board77

Literally. Requires sound.

A call to a pizza place (from ACLU website, I better warn you)

W00t! My first thread on b77!

I've seen the transcript typed up, but the visuals make it better.

Hi Frelga!

I remember seeing this in Manwe a while back. It seems they’ve updated it by adding the “National ID” number (I don’t remember it from before). It is rather spooky though. I wonder if something like this is really that far away from reality. I certainly hope not.

Spooky sounding and I remember this from Manwe. I doubt this will happen.

It's not going to happen, people won't allow it to happen.

However, the ACLU loves to play up people's fears for whatever they're pushing, so it doesn't surprise me.

tinwe_linto wrote:

I wonder if something like this is really that far away from reality. I certainly hope not.

The technology is all available today. All the information they are referring to is entered in various computer systems and much of it is public records. The logic behind is not complicated at all. In fact, I could probably write an application like that in very little time, given access to the databases. A universal ID like in the ad would make it much easier, but even without it it's no big deal.

The current laws do limit access to medical information, and that has been made stricter recently with the HIPAA act. I don't think that there's a chance that this information would ever become available to a pizza parlor.

The real key, however, is the access to the credit card data on the level of individual purchases. I am not sure if that information is at all protected. It's not your financial data, strictly speaking, is it? If the merchants find a way to share that, it would not be hard to infer the state of your health from your buying habits.

hal, I'm curious to hear what ACLU is pushing, in your opinion. From what I know about them, they seem to be pretty evenhanded, taking cases on both sides of the political spectrum (someone in Manwe posted examples a while ago). If they seem to be taking up a liberal cause more often, perhaps it illustrates which rights and interests require greater protection these days.

As for people being able to stop something like this... that's a topic for another forum. Market forces might come into play, if consumers plain refuse to deal with businesses that infringe on their privacy. But the way many markets are consolidated now, how much choice do we really have?

Quote:

It's not going to happen, people won't allow it to happen.

This is of course spoken before every Really Bad Thing that happens. That, or "hey guys, watch this" depending.

As an interesting experiment, could the Americans here type your home phone number (including area code) into Google. I'm told it will bring up whatever info is easily available on your residence including a map.

Let me know if it works!

Alatar

Mine doesn't come up, but that's because my home phone number is unlisted, meaning it isn't in the phonebook. I'm not sure what your experiment is aiming to prove, but I assure you (if anyone's know shows up) it isn't a matter of the government keeping tabs, but because the phonebook and its contents are online.

It's not a conspiracy theory or anything like that, it's simply interesting that the info is so readily accessible without and particular effort.

I'm just curious to know how detailed the info is.

Alatar

Mine comes up with the phone book listing, which lists the last name, but not address, and the city is incorrect. However, the personal information you can find just by googling is astonishing. Try googling your name or your email.

When hubby was changing jobs, he found all kinds of information about his potential employers and incidentally quite a bit about the employees (hint: do NOT use your work email to sign up for anything!). Harmless stuff, mostly, although he did find a rant by former employee that caused him to decline one of the offers.

TED, no, it's not a government conspiracy. However, the damage to an individual from abuses by private companies could be just as devastating. See this article for some examples ChoicePoint's Checks Under Fire.

Interesting... googling my name actually bought up less results than last time. I mean less about me. Perhaps my old primary school just stopped feeling that terrrible urge to publish the names of small children along with the village they live in, eh?

*~Pips~*

I googled my phone number. Google gave my name, address, and two maps of where I live. Nice to know it would be so easy to stalk me.

I also googled my name. 2 of 9 results were me, and another was my cousin who has exactly the same name.

This may be infringing on Symposium territory, but here's an example of a private company that is trying to introduce a variation on a national ID card. You may want to peruse other stories on the same page.

"I'm not a Terrorist" Cards

Crypto-Gram Newsletter wrote:

Journalist and entrepreneur Steve Brill is developing a voluntary, fingerprint-based ID card with a background check attached. The company is called Verified Identity Card, Inc., and the card is called a V-ID.

The idea is for people who are not on a set of government watch lists to be able to subscribe to the service (or for organizations to buy it for their employees, customers, etc.), and then get faster treatment at security checkpoints around the country. Guards would be able to divide people into two categories: more-trusted people with a card and less-trusted people without a card -- and concentrate their screening resources on the less-trusted category.

I'm not buying stock in that company - yet.

From the same newsletter, another take on the ChoicePoint disaster.

Quote:

ChoicePoint protects its data, but only to the extent that it values it. The hundreds of millions of people in ChoicePoint's databases are not ChoicePoint's customers. They have no power to switch credit agencies. They have no economic pressure that they can bring to bear on the problem. Maybe they should rename the company "NoChoicePoint."

The upshot of this is that ChoicePoint doesn't bear the costs of identity theft, so ChoicePoint doesn't take those costs into account when figuring out how much money to spend on data security. In economic terms, it's an "externality."

If I goggle my number I get my phone book entry. From there you could easily generate a map to my house, but my house is protected by insane attack guinea pigs and venomous house plants so don't even try.

If I google my name I get all kinds of other stuff. My dad used to google-stalk me in college. He said it was because I never told him anything (not that there was much to tell). Of course, none of what I wanted to keep secret was accessible by google, but it was rather annoying that he would know how much duty time I'd been putting in with the campus rescue squad.

I googled my name and was surprised a picture of me came up. Then I remembered why there was a picture of me somewhere in cyberspace. Yay, playwrights workshop!

My name and address and a link to a map comes up when googling my phone number.

I am relieved, however, that typing in my first name and the town I live in DOESNT bring up my info, although it does for 3 other "Marias" in the area.

I got interested, so I googled both phone numbers in my house, and my street name and number but nothing came up for any of them.



But then again, not even the pizza delivery people knew my street existed ...I thought they knew everyone?!

Wow, even my googling my cell phone and street address returns nothing. Do I exist?

satch wrote:

I got interested, so I googled both phone numbers in my house, and my street name and number but nothing came up for any of them.

Were you using the UK google? Maybe this problem is only specific in the States.

I just googled my name and found that other people have my name...that's strange because neither my first or last name are names I encounter.