Headlines Under Surveillance: 03.31.09

* People are worried about privacy! Or at least they claim they are in this survey. Over 90 percent of TRUSTe survey respondents said online privacy is an important issue to them, but only 28 percent said they were bothered by the tracking of their online behavior for ad-targeting. So what does online privacy mean to them? [New York Times]

* Maybe this is what they are scared of: Electronic Spy Network Focused on Dalai Lama and Embassy Computers. [Threat Level/Wired]

* A judge in Pennsylvania rules that teenage sexting falls within minors' constitutional rights. [Reuters]

* Newsweek Editor and Securing the City author Christopher Dickey (who we saw speak in February) has a self-aggrandizing blog which pointed us to this article on public input being solicited by the NYPD on the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. [City Limits via The Shadowland Journals]

* Speaking of the LMSI, Brian Lehrer had Ali Winston, the City Limits article author, on his show to talk about the 3,000-security-camera Initiative. [WNYC]

* Yuck. Giving Nudists everywhere a bad name. [St. Petersburg Times]

Privacy Field Trip We'd Like to Take: The National Cryptologic Museum

The January/February issue of The Atlantic Monthly had a two-page spread titled, "Then and Now," a diagram comparing U.S. data from 2000 and 2008. In 2008, we watched 200 hours more television per person than in 2000. Gold was three times as expensive (the price is even higher now). Our credit card debt was 50 percent higher. There were 16.4 percent cell-phone-only households compared to 4.2 percent in 2000. Etc. Etc.

Anyway, lots of alternately depressing and interesting factoids like that. What caught our eye from a privacy perspective was the number of visits to the NSA's Cryptologic Museum. In 2000, 65 school groups paid them a visit, compared to 134 in 2007.

From the museum's website:

The National Cryptologic Museum is the National Security Agency's principal gateway to the public. It shares the Nation's, as well as NSA's, cryptologic legacy and place in world history. Located adjacent to NSA Headquarters, Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland, the Museum houses a collection of thousands of artifacts that collectively serve to sustain the history of the cryptologic profession. Here visitors can catch a glimpse of some of the most dramatic moments in the history of American cryptology: the people who devoted their lives to cryptology and national defense, the machines and devices they developed, the techniques they used, and the places where they worked. For the visitor, some events in American and world history will take on a new meaning. For the cryptologic professional, it is an opportunity to absorb the heritage of the profession.

The museum's been around since 1993, but it's kind of in the middle of nowhere as far as D.C. tourist destinations go. Most people do not tend to wander far from the Mall. The Spy Museum is conveniently located near the Verizon Center in tourist central near Gallery Place/Chinatown metro.

So, why did the museum get so popular between 2000 and 2007? The museum's curator, Patrick Weadon, tells us that educational programs only got their start at the museum in 2000:

Over the years we have worked very hard to develop a wide range of cryptology-related classes, scavenger hunts, and briefings to appeal to all age groups. Although we do not formally "advertise" our educational programs, we do reach out to local schools; over time, word has spread about the interesting, unique, educational, and most importantly, FUN programs that we offer.

The museum gets 50,000 to 60,000 visitors a year. We hope to take a field trip there ourselves in the near future. We're not sure what we'll actually find there in terms of exhibits. The museum's website is annoyingly cryptic.

Headlines Under Surveillance: 03.22.09

We're launching a new feature here at the Not-So Private Parts. A weekly round-up of articles that dealt with privacy issues. Here's the first round-up:

* After an evening spent in New York night court last year, we discovered that anyone charged with a felony has to submit a DNA sample to a NYPD database. (Note: Just charged. Not convicted.) That made us want to write an article on DNA privacy... but Jeffrey Rosen beat us to it: "Genetic Surveillance for All: What if the FBI put the family of everyone who has ever been convicted or arrested into a giant DNA database?" [Slate]

* Tim Berners-Lee is having an Oppenheimer moment. Berners-Lee, one of the original founders of the World Wide Web, has concerns about privacy and snooping online. [AFP]

* Google has rolled out a new advertising program: "interested-based advertising." It uses your cookies (the history of sites you have visited) to choose ads keyed to your interests. Privacy advocates don't like sharing their cookies with the Google monster. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has worked with Google to create a program for those who want to keep their cookies in a private cupboard. [EFF Deeplinks]

* Facebook has changed its template again, much to the dismay of just about everyone. Most people are talking about the annoying layout, but the changes go beyond aesthetics. Facebook made a big change in privacy settings. Facebook used to be a world where you had to have a link to someone in order to view their profile-- either you were a friend, alumni of the same school, or living in the same city. There was no way around that. Now Facebook will allow users to drop any semblance of privacy. [Epicenter/Wired]

* Back in February, a government official on the other side of the Pond said of privacy and security: "Finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules." In a recently published public policy paper, former UK security chief Sir David Omand argues that privacy rights in the UK must be sacrificed for security's sake. [Guardian]

Bubba Facebook Update: Bubs Accepted Our Friend Request!

We mentioned in our last post that we had requested Bubba Waring, of fetal Facebook fame, to be our friend on the social networking site. We are excited to report that he confirmed our friendship:

Australia-based Bubs has less than 100 friends on Facebook. We feel honored to be among them, but are surprised that (1) the 1-year-old Bubs already has 95 friends and (2) that he (or more likely, his mom) accepted a friend request from a random 20-something American lady. We can now see photos, status updates, and even his phone number. It's like being invited into the family's virtual living room.

We are happy to see a status update from Bubs that indicates he is recovering from a cold. We're contemplating writing on his wall to say so...

The Little Ones Get Little Privacy

It's hard to find anywhere truly private these days. Even the womb is subject to prying eyes. According to Ubergizmo, 57,000 babies in the UK have their own social networking sites. Parents set up profiles for their children while they are still fetuses in some cases, setting ultrasonic images as their profile pics and updating their statuses as appropriate, e.g., Baby Bubba is kicking.

An Australian couple was one of the first to put their fetus, Bubba Waring, on Facebook back in 2007 and got lots of news coverage.

The idea of having your whole life played out on Facebook strikes me as incredibly creepy. I checked Facebook to see what Bubba Waring is up to these days. The profile for "Bubs Waring" is now set to private so I couldn't take a close look at it, but the child in the profile photo looks about 2. He's carrying a red ball. Very cute. I requested to "add as friend."

World Net Daily brings us another more recent privacy issue for the little ones. The privacy of their DNA is not getting the respect it deserves in Minnesota:

Nine families have filed a lawsuit against Minnesota's health department over its practice of collecting DNA from newborns and then keeping and using the private information...

Agency spokesman John Stine said the lawsuit was being reviewed, but he confirmed the department takes the blood samples from about 70,000 infants annually, and unless the parents specifically choose to opt out of the program, their children's DNA is saved...

The case alleges "as of December 31, 2008, Defendant Minnesota Department of Health had stored 819,282 dried blood spot baby samples; had stored 1,567,133 records of the results of newborn genetic screening; and had used 52,519 dried blood spot samples for research."

Our notions of privacy are changing all the time. There is certainly much that is generational and cultural. But if kids today are born to ready-made social networking profiles and their DNA on file, it seems like expectations for some kinds of privacy will be almost nonexistent.

Unborn Have Their Own Social Networking Page [Ubergizmo]
Parents sue state over babies' DNA [World Net Daily]

The Threads of Nudism

One path we've gone down in exploring privacy is the practice of nudism, and the abdication of the physical privacy provided by clothes. In talking to various nudists in New York, we're discovering divisions within the group.

There are the naturalists vs. the nudists. This is a matter of semantics. While some use the terms interchangeably, others feel very strongly about one term or the other. One of our interviewees insists on being called a nudist, because he "hates nature."

There are the nudists vs. the swingers. Much of the media attention received by nudist resorts tends toward the salacious, such as this recent BlackBook Magazine piece by Greg Boose: Hedonism II: The Cave is for Blowjobs. Boose writes:

Nudist resorts, in hopes of lifting up sagging tourism numbers, want to bring back the orgies. But when Claire told me that Hedonism II was one of the resorts we’d be touring in Jamaica while she researched the greening efforts of hotels on the island for an airline’s glossy, I wasn’t really expecting orgies.

But he does find orgies at this particular nudist resort, because in fact, it is a swingers' resort. "Pure" nudists become extremely distressed by the conflation of the two. Nudists celebrate and embrace nudity as non-sexual. The code word for a nudist resort, as opposed to a swinger's nudist resort, is "family friendly."

There are the at-home nudists vs. community nudists. Some nudists want to be naked all the time, and would prefer to conduct daily activities in the buff. These are the type that shed their clothes wherever and whenever they can, and as soon as they get home. However, others only like being nude in groups, and sharing the experience with others. I've interviewed one couple that bridge this divide. The wife enjoys nudist resorts and activities but prefers being clothed at home. Her husbands prefers to be nude as often as possible, including during the course of our interview.

For the community nudist wife, nudism is linked to feminism. She enjoys not being judged on her clothes, or her body parts. "I've never had so many people maintain eye contact with me, as opposed to checking out my body, as at nudist resorts," she said. This, of course, would not be the case at a swinger's resort.

There are other "threads" I am still exploring: the exhibitionists, the narcissists, the individualists, the religious nudists, the thrill-seekers... Who would expect to find that nudists have so many threads?

Hedonism II: The Cave is for Blowjobs [BlackBook Magazine]