Privacy?

Despite the allegations to the contrary, there is no Constitutional Right of Privacy. There are laws, but no right. A while back I wrote a paper on Privacy in the Internet Environment, in 2002, before the issues had become red hot. At the time no one seemed interested. I presented to colleagues in the White House Staff on one hand and to my Russian partners on the other hand. The Russians were interested. But that was almost two decades ago.

Now the EFF, an excellent organization that all should defend, has noted the following:

The U.S. government sends a lot of emails. Like any large, modern organization, it wants to “optimize” for “user engagement” using “analytics” and “big data.” In practice, that means tracking the people it communicates with—secretly, thoroughly, and often, insecurely....Every time I open this email, my device sends Granicus my email address and a unique identifier for the email that I opened. Granicus knows exactly who I am, which email I’m reading, and when I opened it—and potentially, so might a network observer...The email also uses link shimming, the practice of obfuscating URLs in emails for tracking purposes, to track which links you click on. (Link shimming, and link tracking more generally, is commonly used on the web by search engines and social media companies.) Take a look at a sample link from the newsletter....The practice of link shimming poses a subtle security risk as well: it makes users more susceptible to phishing. If users are led to click links that look like garbage, they are much more likely to be duped into clicking links from less-than-reputable sources. 91% of cyber attacks start with a phishing email, including many attacks on the government itself. That means that training users to trust insecure, illegible links to unrecognizable domains is a serious problem.

So now we have the Government, and everyone else tracking such things as if you opened it, read it, printed it, and who you may have sent it to. All done on an open insecure transmission which not only gives the Government the information but anyone else who may try to get it.

At some time there should be some conversation regarding privacy, a real one, please!