Americans are a bit STUPID about privacy.
1. We don't want the government to know anything about us. But the government does know, but we have made it nearly impossible for various agencies to share any of that information. That means there are dozens of databases with your "private" information. It is very expensive to maintain all those databases and the likelihood of errors is dramatically increased. Whose privacy are we protecting that way?
2. We don't want our public record data available to just anyone! (This is my favorite bit of insanity). Those records are called "public" precisely because the data contained is NOT private. It should be absolutely public and easily accessed. One does not and should not need a permissible purpose for accessing any public record.
3. We live in a society where screening tenants is accepted, but the idea of screening a landlord is a serious breach of privacy.
4. We worry about government surveillance and dismiss private surveillance. You are being watched 24 hours a day by people who want to sell you something. The government makes mistakes with their surveillance from time to time, but they (mostly) need approval before they can track your habits. There are more or less no such constraints on marketers. But we don't hear a huge outcry about that invasion of privacy (except from the geek world).
We are upside down with our privacy concerns. The more we are trying to keep secret, the more likely the black hats win. We end up protecting their identities while they go about their nefarious business. We are concerned with protecting that which is not worth protecting and not protecting the information that is worth protecting. Why?
Well, that would be the black hats, of course. They are getting their message out to misdirect our concerns to keep themselves hidden. That has two benefits for them. They are hidden, obviously, but it also makes the government the bad guy, so any kind of regulation is slow to happen or ineffective.
"There's burglars in the bedroom while your fiddlin' in the parlor."
I want a national id card. I want a number for every single citizen that does nothing but identify them. I want that card to have a magnetic strip. Use that card to identify yourself for the purposes of using a credit card (or any other legal transaction) and the other party can swipe that ID and have a picture of you show up from the national database. Positive ID. Every time. All the time.
I want a government run, national public record database that is easily accessible by anyone for any reason. (Some data, under certain circumstances, could be suppressed by court order.)
I want a government run, national criminal and financial databases that can be accessed under certain conditions by those with permissible uses. I want the person who is the subject of the record to have free access at any time at all. And I want response error correction available. I want every inquiry to be listed with who, when and why. I want every contribution (creditor submissions, for instance) to be fully disclosed to the subject of the record. No more Big Three credit bureaus.
I want any contribution (direct or otherwise) to any political campaign to be included in a public database. And I want it to have a serious "chilling affect." I want the power brokers in the country to be fully in the open. I want everyone to notice that they have strings be able to see who is pulling them.
I want every elected official (and their top staff) to have their work related calendars publicly accessible. I want to know who my elected officials are meeting with by name and who they are representing. And if that person is a lobbyist, I want that listed also.
We are so concerned with keeping private that which isn't really a secret at all, that we hand a great amount of power over to those who lurk in those shadows. We are being led around by the nose while believing that we are the masters of our universes.
1. We don't want the government to know anything about us. But the government does know, but we have made it nearly impossible for various agencies to share any of that information. That means there are dozens of databases with your "private" information. It is very expensive to maintain all those databases and the likelihood of errors is dramatically increased. Whose privacy are we protecting that way?
2. We don't want our public record data available to just anyone! (This is my favorite bit of insanity). Those records are called "public" precisely because the data contained is NOT private. It should be absolutely public and easily accessed. One does not and should not need a permissible purpose for accessing any public record.
3. We live in a society where screening tenants is accepted, but the idea of screening a landlord is a serious breach of privacy.
4. We worry about government surveillance and dismiss private surveillance. You are being watched 24 hours a day by people who want to sell you something. The government makes mistakes with their surveillance from time to time, but they (mostly) need approval before they can track your habits. There are more or less no such constraints on marketers. But we don't hear a huge outcry about that invasion of privacy (except from the geek world).
We are upside down with our privacy concerns. The more we are trying to keep secret, the more likely the black hats win. We end up protecting their identities while they go about their nefarious business. We are concerned with protecting that which is not worth protecting and not protecting the information that is worth protecting. Why?
Well, that would be the black hats, of course. They are getting their message out to misdirect our concerns to keep themselves hidden. That has two benefits for them. They are hidden, obviously, but it also makes the government the bad guy, so any kind of regulation is slow to happen or ineffective.
"There's burglars in the bedroom while your fiddlin' in the parlor."
I want a national id card. I want a number for every single citizen that does nothing but identify them. I want that card to have a magnetic strip. Use that card to identify yourself for the purposes of using a credit card (or any other legal transaction) and the other party can swipe that ID and have a picture of you show up from the national database. Positive ID. Every time. All the time.
I want a government run, national public record database that is easily accessible by anyone for any reason. (Some data, under certain circumstances, could be suppressed by court order.)
I want a government run, national criminal and financial databases that can be accessed under certain conditions by those with permissible uses. I want the person who is the subject of the record to have free access at any time at all. And I want response error correction available. I want every inquiry to be listed with who, when and why. I want every contribution (creditor submissions, for instance) to be fully disclosed to the subject of the record. No more Big Three credit bureaus.
I want any contribution (direct or otherwise) to any political campaign to be included in a public database. And I want it to have a serious "chilling affect." I want the power brokers in the country to be fully in the open. I want everyone to notice that they have strings be able to see who is pulling them.
I want every elected official (and their top staff) to have their work related calendars publicly accessible. I want to know who my elected officials are meeting with by name and who they are representing. And if that person is a lobbyist, I want that listed also.
We are so concerned with keeping private that which isn't really a secret at all, that we hand a great amount of power over to those who lurk in those shadows. We are being led around by the nose while believing that we are the masters of our universes.
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