Living in a World without Privacy: Hang on to Your Identity

Privacy, in theory and in fact, is a contradictory thing.  Many Americans, including a waning majority of Supreme Court justices, see privacy as an inalienable right.  But the word appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. 

Most Americans value their privacy, recent polling indicates.  But even as they fear that their privacy is slipping away, the vast majority of Americans do little to maintain it.  In fact, polls show that most Americans would gladly trade some of their remaining privacy in exchange for greater convenience. 

Underneath all our contradictions about privacy lies one simple truth:  The only way to completely maintain your privacy is to abstain from modern society.  But if you choose to use the internet, buy groceries, use a cell phone, shop at a national retail chain, drive on a toll highway, travel overseas, walk into a convenience store or use a credit card, someone somewhere is using advanced surveillance tools to track your purchases and your movements. 

Tracking and selling private information has become big business.  And in the next two years, new laws and new technologies are aiming to erode Americans’ privacy still further.

Widespread Concern, Little Action

In another contradiction, however, respondents acknowledged that it is they, not corporations or the government, who are most likely to compromise their own privacy.  While 67 percent said they were unwilling to surrender more information or submit to intense questioning at airports, and 92 percent said they do not want the government tracking their web usage, e-mails or phone calls, 40 percent would consent to voluntary fingerprinting at a local police station.  Sixty percent said they would carry a high-tech driver’s license with a computer chip implanted that could track their movements, and nearly 20 percent said they wouldn’t mind having a tiny microchip that could be used to identify them implanted under their skin. 

Only seven percent of Americans change their behavior to protect their own privacy, for example by turning down discount cards at grocery stores or EZ Pass systems that track automobile movements on toll roads. 

“People believe their privacy is eroding, but that they value convenience over privacy,” says researcher Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute, which conducted the poll for MSNBC.  Living without grocery discount cards, EZ passes and the like would lead to “a very inconvenient life,” Ponemon says. 

The Information Merchants 

ChoicePoint was a relatively obscure company until February, 2005, when criminals gained access to its files and stole the names and Social Security numbers of as many as 145,000 people.  In addition to public records, ChoicePoint aggressively buys anything from pizza delivery lists to utility company customer rosters credit reports from the three national credit bureaus. 

Smaller online companies, such as Abika and Axciom, are also growing as data brokers.  Both tout the many possible ways their services can be used for good.  A testimonial from a person identified as L.C. on abika.com writes: “I used your services to find his birthday, we knew the year but couldn’t find the day and month.  You did and we surprised him on his 60th birthday!!! He was surprised and delighted!!!  Thanks so much." 

Another subscriber, K. Lindsey, writes, “I was getting malicious e-mails from an unknown source.  I tried many different sources to trace and locate the source of the emails without any success.  Then I found Abika.com . . .” 

Other companies downplay their potential for use by private individuals and target their services more toward corporate clients.  “Through instant online screening services, comprehensive background checks and drug testing, ChoicePoint is well-positioned to meet the varying employment needs of its corporate customers,” the company says on its website.  “ChoicePoint’s subsidiary, Resident Data® is a premier nationwide provider of decision-making intelligence that helps mitigate risk and turn qualified applicants into residents, quickly and easily." 

Acxiom’s website includes a link to a 25-page brochure entitled “Protecting Your Privacy in the Information Age: What every consumer should know about the use of individual information.”   Elsewhere on its website, Axciom says that it has paid staff combing white and yellow phone directories, directory assistance, court documents, purchase records and the credit bureaus to mine as much data as possible about individuals.  But one doesn’t need to be a corporate human resources manager, or even a person looking to throw a birthday party, to use these services.  If they can forge evidence that they are a legitimate business, would-be identity thieves can buy subscriptions just as easily. 

Eavesdropping in the Post 9/11 World 

In the next 18 months, government’s ability to track the movements of its citizens will take a giant leap forward.  In accordance with the Real ID Act, signed into law by President Bush in May 2005, the states will begin issuing driver’s licenses and ID cards embedded with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology.  Using these cards, simple radio transmitters can be used to read peoples’ identification information from a distance, without ever coming in physical contact with a card reader, as with traditional credit card technology. 

The cards are a result of a major finding in the 9/11 Commission report, which cited the 9/11 hijackers’ easy access to legal identification as being part of the security failure that led to the attacks.  But the states are balking at the legislation’s high price – the National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that implementing Real ID’s will cost the states $11 billion. 

"It's absolutely absurd," said Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, chairman of the National Governors Association, which takes a stand on issues only when it has a broad consensus.  "The time frame is unrealistic; the lack of funding is inexcusable." 

Others see nationwide identity cards with built-in tracking technology as an open invitation for abuse, the ultimate tool of control for an authoritarian government.  “What about us libertarian misfits who take the trouble to try to ‘opt out’?” conservative pundit William Safire wrote in a New York Times editorial.  “We will not be able to travel, or buy on credit, or participate in tomorrow's normal life.  Soon enough, police as well as employers will consider those who resist full disclosure of their financial, academic, medical, religious, social and political affiliations to be suspect.” 

What can we do now?

Thanks in part to the technologies that McNealy’s company created, his quotation now appears to be coming true.  Between internet databases, the explosion of online video through sites like YouTube, and growing government surveillance systems, it’s easy to feel that one’s private life is no longer private at all. 

But there are some simple steps we can take to minimize the amount of private information that leaks out into the world.  It starts with simple things, like: 

• Shopping at grocery stores that have no loyalty discount cards. Databases of discount card information are regularly bought by data aggregators like ChoicePoint. 
• Remember cash? Many of us have become so dependent on credit and debit cards that we forget that good old American greenbacks are no longer green. Go to an ATM, take out 40 bucks, and get reacquainted with the face of our seventh president. 
• Have you joined an online dating site? Ever notice how much private information you must urn over before you get to meet anyone? Do you really think the sites don’t sell that information? Maybe it’s time to rediscover your neighborhood bar, where generations of Americans met their future mates. 
• Concerned that your credit card may have an RFID chip implanted in it? You should be. The credit card companies recently admitted that they’ve sent millions of cards to members where the RFID chip has no encryption whatsoever, so the card number and expiration date is left exposed. Try holding your card up to a powerful light, so that you can see through the card. If you see a tiny dark dot connected to a wire that wraps around the edge of the card, send it back and request a new card without an RFID chip.