Even though DC faces a budget crisis and there are radical inequities in our public education system, the city is looking to expand its surveillance program. As I have mentioned before, there are strong evidence that CCTV surveillance doesn’t lower the crime rate and doesn’t add to the public good. Hopefully, the city council will put a stop to this but I doubt it will.
Tag: surveillance
Trip report from the Privacy Symposium
This is a cross-post from Burton Group’s Identity Blog.
BTW, I am moderating a panel at Defrag. If you use “ig1” as a registration code, you get $200 off the registration fee. Hope to see you there!
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A few weeks ago I was up in Cambridge at the Privacy Summer Symposium. Gathered together on Harvard’s campus were a collection of lawyers, activists, government officials, and privacy officers discussing various aspects of privacy. It was certainly a bit of a change for me to be in a non-tech heavy conference. Besides hearing people like the chairman of the FTC, William Kovacic, speak, I got to witness the launch of EPIC’s Privacy ’08 campaign. Further, I got to hear Jeffery Rosen share his thoughts on potential privacy “Chernobyls,” events and trends that will fundamentally alter our privacy in the next 3 to 10 years.
Privacy Chernobyl #1 – Targeted Ads
We’ve already seen enough concern over targeted ads to trigger Congressional hearings. The Energy and Commerce Committee in the House has been asking ISPs and advertising providers to answer questions as to how they track and use clickstream data. Not be left out, the EU has notified the UK that it must respond to an inquiry whether the Phorm system violated EU data privacy laws. From NebuAd to Phorm to DoubleClick and beyond, targeted ads are getting more and more targeted. The real concern for Rosen is the downstream use of the collected clickstream data. For example, my ISP may not directly do anything overly odious with the information about which sites I visit, but if they sell that information, the 2nd and 3rd generation data users may bit a more nefarious.
Privacy Chernobyl #2 – Personally identifiable search term leak
The knowledge of who I am and what I search for can be used in a variety of ways: from serving voyeuristic desires to putting me in a compromising situation. Without being able to provide the context for the searches, I could be judged by a people like a potential employer, dating service, or insurance provider unfairly, and these judgments can have a real impact on my life. As YouTube has to disclose data for its court case, I have to imagine there are some people who really don’t want identifiable searches being disclosed into the public record. As more and more of our web browsing is search driven, the potential impact of this problem will only grow.
Privacy Chernobyl #3 – Unexpected data exposure on Facebook
There are two concerns to this issue. The first concern is one that Rosen categorized as data exposure in unexpected ways. I may have tailored my Facebook profile’s privacy settings to what I think strikes a decent balance between my desire to connect to people and maintaining some level of privacy. But what is unclear is how Facebook application developers are using my data, including clickstream data. I don’t expect to hear a friend tell me that I “friended” a product whose ad appeared in Facebook for her, and I certainly never want to hear that this has happened.
Poorly spent funds: Surveillance cameras in DC
I am especially sensitive to this as one of these camera units is a block and half from my house. Questions that come to mind are:
- How long will the District retain footage from these cameras?
- Who will maintain this footage: law enforcement or emergency management?
- Can I as a citizen request to see footage as part of a FOIA request?
- Will INS/FBI/ATF/other Federal law enforcement agencies have access to these cameras on an ongoing basis?
As I mentioned there’s one of these cameras a block and half from my house. It sits on a very heavily trafficked corner. People stand there waiting for the bus. There is a huge amount of vehicular traffic that goes right by it. There is a 7-11 right there and there is always some flavor of law enforcement officer there. There is rare street crime in the area and when it does happen it happens blocks away on darker corners. There is no way this camera prevents crime in any way shape or form.
If the real goal is to prevent crime, instead of spending the $10 million to set this system up, put that cash to funding more neighborhood cops who walk a beat.