Creating privacy crises: Society hacking
In the composition of my last message, I was thinking in the back of my mind about how we could foment an information privacy crisis. This could very well be a Good Thing, a societal hack to serve as a wake- up call. At the HOPE conference, there was someone selling CD-ROMs of the DMV records for Oregon for $125. The same folks promise to add more states soon: next in line is Texas. Perhaps one could generate a privacy crisis by collecting that information and conducting a mass mailing to every person in the database: "we have this information on you. So could anybody with $125. Call your congress critter and complain." Some people don't consider their DMV records critical -- so perhaps a mailing from a company of their credit history would open their eyes (More effort than the $125 + postage, but probably a better yield). It's just a thought and it would require some amount of time & money, but it's a doable hack with finite resources. Thoughts? Is this totally off the wall, or do y'all think that somebody with a small but not tiny amount of money would be into doing this? -- L. Todd Masco | "Large prime numbers imply arrest." - Previously meaningless cactus@bb.com | grammatically correct sentence. Now...
In the composition of my last message, I was thinking in the back of my mind about how we could foment an information privacy crisis. This could very well be a Good Thing, a societal hack to serve as a wake- up call.
Extremely. Speaking as someone who derives particular joy from culture jamming in all of its forms, it sounds like a great thing to do if it is done appropriately.
At the HOPE conference, there was someone selling CD-ROMs of the DMV records for Oregon for $125. The same folks promise to add more states soon: next in line is Texas.
It's a good idea; especially since the information is public record an is available from the state government on tape for a reasonable fee. Unfortunately, from what I've heard from people who actually have the database (for Florida), it works out to be several gigabytes of data, which is unfortunately too large to fit on a CD-ROM unless severely compressed.
Perhaps one could generate a privacy crisis by collecting that information and conducting a mass mailing to every person in the database: "we have this information on you. So could anybody with $125. Call your congress critter and complain."
Perhaps - but it is extremely likely that the local government would take a rather dim view of it. The DMV record data is probably restricted by some clause or other to non-marketing purposes. Before trying something like that I would suggest speaking to a lawyer or being willing to have large legal problems.
Some people don't consider their DMV records critical -- so perhaps a mailing from a company of their credit history would open their eyes (More effort than the $125 + postage, but probably a better yield).
This would definately get you thrown in jail and your CBI account killed. It's a violation of CBI's use agreement and also against the fair credit reporting act.
It's just a thought and it would require some amount of time & money, but it's a doable hack with finite resources.
I think there's a happy medium where you can shake people up without going to jail in the process. :)
Thoughts? Is this totally off the wall, or do y'all think that somebody with a small but not tiny amount of money would be into doing this?
Yes. It's doable, but once again, I would seriously suggest a different approach. -jon ( THEY CAN STOP THE PARTY, BUT THEY CAN'T STOP THE FUTURE ) ( --------------------[ entropy@intnet.net ]------------- )
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Perhaps one could generate a privacy crisis by collecting that information and conducting a mass mailing to every person in the database: "we have this information on you. So could anybody with $125. Call your congress critter and complain."
[...]
It's just a thought and it would require some amount of time & money, but it's a doable hack with finite resources.
Probably more than any of us want to pony up. My 1990 almanac lists a 1987 estimate of Oregon's population at 2.7 million people, 20 % of whom were below the age of 15. Let's triple that and assume that 60% of the population doesn't have a driver's license (overgenerous, I think) - and let's assume that you form a nonprofit (to get cheap postal rates), and you pre-sort your mailing, and you use cheap stationary, such that each piece costs you only $.20 - you're still talking about a $216,000 mailing. It's a good idea, though; I for one am sympathetic to the cause, if not this particular implementation. Actually, there's no reason that the Oregon Privacy Institute (which I just made up on the spot :) couldn't hold a press conference in a room with stacks & stacks of flats of envelopes, and announce that the mailing will take place soon .. :) Thanks for inspiring me (an Oregon resident) to get off my butt and write to my state representative. For what it's worth, it is possible to ask the Oregon DMV not to release your records - I've done so, but don't know if I'm on the CD or not. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.5 iQCVAgUBLlf+P33YhjZY3fMNAQGaXgP8DVealDg09ypFtnshBq8GvtjnmpA5Bpa/ VChXJE6R2ttylGNIbYjdXdLO+0AZR62f8e8R0ab4eccddMra14jradsrSpQJHqeL lOahiZGzFYXD/0S260B6gXQMT4K0BzwjX2AUCeCfS4zbya6JoTG5jAB0B8J6iS6e U1CQl6JxHXI= =Ya0c -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
L. Todd Masco:
Perhaps one could generate a privacy crisis by collecting that information and conducting a mass mailing to every person in the database: "we have this information on you. So could anybody with $125. Call your congress critter and complain."
I love the first part of this idea, and hate the second part. As other posters have noted, putting the information that we are unconsciously giving away to strangers, back in front of our faces, is worth any million screeds about how our privacy is being eroded. The fact is, we can't see that our privacy is being eroded. It happens silently and invisibly. That feedback loop needs to be completed to our guts, for there to be enough awareness to motivate most people. But just what are we supposed to tell our Congressmen to do? We have way too much "write your Congressman to solve all our problems" bullshit in the privacy advocacy area. It's almost all hallucination. I defy you to suggest anything that has a snowball's chance in hell of passing that will _in fact_ have a major impact on improving our privacy instead of just satisfying the needs of special interests who want to keep their monopoly on consumer information and keep consumers effectively ignorant of what they are collecting. The most likely outcome of the above tactic are weak laws saying that DMVs can only sell their data to a few select federal agencies and credit reporting companies. What a blow for privacy. What we need is privacy as a _business_ movement. We need to offer services that are alternatives to to the current dossier system. People have to take action on their own, not go whining to their purported leaders and comforting themselves that that they have done something to solve the problem. Political action does have a niche in the activist ecology, but it is a much smaller niche than is reflected by the dominance of politics over more important consideraions in the privacy movemement. The proper niche of political action is as completementary supplement to personal action and business activity. Political action that purports to be the main solution to the problem is, in all likelihood, part of the problem. Political activism in favor of legal cryptography is a supplement, a support for our personal decisions to use cryptography to empower people to improve their own privacy. It is not a replacment for deploying and using cryptography, it is only a support activity. Most of the decisions will be made in the marketplace, in this case the marketplace of aliased and out of state driver's licenses, with with politcs being only one of a wide variety of considerations. Jim Hart hart@chaos.bsu.edu
In article <199408220237.VAA17153@chaos.bsu.edu>, Jim Hart <hart@chaos.bsu.edu> wrote:
L. Todd Masco:
"we have this information on you. So could anybody with $125. Call your congress critter and complain."
I love the first part of this idea, and hate the second part. ... But just what are we supposed to tell our Congressmen to do?
Fair enough. ^Call your congress critter and complain^Support anonymous transactions with digital cash from (company_name). I agree with the anonymous poster who said that such a move should be put off until we have a real solution. So, whatever company wants to kick this off could use this to generate political protection. To put my comment in the right context, I was worried (when thinking about this) about anonymous digital cash being made illegal. The intent would be to kill opposition to anonymous digital cash. Eric mentioned in his talk at the SEA that companies exist that sell mailing lists of people of a particular ethnicity based upon spending patterns: the example he gave was a company marketing to jewish people bought a list of "believed jews" for the purpose of marketing (and Eric mentioned the irony). Another variation of my suggestion would be to get such lists and to mail to people a statement saying "You are registered as an (ethnicity) in mailing lists." Even a 50% hit rate would drive the issue home to people with enormous efficiency. The intent isn't to get the government to Do Something, but to make people en mass aware that privacy is a real issue that affects them. -- L. Todd Masco | "Large prime numbers imply arrest." - Previously meaningless cactus@bb.com | grammatically correct sentence. Now...
Greg Broiles writes:
Probably more than any of us want to pony up. [...] you're still talking about a $216,000 mailing.
Yup. I wasn't thinking of some individual doing this: $216K is relatively small change for a reasonably sized organization, though. On the other hand: remember, we live in an age when people like Perot live. Another consideration is that you could probably interleave: send only 1 in 5 people one of the letters, and you may very well have a similar impact for "only" $44K. With 250 million people in the US, guess that half of them have DMV records, and take a fifth of them: that's $1 million dollars at $.20/mailing. How much do lobbying organizations spend? Political parties? (Hmmm. Maybe we could get the House post office to send 'em). Another approach might be to try to find small groups of people in each county in the US to handle the mailings. Of course, the details aren't important: the level of awareness generated is. I also agree with the anonymous poster who suggests that we wait until there's a real alternative. -- L. Todd Masco | "Cowboy politicians sucking up to the aristocracy, not cactus@bb.com | even sure if they like democracy..." - TR-I
participants (5)
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cactus＠bb.com -
FLOATING OUTWARD -
greg＠ideath.goldenbear.com -
Jim Hart -
L. Todd Masco