Chapter 7. Privacy in the Future

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Last August, to dramatize its Total Surveillance Society campaign, the ACLU created a clever, flash-based animation that portrays a future where privacy has been obliterated and data brokers run amok.

In the scene, you hear a man calling a pizza delivery service to order two double-meat pies delivered to his home (see Figure 7-1). You then look over the shoulder of a perky Pizza Palace employee who proceeds to click through a series of screens detailing the customer's medical records, financial history, library loans, travel plans, and recent retail purchases. Because he's got high blood pressure, his insurance company insists on a $20 surcharge for ordering a meat pizza (although the submarine sprout combo is available at a discount).

annoyances 7-1. Would you like Viagra with that pie? The ACLU's "Pizza" animation imagines a world where your most highly personal information is available to virtually anyone, even the folks at the local pizza parlor.


He lives in a high-crime neighborhood, so she adds $15 to the delivery charge. She sees that his credit cards are maxed out (probably because he charged those airline tickets to Hawaii) and that he wears a 42-inch waist, which entitles him to $3 off a subscription to Total Men's Fitness magazine. At the end, the exasperated man orders the sub sprout combo and agrees to schlep down to the parlor himself. (You'll find the animation at http://www.aclu.org/pizza/.)Though a comic exaggeration, this scenario is more feasible than you might imagine. By and large, the technology to acquire and share this type of data exists, while laws protecting most of this data are scarce.

But the future doesn't have to look like this. There are many organizations working on ways to slam spam, foil phishers, keep your identity safe from online thieves, and curb Corporate America's and Uncle Sam's seemingly insatiable appetite for information. Here are some of the more promising approaches toward a more private future.

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    Computer Privacy Annoyances
    Computer Privacy Annoyances
    ISBN: 596007752
    EAN: N/A
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 89

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