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MIT Professor Jerry Saltzer comments that "privacy is a database correlation issue."
A person is likely to divulge many little bits of information about themselves
in a distributed way, to different organizations and different people, but
less likely to hand over all their information to a single entity.
If these different entities
buy, sell, and trade information and then correlate the information to link
information from various sources to a single individual, these little
seemingly non-threatening bits become threads woven into a tapestry depicting
a person's life and elucidating their behaviors. What makes correlation so
easy is the unique identifiers in our lives. More than just our name and
social security number, the introduction of new technologies creates the
need for us to attach an increasing number of unique, and
therefore personally identifiable, keys that distinguish who we are from
others, such as an email address,
Internet Protocol address, and open more
doors for the stalking hobbyist or professional data-aggregator.
Even more
problematic is that most users of technology do not understand
the collection of data, like web statistics or purchases, not being
stored just as aggregate data but associated with personally
identifiable or traceable information.
Privacy is at its peak when there is no central, organized entity that
has the capacity to track people. If a person buys sheep wool from a
roaming merchant, the merchant will know of the purchase, but no other.
To keep track of individuals and their buying habits, the merchant would
have to keep written records of what was purchased, where it was
purchased, and personally identifiable information about the person.
So the technology of writing increased the ability of one person to
track others by storing the memory externally. Now, with computers,
the merchant can keep track of every person associated with their
personal information every time they swipe their "Valued Member" card,
or whatever creative name the merchant chooses to give the customer
tracker card.
So the issue of privacy has not changed with the introduction of the
computer, it is just now
much easier to collect more information, correlate and analyze
information, and trade information with others. The computerized
database increases the vigilance, reach, and power of those who desire
to collect information on others in a way so cheap and so efficient that
only governments or large bureaucratic organizations skilled in
administrative science dreamed of achieving before the advent of the
computer. The main change that this enabler of efficient data processing
brought about was delivery of its surveillance powers to a broader range
of entities. Now government with its large bureaucracy is not the only
threat. Companies have perhaps become a greater
threat to privacy in the democratic state because of the opacity of,
daily reliance on, and lack of surveillance regulation on the private sector.
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