[IP] Ted Koppel: Take My Privacy, Please!
Begin forwarded message:
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 13, 2005 2:42:36 PM EDT
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Ted Koppel: Take My Privacy, Please!
From the New York Times -- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/opinion/
13koppel.html?hp
Op-Ed Contributor
Take My Privacy, Please!
by Ted Koppel
THE Patriot Act - brilliant! Its critics would have preferred a
less stirring title, perhaps something along the lines of the
Enhanced Snooping, Library and Hospital Database Seizure Act. But
then who, even right after 9/11, would have voted for that?
Precisely. He who names it and frames it, claims it. The Patriot Act,
however, may turn out to be among the lesser threats to our
individual and collective privacy.
There is no end to what we will endure, support, pay for and promote
if only it makes our lives easier, promises to save us money, appears
to enhance our security and comes to us in a warm, cuddly and
altogether nonthreatening package. To wit: OnStar, the subscription
vehicle tracking and assistance system. Part of its mission
statement, as found on the OnStar Web site, is the creation of
"safety, security and peace of mind for drivers and passengers with
thoughtful wireless services that are always there, always ready."
You've surely seen or heard their commercials, one of which goes like
this:
Announcer The following is an OnStar conversation. (Ring)
OnStar OnStar emergency, this is Dwight.
Driver (crying) Yes, yes??!
OnStar Are there any injuries, ma'am?
Driver My leg hurts, my arm hurts.
OnStar O.K. I do understand. I will be contacting emergency services.
Announcer If your airbags deploy, OnStar receives a signal and calls
to check on you.
(Ring)
Emergency Services Police.
OnStar This is Dwight with OnStar. I'd like to report a vehicle crash
with airbag deployment on West 106th Street.
Emergency Services We'll send police and E.M.S. out there.
Driver (crying) I'm so scared!
OnStar O.K., I'm here with you, ma'am; you needn't be scared.
Well, maybe just a little scared. Tell us again how Dwight knows just
where the accident took place. Oh, right! It's those thoughtful
wireless services that are always there. Always, as in any time a
driver gets into an OnStar-equipped vehicle. OnStar insists that it
would disclose the whereabouts of a subscriber's vehicle only after
being presented with a criminal court order or after the vehicle has
been reported stolen. That's certainly a relief. I wouldn't want to
think that anyone but Dwight knows where I am whenever I'm traveling
in my car.
Of course, E-ZPass and most other toll-collecting systems already
know whenever a customer passes through one of their scanners. That's
because of radio frequency identification technology. In return for
the convenience of zipping through toll booths, you need to have in
your car a wireless device. This tag contains information about your
account, permitting E-ZPass to deduct the necessary toll - and to
note when your car whisked through that particular toll booth. They
wouldn't share that information with anyone, either; that is, unless
they had to.
The State Department plans to use radio frequency identification
technology in all new American passports by the end of 2005. The
department wants to be sure that we all move through immigration
quickly and efficiently when we return from overseas. Privacy
advocates have suggested that hackers could tap into the information
stored on these tags, or that terrorists might be able to use them to
pinpoint American tourists in a crowd. The State Department assures
us that both concerns are unfounded, and that it will allow privacy
advocates to review test results this summer.
Radio frequency identification technology has been used for about 15
years now to reunite lost pets with their owners. Applied Digital
Solutions, for example, manufactures the VeriChip, a tiny,
implantable device that holds a small amount of data. Animal shelters
can scan the chip for the name and phone number of the lost pet's
owner. The product is now referred to as the HomeAgain Microchip
Identification System.
Useful? Sure. Indeed, it's not much of a leap to suggest that one
day, the VeriChip might be routinely implanted under the skin of,
let's say, an Alzheimer's patient. The Food and Drug Administration
approved the VeriChip for use in people last October. An Applied
Digital Solutions spokesman estimates that about 1,000 people have
already had a VeriChip implanted, usually in the right triceps. At
the moment, it doesn't carry much information, just an identification
number that health care providers can use to tap into a patient's
medical history. A Barcelona nightclub also uses it to admit
customers with a qualifying code to enter a V.I.P. room where drinks
are automatically put on their bill. Possible variations on the theme
are staggering.
And how about all the information collected by popular devices like
TiVo, the digital video recorder that enables you to watch and store
an entire season's worth of favorite programs at your own
convenience? It also lets you electronically mark the programs you
favor, allowing TiVo to suggest similar programs for your viewing
pleasure. In February, TiVo announced the most frequently played and
replayed commercial moment during the Super Bowl (it involves a
wardrobe malfunction, but believe me, you don't want to know),
drawing on aggregated data from a sample of 10,000 anonymous TiVo
households. No one is suggesting that TiVo tracks what each
subscriber records and replays. But could they, if they needed to?
That's unclear, although TiVo does have a privacy policy. "Your
privacy," it says in part, "is very important to us. Due to factors
beyond our control, however, we cannot fully ensure that your user
information will not be disclosed to third parties."
Unexpected and unfortunate things happen, of course, even to the most
reputable and best-run organizations. Only last February, the Bank of
America Corporation notified federal investigators that it had lost
computer backup tapes containing personal information about 1.2
million federal government employees, including some senators. In
April, LexisNexis unintentionally gave outsiders access to the
personal files (addresses, Social Security numbers, drivers license
information) of as many as 310,000 people. In May, Time Warner
revealed that an outside storage company had misplaced data stored on
computer backup tapes on 600,000 current and former employees. That
same month, United Parcel Service picked up a box of computer tapes
in New Jersey from CitiFinancial, the consumer finance subsidiary of
Citigroup, that contained the names, addresses, Social Security
numbers, account numbers, payment histories and other details on
small personal loans made to an estimated 3.9 million customers. The
box is still missing.
Whoops!
CitiFinancial correctly informed its own customers and, inevitably,
the rest of the world about the security breach. Would they have done
so entirely on their own? That is less clear. In July 2003,
California started requiring companies to inform customers living in
the state of any breach in security that compromises personally
identifiable information. Six other states have passed similar
legislation.
No such legislation exists on the federal stage, however - only
discretionary guidelines for financial institutions about whether and
how they should inform their customers with respect to breaches in
the security of their personal information.
Both the House and Senate are now considering federal legislation
similar to the California law. It's a start but not nearly enough. We
need mandatory clarity and transparency; not just with regard to the
services that these miracles of microchip and satellite technology
offer but also the degree to which companies share and exchange their
harvest of private data.
We cannot even begin to control the growing army of businesses and
industries that monitor what we buy, what we watch on television,
where we drive, the debts we pay or fail to pay, our marriages and
divorces, our litigations, our health and tax records and all else
that may or may not yet exist on some computer tape, if we don't
fully understand everything we're signing up for when we avail
ourselves of one of these services.
Ted Koppel is the anchor and managing editor of the ABC program
"Nightline."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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John F. McMullen
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