Another link dump

Yeah, it's time for one of these again... lots of news-worthy articles, none of which completely justify a full post but all of which I think are important. It was either a link dump or a whole bunch of Twitter posts that would probably get ignored, so here we are. As usual, I'll give a quick summary and then my brief thoughts.

The first two articles are semi-related, as both of them concern people's shocking willingess to sacrifice their basic rights.

Govt. agencies, colleges demand applicants' Facebook passwords
Bob Sullivan, MSNBC.com

Pretty simple, but troubling.

If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts guarantee future employers or schools can't see your private posts, guess again. 

Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes. 

In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state's Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall... 

Student-athletes in colleges around the country also are finding out they can no longer maintain privacy in Facebook communications because schools are requiring them to "friend" a coach or compliance officer, giving that person access to their “friends-only” posts. Schools are also turning to social media monitoring companies with names like UDilligence and Varsity Monitor for software packages that automate the task. The programs offer a "reputation scoreboard" to coaches and send "threat level" warnings about individual athletes to compliance officers.

I hate that I have to explain why this is dangerous--the usual excuse/response is "I don't care, I've got nothing to hide". That's not the point. Whether or not you've got anything to hide, you've got a right to privacy that absolutely must be protected. The whole concept of an "unalienable right" is that even you cannot opt to forfeit that right--one cannot sell oneself into slavery, hard as we may try with unpaid internships and the like.

I'm particularly troubled by the "threat level" warnings about student-athletes--we need to stop treating everyone as though they're a potential terrorist. It's ridiculous and it's wholly in opposition to the founding principles of this nation. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, he who would sacrifice liberty in pursuit of security deserves neither. Why are we all so eager to sacrifice liberty these days?

How Big a Deal is H.R. 347, That "Criminalizing Protest" Bill?
Gabe Rottman, ACLU.org

There's been a lot of hub-bub surrounding this most recent bill, which would seemingly criminalize protests of the ilk of the recent "Occupy" variety. The ACLU blog tempers the conspiracy theorists slightly, but still raises some disconcerting points.

It's important to note — contrary to some reports — that H.R. 347 doesn't create any new crimes, or directly apply to the Occupy protests. The bill slightly rewrites a short trespass law, originally passed in 1971 and amended a couple of times since, that covers areas subject to heightened Secret Service security measures. 

These restricted areas include locations where individuals under Secret Service protection are temporarily located, and certain large special events like a presidential inauguration. They can also include large public events like the Super Bowl and the presidential nominating conventions (troublingly, the Department of Homeland Security has significant discretion in designating what qualifies as one of these special events)... 

H.R. 347 did make one noteworthy change, which may make it easier for the Secret Service to overuse or misuse the statute to arrest lawful protesters. 

Without getting too much into the weeds, most crimes require the government to prove a certain state of mind. Under the original language of the law, you had to act "willfully and knowingly" when committing the crime. In short, you had to know your conduct was illegal. Under H.R. 347, you will simply need to act "knowingly," which here would mean that you know you're in a restricted area, but not necessarily that you're committing a crime... 

Also, while H.R. 347, on its own, is only of incremental importance, it could be misused as part of a larger move by the Secret Service and others to suppress lawful protest by relegating it to particular locations at a public event. These "free speech zones" are frequently used to target certain viewpoints or to keep protesters away from the cameras. Although H.R. 347 doesn't directly address free speech zones, it is part of the set of laws that make this conduct possible, and should be seen in this context.

Basically, we're now allowing DHS to determine what does and does not constitute a legal demonstration of our right to free speech. That's cool, if we assume that everyone within DHS is absolutely acting in the best interests of the citizenry (as opposed to certain hand-picked moneyed interests)... but what if they're not?

Reading the Privacy Policies You Encounter in a Year Would Take 76 Work Days
Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic

This is brilliant, even if the research is a couple years old. Many of you are probably aware that by visiting a website, you are implicitly agreeing to that site's privacy policy, whether or not you have read it (which you haven't).

One simple answer to our privacy problems would be if everyone became maximally informed about how much data was being kept and sold about them. Logically, to do so, you'd have to read all the privacy policies on the websites you visit. A few years ago, two researchers, both then at Carnegie Mellon, decided to calculate how much time it would take to actually read every privacy policy you should... 

So, each and every Internet user, were they to read every privacy policy on every website they visit would spend 25 days out of the year just reading privacy policies! If it was your job to read privacy policies for 8 hours per day, it would take you 76 work days to complete the task. Nationalized, that's 53.8 BILLION HOURS of time required to read privacy policies.

Hahahaha, oh wow. Good thing this kind of stuff doesn't threaten to follow us around, right? Ah, crap... Again, people, with the privacy? Seriously?

Alright, that's it for today. Unless, of course, you feel like reading another one of my rants about how TARP didn't actually make money--but let's be honest, you don't. Anyway, get some sleep tonight, people--I lost one hour of sleep this weekend and I swear it feels like I lost 20. So be it.

Who is Mr. Baker?

This weekend, I stopped into my local CVS to pick up some NyQuil and cough drops for my wife, who had been diagnosed with strep throat (she also wanted to know if she could take NyQuil, Aleve, and penicillin all at the same time...goes along nicely with my posts on prescription drugs, but I digress).

When I got to the checkout counter, the clerk asked me if I had a CVS card. I don't, but my wife does, so he said he could look it up by phone number. I gave him my home phone number, he punched it in, and we were good to go. Then after I'd paid for my things, he gave me my receipt and said "have a nice day, Mr. Baker".

I laughed it off, considered whether the clerk had lost his mind, and got in my car to drive home. Then I thought about it some more and began to wonder. Who the hell is Mr. Baker, anyway? My wife and I purchased our home 3 years ago from its original owners, the Millers. I'm not certain if the Millers had our same home phone number, but we've had the number since at least June of 2007. So either there's a Mr. Baker out there somewhere making CVS purchases of Lord-knows-what using my phone number with malicious intent...or Mr. Baker sincerely needs to update his phone number.

Either way, the incident got me to thinking about privacy and fun with databases. My wife and many of my friends have recently become very concerned about protecting their personal information (with good reason), de-tagging photos of themselves on Facebook and taking care not to provide merchants with personal information unless completely necessary. But how many databases do we exist in that we don't even realize? And how many people could be using our information without us possibly knowing about it?

The Baker/Powers mismatch at my CVS could be an isolated incident, and probably doesn't matter much anyway. But as someone who recently changed his cell phone number, I do have to wonder how many databases the new Mr. 781-367-XXXX is now listed in under my name. What other information might he be able to learn about me, simply by having my old phone number? If I had asked the CVS clerk, what would he have been willing (and able) to tell me about Mr. Baker? I worry that in this new era of identity theft and privacy concerns, there might be more to protect than we could possibly manage. But if you do happen to come across Mr. Baker in your travels, please tell him to call CVS and change his number.