The Idea Fountain

Out of the computer and Internet has been born and grown some great industries and technologies. Unfortunately, there has been born, grown and distilled some very nasty and ugly ones as well. It is bad enough there are people that do things that are known to be illegal but there are others who split hairs and do things that are borderline illegal or “should be illegal”. This leads to those people taking advantage or exploiting the fact that it takes time to overload the human patience factor and then add to that the time it takes to get the slow legal process into motion to address these new problems. How many times have you heard it said, “The legal system is trying to keep up with the fast moving internet issues and problems.”? Unfortunately, the irritation factor and bad stories of true exploitation, leads to nonsensical, confusing, and irregular enforcement set of laws as well as people WILLINGLY giving up their liberties and freedoms with the bad attitude driven justification of, “Well I’d rather not have this __freedom, liberty, right, benefit, etc.___ than to go through ___exploitation, harassment, terrorism, etc.___.”

For example, online commerce is a huge economic phenomenon that has shown its tremendous benefit to the world. But out of online commerce has come rampant information selling or disclosure of private information. The harvesting of personal information and associating it to demographic profiling has become an industry unto itself. Add to that the government’s desire to put all your information into a centralized database, give us National ID’s by which all transactions can be tracked. Then add to that the “self/non” regulated Credit Bureau, the “Freedom of Information Act” (a good thing), the “electronification” of “matters of public record”, and well, there you have it… no anonymity and no privacy.

How many times have you heard someone say in that grating whiny voice, “Well, if you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t worry about it.”? Uh huh… right. Why should my private information be collected, cataloged, sold and used against me? Why should people’s medical records be harvested by the Insurance industry? Do you think that it is fair that a person with a medical ailment to be victimized? You might try and coldly justify in that same whiny voice, “Well it’s there fault to begin with… if they didn’t _________...”. Didn’t what? Be born? Get sick? Get hit by a car? Have an accident? What? Tell me there has never been a person who has been ravaged by an ailment that wasn’t denied a medical claim or has been discontinued from their insurance. You can be buried with a mountain a legal and administrative paperwork from just such incidents!! Do you think that you won’t be exploited, denied, prejudiced against, etc.? If you said no, are you kidding me?

Think about this… if you happen to look like someone else and you are targeted by a facial recognition engine and a law enforcement agency stops you, questions you, and possibly ARRESTS you based solely on that information, then what? At the VERY LEAST you are out a bunch of time and effort to prove your innocence. You did nothing wrong… you just happened to look like someone or at least some heuristic algorithm thought you did. You didn’t do anything wrong- but now you’re worrying. Just say you are wrongly accused by facial recognition and issues of identity theft… and they law enforcement agency is 100% in the wrong, what do you do? (By the way, this actually happened to a close friend of mine.) SUE THE GOVERNMENT? First of all, that may take forever! Second who are you really suing? TAX PAYERS! That’s just as bad as Credit Card Fraudulence causing you, a good credit holder, to pay higher interest rates! Unfortunately, suing is really is the responsible thing to do since it will draw attention to this sort of problem and hopefully there will be some action taken to prevent this problem from occurring again. If you are worried about tax payer’s money being taken for YOUR benefit, don’t sue for personal damages just for legal cost- that at least reduces the out of tax payer’s pocket cost.

Damage can be devastating to a person who is a victim of identity or information theft or information misuse and information preudice. And there you have it folks, People who did nothing wrong, didn’t have a worry about doing something wrong, and look at them now… WORRYING ABOUT IT! Their life in RUINS!!!

So the next time you hear someone whine that phrase, “Well, if you’re not doing anything wrong…” slap them with all these little ditties. There are a whole deal more of examples about people not doing anything wrong and being victimized.

Forget the fact that it is REQUIRED the “good” guys NEED LAWS TO PREVENT THEM FROM EXPLOITING YOU, there are bad people out there and you know it.

Protecting your information from Information Exploitation

There are many websites and information packets about techniques used to protect your privacy and your information as well as many detailing how to protect against identity theft, so I won’t cover that here- at least right now.

Back to information collecting… Once information is made readily available, then it lends itself to be exploited and misused. There IS NO QUESTION ABOUT THIS POINT. That statement is 100% true! There is nothing you can do to change the fact that your information is out there and you WILL be exploited… by the “good guys” as well as the “bad” guys. There is no doubt that we need to pass laws or take action to dissuade exploitation from happening and to punish those who exploit you. But I have always been an advocate of preventative measures- Stop the Madness! (as Susan Powder says!) Stop the problem before it gets out of hand. Nip the problem in the bud. A stitch in time saves nine. If you educate yourself about the potential problems and risks that can affect you, take measures to protect yourself, reduce your exposure, and quickly take actions when there are problems, you can reduce the effects problems have on you. Be Proactive, not Reactive! Assume an aggressive posture against problems.

Just imagine, no more than 10 years ago, the term “Privacy Policy” was not well known or even common in use! Now it is common place to see companies have a printed or internet page dedicated to their privacy policy. MOST people always thought that their information was private when you gave it to a company, at the very least they thought, the companies approach would be OPT-IN process to any sort of information disclosure policy.

Information selling is nothing new. Granted, there has been “junk mail” (“snail mail’s” Spam equivalent) for a long time, so people knew their name address were being sold. Then there are the unsolicited calls on the telephone…the Spam equivalent for phones. There had to be a law created to PREVENT solicitors from harassing you on the phone and you have to, surprisingly enough, OPT-IN to not be harassed! How strange is that! Now almost every website you go to there is some sort of “Privacy Policy” to check out. It becomes too much to read and keep track of… information overload!

If there isn’t already an organization that does this, there should be- An organization that collects and rates privacy policies. Website certifications (such as a cool logo) and a central area for looking up company websites and their ratings. [IDEA FOUNTAIN]

There are companies that profit in SELLING VERY PRIVATE (at least you think it is private!) information. Your credit information, your cell phone bills, your legal information, everywhere you lived worked etc! And these companies begin operation and continue to until they are forced to shut down. But by that time, the damage to people lives is done!

There is no doubt that new technologies and techniques need to be developed to address privacy issues. But remember that motto, Be Proactive, Not Reactive? Use it! I am a big fan of the word mantra. From wikipedia, ‘The Sanskrit word mantra consists of the root man- "to think" (also in manas "mind") and the suffix -tra meaning, tool, hence a literal translation would be "instrument of thought".’ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantra]

A “thinking tool” or an “instrument of thought”… I really like that!!! We must create new tools and techniques to allow the recapture of our personal information and to protect ourselves against unscrupulous people. More importantly, we must change they way we do business, the people with whom we do business, and take a long hard look at ethics, we must take a different approach to issues.

While it is a generally a good idea to be intolerant of intolerance, you should ALWAYS stand up and fight for your rights. Being intolerant of people who exploit others is NOT a bad thing. Should you change because the world is changing and there are people who are out there who want to hurt you? Yes, of course. How much is up to you. There are many people who still don’t even lock their house when the leave… is that a good idea? I personally don’t think so- why take an unnecessary risk especially when it takes nothing to avoid the problem? How long does it take to lock your house? Should you get a security system and take things further… that depends on the situation- your particular situation, which you may know better than anyone. Again it is up to you. Should you change because there are bad people? You should definitely take measures to protect yourself, your rights and your liberties against ANYONE who wishes to take them from you, FOR ANY REASON!

By changing the ways of doing business, are you giving up anything? That depends on how you change how you do business. Think really hard about giving up your benefits, privileges, etc. Think twice about it. Then discard it and try to find another way. Always try and figure out how to keep what you have and at the same time, figure out how to prevent yourself from being victimized. By changing they way you do business, are you giving in to the malicious people? Of course not! Actually, by taking action you are doing the best thing that you can do against these types of people- you are fighting back!

[IDEA FOUNTAIN]

[IDEA FOUNTAIN]

posted by TheGuardian  # 1:05 PM