[they can use active tracking of you] for various 'public benefits' (such as antiterrorism, antipedophilia, anti-anti-gov't thinking, and monitoring any
Somewhere in the bowels of an active location transponder discussion on the wearables list... Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text X-Sender: minsky@mailhub.media.mit.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 14:29:19 -0500 To: wearables@media.mit.edu From: Marvin Minsky <minsky@media.mit.edu> Subject: Re: location vs. tracking "David P. Reed" <dpreed@reed.com> worries: personal, non-business interactions, among employees. ) Did you mean to include antiterrorism?
There's always a plausible reason that can be used to override whatever privacy policies and safeguards are designed into such a system.
If the reasons really are plausible, then those overrides should be added to the system design.
It's sad that our public institutions now tend to view everyone as a potentially evil person...
Do you mean all public institutions? Perhaps, instead, we should try to design tracking systems that include public review mechanisms -- so that whenever anyone (e.g., your employer) accesses your record against the privacy policy, they'll be subject to legal sanctions and damages. The issues of privacy are pretty complicated: for example, if someone has been furtively following you, some future technology might permit you to authorize someone you trust to find out who it is. Ed Fredkin once asked a number of people how they would feel about a new device with which you could select almost anyone in the world, and make the device produce a loud noise near them. They all objected angrily. Then Ed said, "It already exists. It's called the telephone." --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>