on privacy in digital communications

[Benjamin.Britton at UC.Edu]

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On Privacy in Digital Communications

Taxpayers, legislators, social and governmental leaders do not yet
realize that use of the "Clipper Chips" would make their most intimate,
most highly private and proprietary information completely accessible
through online information links to organized crime, foreign
governments and the American national intelligence community.  Anyone
who has grown up wondering why they did not prosecute the assassination
of President Kennedy has reason to fear the "Clipper Chip" technology.
There is no need for absolute intrusability into the private lives or
public records of American citizens.  On the contrary, responsible
governmental efforts should seek to rebuild such privacy by outlawing
databases based on Social Security numbers and by codifying legal
remedies against businesses which have illegally compromised public or
private information.  We should move, not away from citizens' rights in
the new age of computing; rather we should use a blend of American
democracy and high technology to make sure we retain the
 rights guaranteed to us by the American Constitution.

It should be made illegal to encode a database of personnel information based on the Social Security numbers of the individuals.  Such databases are inherently inaccurate and encourage covert searches for private information.  Alphabetic listings of individuals names can be encoded with a unique key by an institution holding a database of personal information, for purposes of information retrieval.  This key should be enciphered on a timely basis, such as during annual board meetings, by individuals in positions of legal responsibility in the organization.  If the key is leaked by the organization, legal suit should be able to be brought to determine how the leak occurred, to punish the offenders if appropriate, and to establish a new key to the database with participation from the prosecuting judge and the defendant.  Database encoding with this new key should then be legally required and enforced, and periodic encipherment of the code by the database holders should continu!
e as before.

A new function of law enforcement will need to develop;  police, rather than being some of the greatest abusers of private information held in data networks, will have to become the enforcers of privacy and data security.  If the police don't want to do this job, or if they feel they cannot, they should be fired and new police willing and able to guarantee the rights of citizens should be hired.  Data security in cyberspace is a real concern, not only for the federal government, but also for local governments, businesses and individuals.  The police will enforce the laws only if the laws are established, and they can serve as guardians of private data and personal information if such responsibilities are levied upon them.

Data security, personal privacy, and the gross abuses of digital databases in the hands of white collar criminals are issues which lie at the heart of America's present malaise.  If the government of the United States is not morally capable of taking on the challenge of instituting privacy in digital communications, we may look forward to years of gross criminality and abuses of human rights which will make the S&L scandals of the 1980's pale by comparison.  But no government intent on enslaving the citizens who continuingly create it can stand.  If our representatives in the Federal government cannot squirm free of the grips of organized crime, we may look forward to a distant national revolution.  But no country, intent on guaranteeing the rights of its citizens, run by leaders with moral authority and free will, would seek consciously to hand the people over as slave/cattle to the organizers of international criminal cartels.  The "Clipper Chip" technology as outlined in !
national press releases would guar

antee and constitute such a wholesale handover of Americans.  It would codify, promulgate and direct the destruction of privacy rights for all individuals by guaranteeing the availability of all information to anyone wealthy and corrupt enough to buy it.  The alternative course is for our government to turn around completely, to build ways of defending the privacy of the individual against unnecessary search and seizure.

The term privacy and its root word private will take on new meanings in the coming years.  For example, records containing the votes you have cast in public elections during your life may be considered private, although the public institution of government is your only guarantor of that privacy.  Goverment acts (supposedly) as conscious guarantor of the privacy and security of your participation in public affairs.  They could certainly make the same efforts to secure your tax information, your demographic information, your legal records, your personal information derived during security background checks by intelligence agencies; but they do not.  They encode all this with your social security number guaranteeing its accessibility to international criminal cartels operating outside the control of our government.  The term "privatization" has come into vogue through its promotion by the international monetary fund during the 1980's (and continuing today); it has meant the han!
ding over of publicly guaranteed e

nforcement of citizens' rights to private individuals not accountable through democratic processes.  Such handovers are a public concern, because they threaten the structure of legal enforcement which is the original reason for a democracy.  Privatization conflicts with privacy, because it is through the self-interest of private citizens involved in participation in legal processes of government, such as through election to public office or participation in jury duties, that make a democracy work for the welfare of its individual citizens.  When control is taken out of the hands of the public and handed over in the form of privatization, no citizen, except he or she who controls the private company, may defend their legal rights successfully and without preemption by default.  The government exists to enable citizens' participation; such participation must be an inherent part of securing personal privacy in digital communications.

I suggest that computing necessitates a reaction from government, and that reaction should properly be to defend the rights of citizens, including the right to privacy. A change in direction is called for; our government should support individuality. Public participation is essential to establish that no one has the right to our privacy. One may envision a 21st century public ceremony of encoding the National Database: A one-year-old child taps on a keyboard, and nationwide in realtime others do alike. This would be no guarantee of privacy, but far better than a quarantee of no privacy.

Benjamin J. Britton      					May 24, 1993
Assistant Professor
Electronic Art, Fine Arts
University of Cincinnati
Benjamin.Britton at uc.edu
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