# Volunteering to give up your privacy is mandatory?



## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

If it hasn't happened to you already, it will soon. Police will knock on your door, tell you they're looking for a criminal who may be in the neighborhood, and ask you to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. If you hesitate even for a moment, they'll become quite, er, persuasive. "You don't have anything to hide, do you? You aren't the person we're looking for, are you? What's the problem? It's just a cotton swab from the inside of your cheek. It'll prove your innocence."

What's happened to the United States of America, where this sort of thing can happen?

Yes, the above actually happened, in the town of Truro, Mass., about a year ago. "We're trying to find that person who has something to hide," said Sgt. David Perry of the Truro Police Department.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/natio ... b8&ei=5090

The idea that someone who values his or her own privacy has something to hide is patently ridiculous. There are many good reasons to keep personal information private, not least among them being the opportunity for crime, such as identity theft, committed through the misuse of personal information. And then there's the fact that you can't trust all police.

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/205/205lect11.htm

(  btw...I'm former law enforcement and don't subscribe to all of this web article listed above... Ryan)

Security expert Bruce Schneier points to a new paper from Gary Marx, entitled "Soft Surveillance: The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in Collecting Personal Information." It details the relatively new methods whereby police, marketers and others collect personal information from as many people as possible through whatever means they can, whether they need that information or not. Here are a few choice cuts.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2 ... on_su.html



> There is increased reliance on "soft" means for collecting personal information. In criminal justice contexts these means involve some or all of the following: persuasion to gain voluntary compliance, universality, or at least increased inclusiveness in the dragnet they cast, and emphasis on the needs of the community relative to the rights of the individual.
> 
> In contrast, more traditional police methods such as an arrest, a custodial interrogation, a search, a subpoena or traffic stop are "hard." They involve coercion and threat in seeking involuntary compliance. They may also involve a crossing of intimate personal borders, as with a strip or body cavity search done by another. In principle such means are exclusive in being restricted by law and policy to persons there are reasons to suspect - thus implicitly recognizing the liberty of the individual relative to the needs of the community.
> 
> ...


How the *hell *did this happen? Why are we being asked to "voluntarily" give up all pretense of having a private self and a private life for some nebulous "public good"?



> Traditionally (if accidentally) there was a happy overlap between three factors that limited searches and protected personal information. The first was logistical. It was not cost- or time-effective to search everyone. The second was law. More invasive searches were prohibited or inadmissable, absent cause and a warrant. The third reflected the effrontery experienced in our culture when certain personal borders were involuntarily crossed (e.g., strip and body cavity searches and taking body fluids, and to a lesser degree, even fingerprinting). Limited resources, the unpleasantness of invasive searches (for both the searched and the searcher) and the ethos of a democratic society historically restricted searches.
> 
> These supports are being undermined by the mass media's encouragement of fear and perceptions of crises, the seductiveness of consumption and the concurrent development of inexpensive, less invasive tools for broad searching. - Ibid.


The mass media and technology? I guess I can buy that. The technology of the last 50 years has changed pretty much everything. People have voluntarily interconnected themselves, buying mobile phones, starting Web logs, and watching Jerry Springer.

But what about terrorism? Don't we need more information on everybody to figure out who's a terrorist?



> In the face of grave risks and the blurring of lines between the foreign and domestic, today's security issues are more complicated, but still involve the question of where control agents should look (both morally and practically) to discover or prevent harm and how their behavior should be reviewed. A central idea in the Bill of Rights and in the general culture is that there be reasonable grounds on which to investigate, absent that individuals should be "let alone" as Warren and Brandeis (1890) argued. Of course just what being left alone means is contentious, especially when searches are done directly by machines rather than people.
> 
> Searches in the 18th century had a cruder physical quality and the object of a search was something material - whether contraband or printed material. Today, networks, electronic transactions and communication and behavior patterns that are more publicly accessible than papers hidden in a drawer, are of search interest. New data mining techniques (such as those proposed for the Total Information Awareness program, CAPPS2 for airline passengers or NSA's satellite screening of communications) depend on dragnets (both with respect to kinds of data and persons) of staggering breadth. There is an initial superficial troll in the hope of finding cases for more detailed investigation. The traditional standard is less easily applied to the initial automated search.
> 
> ...


This is nothing we didn't know. More computers are online now than ever, and more agencies are sharing information about you than ever before, both with each other, and with the government. That's not to mention the information sharing within the government. That DNA sample you "voluntarily" gave a year ago could eventually "prove" that you were at a crime scene, even if you were there hours, days or weeks before the crime happened! Without other suspects, it could then be you who goes on trial for a crime you didn't commit.

In the meantime, you would be well-advised to keep strict control over your personal information, and especially with respect to people from the government. If they try to tell you it's for your own good, or for the public good, or for some good cause like catching a criminal, ask yourself this: Could the information be misused against you later? If so, politely decline and ask Officer Unfriendly to get a search warrant if he wants your DNA. Unless you are the criminal he's looking for, he likely won't return, and a bit of your personal information - and perhaps your very life, if that information was ever misused - will remain safe.

Anyway, I obviously don't agree with everything in the article, since he's so far left. But it's still a good read, and an excellent reminder that your privacy is as important now as it ever was. Government is not your friend, never was, and never will be. It must remain strictly limited and kept in its place, and by refusing unfounded, warrantless searches, you're doing an important part in keeping government limited and keeping yourself safe.

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Ryan


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## Gun Owner (Sep 9, 2005)

I tell ya whats really scary. If they want your DNA, they sure dont have to ask for it. IF you're a suspect, or for that matter one of the "holdouts" all they have to do is follow you around. You're bound to leave your DNA somewhere.

Cut your finger and soaked the blood into a tissue?

Blew your nose?

Threw out an old hat?

Wiped your mouth with a napkin?

If they want your DNA, they can have it.

Time to wake up America. For every little creature comfort we create and sell to the masses, we give up just a little more freedom.


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## Militant_Tiger (Feb 23, 2004)

> How the hell did this happen? Why are we being asked to "voluntarily" give up all pretense of having a private self and a private life for some nebulous "public good"?


Which is precisely my issue with the NSA wiretapping scandal. Once we start giving up freedoms it is not a far step to totalitarianism.


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

Militant_Tiger said:


> > How the hell did this happen? Why are we being asked to "voluntarily" give up all pretense of having a private self and a private life for some nebulous "public good"?
> 
> 
> Which is precisely my issue with the NSA wiretapping scandal. Once we start giving up freedoms it is not a far step to totalitarianism.


Sorry MT. We are not taking this post in that direction. 2 different issues. Noone wants to hear your wiretapping conspiracy anymore.

Ryan


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## Militant_Tiger (Feb 23, 2004)

> Sorry MT. We are not taking this post in that direction. 2 different issues. Noone wants to hear your wiretapping conspiracy anymore.


They are both about giving up our rights, specifically privacy. You may not want to hear it, but that doesn't make it any less true or important.


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

Militant_Tiger said:


> > Sorry MT. We are not taking this post in that direction. 2 different issues. Noone wants to hear your wiretapping conspiracy anymore.
> 
> 
> They are both about giving up our rights, specifically privacy. You may not want to hear it, but that doesn't make it any less true or important.


The difference is that one is fighting the war on terror, the other is degrading my domestic rights. If the government want to listen to my boring phone conversations in pursuit of Terrorists, I say let them listen to my attempts to shmooze a girl. Maybe it will give them a thrill in their boring lives. However the government isn't going to have permanent DNA records in some vast database somewhere. If they come knocking for DNA, that is an entirely different story, where they can "mass categorize" all citizens. _*THAT*_ is a different story entirely!

Yes I do seperate the two. Take the wiretap story over to the other thread..... Or it will be done for you.

Ryan

.


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## Militant_Tiger (Feb 23, 2004)

> The difference is that one is fighting the war on terror, the other is degrading my domestic rights.


You could argue that both are to "fight a war", but then again both degrade domestic rights, too.



> If the government want to listen to my boring phone conversations in pursuit of Terrorists, I say let them listen to my attempts to shmooze a girl. Maybe it will give them a thrill in their boring lives.


Except for with no oversight, no one but the listeners know who is being listened to. Who knows what they will cart you away for in future years using the right that you seek to give them now? These sort of things always start out innocent enough.



> Yes I do seperate the two. Take the wiretap story over to the other thread..... Or it will be done for you.


Fair enough, no need to rattle your saber though.


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