There is a great (if not really long) article by Simson Garfinkel over at the Technology Review discussing our privacy and the need to be vigilant and proactive. Privacy by inaction doesn’t cut it in our digital age. Keeping your head low won’t keep your name or picture out of the massive government and private-sector databases. We need to be more vocal and more active in protecting ourserlves and our data.

Garfinkel concludes that what is necessary is an “online passport”: A global, ubiquitous electronic-identification system, backed by business and government alike. Currently there are a myriad of systems to verify our online personas: your banks each have one, every e-mail account you use is different, any company you do business with online and your facebook and myspace. Now each of these systems is designed and implemented in different ways by different people and contain their own strengths and weaknesses. While I see the benefits of a single, well-designed and strong authentication system, I also see it’s drawbacks. It creates a single point of failure. Sure we can pass laws protecting it and standards for auditing it. But what happens when an attacker gets a hold of your credential? Instead of just having access to one account, he has access to all of them. Because now every government office and online retailer trusts that single system, and nothing is ever 100% secure.

Anyway, it’s a good read and contains a good discussion of the legal history of privacy and how it’s evolving and will continue to evolve. Discussion is what we need; a solution to the privacy problem will not be a quick and easy fix. Read the full thing here.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Privacy, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.