Security vs. Privacy

Never thought you'd see me pit those two things against each other? That's because, perfect world, those two things complement each other. Real world, there's some conflict.

As individuals, we use security systems, whether anti-virus or shredder, to protect our privacy.

As a government, there's some conflict - Congress creates legislation to protect our privacy and they create legislation providing themselves with loopholes for why those laws doesn't apply to the government (hello, Patriot Act).

Here's a great article on the issue of security vs. privacy. I'm not a regular reader of the Huffington Post, but I am a regular reader of schneier.com/blog. Schneier posted this article this morning, along with this excerpt.

Marc Rotenberg on Security vs. Privacy:

In the modern era, the right of privacy represents a vast array of rights that include clear legal standards, government accountability, judicial oversight, the design of techniques that are minimally intrusive and the respect for the dignity and autonomy of individuals.

The choice that we are being asked to make is not simply whether to reduce our expectation of privacy, but whether to reduce the rule of law, whether to diminish the role of the judiciary, whether to cast a shroud of secrecy over the decisions made by government.

In other words, we are being asked to become something other than the strong America that could promote innovation and safeguard privacy that could protect the country and its Constitutional traditions. We are being asked to become a weak nation that accepts surveillance without accountability that cannot defend both security and freedom.

That is a position we must reject. If we agree to reduce our expectation of privacy, we will erode our Constitutional democracy.

Link to Huffington Post article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-rotenberg/privacy-vs-security-pr_b_71806.html?view=print

Assorted

Facebook goodness: "Walking the Cyberbeat"

...one of some 150 people the young company employs to keep the site clean—out of a total head count of 850. Facebook describes these staffers as an internal police force, charged with regulating users' decorum, hunting spammers and working with actual law-enforcement agencies to help solve crimes. Part hall monitors, part vice cops, these employees are key weapons in Facebook's efforts to maintain its image as a place that's safe for corporate advertisers—more so than predecessor social networks like Friendster and MySpace.

Here's an article on recommended settings for your, or your kids', facebook account:http://spylogic.net/downloads/Facebook_Privacy_and_Security_Guide.pdf
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I have no idea how many people subscribe to the feed on this blog.

Much of this is also posted over at bigtent.
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Justice Scalia made an errant comment about privacy online, and has gotten some flack about it.

Here is a clearly intelligent guy who didn't realize how much personal information is available online. Prior to providing his opinion, he should have checked with one of his clerks.

Article from the ABA Journal: http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/fordham_law_class_collects_scalia_info_justice_is_steamed

Good practice - periodically search your user names in a few search engines, not just google. Make sure you can see what is cached, too, as it often will provide some surprising gems.

Look yourself up in the online white pages, pay $20 to see what a base-level back ground check shows about you, and find out how much information about your location is available through sites like zillow.

If you find any information about yourself that could be used to determine your residence, access your credit/financial, etc., the website should prominently display a method of removing that information.

For instance, on the bottom of the msn.whitepages.com, there's a link that says, "Is this you? Remove your listing"

Along the very bottom of the page, or somewhere else easy to find, there should be a link to a privacy page, which has their privacy policy. Information removal instructions may also be located there.

If you do not easily find the instructions for removing this information, contact your Attorney General's office, and let them know about your concerns. http://www.naag.org/.

Big Tent

Really glad to see people posting a wee bit at our bigtent community.

If you'd like more information about our bigtent CommunityWatch space, you can visit the public page: https://www.bigtent.com/groups/comwatch

Safe & Secure class at PTA Convention

For parents in WA, many of you know that this is the weekend of the Spring PTA conference. I was pleased to see several classes available on security issues - one of them was ours!

A detective from the Bellevue PD, and the lead educator from the King County SARC, provided some great information on real crime, how to avoid it, and how to talk to kids about the life skills and common sense needed to avoid crime.

Our goal with these classes is to offer a tool box to parents and care-givers, so that they walk away with more ability to safeguard their kids, and the empowerment to know that they can.

Thanks to the Bellevue PD and KSARC for providing these excellent speakers and dedicated professionals.

This class was also to raise awareness of the Take 25 campaign, which works to reduce the number of children victimized by abuse. "Take 25, Make time to talk about child safety," is a simple, easy, and essential message for care-givers to receive. 25 minutes is all it takes to provide a kid with information about a situation, and it may make a tremendous difference in that kid's life.

Take 25 materials were available for the class and conference attendees, in Spanish and English, as well as NetSmartz posters and brochures. We ran out, which is GREAT!