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Erosion of Individual Privacy
“Without the ability to keep secrets, individuals lose the capacity todistinguish themselves from others, to maintain independent lives, to becomplete and autonomous persons. . . . This does not mean that a personactually has to keep secrets to be autonomous, just that she must possessthe ability to do so. The ability to keep secrets implies the ability todisclose secrets selectively, and so the capacity for selective disclosure atone's own discretion is important to individual autonomy as well.”-Kim L. Scheppele,
Legal Secrets 
302 (1988)“Knowledge is Power”-Sir Francis Bacon“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a morecontrolled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite,unrestrained by traditional values. [...] [T]he capacity to assert social andpolitical control over the individual will vastly increase. It will soon bepossible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and tomaintain up-to-date, complete files, containing even most personalinformation about the health or personal behavior of the citizen in additionto more customary data. These files will be subject to instantaneousretrieval by the authorities.”-Zbigniew Brzezinski, protegé of David Rockefeller, cofounder of theTrilateral Commission, and NSA to Jimmy Carter, from his 1971 book
Between Two Ages 
 Individual privacy rights are an impediment to the oligarchy of power brokers.They increase the self-respect and mutual respect of those who would be ruled,and they decrease the thoroughness with which their compliance with thedictates of the oligarchy can be evaluated. In particular, individual privacy rightsmake it harder for the oligarchy to detect and snub in the crib cultural andtechnological innovations that threaten their hegemony.Thisarchive of Guy Polis's Cryptography Manifestodetails many of thetechniques and strategies intelligence agencies (and other organizations) use inmining personal information, including a treatment of the infamous Echelonnetwork.Something to consider: a representative of the National Security Agency visitsthe Altavista site in Palo Alto once a week to collect data on site traffic. In 1996,the CFO of the facility personally confessed this to me, when prodded. The othermajor search engines probably have similar arrangements.
 
The Echelon articles are mostly ina dedicated subchapter on Echelon. Thatsubchapter contains most of the coverage of the signals intelligenceestablishment.
 EFF's list of printers that rat out their owners from the New York Times, 2009-Jan-17, by Robert Pear:
Privacy Issue Complicates Push to Link Medical Data
WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama's plan to link up doctors andhospitals with new information technology, as part of an ambitious job-creationprogram, is imperiled by a bitter, seemingly intractable dispute over how toprotect the privacy of electronic medical records.Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff-designate, said it was “essential”to protect personal health information.Lawmakers, caught in a crossfire of lobbying by the health care industry andconsumer groups, have been unable to agree on privacy safeguards that wouldallow patients to control the use of their medical records.Congressional leaders plan to provide $20 billion for such technology in aneconomic stimulus bill whose cost could top $825 billion.In a speech outlining his economic recovery plan, Mr. Obama said, “We willmake the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years all ofAmerica's medical records are computerized.” Digital medical records couldprevent medical errors, save lives and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Mr.Obama has said.So far, the only jobs created have been for a small army of lobbyists trying tosecure money for health information technology. They say doctors, hospitals,drugstores and insurance companies would be much more efficient if they couldexchange data instantaneously through electronic health information networks.Consumer groups and some members of Congress insist that the new spendingmust be accompanied by stronger privacy protections in an era when digital datacan be sent around the world or posted on the Web with the click of a mouse.Lawmakers leading the campaign for such safeguards include RepresentativesEdward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Pete Stark of California, bothDemocrats; Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont; and SenatorOlympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine.Without strong safeguards, Mr. Markey said, the dream of electronic healthinformation networks could turn into “a nightmare for consumers.”
 
In the last few years, personal health information on hundreds of thousands ofpeople has been compromised because of security lapses at hospitals, insurancecompanies and government agencies. These breaches occurred despite federalprivacy rules issued under a 1996 law. Congress is trying to strengthen thoseprivacy protections and make sure they apply to computer records. Lobbyists forinsurers, drug benefit managers and others in the health industry are mobilizing acampaign to persuade Congress that overly stringent privacy protections wouldfrustrate the potential benefits of digital records.One of the proposed safeguards would outlaw the sale of any personal healthinformation in an electronic medical record, except with the patient's permission.Another would allow patients to impose additional controls on certain particularlysensitive information, like records of psychotherapy, abortions and tests for thevirus that causes AIDS. Patients could demand that such information besegregated from the rest of their medical records.Under other proposals being seriously considered in Congress, health careproviders and insurers would have to use encryption technology to protectpersonal health information stored in or sent by computers. Patients would havea right to an accounting of any disclosures of their electronic data. Health careproviders and insurers would have to notify patients whenever such informationwas lost, stolen or used for an unauthorized purpose. And patients — or stateofficials acting on their behalf — could recover damages from an entity thatimproperly used or disclosed personal health information.Rahm Emanuel, who will be the White House chief of staff for Mr. Obama,advocated such safeguards when he was a House member from Illinois. “As wemove forward on health information technology,” Mr. Emanuel said, “it isabsolutely essential that an individual's most personal and vulnerable informationis protected.”Advisers to Mr. Obama say he favors strong privacy protections but does notwant the dispute to slow down the bill.Mary R. Grealy, president of the Health Care Leadership Council, whichrepresents large health care corporations, said the proposed safeguards couldbe an impediment to the widespread adoption of health information technologyand counteract any economic stimulus effect.In a letter to Congressional leaders, Karen M. Ignagni, president of America'sHealth Insurance Plans, a trade group for insurers, expressed “serious concernabout privacy provisions being considered for inclusion in the economic stimulusbill.”She criticized, in particular, a proposal that would require health care providers toobtain the consent of patients before disclosing personal health information fortreatment, payment or “health care operations.”
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lumpy

Great book Thanks could it be made down loadable

reply01 / 22 / 2010
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