If You Want Any Privacy At All, You've Got to Unplug Completely

Time to dig grandma's old manual typewriter out of the attic and starting conversing face to face with real people.

Bon the Geek at Zandar's place:

Prompted by privacy concerns, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is circulating draft legislation that would require law enforcement officials to obtain warrants before using data collected from mobile devices for tracking purposes.

If formally proposed as it’s now written, the bill would severely curtail the ability of police to use geolocation information acquired by wireless carriers. Such data is utilized frequently to pinpoint the whereabouts of criminals through items such as cell phones, global positioning systems and computers.

Sorry, I honestly thought protective measures were already in place. I have dealt with the FCC and other communication regulations, and I had no idea. Shows what I know. It appears in the era of spying and then justifying the data once you have it, that your location and other information is up for grabs and not that hard to get. Now for the bit that made my stomach actually churn:

“Law enforcement will say, ‘I don’t have time to get a warrant, so I guess we can’t do that,’” Wormeli said. “That puts the life of [a] victim in danger. There are consequences.”

Wormeli conceded that current law could be revised for clarity and strengthened regarding commercial use of location data. But he was steadfast that Wyden’s bill unduly restricts police from ensuring the public’s security.

“When it comes to public safety, we have a history in this country allowing the law enforcement agencies … to use whatever tools they need as long as they can show that it is a reasonable application of the tool,” Wormeli said. “I much rather see legislation that started from that whole notion of permission.”

To which I humbly reply: I just bet he freaking would.

I am sorry if our rights are an inconvenience to law enforcement, but do your job. If a judge would not justify a warrant, that means there is a reason. The article mentions the reasonable application of the tools, but we also read daily about gross abuses of authority. This is the foundation of checks and balances put in place to protect us, and ones that should never be sacrificed. To let this slip and go unprotested is to allow our privacy to be manipulated by people who just want us to trust them to do what's right. Kind of ironic, since they're stomping the hell out of our rights to privacy and control of our private data. Highly abusable private data, who we talk to, what we say, where we are. Already there are "helpful" services that allow remote "technical support" of devices. That means we're one step away from the day when law enforcement, without the burden of getting a warrant, can point a finger and snoop on anyone they please. This remote support capability means that our text messages, emails, control of our phone functions, pictures, instant messages, browser history and cookies, documents, music, videos, GPS location, call history, contacts, calendar and more will be subject to the whim of a power that does not have a counterbalance. It is for the greater good that those rules are in place. Backup services could become mines of information in the wrong hands.

The future of our lives will be digital. We'll never gain privacy rights, this is a purely downhill ride. This is not where we should start. We're talking about setting a foundation that will protect us from unwarranted intrusions, pun intended.