Cory Doctorow is an entertaining speaker and is one of the few orators that can express coherently the issues of privacy and personal freedom in our increasingly digital times. Below is a recent talk he gave in which he says:

As a member of the Walkman generation, I have made peace with the fact that I will require a hearing aid long before I die, and of course, it won’t be a hearing aid, it will be a computer I put in my body,” Doctorow explains, “So when I get into a car – a computer I put my body into – with my hearing aid – a computer I put inside my body – I want to know that these technologies are not designed to keep secrets from me, and to prevent me from terminating processes on them that work against my interests.

There is new legislation in Louisiana that in certain cases prevents citizens from trading “legal tender” (specifically cash) for goods.

shall not enter into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of junk or used or secondhand property

This will undoubtedly make its way through the federal court system and it will be interesting to follow, particularly in that the legislation applies to lawful transactions. There is no question to the lawfulness of the transaction, the law simply makes unlawful the trade of cash for goods in certain lawful transactions.

Read the article by Thad D. Ackel, Jr. Esq.

In addition to stifling business, the law includes a tangible attack on privacy. From the article liked above:

For every transaction a secondhand dealer must obtain the seller’s personal information such as their name, address, driver’s license number and the license plate number of the vehicle in which the goods were delivered.

There is a theme that this legislation adheres to which is making its way into many aspects of our lives (think airport security). It seems Uncle Sams’ believes it best to treat everyone as a criminal because someone is a criminal.

Situations like these always seem to bring me back to the simplicity of our founding fathers ideas of government. At the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801 he said:

a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

I love how simple that is and how it exposes our distance from it today. I corresponded briefly with Thad Ackel and promised I’d make this post and promote his efforts to see this legislation corrected.

Do you use Dropbox? Have you read their new recently changed TOS? The following quote is from their “Your Stuff & Your Privacy” section and seems to me to have some far reaching implications that could cause some users major legal trouble. Particularly the last sentence of the quote. Think about that and the stuff you have in your folders. Additionally, the bulk of the statement regarding granting them sublicenseable rights undoubtedly relates to them making your data visible to you and those you share your information with. I suspect that this is with the best of intentions and results in broad language recommended by lawyers but, it is not restricted in any way. So the result is that it matters not what their intentions for your “stuff” are. They can do what they want with it. Just imagine if Facebook buys Dropbox at some point.

My opinion is, be informed and be cautious. It’s ok to use these services but only once you understand the consequences of doing so.

We sometimes need your permission to do what you ask us to do with your stuff (for example, hosting, making public, or sharing your files). By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent we think it necessary for the Service. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission.

I like this. I particularly like the idea of this being able to form a mesh. In my opinion it will be the mesh network that we will eventually rely on for the free dissemination of information. There are many other projects out there that can be aggregated to form the mesh. I mentioned the mesh-potato in the past. There are also many consumer grade wireless routers that can be adapted to the mesh task with freely available custom firmware. I use the WRT54GL and Tomato at home now. Its brilliant.

Here are some other mesh network related sites:

• Roofnet at MIT
• Wing Project
• Meraki
• SMesh

Our governments abuse of its power is nothing new and it will not end. It is in the nature of any large governing bureaucracy be it corporate, civil or federal. Clearly the frenetic pace which technology has advanced over the last couple of decades has afforded the government an opportunity to take advantage of a gap in the public’s understanding of the true nature of these technologies and the potential consequences of their use. Because I’m a bit if a geek it’s clear to me on a daily basis how little people understand about the technology they use and depend on on a daily basis. It may not be so important to understand the workings of your refrigerator but when it comes to the way you share and communicate all aspects of your life you really need to understand whats going on. Most of us are voluntarily contributing to a massive information store that is the result of such daily activities as using cell phones, texting, internet phone calling, emailing, credit cards, grocery store discount cards, movie rentals, online purchases, ATM withdrawals, DMV auto inspections, EZ-Pass toll payments, airline/train travel and more. Some of these situations seem benign, however all of them result in some amount of data being collected, transmitted and stored on a computer in a database somewhere. Do you know who knows every item you purchased at Shop Rite for the last 5 years you’ve been using your membership savings card there? Did you even know that someone has that information? Perhaps you don’t care, after all its only a grocery list. But take all the databases for all the activities I mentioned and start putting them together and your life story is suddenly patent knowledge. What you read, what you eat, how much gas you put in your car and where you go, how much cash you tend to have in your purse and the people you talk to most on weekly basis, how much money you owe and how much you drink, what kind if driver you are and how long you have owned your home. Such is the way we exist to lesser or greater degrees but we do live is a digital world and digits are very cheap to store and very valuable depending on the end user. Life with these amenities is quite nice. It affords many conveniences and efficiencies. The problem is that we trade our privacy for convenience and often without the understanding that we are doing so. When was the last time you agreed to a terms of service by clicking that “I Agree” button? Did you actually read the entire “Terms of Service” document? Never. Try it sometime, you will be shocked at what you are agreeing to. The truth is, in most cases, we don’t control or even own any of this information and we have expressly given away all rights to it forever.

In this recent article by the EFF there are some examples of how privacy can be violated by the government and your service providers. The article focuses on abuses but what strikes me most is that much of the abuse is facilitated by what I hope is the general misunderstanding of the tech we use every day rather than a blatant disregard for our own privacy as a citizenry.

This portion of the report referenced in the article caught my eye and highlighted my concern.

In over half of all NSL violations reviewed by EFF, the private entity receiving the NSL either provided more information than requested or turned over information without receiving a valid legal justification from the FBI. Companies were all too willing to comply with the FBI’s requests, and — in many cases — the Bureau readily incorporated the over-produced information into its investigatory databases. For example, in a violation reported in 2006, the FBI requested email header information for two email addresses used by a U.S. person. In response, the email service provider returned two CDs containing the full content of all emails in the accounts. The FBI eventually (and properly) sequestered the CDs, notified the email provider of the overproduction, and re-issued an NSL for the originally requested header information; but, in response to the second NSL, the email provider again provided the FBI with the full content of all emails in the accounts.

The failure in the bureaucratic process outlined in this example here is completely preventable, not by a more lawfully compliant FBI or a more adept service provider but a more informed and better equipped citizen. Like Uncle Ben told Peter, “with great power comes great responsibility”, the information age is our superpower. Let’s not destroy ourselves with it.