Some Privacy Issues

Here are some privacy issues, which have been in the news:

From Agape Press, (I am not sure what "reliable news from a christian source" means, but the article is pretty interesting.)

A school district in Sutter, California, briefly implemented a program that had students carry tags containing what is known as "radio frequency identification" technology, or RFID, in order to help monitor student attendance. The program was a pilot project for a small start-up company called InCom, which had developed its "InClass" system to help elementary and secondary schools automate attendance-taking.

In theory, I have no problem with this. Schools should be able to monitor their students, and if the teachers can spend more time instructing and less time on administration then we are all better off in the long run. It seems the counter arguement is pretty silly.

But Beth Givens with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse feels school officials should not be too hasty in latching onto InClass, as administrators at Brittan perhaps were. She says instead of fully exploring the ramifications of such a program, the elementary school may have looked to the new technology as a "magic bullet" for an administrative problem without stopping to consider its potential impact on the school and the students themselves.

Givens warns that if systems like InClass are implemented in a school, the social environment there and the way students act within it may change profoundly. "Young people are going to get used to the idea or comfortable with the idea that they are always being watched," she says. "So what kind of adults will they grow up to be? Will they not be as risk-taking as perhaps entrepreneurs of earlier decades have been?"

How, the PRC spokeswoman wonders, would introducing an RFID system affect the communication and self expression of school children? "Will they be cautious about what they say? Will they not speak out? Will they not have a passionate interest in certain things?" she asks.

I have no idea how monitoring minors in school will prevent them from becoming independent thinkers. This seems like a huge logical jump, without much justification. Show me in the future that these kids are not able to think for themselves, and I will believe that this monitoring had a partial effect. As far as being watched all the time, isn't that what is supposed to happen in school now? Since when and where is a child independent in school? When I was in public school, the teachers and administrators told us they were responsible for our actions and us while we were on school property, and also the attendance log was could be admissable in a court of law as for proof of a childs where-abouts.

IBM's Anonymous Moves into Privacy Software

Imagine being able to exchange and store data while encrypting personal information from prying eyes.

Jeff Jonas loved this privacy concept so much, he decided to build anonymity software that safeguards people's identities during information exchanges.

IBM loved this technology so much, that it acquired Jonas' company SRD Software and its staff, a little known Las Vegas provider of software that "anonymizes" data so that it can be compared and analyzed without revealing private information.

I can't wait to see how IBM screws this up.

Targeting, Search & Privacy Concerns by Alan Chapell

I saw Alan Chapell speak at the InfoSecurity New York in a privacy seminar a few weeks back. His primary focus seems to be walking the fine line between consumer privacy and the information that is gathered by marketing organizations. It is good to know that there are people out there working to make sure our information does not become public and exploited, worth a read for those interested.