Yay, technology! Now nothing is secret!
I am growing increasingly disgusted and apprehensive about privacy issues, especially in this country. As various departments, companies and organizations embrace the digital age, more personal and private information becomes available. Information that really should not be easily accessed, especially anonymously online.
There are two sides to the personal privacy issue. One is that most companies, programmers, organizations, et al, figure that if the same data is available anyway, aggregated in a different format, it’s fair game. In other words, if I can take the time to hunt down all the information about someone in a time consuming way, how is it any different if a web site aggregates that data for me in one easy-to access format. The logic being that if the data was already out there, it’s no different in a new format. In one universe, that’s true, but in our universe it just isn’t.
The thing that worries me is that most people address issues this way, without second thought to how people might react, or more importantly, how it may jeopardize the private information and make it more likely for personal information to become compromised.
Are there legitimate uses for this data? Sure. But the bottom line remains that in our society, identity theft is by and large a crime of convenience. When data is made easily accessible, or, conversely, when doing a bit of work can get you a lot of personal information (e.g. debit card skimmers), it becomes not only feasible for malicious individuals to harm people, but it makes it very, very tempting.
When people had to dig up data the old fashioned way, by visiting government offices and sifting through paper work (or waiting for someone else to do it), it made data mining inconvenient and expensive in terms of time spent. It was not an efficient or effective way of stealing. It was, however, effective for people with more legitimate interests, who likely were interested only in a small amount of data pertaining to their individual interests.
With new technology comes a new way of thinking about things, especially privacy. What distresses me as an IT professional as well as a person with shit to lose, is how little these issues are considered. I have no problem being the voice of reason. I’ll continue to bring up this issue. It just scares me when I’m the only one who considers it.
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