Category: privacy

Wow, this reeks to high heaven. There’s lots of BMW dealerships out there in Southern California. Go to one which does not have an absurd policy of demanding a thumbprint in order to buy a car (like this South Bay BMW and Mini outfit). The dealership is apparently owned by Hitchcock Automotive Resources — ironically, the subject of a Cisco White Paper.

Imagine you’ve gone through a multiple week process to purchase an automobile.

You know the drill. Research every feature, pick your color, then, it’s negotiations for purchase price and for trade-in. Everything is done and agreed-upon, and excited, you are ready to hand over the check and collect your new car.

But wait!

You are handed a slip of paper and told to mark your right thumbprint in a box. The paper says clearly that it’s a request, for your protection, and to prevent your identity theft.

When you politely decline, the dealership refuses to sell you the car.

This is precisely what happened to me today when I tried to purchase a new X3 at the South Bay BMW dealer in Torrance, California.

Link here.

Truly, what extraordinary audacity on the part of this dealer.

Here’s my advice: Don’t give anyone your thumbprint unless it’s statutorily required.

Alex Eckelberry
(Hat tip)

Many of you may know of this one, but it’s not widely known. zug.com did a massive prank at the SuperBowl. Whether it actually happened or not (I think it probably did), it’s worth checking out.

And this note by the author, John Margrave, which is dear to my hear and something I’ve written about before:

We live in a zero-risk society, convinced that more security, more police, more searches, and more technology will make us more safe. This is false. As we’ve proven, even four comics and a cameraman can outwit the most tightly-controlled event in history. Everyone did their job. No one did anything wrong. But no system is completely safe.

Life involves risk.

I want to leave you with this final thought. Life is some risky business. When we cling to the illusion of security, we give up our freedom and our privacy. When we willingly remove more clothing at airport security, when we allow our government to pass wiretapping legislation, when we give them power to spy on us, we are giving away our precious civil liberties that our founding fathers earned with blood.

Link here (via BoingBoing)

Alex Eckelberry

If lawmakers had any idea as to how difficult it is to find top talent anywhere in the US these day, they would never continue to consider this immigration policy — all in the name of anti-terrorism.

Bill Gates, the chairman of Micro­soft, on Wednesday warned that restrictions on the number of skilled workers allowed to enter the US put the country’s competitiveness at risk. (Link here.)

Al-Qaeda did a repulsive thing on 9/11 which cost precious lives and for a short period of time, had catastrophic effects on our economy. But they didn’t win — at least then.

But let’s not forget the real cost of 9/11: Fear and paranoia, increasing suppression of our civil liberties, restrictive travel policies that are affecting our tourism industry, and more of these laws which will directly hamper our ability to be a competitive world leader.

If we continue in this manner, Al-Qaeda can only be pleased —– to take a strong, free, proud and open country and turn it into what it’s rapidly becoming: self-destructively phobic.

Alex

A story in the Guardian today brings up some very interesting tidbits about the widespread use of CCTV in England, whose citizens are the most watched in the world.

The complete ubiquity of these cameras has signaled the end of any sense of privacy for British citizens.

From the article:

“But what if this impeccably liberal Observer journalist wanted to sneak out and buy a copy of the Sun or Nuts magazine so I could look at pictures of girls in their pants without anyone knowing? Or slack off to KFC to load up on the Colonel’s fat-and-carb combo, as a little light relief from the prissy platefuls I have to swallow as a restaurant critic? These aren’t criminal acts, but they are things I might not wish anybody to know about. And yet I probably couldn’t get away with them today because somewhere there will be a camera watching me. I suddenly feel like my private space has shrunk and that the Great British Public has allowed it to happen. And I want to know why.”

But at what cost? Doesn’t even seem to stop crime:

“…a major survey of 14 CCTV schemes published last year showed their impact on local crime rates was either negligible or that crime rates actually went up. At the same time fear of crime has also gone up. Meanwhile, clear-up rates – the number of crimes that the police solve – have gone down.”

There’s even a a program to allow everyday people to subscribe to a special CCTV channel, for only a few pounds a week.

“To see the future of CCTV we need to go to Spitalfields in east London, where the Shoreditch Trust, a local regeneration agency, is piloting a new initiative: CCTV for the masses. Instead of the images only being seen by the likes of Norman Whalley and his team, local residents will be able to watch them, too, on a broadband connection.”

It’s justified as you won’t be able to do all the fun stuff the local cops can do (like pan, tilt, zoom, etc.). According to the article, it’s not “big brother”, it’s described as “little brother”.

Except that little brothers grow up.

Article link here.

Alex Eckelberry
(Thanks Chris)

(Sanyo)

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt loves cameras:

Houston’s police chief on Wednesday proposed placing surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets, shopping malls and even private homes to fight crime during a shortage of police officers.

“I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?” Chief Harold Hurtt told reporters Wednesday at a regular briefing.

Link here via techdirt.

Notice the refrain from the standard police-state siren song: “You have nothing to worry about if you’re innocent!”

Wrong.

I’ve said this before:

The fear of real or perceived threats has historically been the justification for the biggest assaults on civil liberties.

Do we really want to live in a “safe” society that has cameras on every corner? Do we want our every move watched? Is that an exchange for perceived “protection” that we’re really willing to make? Are we so afraid that we have to destroy our own civil liberties?

Furthermore, who is doing the watching? It’s one thing to have a casino watch your every move, or for airport security officers to keep a watch for terrorists, but it’s another to have some anonymous civil servant observe you on every street corner.

Governments always want more control and more oversight. It’s the nature of government. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.

Alex Eckelberry

Information Week has an article on keeping search engine results private:

Word that the government has been seeking search data from Google has struck fear into the hearts of Internet Explorer and Firefox users. Here are five simple steps to keep outsiders from uncovering private information about your Web browsing habits.

Link here via beSpacific.

Alex Eckelberry

British author and former journalist Henry Porter writes on privacy in the Observer.

He’s spot on about the incredibly rapid deterioration of civil liberties in the UK.

The argument for social control goes like this: if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from a national data bank of identity/the terrorism act/the tapping of MPs’ phones/the use of the public-order act to control protest and limit free expression/the new powers of arrest/the retention of DNA samples taken from innocent juveniles.

…Make no mistake – we are wiring up for the police state.

Link here via Catherine.

As I continue to repeat, the fear of real or perceived threats has historically been the justification for the biggest assaults on civil liberties.

Furthermore, I’m truly shocked and concerned by what has been happening over in the UK. It’s not only the privacy issues. For example, just glance through the UK section of overlawyered.com. There’s just an extraordinary encroachment of government into people’s lives, under the guise of “safety” and “security” and political correctness — everything from nursery children being made to stay inside, to cutting down fruit trees (so people won’t slip on falling fruit), to having novelty calendars banned. The list is long. Trust me.

Ironically, I’d be scared to live over there. Really. I’d probably be arrested for blogging something in violation of some ridiculous rule.

How’s that for feeling “safe” and “secure”?

Alex Eckelberry

I had the pleasure of attending a Boxing Day dinner last Monday with some British friends, and had an animated discussion with one Brit about the fact that in the UK, practically of your moves are being recorded on cameras. This started with the discussion of the fact that recently, the UK government has started to catalog and track every vehicles whereabouts by camera.

He told me a story that years ago, a number of people in his town started to go out late dressed in costume and do odd capers in front of the cameras in the early hours of the morning. They were careful to do nothing illegal, but it caught the attention of the local press. It was worthy of a chuckle.

This morning, I caught a Wired story on Ted Richardson’s blog about a group of activists in Austria performing various acts of civil disobedience in front of cameras

From the Wired story:

When the Austrian government passed a law this year allowing police to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras in public spaces without a court order, the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz vowed to watch the watchers.

Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it’s transferred from DVD to VHS tape.

The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices.

And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded.

Link here via Ted Richardson.

It is something that I’ve said before and something I will continue to repeat: The fear of real or perceived threats has historically been the justification for the biggest assaults on civil liberties.

Do we really want to live in a “safe” society that has cameras on every corner? Do we want our every move watched? Is that an exchange for perceived “protection” that we’re really willing to make? Are we so afraid that we have to destroy our own civil liberties?

Furthermore, who is doing the watching? It’s one thing to have a casino watch your every move, or for airport security officers to keep a watch for terrorists, but it’s another to have some anonymous civil servant observe you on every street corner.

Governments always want more control and more oversight. It’s the nature of government. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.

Alex Eckelberry

This is not a political blog and I am absolutely uninterested in making political statements here.

I am, however, a pretty serious privacy and free speech advocate. In other words, it’s never a question of politics. It’s a question of our constitution and other universally agreed-upon rights.

So it is with this non-political disclaimer that I introduce you to today’s headline on the front page of the New York Times that alleges that our government:

“secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.”

Link here.

I have said this before and I will continue to repeat it as a mantra: The fear of real or perceived outside threats has historically been the justification for the biggest assaults on civil liberties.

Be vigilant.

Alex Eckelberry