What's left of right of privacy?

I remember sometime in the 70s, when I was kid, a big controversy erupting when it was revealed that either the CIA or the FBI, or both, conducted domestic reconnaissance programs, spying on average US citizens and then amassing the private information in secretly held files. People were outraged by the abuse of what was back then considered the fundamental civil right of privacy and I believe, though can't state as fact, that the Freedom of Information act was in some part a result of the scandal. In the 70s, government snooping into the private lives of citizens was considered unconscionable; boy, have times changed.

Nowadays, thanks to technological progress, there is very little personal information that isn't known by either the government or Google. The information age, heralded by the personal computer and entrenched with the explosion of digital technology that followed, has made every activity and interaction an information gathering opportunity, or at least it seems that way. Buying an extension cord at Radio Shack requires what amounts to a five minute survey on your spending habits before the clerk can open the register to give you your 37 cents in change; using a credit or debit card to pay for something, it turns out, is a more efficient and extensive variation on the scheme in that it bypasses variables such as an individual's reluctance to share or, as in my case, intentional vagueness and obfuscation, by recording every detail of every transaction.

The purpose of this information gathering, of course, is that with the digital revolution, information has been commoditized; so now when they make a profit on the sale to you, they can make a second profit on the sale of you. Any objections one my have to the collection and sale of personal information is rendered futile when the most mundane of routine but necessary tasks is complicit in the process; and most people don't object because the technology is framed as a benefit to the consumer, something that facilitates the routine and/or improves the quality of life.

The integration of the Internet with our lives has also contributed to the change of attitude concerning privacy. As much as it is a useful and beneficial tool, it too is also a means of gathering and disseminating an individual's personal information. It perhaps is even potentially more pernicious in that it operates more elusively in the background while at the same time the user operates, to a varying degree depending on individual savvy, under a false sense of anonymity. What one is willing to reveal about themselves on the Internet is vastly different than in a department store or supermarket.

Predictably, with this kind of technology, some people have found ways to use it in ways that are more damaging to the individual. Now that information can be monetarily quantified, it can be stolen, and indeed, identity theft is the newest cutting edge in crime, causing much media hand wringing. Local news, magazines and newspapers have offered countless stories about its horrors; a cottage industry has even sprung up offering identity theft protection services.
What doesn't get talked about much in the media, or interpersonally, and is more nefarious than the increase in junk mail caused by businesses selling personal information, is the government surveillance of private citizens. I remember the scandal of the 70s and learned what governments are capable of and what the individual has the right to expect and demand of the government. Since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, 9/11, and the subsequent legislative actions, most notably the Patriot Act, there has been no transparency or oversight or even information on government activity. That is scary and hopefully that will change with Barak Obama.

In the meantime, as someone who is obsessively private, I long ago developed a mechanism that is part denial and part ignorance for coping with this nightmarish situation; the alternative would be permanently paralyzing paranoia.

Smile...

Copy fight: The right to copy (use), not copy (cheat)

<-- In Their Own Words: The copyrighted raise their voice to explain their predicament.



I have an artist friend named Jim whose ever-smiling face becomes a stony grimace at the mention of the name Disney. This change of face is followed by a diatribe on Disney's marketing of its animated films, particularly the television advertisements warning of the last chance to buy a Disney "classic" before it goes back in the vault for seven more years. Jim finds this bewildering and stupid and as an artist can't or won't accept the economics of manipulating supply and demand. Disney's pugnacious proprietorship of its product is legendary, outdistancing even Mattel's protective patriarchy of Barbie in its extremes; this is the corporation that managed an act of Congress to change copyright law, extending protection from 50 years after the owner's death to 70, just as Mickey and friends were about to celebrate their emancipation on the 50th anniversary of Walt's demise.

I have no problem with Disney's parental angst over little Mickey and his friends leaving home to make their way in the world, nor with the company's attempts to keep that from happening; I've never liked the little beast, and I shudder to think of a future ubiquitous with cheap Mickey Mouse memorabilia. They created it, let them keep it (and keep the kid off the streets). On the other hand, Disney has made a ****load of money appropriating cultural artifacts such as folk lore and fairy tales, as well as an author's original works that have passed into the public domain, adapting and animating them into "Disney films". Snow White and Cinderella, to name two, are stories that were told in many different cultures going back hundreds of years; The Little Mermaid, is a story by Hans Christian Anderson that is now public domain. Once appropriated, Disney acts aggressively and vigorously to retain as much control and ownership as possible over what is essentially intellectual property owned by you and me. Expecting Disney to recognize that it has drunk far more than its fair share from the community well, though, is, fittingly, living in a fairy tale.

To be fair, Disney, as one of the most recognized brands in the world, is the most obvious example of the increasing corporate ownership and control of the culture and its intellectual and artistic products. It is one of a handful of giant media corporations that own most of the commercial media production and distribution in the country. What that means for you and me is that quite literally, they control our, the public's, access to entertainment, information and knowledge. If as the saying goes, knowledge is power, then the big media conglomerates have it in spades, and you don't; that can change, though.

A significant aspect of Internet technology is that, for the most part, it is accessible to everyone, providing the individual with potent tools with which to participate democratically in culture. This allows those of like mind, previously isolated by geography or ideas and opinions contrary to the dominant class' interest, to connect, communicate and organize. Currently, resistance to the big media corporations' domination of our creative culture is loosely organizing around what is referred to as the Free Culture movement. The movement, related to the free software and open source movements, takes its name from the the book by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig and is associated with the organization, Creative Commons, which offers a more flexible alternative to copyright licensing. College students, in particular, have taken on the cause, forming the organization Students for Free Culture with over 30 chapters on college campuses across the United States.

Get empowered: express yourself, get involved.

Unethical ATTempts

Six or seven years ago, when ATT was in the cable business and held the contract for San Francisco, I switched my telephone, television and Internet services to a small company named RCN; the company had won approval from the city of San Francisco to begin building a fiber optic network and my neighborhood was one of the first finished. At first, I balked at making the switch until RCN, in addition to offering a one-month free trial, guaranteed that they would take care of the details involved in changing service providers and, if I chose not to stay with the company after one month, they would switch everything back; I wouldn't have to do a thing, not even make a single phone call. I signed a contract giving them the authority to act on my behalf and have been with RCN ever since.
About three months after making the switch, I began to receive threatening letters from ATT demanding payment for the three months I had been with RCN. I'll skip the details of the hours of pull-your-hair-out-want-to-scream-and-break-something frustration I spent on the phone trying to sort the situation out; the dispute came to a stalemate during a phone call between customer service supervisors from both companies, with, unbeknownst to ATT, me silently listening. Silent, that is, until I became so outraged by ATT"s attitude that I had to say something. It ended when I managed to get the ATT supervisor to admit that ATT did not care that RCN had proof that I was an RCN customer during the disputed time and that I did not receive any services at all from ATT and that as far as ATT was concerned, I owed them and they would continue to pursue payment.
What do you do when a corporation is so entrenched in the market and so large that it feels entitled to abuse, or as I prefer to view it, attempt to extort consumers with impunity? Not much, but I vowed to remember the outrage and never to do business with ATT again. I couple years later, I received a bill for $75 from ATT thanking me for opening an account and welcoming me to the ATT family. The charge was for a one minute call to the Cayman Islands using the ATT network. ATT claimed that my computer had made the call, despite the fact that I did not have a dial up modem. This time the customer service agent said that ATT would graciously forgive the debt this one time, but in the future I would be held responsible for all charges; I told the agent that she should make a note that I do not and will not ever do business with ATT and that they should block me from accessing any of their networks. If they fail to do so, they are responsible for all charges, not me. Of course, she sputtered and flailed about for a response, but corporations are unable to cope with alternative paradigms, no matter how reasonable or logical, and they certainly don't empower their customer service employees to operate outside the approved script.
The purpose of sharing these stories is that ATT is one of the companies that is attempting to use technology to control and configure the Internet in such a way as to best exploit it for maximum profit; and they don't care how it affects others with a stake or an interest in the future of the Internet. Whether or not, and to what extent, these corporate interests will be allowed a priority claim to the Internet for private commercial use in order to enrich private interests is one issue that falls under the term Net Neutrality. I've not forgotten the outrageous treatment I have received from ATT and have gotten involved with some grassroots groups fighting corporate attempt to appropriate the Internet for private gain. Check out freepress.net and savetheinternet.

Save the Internet, Save the World!