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Declan McCullagh on the NSA leaks

by on June 18, 2013 · 0 comments

Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET and former Washington bureau chief for Wired News, discusses recent leaks of NSA surveillance programs. What do we know so far, and what more might be unveiled in the coming weeks? McCullagh covers legal challenges to the programs, the Patriot Act, the fourth amendment, email encryption, the media and public response, and broader implications for privacy and reform.

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Is Watching “Spying”?

by on December 23, 2010 · 4 comments

I was struck by the absurd title of a New York Post story from yesterday: Is Your Restaurant Spying on You? Some restaurants are—shocker—making note of your preferences and your qualities as a customer, for good or bad. That’s “spying”?

Of course, headlines are meant to catch attention. The story illustrates a phenomenon that will continue to proliferate, and that will probably continue to raise hackles, classed as “spying”, “privacy invasion”, “dossier building”, and such. People and businesses are more able to capture information about each other than they were before. (It is a two-way street. We consumers know more about businesses, and businesses know more about us.)

That’s a big change from the recent past. Over the past century or so, people got more mobile and thus less amenable to consistent observation—which means less amenable to being affixed with a reputation. Now information systems are catching up. What kind of person you are—a good tipper, a brusque faux gastronome—that information might precede you to a restaurant. Object to it. Call it what you want. But you might also consider getting used to it, tipping better, and being polite.

None of this is a comment on what our public policies should be. They should neither favor this cultural change nor fight it. People need to understand what happens with information about them, and they should be able to withhold information if they want, though that may be hard for privacy outliers to do.

As a student of information, I find it hard to accept that a restaurant noting the information you’ve made available to it is “spying.”

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School Laptops and Spying—and Media

by on February 23, 2010 · 17 comments

Fellow TLFer Julian Sanchez has written (twice) at Cato@Liberty on the big school-using-laptops-to-spy-on-kids case.

Indulging my contrarian habit, I’m taking a little bit of a different view, though not necessarily an inconsistent one. While it seems error to me that the school district issued laptops with a potentially invasive security system, failing to fully inform parents, I think a lot more facts have to come out before we reach legal conclusions.

I started to feel some contrary comin’ on when I read the lengthy commentary of a parent at the school, posted on a privacy colleague’s Facebook wall. Among other things, she said:

The minor in question is a truly bad kid. [cites supporting facts] He had broken two laptop computers and had been issued a loaner computer with the explicit instructions not to take it off school property. It disappeared from the school and when questioned he told the school it had been stolen from him. There is quite a bit of theft and laptops had been a target. The kids seemed to know about the security system in place, I didn’t know about it which I think was wrong — the school has apologized for this. The school activated the security system realized the computer was in use and the webcam took a still shot. The minor in question was sitting in front of the webcam, the rumor is with drugs. The photo was sent to the police which apparently was standard procedure for stolen property and not related to anything else.

Maybe the “drugs” were Mike & Ike’s candies. The plaintiff’s lawyer says so. (Consider the veracity of a kid explaining things to his parents and their counsel, though, and of a trial lawyer seeking to lead a class action.)

Sugar pills or not, if the laptop is AWOL from school—presumptively stolen—I don’t see that it would be unreasonable to use the security system to discover its location, and the camera to capture images of who is using it. If there are statutes that would prevent that, I think a court would find a way to avoid applying them, be it on the theory that the putative thief assumed the risk of being surveilled, unclean hands, or some other basis.

The reporting and commentary has been a little overwrought. Better facts will determine what law should apply. Parents at the school have started a Facebook group to discuss this and share the rest of the story given that the school district has, well, lawyered up.

I tipped a reporter at an outlet I respect about this parent’s version of events. The reporter was alternately dismissive of sources that weren’t “official” and highly defensive when I suggested that her writing and reporting appeared to be preserving controversy rather than getting to the bottom of things. So much for relying on media—even new media—for getting information out.

Maybe spun-up outrage will cause better policies in this area than would otherwise result. Maybe we’ll learn that the security system was used for routine, inappropriate spying on kids. But as a legal case, there’s a lot more to be learned before we should draw conclusions.

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The Construction Boom in Utah is About You

by on January 2, 2010 · 2 comments

San Antonio too.

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The “GPS Tax,” e-Health & the Privacy Implications of Tech Upgrades for Government Monopolies

by on January 21, 2009 · 13 comments

Just before the New Year, Mike Masnick reported:

It’s been well over five years since we first heard about a plan in Oregon to attach GPS devices to cars and tax drivers based on how much they drove and the idea hasn’t become any better in the intervening years… but apparently it’s still being pushed. Oregon’s governor is trying to move forward with the plan.  One of the reasons behind the bill has nothing to do with a more efficient way to tax drivers, but because the state is gaining less revenue from its gas tax since there are more fuel-efficient cars on the roads these days. Of course, rather than reward drivers for driving more fuel efficient cars, this sort of tax punishes them, and actually encourages the use of less fuel efficient vehicles. And, of course, that doesn’t even begin to get into the potential (and likely) privacy problems brought about by any system whereby the government has full access to a GPS system on your car.

This is a great example of the problems that often arise when trying to bring into the digital age areas of the economy monopolized or dominated by government.  There’s a clear (if imperfect) analogy here to Obama’s ambitious goal of digitizing health records:  both are great ideas that raise special privacy concerns because of the heavy involvement of government.  These privacy concerns are certainly not unwarranted:  I wouldn’t want the government to have access to my car’s location or my medical history at any given moment or a complete record of where I’ve driven or what doctors I’ve seen.  But just as relying on paper health records is clearly stupid (and dangerous), it would make a hell of a lot more sense for drivers to pay for road use depending on “where, when and how far they drove”—as in a small pilot project in the UK.

Today, state and Federal taxes on every gallon of gasoline are intended to serve two conflicting purposes—but do a poor job with both.   Continue reading →

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