By Barbara Iverson
Privacy is the theme of a rich package of print and online features in September's Scientific American. For early adopters of tools like Twitter, Facebook,
and blogs, as well as those who are just beginning to connect and use
social networking tools in reporting and writing, this is a good time
to pause and reflect on the dark side of being socially wired in to a
global network -- from identity theft, to the meaning of privacy, to
RFID chips that can track more than inventory.
Here's an RFID chip reader used as an interactive work of art. Whimsical looking, but is that your address it's displaying?
In the short but attention-grabbing How I Stole Someone's Identity" by Herbert H. Thompson, we see how easy it is to gain access to accounts where password protection is paramount (your bank account) just by starting with information gleaned from chatty blogs and accounts where passwords don't seem as critical (like an old e-mail account).
From there, read Do Social Networks Bring the End of Privacy? by Daniel J. Solove. He calls for a new examination of what privacy means in our information-saturated world of connected electronic communication: "The more subtle understanding of privacy embraced by Generation Google recognizes that a person should retain some control over personal information that becomes publicly available. This generation wants a say in how private details of their lives are disseminated."
"Digital natives" and "digital immigrants" (as defined in this seminal article by Marc Prensky) tend to have very different definitions of and expectations about privacy. Solove concludes that exiting laws should be amended to include privacy protection for things that you couldn't have said publicly a generation ago, but that technology places in the public domain today.
Katherine Albrecht of Spychips describes a scenario which could have been ripped from a graphic novel. Truth appears stranger than fiction in How RFID Tags Could Be Used to Track Unsuspecting People. Consider the last piece of clothing you purchased (if it wasn't from the secondhand store), or look closely at your newest credit card. Have you gotten a passport in the past couple of months, or gotten one of the Homeland Security citizen I.D. cards? Think your private information is safe? Think again. "The new licenses come equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that can be read right through a wallet, pocket or purse from as far away as 30 feet," writes Albrecht.
In Europe, the standard for these chips uses some encryption and attempts to protect the individual. In contrast, the U.S. RFID standard for personal information is the one that Walmart and other corporations use for inventory and in-store product tracking -- so it is not protected from "sniffers" that can read the transmissions from these chips at 30 feet or more.
This SciAm issue is fascinating and a must-read for reporters and writers who are electronic information workers. Educate yourself. There are story ideas lurking here that you can localize for your readers.
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