Do We Need A Privacy Commission To Examine The Privacy Implications Of All New Products?
from the how-to-kill-innovation-dead dept
There's been some talk today about how researchers are pointing out that the Nike+iPod sports kit can be used to track people, with the researchers in question going so far as to claim that there's "a need for independent oversight and investigation of these technologies before they go to market." This seems a bit extreme. Basically, what the researchers found is that you could, with some amount of effort, create a device that would be able to read whether or not someone wearing the device (which is designed to track your running information by clipping it to your shoes, and make it easy to pass on to your iPod via RFID) was nearby. You would have to be less than 60 feet away to make it work -- which seems pretty close. The whole thing sounds fairly impractical. While the researchers discuss the possibility of placing these devices near people's homes to track when they come or go from the house, others are pointing out that it's probably a hell of a lot more effective to just sit in a car and watch the house instead. Either way, it seems pretty ridiculous to say that no product should go to market without first getting approved for privacy issues from some "oversight" committee. If the offering is really a problem, news stories like these will make it clear, and the market for them will disappear quickly. If people are fine with the privacy implications, then why stop them from buying?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
privacy may be a lost cause
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Poor assumption
1. The general public usually does not know of these privacy issues at time of purchase.
2. News media, be it national or local, can no longer effectively reach all citizens to inform them every time these problems occur.
3. The general public is not equipped to assess risk intelligently when it comes to issues of security, privacy, and identity management.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Privacy maybe for the dogs
privacy has become very askewed i think in our modern day and age, and (im guessing!!!) that not to many people really care or are aware that they may be under constant supervision or not...eh..so what really is the big deal??
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Why privacy is important...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061201/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/traveler_screening_6
I don't know what you guys think about it, but the fact that the US authorities have been given access to travel records from all travellers, the vast majority of them absolutely innocent (breaking the right to privacy granted by documents like the UN's universal declaration of human rights), means in this particular case that the people affected no longer have a clean criminal record. And the implication that has to a person's life is obvious...
Yep, the iPod+Nike example is not the best, and the researchers really wanted a bit of publicity... but still, data privacy is much more important than mass media or governments worldwide want us to believe.
Kind regards.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Privacy is dead... get over it.
http://www.hopenumbersix.net/speakers.html#pid2
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I'd like to make a monitoring site...
Basically, the software would just look for RFID's and then post the ID to the website, along with the global coordinates and the GMT...
The whole thing will be anonymous. No filtering on what gets uploaded. Oh yeah, and a webpage to allow people to search by...
Think that will open any eyes?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: I'd like to make a monitoring site...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
stop driving cars with OnStar because they can track you via satellite anywhere in the world... throw away your cell phone because they can use that too... disconnect your digital cable because they know that you order those dirty movies at night... stop using a credit/debit card or they'll know how much you eat at McDonald's... and most important of all - don't post comments on techdirt because someone, somewhere is using your IP to find your geographic location
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sounds like good ideas to me, Nick.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]