Loss of Privacy

The pentagon has plans to build a blimp that will fly for ten years, spying on everything.  It will be capable of detailed radar surveillance of vehicles, planes, and people.

The 450-foot-long craft would give the U.S. military a better understanding of an adversary’s movements, habits and tactics, officials said. And the ability to constantly monitor small movements in a wide area — the Afghanistan- Pakistan border, for example — would dramatically improve military intelligence.

It could also be used in the USA.  They just like to test things in the Middle East first.

It has always been dangerous to speak freely, but countries that claim to have free speech, yet prohibit certain individuals from even entering their country are hypocrites. Whether or not you agree with all that Geert Wilders says, free speech and free societies should allow him to speak his concerns.

Justice Antonin Scalia questioned the need to for more protections on people’s privacy.  A law professor at Fordham University assigned his students the task of proving just why individual privacy is so important.

His class turned in a 15-page dossier that included not only Scalia’s home address, home phone number and home value, but his food and movie preferences, his wife’s personal e-mail address and photos of his grandchildren

Reidenberg tells the ABA Journal that the information gathered by his class about Scalia was all “publicly available, for free,” and wasn’t posted on the Internet by the class or otherwise further publicized. He views the dossier-gathering about a public figure as a legitimate classroom exercise intended to spark discussion about privacy law, and says he and the class didn’t intend to offend Scalia.

But Scalia is angry about the entire project, presumably missing the entire point of the class assignment while continuing to believe that what’s good for you isn’t good for him, so you shouldn’t do it to him.

“When there are so few privacy protections for secondary use of personal information, that information can be used in many troubling ways,” he writes in an e-mail to the ABA Journal. “A class assignment that illustrates this point is not one of them. Indeed, the very fact that Justice Scalia found it objectionable and felt compelled to comment underscores the value and legitimacy of the exercise.”

The students in this case only obtained information that was freely available to anyone willing to do a little research and legwork.  If they had gone the route of many semi-legal pay sites online, they could have obtained social security numbers, pay slips, and bank and credit card statements.  Justice Scalia seemed to be ignorant of the fact that so much personal information is available without a person’s permission.  This is precisely why his comments needed to addressed.

Yet, he continues to rely on the belief that, just because something is legal doesn’t mean you should do it.  He naively contends that people shouldn’t take your information just because it’s available.  This is a dangerous stance to take.  Yes, it was done in poor judgment, but what happens when people who don’t care about poor or good judgment take your information anyway?  Assignments, such as these, are sometimes necessary to get the point across.  One can talk forever about the issue, but those with the power to do something about it rarely act swiftly until an incident actually occurs.

There is a growing need for personal information to be kept private.  The secondary use of information is out there because the government allows the sale of personal information from one entity to another.  At some point, something that shouldn’t be public information, will be.

For another, similar case, read the interesting story of the Congressman who helped create the TSA screenings, yet was angered when the guidelines he helped create were used upon him.

Saudi Arabia already blocks tens of thousands of Internet sites. Now, it wants to place secret cameras in its cafés to ensure that government guidelines are being followed.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said today that the Saudi Ministry of Interior has imposed severe restrictions on the Saudi Internet Cafes, requiring owners of Internet Cafes to install censorship secret cameras inside cyber cafes, to register users names and identity numbers, in addition to limiting the use of Internet on the Café’s phone lines, as well as other measures to impose more restrictions on Internet users, in a country known for its restrictive repressive policy and its continuous hostility towards freedom of using this important tool.

It is worth mentioning that the Interior Ministry has issued 8 basic instructions to owners of Internet Cafes on 15 April, requiring them;

1. To install censorship secret cameras.
2. To prepare electronic or manual registration of users and identities.
3. The prohibition of using prepaid Internet cards and Satellite dishes to access the Internet without authorization of the competent authorities.
4. Prohibition of using any Internet device unless indicated in the certificate issued by the service provider.
5. The supervisor in the Cyber Café must be Saudi.
6. Those under 18 must not be allowed to use the Internet.
7. The cafes opening hours must be the same as other commercial shops, therefore the Café must close at 00:00.
8. All phones to be used in the Café must be under the Café’s name, “neither the owner nor any other person.”

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information affirmed that “These decisions do not go with the announcements of Saudi Arabia who claims it is thriving for reform, such decision is more like establishing a small prison inside each Internet café, and sadly, it indicates how the Saudi Interior Ministry perceives Internet users.”

It is to be noted that Internet users in Saudi Arabia, who actually exceed seven million users, most of them suffer from the tremendous expansion in the repressive policy adopted by the Communication and Information Technology Institution, who controls the use of the Internet In Saudi Arabia, and it now censors and blocks web sites in general, and also censors freedom of navigation, which proves that Saudi Arabia is one of the most suppressive countries with regard to freedom of Press and the Internet.