Dan Gilmor -- his somewhat gloomy assessment of CFP and A Hotel's Privacy Invasion

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dan Gillmor <dgillmor () mercurynews com>
Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2003 07:45:19 -0700
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Fyi, my somewhat gloomy assessment of CFP

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5571471.htm

Posted on Sun, Apr. 06, 2003



Why we may never regain the liberties that we've lost

By Dan Gillmor 
Mercury News Technology Columnist

NEW YORK -The lights of a magnificent, recovering city glittered from the
80th floor of the Empire State Building on Wednesday evening. The multiple
ironies were not lost on the gathering of civil-liberties and
public-interest activists.

The Empire State Building is now the tallest structure in the city, still
half-stunned from the attacks that brought down the two taller buildings 18
months ago. As a new war raged in Iraq, the people in the room were acutely
aware of the only slightly older war that has consumed their daily lives
like nothing before -- the way in which the war on terrorism has also turned
into an assault on individual liberties.

The activists were in New York for the annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy
conference. They continued to take heart from small victories here and
there, some of which were simply stopgap efforts to keep a bad law from
becoming even worse. But the prevailing mood, even more so than a year ago
in San Francisco, struck me as downright gloomy.

Maybe I'm projecting my own worries onto others. But I sensed a deepening
fear that things are really different this time.

Liberties ebbed and flowed in America's past. Leaders curbed liberties, with
the public's often ignorant endorsement, in times of crisis. But the rights
tended to come back when the crises ended.

The fabled pendulum of liberty may not swing back this time. Why?

For one thing, the damage that one evil or deranged person or group can
cause has grown. Even if America somehow persuades all Islamic radicals that
we are a good and just society, there will still be some evil and deranged
people who will try to wreck things and lives in spectacular ways. In other
words, the ``war on terrorism'' can't possibly end.

Moreover, the architecture of tomorrow is being embedded with the tools of a
surveillance society: ubiquitous cameras; the creation and linking of all
manner of databases; insecure networks; and policies that invite abuse. They
are being put into place by an unholy, if loose, alliance of government,
private industry and just plain nosy regular folks.

Sure, Congress put a temporary halt to the notorious Total Information
Awareness project. That Pentagon-inspired operation would have let
government snoops scoop up all kinds of public and private data about all of
us, then rummage through it with supercomputers to look for bad tendencies.

No sooner had Total Information Awareness been slowed than ``CAPPS II,'' a
plan by the Transportation Department to scoop up and analyze data on
everyone getting an airplane ticket (sound familiar?), hit the radar of
activists. The particulars of CAPPS II are still under review, but it's
blatantly obvious that the major purpose of this scheme is surveillance, not
safety. 

Meanwhile, under cover of a war that has caused the news media to ignore
other important news, the Bush administration issued an order that will
guarantee the wrongful arrests or harassment of innocent people. The Justice
Department told the FBI it no longer needed to worry about the accuracy of
its National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database containing 39 million
criminal records, including some documents that would barely pass the gossip
hurdle. 

NCIC records are used every day by law enforcement agencies all over the
nation. The accuracy requirement was established under the 1974 Privacy Act,
one purpose of which was to ensure that federal records, which could have
enormous impact on people's lives if misused, don't contain erroneous
information. For more information, as well as an online petition asking for
a reversal of this misguided shift, visit the Electronic Privacy Information
Center Web site ( www.epic.org/actions/ncic/ ).

The Bush administration's attitude, assisted by a Congress that long since
abandoned any commitment to liberty, is that government has the right to
know absolutely everything about you and that government can violate your
fundamental rights with impunity as long as the cause is deemed worthy.

You, on the other hand, have absolutely no right to know what the government
is doing in your name and with your money, unless the information is deemed
harmless by people who have every motive to cover up misdeeds. Bush and his
people have turned secrecy into a mantra, and too few people recognize the
danger that poses to our freedoms, much less our pocketbooks.

Some civil libertarians profess a renewed aim toward practicality. Ira
Glasser, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it's
foolish to accept the notion that the job is to strike a balance between
security and rights. We always lose liberties when such choices are
presented, but we rarely gain any significant security, Glasser observed.

I found that assessment strikingly cynical, worryingly short on principle.
Maybe it'll work a few times, but in the end, if he's right about our basic
motives, people are going to pick even the possibility of security over
liberty if they get scared enough.

But the damage we will do to ourselves if we allow our liberty to disappear
is incalculable. An entrepreneurial society can't exist if political freedom
disappears, and if Big Brothers, public and private, are invading our daily
existence with impunity.

The damage we'll do globally will be tragic. The world looks to America in
large part because of our freedoms. We are a magnet, and a beacon, because
liberty means something here.

So I deeply admire the activists who gathered in New York, because they keep
trying even in the toughest of times. They are fighting for all of us, and
for our future. 

Dan Gillmor's column appears each Sunday and Wednesday. Visit Dan's online
column, eJournal ( www.dangillmor.com ). E-mail dgillmor@mercurynews .com;
phone (408) 920-5016; fax (408) 920-5917.




Also the irony of the CFP's anti-privacy hotel policies:

http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/000918.shtml



April 05, 2003 
A Hotel's Privacy Invasion
€posted by Dan Gillmor 06:36 AM
€permanent link to this item

I will not be staying again at the Ramada New Yorker hotel, the site of the
just-ended Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, but my reason has
nothing to do with quality or service (neither of which I'd rate all that
high, but the price was commensurately modest).

It's about something more fundamental -- a gross invasion of privacy.

When I checked in earlier this week, arriving after midnight, the clerk
demanded my driver's license and credit card. He said he had to photocopy
and keep them while I was there.

I asked for an explanation. Because it's the new policy, he said. I
objected. Well, he said with more indifference than arrogance, if I wanted a
room I would have to comply. No negotiation.

It was very late, and I had appointments in the morning. So I handed over
the license. 

I don't know if this was legal. Nor do I know whether it violates the
agreements the hotel has with the credit card companies, which I understand
prohibit merchants from demanding and keeping this kind of identification
when customers use charge cards. I intend to find out.

I do know that identity thieves love to have just these kinds of
information. Ramada could be opening itself to some serious liability for
this kind of behavior.

And, of course, it's grossly intrusive on my privacy. The clerk said the
information would not be used for marketing purposes, and wouldn't be sold
or bartered or given to any other entity. If this turns out to be false, I
will not be happy. 

Upon checkout today, I demanded the return of the photocopy, not that it
does much good at this point. The manager on duty refused to give me back
the copy of my license. He insisted he had no alternative. I grabbed the
paper from him and with a black pen blacked out everything but my name. He
didn't resist. He said there were no other copies made, but who knows.

Another customer was checking out at the same time, and he was really
steamed about the entire thing. He'd managed, it turned out, not to give his
driver's license but had used several other kinds of cards that gave the
hotel nothing useful. He told me that hotel security had later contacted him
to ask for a photo ID (he never gave them one), and at one point a manager
had literally threatened him -- he played me an audio recording of the
message he said he'd received.

I wonder if the NYC police are behind this. Are they systematically
collecting pictures and addresses of everyone staying in mid-town New York
City? If so, it's a sleazy way to go about it.

Bottom line: The practice endangers hotel customers' privacy, and maybe
their financial health.

Have you stayed in New York lately and been forced to hand over your ID for
"safe-keeping" or photocopying? Or anywhere else? Let me know .

Oh, and by the way, here's a suggestion for the organizers of next year's
CFP conference. Find a hotel that doesn't violate people's privacy...

UPDATE: I've heard from quite a few folks about this. It appears that New
York hotels are increasingly demanding and photocopying IDs.

But this isn't universal by any means. One writer recommends Hotel Elysee
for its apparently benign policy. (Has my posting this just led to a change
in policy at the hotel? I hope not.) Another mentioned the Travel Inn
(sorry, no URL handy) but said he was forced to turn over his picture ID at
many other hotels in New York last year.)

I should also observe that this seems, so far, to be solely a New York
phenomenon. I travel widely in the U.S., and nowhere else has such a policy
emerged as a routine. (One writer said the Seattle Sheraton demanded his ID,
however.) 

And, to be completely fair, anyone who's traveled overseas knows it's
utterly routine to show your passport (they usually just write down the
number) in other countries. But the anti-privacy surveillance standards of
more intrusive nations shouldn't be the ones we adopt here.
Dan


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