noteworthy wrote:
Eric Holder:

As a lifelong advocate for the protection of privacy rights, I agree that government should not have the ability to intrude unreasonably on an individual's privacy. But I also understand that law enforcement must have the technical tools to keep pace with the more sophisticated criminals we now must confront. The recent wiretap change is a relatively minor adjustment to an existing statute that serves to protect privacy rather than intrude upon it.

Noam Cohen's friend:

Privacy is serious. It is serious the moment the data gets collected, not the moment it is released.

Bush:

First of all, we have said that whatever we do ... will be legal.

Josh Dugan:

Despite what many are content to believe, the American experience with quartering may not be over. It might have just begun.

Okay, let's just pretend that the world that Eric Holder lives in exists. For a moment, that individuals have "privacy" and that the State does not violate that right (defined as people being able to keep the State from amassing information about them which it does not have an immediate and reasonable reason to have). So how have we "solved" the problem?

There's nothing that says that private entities cannot amass information about you. In fact, most people want them too. So that when I call Dell Technical Support, they already know who I am, what system I have, what software I'm running, what versions, etc. So we don't waste time. "Charge your card on file Mr. Kozicki?" "Yes please." Done.

So there are two things that are happening and you don't want either one of them to NOT happen:

1) Data liquidity. You want the data from Dell Technical Support to flow over to Microsoft, for help on that problem with Windows Vista. You want that to get added to your XBox Live profile, so you don't have to re-key it, or maintain it, when you get a new mobo with the Core 2 Duo 3GHz chips in it. More importantly, you want your health care data to be liquid, so that the hospital ER knows that you already have a prescription to Coumadin so they don't knock you up with heparin and kill you like Randy Quaid's kids. Data liquidity will save lives, increase trust, create transparency, and most of all, lower costs. Because data is cheap. It's even cheaper than cheap. It's more expensive to NOT let data flow. What matters is the information, and that has real value. You cannot stop this trend because information runs the world and it wants to be free.

2) The State producing outcomes. The US is not the only country in the world where the populace wants services that are competitive, trustworthy, and affordable. With our grandchildren's children now mortgaged to the hilt, this is becoming ever increasingly necessary, not just desired. Government, whatever your version of it, and probably BECAUSE it is so intertwined in our globalized society, needs to function effectively, efficiently, and with focus. That means using tools, techniques, and talent that had previously been soaked up by commercial endeavors. Innovations and high performing processes are going to be expected. The government can no longer refuse to take debit cards, or allow online payments, or make you wait for 10 days to see the result of some query. So the government has to play in the same world we all do, and that will be a world of data liquidity. There's nothing that should PREVENT the government from taking the real data it has on you (license plate, driving record, tax records, etc) and combining that with whatever else is out there, in order to yield a faster and more efficient service.

How can you demand privacy (which is to say, I don't want anyone amassing information about me without a need to know basis at the moment you need to know) if both of these conditions exist? And they will absolutely exist, if not already. I only see one way, and it is not practical nor even possible at this time. That would be that the individual owns their data, and it is only queried AT THE TIME IT IS NEEDED, and only by your express permission or action. For example, the government needs to access your address in order to mail you a letter about your property taxes. They will query you for this information (and possibly more). You will have to give express approval to this one entity for this bit of data and only this bit. No more. One and done. This only works if a) everyone is always on, b) storage of this data is indestructable and easy to manage on the part of the individual, and c) there are significant trust relationships across the net to ensure that we are who we say we are and no one else can listen in on the conversation. I don't see that happening any time soon, so wither the illusion of privacy in the meantime.

RE: Clear and Roving Danger of Wiretaps