authorities will co-operate in Snowden's deportation.

[french frank]

So if private individuals wish to keep things secret the best thing to do is to keep their personal matters to themselves.

There is a difference between privacy and secrecy.

"Those advancing the nothing-to-hide argument have in mind a particular kind of appalling privacy harm, one in which privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or discrediting is revealed."

http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/

And security also involves the secure storage of the data collected. No losing memory sticks in the tube or taking your laptop home and having it stolen from your car.

"What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you?"

What if someone could steal your identity, along with your information?

"What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts?"

[I once renewed my anti-virus software online with a company in Germany and bought train tickets from SNCF to travel in Europe in the same month. An unusual pattern of spending and my credit card company put an automatic check on my payments - I couldn't understand why each time I bought something, the shop/hotel was ringing to check - and on one occasion I had to speak on the phone in a shop where I was trying buy something, and give my identification info - which I fortunately remembered. Soon sorted out when I got home, but an example of how perfectly innocent data can be misinterpreted.]

The Kafka image is evoked: what if the security argument prevents any disclosure of what information - or misinformation - is held about you and you can't therefore put the record straight?

All the complacency boils down to trust in vulnerable politicians who fiddle their expenses and hobnob with disreputable journalists out to get a good story; and slapdash civil servants who make mistakes.

[Frances_iom]

...Agreed confidentiality can sometimes be betrayed by those with the power to leak it. Surprise, surprise.
...
Will any of this be so terribly shocking, at least to non-Guardian readers... ?

could you please explain the difference between this 'snooping' and the STASI - modern electronic storeage allows the 'snoopers' to avoid drowning in paper which apparently was about the only thing that kept the STASI somewhat constrained. Europe is finally finding out that US industry + gov pledges are not worth the paper they are written on (eg Google 'accindentally' did not delete records it was supposed to do) however the latest revelations re GCHQ and what appear to be taps onto the transoceanic fibre cables will not exactly please our friends in Europe.

ETA it would appear that lawyers are already illegally into hacking - see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...n-8669148.html

[amateur51]

There is a difference between privacy and secrecy.

"Those advancing the nothing-to-hide argument have in mind a particular kind of appalling privacy harm, one in which privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or discrediting is revealed."

http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/

And security also involves the secure storage of the data collected. No losing memory sticks in the tube or taking your laptop home and having it stolen from your car.

"What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you?"

What if someone could steal your identity, along with your information?

"What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts?"

[I once renewed my anti-virus software online with a company in Germany and bought train tickets from SNCF to travel in Europe in the same month. An unusual pattern of spending and my credit card company put an automatic check on my payments - I couldn't understand why each time I bought something, the shop/hotel was ringing to check - and on one occasion I had to speak on the phone in a shop where I was trying buy something, and give my identification info - which I fortunately remembered. Soon sorted out when I got home, but an example of how perfectly innocent data can be misinterpreted.]

The Kafka image is evoked: what if the security argument prevents any disclosure of what information - or misinformation - is held about you and you can't therefore put the record straight?

All the complacency boils down to trust in vulnerable politicians who fiddle their expenses and hobnob with disreputable journalists out to get a good story; and slapdash civil servants who make mistakes.

Interesting article and follow-up french frank.

When I shared a rented house in the 1980s there were three principal landline phone user but the bill just showed the number of units used in the previous 3 month period and the cost thereof - not much use. So we hired a dial meter that showed the units used for each call and all we had to do was to make a note of the start and end of call readings and the cost could be worked out. Simples!

One day, I made a call and at the end I noticed that the meter hadn't moved so I phoned the operator to report the fault. I was told that it wasn't a fault: they were no longer using such meters. Instead we were going to receive an itemised phone bill with the phone number, length of call, units used, cost etc. I asked why this was happening, my mind spinning with the privacy implications of this and I was told that a number of 'customers' were query the meter reading provided centrally and this new system would enable customers to see the full call record. I was stunned.

In due course, many agencies such as Samaritans, women's refuges, Lesbian & Gay Switchboards, drink and drug helplines were getting together to make representation to government about the implications for potential service users of having these calls monitored and reported. Ways around it were found and people were mollified. But an important freedom had, possibly innocently, been given away. Before phone billing there was no good reason for BT to keep a record of whom you were calling. Now there was, apparently, and no-one really noticed. Now the Government requires BT and all mobile phone companies to maintain such records (for 7 years?) and we've all accepted it. That simple, apparently banal, act of 'normalising' detailed phone billing led the way for modern day snooping.

Obviously snooping on the content of calls is another matter but experience has taught me that if it is possible to do something then someone will certainly do it. And the press phone-hacking scandals have proved this to be true in this case. The unravelling of these crime has taken many years and has cost millions of pounds in legal costs and still the Government has not acted on Leveson's recommendations.

Beware the banal changes I say. And remember that most freedoms are lost incrementally and often with 'good' reason.

[scottycelt]

There is a difference between privacy and secrecy.

"Those advancing the nothing-to-hide argument have in mind a particular kind of appalling privacy harm, one in which privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or discrediting is revealed."

http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/

And security also involves the secure storage of the data collected. No losing memory sticks in the tube or taking your laptop home and having it stolen from your car.

"What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you?"

What if someone could steal your identity, along with your information?

"What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts?"

[I once renewed my anti-virus software online with a company in Germany and bought train tickets from SNCF to travel in Europe in the same month. An unusual pattern of spending and my credit card company put an automatic check on my payments - I couldn't understand why each time I bought something, the shop/hotel was ringing to check - and on one occasion I had to speak on the phone in a shop where I was trying buy something, and give my identification info - which I fortunately remembered. Soon sorted out when I got home, but an example of how perfectly innocent data can be misinterpreted.]

The Kafka image is evoked: what if the security argument prevents any disclosure of what information - or misinformation - is held about you and you can't therefore put the record straight?

All the complacency boils down to trust in vulnerable politicians who fiddle their expenses and hobnob with disreputable journalists out to get a good story; and slapdash civil servants who make mistakes.

Yes, mistakes do sometimes happen and we do have to trust some pretty rum buggers at times.. People have been wrongly convicted of murder and other heinous crimes. We don't then say (I hope) 'let's stop arresting people under suspicion of murder and other heinous crimes'. Perfectly good accounts have been frozen by banks because of software glitches. Data will be lost or stolen from time to time hence the need for backups. Regarding your credit card experience the same thing happened to me in Waitrose (bless 'em) because I had made an 'unusual payment' for about £4 worth of stamps on the internet a few days before. I agree it's quite a humbling experience being escorted to an office with the knowing-looks and nodding of heads from those immediately behind in the queue! :laugh:

Rather than being critical of authorities snooping on suspected wrongdoers I'm extremely glad that they do. I don't believe we remotely resemble the old East Germany as Frances iom fears. Nobody is going to go to jail in this country for calling David Cameron a mug or the Queen an affront to a mature democracy... a good slice of the population must say either or both of these in public from time to time, and Mr GG probably does every day of the week?

On R4 this morning Malcolm Rifkind got irritated with interviewer Evan Davies who appeared to suggest that GCHQ might be reading all our e-mails. 'That is a ridiculous thing to say' snapped Rifkind, 'do you think that GCHQ has the time or inclination to pour through everyone's e-mails?'

Exactly. They are in the job of catching terrorists and other lawbreakers and not trying to discover what we really think of DC and ER or whether we had tea with Aunt Nellie last Friday!

[MrGongGong]

Nobody is going to go to jail in this country for calling David Cameron a mug or the Queen an affront to a mature democracy... a good slice of the population must say either or both of these in public from time to time, and Mr GG probably does every day of the week?

They are , and I do
and people do ..........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/16/facebook-riot-calls-men-jailed

(foolish men indeed BUT .............." Blackshaw, 20, set up an "event" called Smash Down in Northwich Town for the night of 8 August on the social networking site but no one apart from the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up at the pre-arranged meeting point outside a McDonalds restaurant. Blackshaw was promptly arrested.")

Exactly. They are in the job of catching terrorists and other lawbreakers

Oh dear Scotty (i'm sure i've said this stuff before)
If you really think that there are somehow 2 kinds of people ,
Goodies vs Baddies
then you have much to learn .................some of these things are very clear cut and others are much more nuanced
when I used to work in prisons the thing that struck me most was how ordinary and often pleasant murderers were........ (which is NOT to say that I think they have done good things ! )

[ahinton]

Yes, mistakes do sometimes happen and we do have to trust some pretty rum buggers at times.. People have been wrongly convicted of murder and other heinous crimes. We don't then say (I hope) 'let's stop arresting people under suspicion of murder and other heinous crimes'. Perfectly good accounts have been frozen by banks because of software glitches. Data will be lost or stolen from time to time hence the need for backups.

Indeed - and, on the last of these, don't go and back up into the clouds, otherwise you'll be asking for it! Yes, mistakes to happen but people should be and sometimes are actually held accountable for them and for rectifying them; GCHQ, NSA and the like are hardly likely to find themselves in any real sense accountable to anyone upon whom they choose to snoop.

Rather than being critical of authorities snooping on suspected wrongdoers I'm extremely glad that they do.

Are you really? Do you know how any such suspicions, if and when they really exist, actually arise and upon what they might be based? Do you have such confidence and trust in all of the powers-that-be in Britain only ever to pass sensitive information to the likes of GCHQ about known criminals or those with criminal intent (including "terrorists" of all kinds)? If so, I simply do not share it.

I don't believe we remotely resemble the old East Germany as Frances iom fears.

No, that may be largely true as of now, but there's no obvious reason to view the likely outcomes of a snoopers' charter as other than a reincarnation of that country.

On R4 this morning Malcolm Rifkind got irritated with interviewer Evan Davies who appeared to suggest that GCHQ might be reading all our e-mails. 'That is a ridiculous thing to say' snapped Rifkind, 'do you think that GCHQ has the time or inclination to pour through everyone's e-mails?'

I think that you mean "pore", not "pour", unless you had in mind ample taxpayer-funded supplies of oil in Cheltenham for pouring on the allegedly troubled waters of such emails; what bothers me (and appears not to bother our compatriot Mr Rifkind) is not so much whether GCHQ IS reading them (which would be against even the principles of the proposed snoopers' charter) but that they invest in themselves a belief that they're ENTITLED to do so if they see fit. I, for example, sport a beard and spectacles, I am an agnostic, I am a Scot and I write nasty modern music, so I must surely risk being regarded as a suspect of some kind? That said, the minions at GCHQ are welcome to read my posts here if so they choose, although I doubt that they'd find them especially edifying...

They are in the job of catching terrorists and other lawbreakers

Fair enough, but are not other authorities, most notably the police and armed forces but also local authorities, HMRC, DWP and other organisations, also in the job of catching lawbreakers? If the assumption is or becomes that we are all potentially guilty unless or until found innocent or, in the better words unique to our own judiciary, "not proven" as guilty, the fundamental tenet of British justice will be seen to have fallen away.

[french frank]

Exactly. They are in the job of catching terrorists and other lawbreakers and not trying to discover what we really think of DC and ER or whether we had tea with Aunt Nellie last Friday!

But you think because you have 'nothing to hide' they won't be interested in you (but how do they know you have 'nothing' to hide?). What is your annual income, scotty? Do you have a mortgage and if so, how much is it for? How much is your house worth and what would you value your total estate as? Have you made a will and who is the main beneficiary? Where does s/he live?

This may not be information that they're looking for but in their general searches they may find out and once that information has been recorded in case it may be of future use, anything may happen to it.

(There's no need to answer any of those questions, by the way, but they illustrate the kind of things people may wish to keep private - even though there's nothing shameful about them.)

[Serial_Apologist]

But you think because you have 'nothing to hide' they won't be interested in you (but how do they know you have 'nothing' to hide?). What is your annual income, scotty? Do you have a mortgage and if so, how much is it for? How much is your house worth and what would you value your total estate as? Have you made a will and who is the main beneficiary? Where does s/he live?

This may not be information that they're looking for but in their general searches they may find out and once that information has been recorded in case it may be of future use, anything may happen to it.

(There's no need to answer any of those questions, by the way, but they illustrate the kind of things people may wish to keep private - even though there's nothing shameful about them.)

Yes - suppose Aunt Nellie turned out, unbeknownst to scotty, to be a North Korean spy! They'd be very interested in scotty then!!

I had a friend once who turned out to be a secret agent for BOSS, the Apartheid system's secret snooping outfit - which I'd never have guessed: he'd borrowed all my Miles Davis records! <shock/horror>

[teamsaint]

Yes - suppose Aunt Nellie turned out, unbeknownst to scotty, to be a North Korean spy! They'd be very interested in scotty then!!

I had a friend once who turned out to be a secret agent for BOSS, the Apartheid system's secret snooping outfit - which I'd never have guessed: he'd borrowed all my Miles Davis records! <shock/horror>

Wow.
makes my life feel kind of dull.
Did he give the records back, S_A? I hope so.

[scottycelt]

But you think because you have 'nothing to hide' they won't be interested in you (but how do they know you have 'nothing' to hide?). What is your annual income, scotty? Do you have a mortgage and if so, how much is it for? How much is your house worth and what would you value your total estate as? Have you made a will and who is the main beneficiary? Where does s/he live?

This may not be information that they're looking for but in their general searches they may find out and once that information has been recorded in case it may be of future use, anything may happen to it.

(There's no need to answer any of those questions, by the way, but they illustrate the kind of things people may wish to keep private - even though there's nothing shameful about them.)

Much of the information you mention is either already known by thousands of bank clerks or can be found by a simple search on the internet and paying the appropriate fee. As for a will even that's impossible to keep entirely private (or secret). An element of trust is normally always required.

Do I care if others know about my personal affairs? Not particularly. I'm certainly not in the slightest interested in the personal affairs of others but we're all different, I suppose.

The simple fact is that if I keep within the law I SHOULD be okay with the authorities so I don't tend to worry too much about such things. In any case there is not a lot I can do about it.

Am I being over-complacent or simply being a realist?

[french frank]

Am I being over-complacent or simply being a realist?

I detect a certain 'It couldn't happen to me, and it's not my business if it happens to other people'. You see it in personal terms rather than the principle, perhaps?

[scottycelt]

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/poring-over-pore-and-pour/

Well spotted, ahinton!

[MrGongGong]

The simple fact is that if I keep within the law I SHOULD be okay with the authorities so I don't tend to worry too much about such things. In any case there is not a lot I can do about it.

Am I being over-complacent or simply being a realist?

I think you are being over complacent

[scottycelt]

I detect a certain 'It couldn't happen to me, and it's not my business if it happens to other people'. You see it in personal terms rather than the principle, perhaps?

It's a fact of modern life. It already has happened to me (Waitrose). I was (if ever-so-politely) considered a potential credit-card fraudster. The young female manager in Waitrose assured me the check was all done in my own interests (and the shop and the credit-card company's of course!). Do you know, as much as I may have smiled at her sarcastically, she was absolutely right!

I see it more as a matter of attitude (and understanding of the bigger picture) than any huge principle ...

Others here obviously beg to differ!