CDR: Re: Comments on and about e-privacy in Canada

[Tim May]

At 7:13 PM -0400 10/6/00, Robert Guerra wrote:
>
>Here's a message I really like...

Again you show yourself to be uncritical of these claims. You don't "get it."

>
>http://interact.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/WebX?14@119.UM22aQsobAM^4@.ee768e0
>
>
>I attended a recent lecture at UBC that was given by Dr. William J. 
>Raduchel, the Chief Strategy Officer of Sun Microsystems, and he 
>said that Sun and many other companies are hard at work putting the 
>finishing touches on the technology that will make it possible for 
>your fridge to recognize that you are running out of milk, and 
>automatically add it to your shopping list, and automatically shop 
>for it if you want - but here is the really freaky part: In the near 
>future, Dr. Raduchel said that all advertising will be targeted 
>based on your 'electronic behavior'. Picture this: You come home 
>from work and your house sees you coming and the door opens and the 
>net-enabled television in your livingroom comes on, and there is a 
>commercial for Cheerios that says, "Did you know that the box of 
>Cheerios in your cupboard is almost empty?" - and a coupon for 
>Cheerios will print out of your net-enabled refrigerator, and the 
>General Foods corporation will be able to run a report that tells 
>them exactly how many boxes of Cheerios there are sitting in 
>cupboards in wired homes across Canada, and how full each one is.

The solution is not a regimen of data privacy laws but tecnologies to 
enable consumers to remain private. Those who "give permission" for 
their refrigerator to contact some outside party have made their 
choice. (They can block in many ways: don't buy the refrigerator, 
don't hook it up to phone lines or the Internet, insert a firewall 
product which others are likely to provide, hack the system to not 
provide this information, and so on.)

Anyone who complains about this net-enabled fridge has only themself to blame.

What we don't need are "data privacy laws.'

There are deeper principles here, discussed many times. If Alice 
observes something Bill has said, or done, or whatever, it is not 
_Bill_ who owns these observations.


--Tim May
-- 
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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