Once Again, If The Gov't Has Data, It Will Be Abused
from the seen-it-before,-will-see-it-again dept
We've pointed this out over and over and over and over and over again, but whenever a government puts together a big database of info on people -- the data gets abused. The latest example, found via Michael Scott is the news that a police chief in Iowa has been suspended after he supposedly revealed data that he never should have had in the first place, supposedly handing out information on someone's driving record and criminal history, despite having no legal reason to even have that info, let alone distribute it to anyone. So why do we keep assuming that governments won't abuse such data collections?
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Filed Under: abuse, databases, government
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That's easy...
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Re: That's easy...
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Govt
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Next, "We, The People" need to put real effort into our existing control of these organizations by studying the issues and by actually thinking about who we should elect and what 'official' policy should be.
Instead "We, The People" spend all of our time obsessing about single issues and bitching online. Overall, based on the amount of effort we put in, we get the government that we deserve.
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Id like to say this is an example of "tyranny of the masses" but that only works when the masses know what's happening, which often isn't the case. Its why NSA can riffle through people's conversations about love affairs and hemorrhoid , its why police chiefs can pass out other peoples personal information.
Nobody knows, least of which the people. And thanks to the Freedom of Information act behaving exactly opposite of its name, it'll be the same for time immemorial.
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Re:
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Trust.
There are companies like credit companies and some private investigation companies that have large databases about everything anyone can collect and they probably could tell what underwear you are wearing right now based on what you bought last week with your credit card.
Courts have open archives so if you digitize them you will have a very clear criminal record of a great portion of the population in any and I mean any country.
With that said. Breachs of that trust must be dealt with strong action and be given a harsh punishment. It doesn't matter if the actual worker was ignorant of procedures and protocol or not he has to assume and err on the part of society and not on the part of his job or interests.
Decades of chipping away societies rights have given some people extraordinary powers without checks and balances.
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By the way, Mike. Please tell the hippie in the UPS video to get a hair cut and get a real job (and to get it together like his big brother Bob).
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Distinction between Goverment abuse and individual abuse
If we make the premise that the government can not be trusted with data and building large databases then we must assume that these programs are opportunities for abuse:
1. The Health Care Legislation
2. 911 house location data
3. The census
4. Social Security
Should the government abandon these programs because it is too risky to hold all of that data? Should we privatize these functions?
If we want the rich interaction and services that our governemnt provides, they must collect data. The focus should not be on the fact that the government collects data, but on the safegaurds to ensure data is not misused. With that said, I would have made the title of this article: "Senior Ranking Official Misuses Privacy Data: Where Were the Safeguards to Keep it Safe?"
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Re: Distinction between Goverment abuse and individual abuse
Also they the Government can really take the roll of unbiased referee and not Judge,Plaintiff, and executioner...
if you cant see bias of the Government running those types of projects, and collecting tax, and control.. then you need to take another look at what personal responsibility means and truely what freedom stands for.
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Re: Distinction between Goverment abuse and individual abuse
For 1 and 4...YES!!!
Also, gun control....YES!!!
The government should be there to do something that the majority of people in the country can't do on their own. Well, guess what, the vast majority of people can pick and pay their own healthcare coverage and retirement planning.
What can't we do on our own? Infrustructure, fighting foreign wars, overal domestic security*.
What things is our government failing? Infrustructures, fighting foreign wars, overal domestic security*.
*We as a majority can ensure domestic security without the government, just not while continuing our lives as normal, this is something that a central government is pretty effective at helping with.
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"Our" Government
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Re: "Our" Government
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Trust.
How do we balance that?
If we urge free information that means governments will be free to collect that information too. If we stop them we are giving them the reasoning for stopping other useful information to become public. Besides there is no one on the world that can stop anyone from collecting anything.
In that light I'm in favour of letting it go. Let the information be collected and used and when there is an unacceptable use we as a group should make them change that use not the collection part because it would be futile.
Maybe life should be copyrighted, this way every time someone uses your life information without consent you could sue for statutory damages LoL
p.s.: Those are not well thought statements is just my personal on the spot thinking. They could change with time.
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John Poindexter
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Re: John Poindexter
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As already pointed out, we make no such assumptions. It's just that the government doesn't listen to, nor care about, the will of the people. The people are, by and large, ignored. The government does, however, listen to big corporations.
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ratios...
How much data, how many abuses? What is the ratio?
Does the government collect a billion pieces of data per abuse?
Is there a better system?
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Universal Health Care
http://www.integrascan.com/
Credit background example(from google)
http://www.youcheckcredit.com/
The government doesn't need universal health care to collect the data is already all available in numerous(public and private) databases.
Besides I like the idea of a universal health care it works in France, Canada, U.K., Denmark, Japan and a lot of other places. How that should be implemented? Well there you have a real problem, the implementation can make it work or can make it useless :)
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Re: Universal Health Care
"How that should be implemented?" - Hmmm Social Security - Broke, Postal Service - Broke, DMV - Broke and non-functional, Police Departments - Broke/Non-functional/reactionary only, Homeland Security- Uselss Joke, list continues for 100's of more pages
so really they havent made one thing work yet in anyway or with any effiecency... so yea lets give over 1/8 of the Economy to the Government...
Great Idea...
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The abuses I'm most worried about, and the ones that have injured me most to date, are insecure financial records held by credit cards companies, banks, etc and insecure health records held by doctors and insurance agencies. These private entities have no obligation to protect my information and have an interest in exploiting it...a recipe for disaster.
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Doesn't work that way, those collecting and storing and maintaining the information ARE individuals and they are subject to corruption.
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"Not collecting and storing and securing the information is not the solution."
Also, the government should have justification for collecting and storing information on us. The question shouldn't be one of, "is not storing information a solution" it should be one of, "what problems does storing information solve and what justification is there to store information." Of course asking what kinds of problems storing information causes is also important and if there is cause to store information we must ensure that the cause outweighs the problems that storing information causes and the effort and cost that society must put into solving those problems. I must say that I think there is little cause for them to store information and the problems it causes outweigh anything it allegedly seeks to solve.
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"Look at this idea...isn't it great? It'll revolutionize the country and make everything better. If you look at the drawbacks, then you're just a nay-sayer"
You have to look at the pro's and the con's of everything. Then, you have to make certain that once it's actually implemented that it works. And that means developing a way to measure it's success and agreeing to those metrics ahead of time. This is somethign I've never heard of in the government and, I think largely, why it's been such a failure.
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Actually, that is not true. The types of corporations you mentioned are obligated to keep your personally identifiable information private. Fourth Amendment protection applies to financial records.
That's not to say they always do that well, or that none of these companies would every try to cover up a leak. However there is a law.
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They pass laws but don't pass functional mechanisms to keep an eye on it to see if it is working and what to do if it does not work.
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Re: Re: Re: "sells my individual purchasing history.."
1) you agreed to it. somewhere in the 20 pages of 3pt fine print that came with your card was a statement that by use you allowed them to share information with "concerned partners" or perhaps "authorized third party representatives". Of course, its buried in legal talk so you're going to need a lawyer to figure out that they Might, Possibly be able to use that clause in such a way.
2) its not "Your" data. Perhaps the information is carefully anonymised, so all that anyone could tell is that you are a white male between 23 and 25 with income between X and Y, who lives in area code Z, and shops at stores alpha through gamma. See, no personal info at all! a totally perfect anonymous dataset that, once generated, is the property of the card company (or more likely one of those "authorized third party representatives") to be sold, resold, upsold and downsold and mysteriously have your name added to it.
its a load of excrement.
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dna in uk
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8375567.stm
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-Thomas Jefferson
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Re:
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Universal Health care.
Ok then.
I still like the idea of universal health care because I experienced them.
I lived in London and Tokyo used both systems and have no complaints about it.
I know from experience that heart surgery to repair damaged heart valves after half of your heart died and months in recovery cost in Japan 10.000 dollars to do it and it only costs $50 dollars in medicine monthly. Nobody told me that I saw it with my own eyes.
I know from experience that you pay nothing to go to a doctor in London and my only cost for an asthma attack was pennies after being hauled in too the ER and have an EV sticked into my arm. Nobody told me that, I experienced.
Those systems worked for me, if they are perfect I have no idea.
And still I think bad coverage is better then no coverage at all or do you think we don't need the Postal Service, the DMV, the Police, the Fire Fighters and many other less then perfect services?
I don't care who do it, in London and Tokyo both are public services available to the people as are private options and I have no problem what so ever as long as it works.
As long as people can afford some sort of assistance is all good.
So did you lived anywhere that had universal healthcare and had a bad experience or what you hear is what you based your decisions on?
Please don't believe me, go to Japan, UK, Canada and see it for yourself how it works. You want to see a bad system? Go see how universal health care is in Brazil, Argentina or Africa those are models that don't work and I been there too.
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Meanwhile.......here in the UK
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Government data bases
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Government Databases
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Screening Background Checks for Letigimate Users
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screening makes good sense
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instant screening
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