Living the observed life in the digital world

The US Government has asked several of the major search engines to turn over search data for one million random web addresses and records of all  searches, from any source,  for a one week period. The expressed purpose was to estimate how much pornography shows up in the searches that children might do. How they could determine which searches were done by children and which searches were done by adults is a mystery.

Yahoo, MSM, and AOL have supplied the requested information. Google has refused, and was issued a subpoena. Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineWatch has covered this issue extensively and uncovered the real facts. Definitely worth a read. John Battelle's Searchblog also has a story "What's the big deal". The New York Times chimes in with a story on web privacy.

UPDATE: Om Malik of Business 2.0 has published a story on his blog "Living a cached life" which expands on the issues presented here in Living the "Observed Life". An excellent read from a truly outstanding writer. Dan Farber at ZDnet adds his view in "Data trolling and the cached life". Jack Schofield of The Guardian in the UK also picks up the story "Living the observed life".

The supreme court nomination hearings for judge Alito have focused in part of the boundaries of presidential power and the government's right to wiretapping and other surveillance methods in the name of national security. The supreme court ultimately decides the constitutionality and legality of such issues. Serious stuff.

Technology, politics, and the law are a very dangerous mix. I was at Napster back in 2000 when these three forces converged. It was not a pretty sight. The search engine request is a much larger, far reaching, issue. It effects every one of us, at least in principle. After stripping away all the hype the reality is that the government has not requested any personally identifiable information associated with the search data. At least not yet. It could become a slippery slope. What if they ask for all searches for "Osama Bin Laden" and associated IP addresses?

We should again consider what rights and privacy we have in the new digital world. You will probably be surprised to learn you have very little privacy and very few rights. Over the years we have rationalized this away, traded privacy for convenience, accepted targeted ads for free content, and assumed our email, even at work, was private. It isn't.

Most of the time this is OK. Getting sued by the government, a competitor, or a litigious  action group, will change your perception of privacy in a hurry. At Napster every email we ever wrote or received was subpoenaed and read by teams of lawyers. Sorry Mom...that email you sent me complaining about Dad...is now public information under the Freedom Of Information Act.

Bill Gates and other executives at Microsoft have had all of their email captured by legal teams for various law suits at one time or another. Bill Gates once said "We live the observed life". Translation...assume that everything you say, write, or do will be reviewed by a team of lawyers...with the worst of intentions.

Working on personal computers does not mean everything we do is personal and private. Email is an impersonal and informal type of communication. We sometimes write things in email that we wouldn't say face to face, or even on the telephone. Instant Messaging is even more informal. Some think that when the session ends the message vanishes. Not always. Some services log and archive IMs.

Living the "observed life" can actually be a good thing, once you get used to it. But it should be your choice, not a requirement. Here are a few suggestions for living the observed life in the digital world.

1. Write each email as if it is CC'd to your boss, your competitors, or your spouse. If you are ever sued or investigated...it will be.
2. Use a separate, non-work, email for any personal communication. Still not private, but at least a little safer from work and competitors...but not your spouse. :-)
3. Use the old fashioned telephone for sensitive conversations, and don't take notes. Email is the ultimate written record that could come back to haunt you.
4. Don't use search engines or email at work for any personal issues.
5. Limit cookies on your browser to only those you explicitly accept. Understand the bargain you are making when you accept a cookie.
6. Understand that anything you download to your computer can be tracked, and probably is.
7. Assume that any data you enter on web forms or e-commerce pages can be intercepted, hacked, misused, or subpoenaed. The creidt card companies take most of the risk here. Your nmaximum exposure is around $50.

There are probably more, and better,  rules to live by, these are just random rules off the top of my head. Ask a lawyer and they can give you a nice long list.

However, life is good. Everything works out just fine 99.9% of the time. We live in a great society of honest and decent people who want to do the right thing. Even in government...most of the time. Principles are important. We do have a right to privacy, but we have been lulled to sleep about where the boundaries of our privacy begin and end, and what compromises we have made along the way. Something to think about over the weekend.

Comments

[Don Dodge]

Tim, I think you have missed the points. The first point is write your email as if it were copied to your boss, your competitor, or your spouse. The second point is to keep your personal activities off your employers computers. The overall point is to conduct your life as if you were being observed...because you probably are. Once you understand that everything becomes easy...not depressing.

[Barry]

What would happen if all those emails you wrote at napster would have been encrypted in say PGP? Would you be forced to give up your personal key to decode the messages?

[Don Dodge]

Barry, that is an excellent question. I don't know but I suspect we would be required to hand over the keys. It is after all a court subpoena. They can confiscate your computer, office files, phone records, or anything else they want. They can require a deposition, and can jail you if you don't comply. So, yes, I am pretty sure you would be required to hand over any keys and passwords.

[Colin]

I think we also have to reflect on the traditional environment, pre internet. Everything is visible and observable there too, and we have become used to that. Internet is just new, and being electronic, trackable in every minutiae.
I would add to Don's list one more - do not change your behaviour patterns - its ok to be tracked and their might even be advantages in the future such as proof that you did NOT do something or other.
I like the word transparency in this context, and transparency is what will help us retain our freedoms.

[OG]

I may be being a little naive here, but assuming that we only ever had the perception of privacy in the first place, isn't the real problem that we're being watched, but we're not watching ourselves?

To my mind, it isn't so much that someone who doesn't have your best interest at heart is watching you and taking notes; it's that you, while being observed, aren't keeping your own set of notes. In that situation, you have no means of rebutting the information that may have been collected. And let's be honest, if the collected info isn't damning enough, someone will make something up to make it look bad, if they want you badly enough.

The cynic in me believes that should the government find the need to manufacture details about where I have been and what I have done, they will. So that they are watching me, doesn't really phase me.

What matters is that when someone attempts to use details about me against me, I have material with which to counter the attack. I have my own records of where I was and what I did, safely put away somewhere.

It may sound paranoid, but BCCing myself on my email, keeping logs of my IMs, and backing it all up eases my mind. And I know someone out there in Web 2.0-land is thinking about this problem, and is going to offer a solution to it.

Heck, maybe it should be me.

[Christine Scharfen]

We profit form new technologies.
We can easy get a lot of information out of our computers, transfer money at 12 in the night, send letters and photos in seconds
or feel a bit more safe in places that are observed by video cameras.
But on the other hand we can´t prevent from getting caught step by step in the digital world. Small post offices get closed,
Bank-companies reduce their counters,
video cameras are installed on big places and shops, without internet it was hard do get a footballticket for the WM 2006 .
and with GPS and Tollcollect “Big Brother” is able to safe all informations about our moovings. What we need is an international, neutral comission to controll the system
and prevent it from abuse.
And who controlls this comission ?….
Christine, Germany