Thoughts spurred by Loki, Google Street Views, etc.

kupietz - 04:56pm Jun 20, 2007 PST
FileMaker Pro consultant & 20 year Mac enthusiast

This is based on what I read about Loki in Tidbits & on their website, as contrary to the article, the OS X version is not available for download.

I have to cop to being a little disturbed when I read the article on Loki. They sent a truck down my street and recorded my SSID and location?

I wonder if, in addition to Privacy rights, we need to begin a movement for Anonymity rights. Between Loki and Google Street Views, we're beginning to see the old "if it's in public, it can be recorded without permission" defense being used in a new way: companies utilizing new technology to aggressively go out and criss-crossing mammoth areas, soaking up and permanently recording amounts of "public" information previously not possible.

OK, so, nobody has been individually harmed yet by this practice (save perhaps for the guy in Google Street Views photographed in front of the porn shop, who may perhaps have had some fast talking to do if he's married or in public office.)

But where is the line between what you do in public being "public domain", and having to jealously guard every aspect of your identity and actions outside of your dwelling or risk having them permanently recorded?

When we purchase a wireless router, are our only two choices to a.) Turn off SSID broadcast, or b.) consent to having it permanently recorded by Loki?

If I go out in public, are my only options to a.) wear a disguise, or b.) consent to having my activities photographed and permanently displayed on a mapping website? (Yes, I know Google will remove street view photos if you complain - but they don't *have* to, and future similar services may not.)

I'm sorry, that just doesn't seem right to me. The right of any passing person to photograph me in public should not be the same as the right of someone to go out for the express purpose of photographing *everybody in public everywhere*. Or do you think it's acceptable to say that anyone anywhere who does not want to have details of their lives be globally accessible should have to always wear a disguise outside their homes?

How long before every thing we do outside our homes, every aspect of our lives that leaks out beyond our for walls, is fair game to be put on display permanently for the whole world to see on demand? I'll tell you how long: no time at all. Right now. It's always been fair game theoretically, of course, but until now the large-scale methods weren't there, so the question hasn't had to be considered.

I think now that massive data collection is a very practical reality, we need to beef up our ideas about public vs. private realms. I think we need a new concept: Anonymity rights, by which you may go out in public but still have the right, essentially, not to have your identifying details noticed or remembered beyond certain pre-technological limits. Now that everything "in public" is not just locally but globally visible, we need to re-evaluate the basic assumptions about things being "in public". The meaning of the term has fundamentally changed. I don't believe that we should have to jealously guard every single minute identifying detail of our lives from becoming game to be collected and stored permanently on a server somewhere any time we step out of (or do something perceptible outside of) our four walls.

Organized, large-scale data collection of minute, identifying detail should be regarded as ethically wrong, even if each individual bit of data was completely public within its local context. How is what Loki or Google is doing, sending trucks down every street of our cities to record information about us, different (except in degree) from having cameras on every street corner recording all our comings and goings? It's illegal to use infrared detection to peer into my walls. Why is it ok to do it on wireless wavelengths? I don't care if my SSID is being publicly (by the old definition) broadcast within a 40 foot radius. Done on the scale they're doing it, and with the express intent of data acquisition, what the Loki people are doing is spying.

Now, granted, I can almost see some of the more pragmatic readers shaking their heads. I know, I know, no possible harm can come to me by my SSID and location being stored in a database somewhere - *I think*. But do you think this is the last we are going to see of this trend? How many trucks are going to be going down our street recording what information, and then using it how? Do anybody have the right to turn their SSID broadcast on at all without consenting to Loki storing and using it for their business purposes? Do they have the right to force me to choose one of those two options?

Can you see a future where everything you do in public becomes the business of not just those in the particular places you go, but of the whole wide world? Is it the right of everybody in the world to see where you go grocery shopping?

Right now, it is. I don't think it should be. I think, just as much as I have a right to privacy in my home, that anywhere in my life, I should have a right to be forgotten.