Re: Reciprocity of knowledge vs Power of abuse

Hi Karl, 

do we already celebrate an achievement if gadgets don't track us secretly but 
openly? Tracking being secret adds to the harm. But what means secret? Your 
GSM provider knows more than latitude:

http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data-protection-malte-spitz

And the GSM provider doesn't tell you. But it is common knowledge that your 
GSM provider knows. Alma Whitten tries desperately to demystify things by 
telling us what Google knows. Do we believe it?

Access to one's own information is one of the cornerstones of the democratic 
functionality of privacy. But the issue is a technical one. Imagine we would 
all try to access all out data and ask Apple for the complete trail of all 
we've ever done on itunes etc.. I think companies are really afraid of the 
overhead created by electronic access rights. It is also a problem of identity 
management. I may have some profile that has a pseudonym and the company 
really doesn't know the identity behind it. By accessing this profile, a 
individual identifies herself and thus makes the less harmful pseudonymous 
profile into a fully identified one. We may remedy that situation with trusted 
third parties and zero knowledge proofs, but those solutions are still a long 
way ahead of us.

In the meantime, I would love to get my data from the telcos without being 
forced to litigate my way through like Malte Spitz did in Germany (where you 
actually _can_ get your data against cost contribution)

Best, 

Rigo

On Monday 11 April 2011 18:38:36 Karl Dubost wrote:
>     In eddology • by edd dumbill, I switched on…
>     At http://eddology.com/post/4528170109/latitude-tracking
> 
[...]
>     This might seem creepy, until you realize your
>     phone company and law enforcement agencies have
>     access to this data whenever they want. So it’s
>     only fair I should have access
>

Received on Wednesday, 13 April 2011 09:29:15 UTC