The Future of Privacy = don't over-empower the watchers!

I blog a lot about privacy, anonymity and censorship, mainly because I feel not just concerned, but obliged to build awareness on the big picture the way I see it. Moreover, I find these interrelated and excluding any of these would result in missing the big picture, at least from my point of view. Some posts I did, worth mentioning are : "Anonymity or Privacy on the Internet?", "China - the biggest black spot on the Internet’s map", "2006 = 1984?", "Still worry about your search history and BigBrother?", "The Feds, Google, MSN's reaction, and how you got "bigbrothered?", "Twisted Reality", "Chinese Internet Censorship efforts and the outbreak", and the most recent one, "Data mining, terrorism and security".



Yesterday, I read a very nice essay by Bruce Schneier "The Future of Privacy" and while I feel it has been written for the general public to understand, you can still update yourself on some of the current trends he's highlighting, mostly the digital storage of our life activities, and how possible it really is.


Some comments that made me an impression though :

"The typical person uses 500 cell phone minutes a month; that translates to 5 gigabytes a year to save it all. My iPod can store 12 times that data. A "life recorder" you can wear on your lapel that constantly records is still a few generations off: 200 gigabytes/year for audio and 700 gigabytes/year for video." - scary stuff, but so true!



"Today, personal information about you is not yours; it's owned by the collector." - if you were to question the practices of each and every "collector" you wouldn't be able to properly function in the 21st century.



"The city of Baltimore uses aerial photography to surveil every house, looking for building permit violations." - typical Columbian style, still applicable in here.

"In some ways, this tidal wave of data is the pollution problem of the information age. All information processes produce it. If we ignore the problem, it will stay around forever. And the only way to successfully deal with it isto pass laws regulating its generation, use and eventual disposal."



I agree on regulation, given someone follows and it's actually implemented, still, I feel it's all about balancing the powers of the public and the rulling parties. The more a government is empowered to invade privacy in one way or another, the higher the risk of them abusing their power, or even worse, having their communications infrastructure wiretap-ready for third parties.



UPDATE - this post recently appeared at LinuxSecurity.com - The Future of Privacy = don't over-empower the watchers!



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Privacy, Anonymity, Censorship