Big brother would be envious...

[David P. Reed]

MIT policy requires that the Committee on the Use of Humans in  
Experimental Studies (COUHES) approve all such experiments.  The  
experiments described are "opt-in" with "informed consent" when  
carried out at MIT.  No one is required to participate.

Yet I agree that carrying out such experiments in corporate settings  
(including MIT) are fraught with concerns.

That said, this is a future that is already here.  Your laptop and  
phone have live microphones and cameras, and phones report their  
geographic position to carriers, where the logs are recorded in  
corporate databases for months or years, and can be subpeonaed  
(hopefully with probable cause, as is the case in Massachusetts state  
courts, but not in FBI National Security Letters).

Don't shoot the messenger (MIT students).  They are just adapting to  
the reality that we grownups have constructed for them.

The law doesn't provide for any of the desired privacy rights.   If  
you carry a phone or corporate laptop, and it turns on its microphone  
based on a remote command from either the NSA or a botnet, *it is not  
illegal*.  The phone company owns the phone, your employer owns the  
laptop, and the legal precedents are not in the users' favor.

In the case of corporate laptops, it is claimed that corporations are  
REQUIRED to monitor and record employee communications, because of  
precedents that hold them liable for sexual and racial harassment.

In the case of private cellphones, you don't hold the radio license  
or the software license.   The carrier does, and under NSL regime  
today, it can be required to capture and search - without any  
requirement to notify you.

So, you are screwed.   I wish that were not the case, myself.   But  
don't assume *anyone* in the US Gov't, including your Senators and  
Representatives, will come to your aid.   If you live in  
Massachusetts, your state might.  But in other states, you are on  
your own.

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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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