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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Privacy

After discovering that a Fordham Law class had compiled a 15-page dossier on Supreme Court Justice Scalia based on information freely available on the Internet (see here and here), we decided to call up the Supreme Court to find out what the Justice thought about the privacy invasion.

He got back to us (through the Court's Public Information Office) rather quickly. He was not pleased to have his privacy invaded, but stood by his stance on privacy rights: that aggregation of such publicly available data is legal. He argued though that such things should not be done, not for legal reasons but for moral ones.

"It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said," wrote Justice Scalia.

Check out our post over at Above The Law, including Scalia's message in full.

Justice Scalia Responds to Fordham Privacy Invasion! [Above The Law]

Privacy Rights and Wrongs: Fordham Invades Justice Scalia's Privacy

The Privacy Rights and Wrongs conference at Fordham yesterday had many of the heavy hitters thinkers in privacy today, though Daniel Solove, professor at George Washington and author of The Future of Reputation, was the star of the show, in our opinion.

He opined on the meaning of privacy: "It's a concept in disarray. It means so many things that it no longer has a legal meaning," he said, calling the term "vague," "protean," and "suffering from an embarrassment of meanings." It needs a clearer definition in order to guide adjudication and lawmaking, said Solove.

We agree. It's been the most difficult aspect of making "privacy issues" the central theme of our work this year. It extends into everything, and we don't have enough time, skill, or smarts to cover EVERYTHING.

There was one little thing we covered from the conference, over at Above The Law. One of the speakers was a professor from Fordham University who revealed that he tasked the 15 students in his Privacy Information Law class with invading the privacy of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Check out our post on it over at Above The Law.

What Fordham Knows About Justice Scalia [Above The Law]

Headlines Under Surveillance: 04.20.09

* The FBI is adopting the practice of collecting DNA samples from those awaiting trials (who have not actually been proven guilty of anything). The practice is already in place in 15 states; New York is one of them, as we've mentioned before. Privacy advocates are up in arms about this, but we must ask this question. Is DNA fundamentally more private than fingerprints, which are collected on a regular basis? If we had consistent commenters, we would ask you to discuss this in the comments. We imagine a not-so-distant-future world where the collection of DNA samples will be as normal as being fingerprinted currently is. [New York Times]

* A woman suing a debt collector for posting to her MySpace page doesn't address privacy issues in her lawsuit. Her complaint accuses the company of violating collection laws and harassing her with abusive tactics. But privacy concerns leapt to our mind. Social networking sites are increasingly being flooded by those with business interests. Our experiment with signing up for Twitter has led to advertisers (e.g., NYCDailyDeals) outnumbering friends "following" us. Corporate beings getting a hold of our e-mail addresses is fine, but when they're actively trolling and interacting with our social networking profiles, it seems like it's crossing a privacy line. [Courthouse News Service via Threat Level/Wired]

* The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls out Obama for adopting Bush's position on secrecy and wiretapping ordinary Americans. [EFF]

* Even less privacy at the airport. Transportation Security Agency officials plan to replace metal detectors in airports with Total Recall-esque whole-body imaging machines. Screeners may be able to see us naked, but at least we won't have to remove our shoes and belts anymore. [Al's Morning Meeting/Poynter]

* Polls opened last week for Facebook users to determine privacy rights on the site. We wonder whether voter participation on Facebook will be healthier than the anemic participation in American elections. [PCWorld]

* Where we'll be found tomorrow: Privacy Rights and Wrongs: Balancing Moral Priorities for the 21st Century at Fordham University. Deep privacy thinker Daniel Solove of GW will be on the dais. [Danger Room/Wired]

The Villagers Revolt Against Google Street View

When a couple in Pennsylvania objected to Google Street View, they sued. (And lost.) On the other side of the Pond, those upset by the mapping program that provides 360-degree views at street level got physical.

AFP reports the story with the following headline "Angry British villagers stop Google maps car." We love that AFP refers to them as "villagers." It makes us think of the Google Street View car as Frankenstein stumbling into town and the denizens of Broughton, England, warding the car off with torches and pitchforks.

BBC News reports that Paul Jacobs was the man to get the townfolk riled up enough to stand in the street and block the passage of the Google Street Maps car with its huge rooftop-mounted camera:

Resident Paul Jacobs was one of the first residents in the village, which is part of Milton Keynes, to challenge the Google car.

Mr Jacobs said he saw the vehicle driving past his home on Wednesday and his first reaction was one of anger.

"I don't have a problem with Google wanting to promote villages. What I have a problem with is the invasion of privacy, taking pictures directly into the home," he said.

The article goes on to say that there had been three burglaries in the town recently, and that Jacobs and other residents feared Street View photos would help criminals plan future burglaries.

This strikes us as a bit illogical. If the Street View feed were live, it could certainly be argued that it could assist with criminal activity. But it's not. And the photo quality (at this point) is not good enough to allow a user to see into someone's home, and decide whether there are electronics or valuables worth taking.

The "villagers" likely cite safety concerns because it seems like the most sensible argument. But in fact, we suspect the motivation comes from a more basic (and emotional) desire for privacy that we all -- to greater and lesser extents -- have.

Angry British villagers stop Google maps car [AFP]
Residents challenge Google camera [BBC]

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.