Matthew's Weblog

I’ve recently started reading Michael Gorsuch’s blog and am liking what I see so far, and he recently got upset about the idiotic so-called ‘Protect America Act’ and the public’s reaction. I know 50% of people are below average, but it is still hard to watch people ask “What do you have to hide?” because anyone asking it really isn’t thinking much.

The best thing I have found to work around that silly question is an academic paper by Daniel Solove, “‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” which is very well written and makes you think about what privacy actually is. However, the people presupposing surveillance is benign probably won’t take the time to read it, much less think…

It’s nice to see that there are columns being written about the TJ Maxx security breach and its repercussions. The more companies who are actually held responsible for their sloppy work should finally begin to reward those who are attentive to security…

An interesting premise that the ascendance of ChoicePoint to the throne of data accumulation king is due to the actions of privacy activists…

Turns out that crackers (hackers with criminal intent) attacking computers are not actually creating most privacy incidents… usually it’s corporate mismanagement. 

Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.

Technorati Tags: privacy, crackers

A useful perspective on OpenID and why it is useful.  To consider…

Technorati Tags: OpenID, identity

All those ‘preapproved’ notes? They’re supposed to quit arriving after you tell people to quit looking at your credit report unless you tell them to… by signing up at optoutprescreen.com or calling 888-567-8688.

I hope it works…

A creepy bunch of patent clips show marketing dreams and echo consumer nightmares.

Technorati Tags: rfid, privacy

A good writeup from CIO Insight about the issues with privacy protections in the US and why companies don’t care to protect customer data.

Technorati Tags: privacy

So ‘hackers’ read and clone a passport’s RFID tag… fine.  The part that bugs me more is that the so-called “security measure” of a wire mesh in the passport cover doesn’t work if the passport opens half an inch.  And this is with today’s technology – tomorrow, the readers will be more advanced and it’s going to require a 3/4″ of solid steel to mess up the read.

Passports should be readable with contact only!  If I can’t touch the pages, I shouldn’t know what is on them.

Technorati Tags: passport, rfid, security

So Bush blocked the Office of Professional Responsibility (the Internal Affairs group at the Justice Department) from investigating warantless eavesdropping.  Gee, I wonder why…

Technorati Tags: warantless+eavesdropping, privacy