RE: wifi off to not be tracked

In the past week, my thinking about privacy was influenced by Habermas, Isaac Asimov and Little Fockers. I love my job :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Dubost [mailto:karld@opera.com] 
Sent: 22 April 2012 14:17
To: Mark Lizar
Cc: public-privacy@w3.org mailing list) <public-privacy@w3.org>
Subject: Re: wifi off to not be tracked


Le 22 avr. 2012 à 08:07, Mark Lizar a écrit :
> One question that has come up is weather or not this information collected is personal, in what ways does your wi-fi beceome PII and require data protection?   My contention here is that this tracking data is retro-active, in that, in the future historical tracking data can be made personal.

For the CCTV, you mentioned appropriate signage. Often by this, we mean "stickers", "written words", etc. In our human relationships, one part of the privacy is maintained by the *reciprocity*. There is an amazing quote in the movie "Little Fockers" (2010) [1].

	Jack Byrnes: I'm watching you. 
	Greg Focker: Yeah, well I have eyes too, so I'll be watching you. watching me. 

The signage in case of the CCTV doesn't work, because we do not have the reciprocity (same power) on getting knowledge about these cameras, their identities, the fact they are here, their findability. The issue could be *slightly* tone down if we had maps [2] and remote notification of the cameras. Basically someone, walking around, could on his/her mobile phone (digital gap who can afford a mobile) be notified in advance, that 

* there is a camera in the area, 
* the identity of the camera
* who owns the camera
* where I can get the video feed of the camera
* the lifetime of captured data

There was an interesting artistic/citizen project a few years ago about someone capturing the video feed of these cameras. Some of them transmit their data remotely and are not encrypted. You can access the data with a remote device, video sniffing exactly like wardriving [3]. Another group made use of CCTV to create artistic movies [4]

There are plenty of issues with all these notifications be for CCTV, cookies, WIFI bases, including

* Be aware in advance. (I know that George I do not like is usually in this part of town so I don't go there)
* Density in space or time (In this little village of two houses, George knows each time I put the foot out)


Still the reciprocity is needed. If we want surveillance devices (cameras, computers, softwares) be part of the society, then they need an id, which is symmetrically accessible. 


And in stretching a little bit, we could take the Three Laws [5]

* A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
* A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
* A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.


and replace robots by bots, bugs, surveillance devices and give it a turn of human and its data. 



[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Fockers
[2]: http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/Services/TransportStreets/Parking/CctvCameraLocationsMap.htm
[3]: http://www.p2pnet.net/story/675
[4]: http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/sousveillance/index.php?page=3
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

-- 
Karl Dubost - http://dev.opera.com/
Developer Relations, Opera Software

Received on Monday, 23 April 2012 08:02:05 UTC