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]

More cameras, less cops

New York's not the only city rolling out impressive camera networks, ala the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. Chicago is getting its CCTV on too, reports the New York Times.

Thanks to a $6-million grant from the Department of Homeland Security, Chicago is rolling out a vast network of public and private cameras to aid in its police and emergency response work. The article from the NYT has the usual structure for these types of stories: an example of the cameras at work -- e.g. capturing a Salvation Army kettle thief-- followed by news of how the system will be bigger and better in the future, with an ACLU spokesperson thrown in at the end to voice privacy concerns.

Wired noted a few months back that Chicago had hoped to have 2,000 cameras linked up by 2006, but was held back by a shortage of fiber. The city refused to tell the Chicago Sun-Times how many cameras they've got in action now, but officials do say they hope to have a camera on every street corner in Chicago. That sends a mild chill down our spine, bringing back memories of our father telling us as a child to behave because he knew everything that we would do before we even thought about doing it.

Of course, turning to cameras for effective law enforcement in these troubled economic times makes sense. The fiber may be expensive but is probably less in the long run than health benefits and pensions for police officers.

Wired reports that the NYPD is cutting back on officer deployment, but is trying its best to move full-speed ahead with putting 3,000 cameras online in the financial district.

If it'll keep the Salvation Army kettles safe, it can't be a bad thing, right?

Chicago Links Street Cameras to Its 911 Network [New York Times]
Surveillance cams help fight crime, city says [Chicago Sun-Times]
NYPD Cuts Cops, Keeps Spycams for Terror Defense [Danger Room/Wired]

Privacy and The Facebook and The Google

Two important technological events in privacy this week. One has made headlines many times over, and stopped qualifying as "news" about two days ago in the fast-paced Internet echo chamber. Facebook tried to roll out a new Terms of Service that would have given the company ownership over all things posted to the site by its 175 million users. Privacy rights be damned.

Folks weren't too happy to learn of the threat to their ownership of their photos, notes, videos, beings, etc. The mass Internet protests caused CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook to cave. Privacy/ownership rights were reinstated, and a new Bill of Rights will be established for users. Any James Madison version 2.0's should surf over to Facebook and get involved in the drafting of the social networking site's Bill of Rights.

Privacy is still a major issue on Facebook. Check out this guide to privacy settings on All Facebook (The Unofficial Facebook Resource) to make sure that the things you want private stay that way. And the guide doesn't say it, but hide your birth date. Depending on your settings, your friends will still know to write on your wall on the big day, but pseudo-friends and scary strangers won't be able to use your DOB for bad things. (More on that in a future post.)

In privacy ebbing news, a less-reported story is Google's win in a privacy case over its Street View application. The application allows us to map an address and zoom in to street level-- you can see people on the street, the facade of homes, cars parked in front of houses... but not in real time. A couple in Pennsylvania, The Borings, had sued Google Street View for violating their privacy by putting photos of their house online, despite "private road" signs at the end of the street leading to their home. A judge dismissed the case. From CNet:

Google claims to be legally allowed to photograph on private roads, arguing that privacy no longer exists in this age of satellite and aerial imagery.

"Today's satellite-image technology means that...complete privacy does not exist," Google said in its response to the Borings' complaint.

Yep, that's right. The Google won. Because complete privacy does not exist.

Facebook Withdraws Changes in Data Use [New York Times]
10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know [All Facebook]
Google wins Street View privacy suit [CNet]

Data Breaches Galore

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has the following quote leading off its About Us section:

The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.
U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977

Privacy protection is nothing new, but technological advances create many new challenges for protecting that privacy. The Clearinghouse, based in California (of course), is dedicated to raising awareness about the effect of technology on privacy, helping people protect their privacy, and advocating for greater privacy legislatively.

The organization keeps an incredible listing of data breaches, dating back to 2005. The total amount of records breached over the past four years is staggering: 252,387,509.

That includes the "biggest ever data breach" of 100 million credit cards by Heartland Payment Services last month. To see data breaches that have occurred in your state, check out this site.

Why are companies not doing more to protect our privacy and our financial data? We were speaking with a friend in finance in New York yesterday, and he casually said he had the ability to access the social security numbers of any of the clients of the bank that he works for. As do hundreds of his colleagues. And this is a Big Bank, of which you may just be a client.

Of course, it's hard to ask companies to be more careful with our data when we ourselves are so careless about it. Many people we know are happy to pirate wireless connections and surf the Net on a stranger's network. Oblivious to the security of the data they're transmitting.

Hmmm... all of a sudden, we're feeling a strong need to take advantage of our Free Credit Report.

Biggest Ever Credit Card Data Breach [Computerworld]