Watch your privates; readers talk back

Well, at home, my IP address has not changed in the last 4 years. It may be longer than that, I just happened to have written it down 4 years ago. It is not a static IP, I use DHCP to get it from my ISP. No matter if I have been off the network for a week or a month, I still get the same IP address from my ISP. So, yes, I think it is personal and probably identifiable with out much effort.

An IP address is sorta like a phone number that always shows up on Caller ID. What if my company decides to log the date, time, and phone number of all calls to the office and keep that for 18 months? Isn't that about the same thing?

I agree with the anonymous Cringster above - if you don't want Google to be able to have your information, don't use their services.

Since privacy is neither a guaranteed right, nor is it completely an illusion, that means there's a line somewhere. Those with money to spend on defining it their way will probably be heard more loudly than those who don't, unless those who don't can get politicians/grass-roots support/etc. mobilized sufficiently to be heard just as loudly (or, in my dreams, even more loudly). It's "self-interest + money" vs. "righteousness + effort" all over again. And, lately, "privacy rights" have been taking a drubbing.

I have a problem with Google and other search engines using my search requests for marketing and other potentially more nefarious purposes. So I use:

http://ixquick.com/

I learned about this search engine several years ago via a mention in InfoWorld and I've been using it ever since. They promise to delete all identifying data within 48 hours. See:

http://ixquick.com/eng/protect_privacy.html

to find out why and how they protect your privacy, links to articles about Ixquick, etc.

Ixquick's engine was a bit kludgey at first, but it has become much better -- fine, in fact. I don't miss Googling at all.

I like Google -- I like what they have done and I appreciate their services, especially Googlemaps -- I just don't want search requests tied to my ID used in what is becoming a huge marketing scheme.

Unfortunately, there are both legal and illegal uses of the internet, the same as in other areas of our life. Driving, banking, ranting in an InfoWorld column. You can't lift someone's else's words and call them your own, nor can you say George W. Tree kick's his dog without risking slander charges.

This means that because of the small percentage of people who would use the internet for nefarious purposes, the rest of us have to be "registered" for the same reason I need a driver's license, even though I could drive in a proper and legal fashion without it.

We do, however, need reasonable restrictions on "internet licensing" to prevent abuse by [insert governments and companies here]. Right now, it seems that an IP address is the logical equivalent to a driver's license, and we have to show it when we use the internet.

Perhaps someday we'll be able to just listen to the stream of information as it flies by and maybe even add our own and still be completely anonymous. I could imagine such a system as similar to broadcast television - you pick a channel and watch, maybe inserting your own video into the stream. A trillion channels and a really good selection mechanism.

Time to change the channel, so I'll watch you later.

Even if a privacy rights advocate had the money to test privacy limits in court, that's an iffy proposition at best these days. Ever since the DMCA, or even earlier, the courts have been increasingly stacked with judges whose attitude is "the corporations own you, and the bigger the corporation the more of you they own, so get over it."

There's only one recourse, and it requires a decision on what's most important to you, and lots of patience. If privacy is your overriding concern, don't vote for a rep or senator, if you have the choice, who doesn't support your views. Otherwise, it will be business as usual. Forget about finding a presidential candidate who supports you. If they do it's the meerest coincidence, assuming you can even figure out what their position might be until they're elected and reveal their position by their actions.

And if enough reps, senators, and a president who are concerned about privacy do manage to get elected, you'll still have to wait until they get around to protecting it, and hope they don't screw up still one more technology issue.

Won't IPv6 pretty well do away with anonymity on the Internet?

To "RE", and his comment: "...privacy is [not] a guaranteed right..."

Let me quote you from the Fundamental Law of the United States: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Hey, that sounds like an argument for "privacy" to ME...

This is why the Bill of Rights is important. Your "rights" are natural and God-given to YOU as an individual. The only legitimate role of government, then, is to protect those rights, and never infringe them. That's why you see the words "shall not be infringed" so often in the Bill of Rights.

But that part of the Constitution has been conveniently ignored by pols for decades now, and unless we do something, it will only get worse. We need to get back to a system where "privacy" is considered sacrosanct, and any "infringement" of that privacy by government has to be justified to high heaven, with sign-offs by officials at every necessary level - with the knowledge that they may be held accountable for their actions later on.

Privacy is not an absolute.

With regard to commercial transactions, the key point should be full disclosure of how the other party will protect and use your information. Then you have the option to participate in the transaction or not. In each case, the parties to the transaction need to make decisions based on the trade-off between privacy and benefits.

The government is different in that government intrusions are subject to one's approval. In this case, again there is an elusive balance between the need to provide national security and law enforcement (two of the fundamental reasons why we have governments) and the threats to privacy and freedom that are inherent to government. There are some cases where clearly the benefits exceed the costs, some where the costs clearly exceed the benefits and a lot of gray area in between. In general, I am inclined to give the government a bit more latitude in wartime than in peacetime, but I want to know that the increase in security is much higher than the loss in other things.

To fix a significant mistake in my last post:

The government is different in that government intrusions are generally NOT subject to one's approval.

RE: "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"

Since when is the internet entirely in my home? Privacy within my home I expect, but when traveling outside in public (and the internet is a very public forum) I have no such expectation of privacy, nor do I have an issue with someone using my searches for marketing - it provides them with income to offset their offering me a free service. What would the cost of this service be without their ability to market products?

I agree with Terry that giving up your IP address in return for some service and access to the internet is a reasonable exchange. The internet's addresses where never designed to be private. They added the private address space as an addendum not part of the original design.

My problem with all this is that the IP adress is taken as an immutable and personally identified piece of information. I believe any IP is no more identifying than a street address or phone number. By itself it means nothing. The infrastructure used to produce this is by no means secure and held auditable by any public committee. Your IP at best identifies the cable/dsl/dialup modem used at a point in time. It does not identify a person, just like having a record of a phone call does not guarantee who you talked to or mailing a letter does not identify who received it.

If somebody provides a service in exchange for tracking my usage and I use it then I agreed to their tacking of my use. Google is a business that you can use to make your life easier. Nobody is forcing you to Google, the libraries and other search engines are all still viable alternatives. If you don;t like them take your business elsewhere. To any business voting with your pocketbook is always heard.

Another point: There's the use of the info and the length of time it's kept:

Of course, I am OK with my bank's security tapes getting clear pictures. That's because:

a) I don't like bank robbers
b) After a week or two of being sure that a robbery hasn't happened, they can erase/overwrite the tape...

Even to view infoworld.com, does anyone have any idea how many other servers that your request has passed through? Does anyone know where every image is hosted on this web page as it is served up?

I don't see a problem when, let's say, google can see that my ip address is accessing their service. Even as I speak I see "Transferring data from www.computerworld.com..." in my statusbar. Other websites unaffiliated with google I see connections for good ads hosted on google servers, or "Google Analytics".

We aren't even easily privy to where our information was going, who is logging it, how it is used, nor have the option to opt out of its use. I don't remember reading a disclosure when I signed up for internet access, or some kind of privacy agreement but I could be wrong.

While I agree with tao that the 4th Amendment does infer a right to privacy even if it doesn't use that word (sometimes the Founding Fathers expected common sense), what most people don't understand is the Amendments were added to the Constitution to protect us against the government. They don't protect you against me, your neighbor, or Google. That is up to the Congress and your state legislature.