The authors and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this b - PDF document

The authors and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book, but makThe publisher offers excontent particular to your business, training goals, mark(800) 382-34Visit us on the Web: wwwBlown to bits : your life, libertyKenISBN 0-13-7technologyÑTHarryQ200800591P50Boston, MA 0211Fax (617) 67 ISBN-13: 978-0-13-713559-2ISBN-10: 0-13-713559-9Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.To gain 45-day Safari Enabled access to this book:Â¥Go to http://www.informit.com/onlineeditionÂ¥Complete the brief registration formÂ¥Enter the coupon code 9SD6-IQLD-ZDNI-AGEC-AG6LMark TaubAcquisitions EditorWater Crest Publishing, Inc.IndexerWilliams Woods Publishing Services 00_0137135599_FM.qxd 11/21/08 10:32 AM Page v CHAPTER 2Naked in the SunlightPrivacy Lost, Privacy Abandoned 1984 Is Here, and We Like ItOn July 7, 2005, London was shaken as suicide bombers detonated fourexplosions, three on subways and one on a double-decker bus. The attack onthe transit system was carefully timed to occur at rush hour, maximizing itsdestructive impact. 52 people died and 700 more were injured.sent around the world instantly. Working from 80,000 seized tapes, policeweeks earlier.George OrwellÕs ety devoid of both privacy and freedom:Éthere seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that wereevery commanding corner. There was one on the house front immedi-ately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU ÉThe real 1984 came and went nearly a quarter century ago. Today, Big 02_0137135599_ch02.qxd 4/16/08 1:21 PM Page 19 lion. Across the UK, there is one surveillance camera for every dozen people.The average Londoner is photographed hundreds of times a day by electroniceyes on the sides of buildings and on utilitypoles. Yet there is much about the digital world that Orwell did not imagine. Hedid not anticipate that cameras are far from the most pervasive of todayÕsnot only what numbers you call, but where you have carried your phone.Credit card companies know not only where you spent your money, but whatyou spent it on. Your friendly bank keeps electronic records of your transac-tions not only to keep your balance right, but because it has to tell the gov-ernment if you make huge withdrawals. The digital explosion has scatteredthe bits of our lives everywhere: records of the clothes we wear, the soaps wewash with, the streets we walk, and the cars we drive and where we drivesearch engines to piece the bits together, to find the needles in the haystacks.Wherever we go, we leave digital footprints, while computers of staggeringcapacity reconstruct our movements from the tracks. Computers re-assemblethe clues to form a comprehensive image of who we are, what we do, wherewe are doing it, and whom we are discussing it with.Perhaps none of this would have surprised Orwell. Had he known aboutelectronic miniaturization, he might have guessed that we would develop anastonishing array of tracking technologies. Yet there is something more fun-from the actual world of today.We have fallen in love with this always-on world. We accept our loss of pri-vacy in exchange for efficiency, convenience, and small price discounts.According to a 2007 Pew/Internet Project report, Ò60% of Internet users saythey are not worried about how much information is available about themlives for all the world to see, even when no one requires or even asks us todo so. 55% of teenagers and 20% of adults have created profiles on socialPartycould escape the gaze of the telescreen. For the rest, the constant gazewas a source of angst and anxiety. Today, we willingly accept the gaze. Weeither donÕt think about it, donÕt know about it, or feel helpless to avoid itexcept by becoming hermits. We may even judge its benefits to outweigh itsrisks. In OrwellÕs imagined London, like StalinÕs actual Moscow, citizens spiedon their fellow citizens. Today, we can all be Little Brothers, using our searchBLOWNTOBITS 02_0137135599_ch02.qxd 4/16/08 1:21 PM Page 20 technologies easier to deploy. And finally we turn to the big question: Whatdoes privacy even mean in the digitally exploded world? Is there any hope ofkeeping anything private when everything is bits, and the bits are stored,copied, and moved around the world in an instant? And if we canÕtÑorwonÕtÑkeep our personal information to ourselves anymore, how can wemake ourselves less vulnerable to the downsides of living in such an exposedworld? Standing naked in the sunlight, is it still possible toprotect ourselvesagainst ills and evils from which our privacy used to protect us? As we do our daily business and lead our private lives, we leave footprintsand fingerprints. We can see our footprints in mud on the floor and in thesand and snow outdoors. We would not be surprised that anyone who wentto the trouble to match our shoes to our footprints could determine, or guess,where we had been. Fingerprints arethat we are leaving them as we openThose who have guilty consciencesworry about where they are leavingIn the digital world, we all leave both electronic footprints and electronicfingerprintsÑdata trails we leave intentionally, and data trails of which wepurposes. Because most of us donÕt consider ourselves criminals, however, wesmall smudges we leave on the digital landscape may be useful to someoneelseÑsomeone who wants to use the data we left behind to make money or toget something from us. It is therefore important to understand how and wherewe leave these digital footprints and fingerprints.Smile While We Snap!today. But for sheer photographic pervasiveness, nothing beats the camerasmisjudgment of Jeffrey Berman. In early December 2007, a man aboutBLOWNTOBITS NWANTEDby JeffreyRosen (Vintage, 2001) details manycontributed to our loss of privacy. 02_0137135599_ch02.qxd 4/16/08 1:21 PM Page 22 60years old committed a series of assaults on the Boston public transit sys-Web and was shown on all the Boston area television stations. Within a day,from time to time, have plainclothes officers on the trolley, but thatÕs a verydifficult job to do,Ó said the chief of the Transit Police. ÒThe fact that this girlhad the wherewithal to snap a picture to identify him was invaluable.Óaccess to the Web also enables a kind of vigilante justiceÑa ubiquitous Little-Brotherism, in which we can all be detectives, judges, and corrections offi-cers. Mr. Berman claims he is innocent; perhaps the speed at which theguilt. Bloggers can bring global disgrace to ordinary citizens.In June 2005, a woman allowed her dog to relieve himself on a Koreansubway,and subsequently refused to clean up his mess, despite offers fromtured by a fellow passenger andfor Òpuppy poo girlÓ). She was iden-tified along with her family, wasnow a Wikipedia entry about thesionÑbefore bits made it possible toconvey information instantaneously,everywhereÑher actions would have been embarrassing and would have beenknown to those who were there at the time. It is unlikely that the story wouldhave made it around the world, and that it would have achieved such noto-moment. But looking at images on the Web is now a leisure activity that any-one can do at any time, anywhere in the world. Using Google Street View, youcan sit in a cafŽ in Tajikistan and identify a car that was parked in my drive-way when GoogleÕs camera came by (perhaps months ago). From Seoul, youcan see whatÕs happening right now, updated every few seconds, in PicadillyCircus or on the strip in Las Vegas. These views were always available to thepublic, but cameras plus the Web changed the meaning of Òpublic.ÓNAKEDINTHESUNLIGHT There are many free webcam sites,at which you can watch whatÕs hap-the world. Here are a few: 02_0137135599_ch02.qxd 4/16/08 1:21 PM Page 23 settled territoryÑany place where you can get cell phone coverageÑthe sig-nals from the cell phone towers can be used to locate you. That is how TanyaKnowing Even Where Your Shoes AreA Radio Frequency IdentificationtagÑRFID, for shortÑcan be read from adistance of a few feet. Radio Frequency Identification is like a more elaborateversion of the familiar bar codes that identify products. Bar codes typicallyidentify what kind of thing an item isÑthe make and model, as it were.Because RFID tags have the capacity for much larger numbers, they can pro-vide a unique serial number for each item: not just ÒCoke, 12 oz. canÓ butÒCoke can #12345123514002.Ó And because RFID data is transferred by radiothe sensor need not be visible to do the reading.tag almost anything (see Figure 2.1). ÒProx cards,Ó which you wave near asensor to open a door, are RFID tags; a few bits of information identifyingyou are transmitted from the card to the sensor. MobilÕs ÒSpeedpassÓ is a lit-tle RFID on a keychain; wave it near a gas pump and the pump knows whomtheir flesh, so individual animals can be tracked. Modern dairy farms log theto its daily milk output. Pets are commonly RFID-tagged so they can bepossibility of tagging humans is obvious, and has been proposed for certainBut the interesting part of the RFID story is more mundaneÑputting tagsThey store a few dozen bits of infor-small. The RFID includes a tiny elec-tronic chip and a small coil, whichNAKEDINTHESUNLIGHT This aptly named bookby KatherineAlbrecht and Liz McIntyre (Plume,actual and proposed RFID uses byconsumer goods manufacturers andretailers. 02_0137135599_ch02.qxd 4/16/08 1:21 PM Page 25