Interesting People mailing list archives
more on A missing package
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 09:56:53 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: Ross Stapleton-Gray <ross () stapleton-gray com> Date: November 8, 2005 12:42:23 AM EST To: dave () farber net, EEkid () aol com Subject: Re: [IP] A missing package At 08:04 PM 11/7/2005, EEkid () aol com wrote:
As I stood on her doorstep and received my package, I realized just how easy it was to quickly unravel her personal information. I didn't reveal to her that I knew her name, address and value of her home before she called back. I must admit I was a bit embarrassed that I had done so. I can remember playing with my first computer years ago, it was a Commodore 64 with 2400 baud modem, I never dreamed such things would be possible. Yet, what's ahead?
Well, to be honest, when I read the subject line, I figured it was more spam about C1AL1S... ;-)
The particular bit of information availability that's bother me of late is the FEC database of campaign contributions, which is now regularly used by political parties and the administration to screen individuals, which is the reverse of the original intent, I think... rather than say, "Candidate Joe gets a lot of money from small businesses owners, so he may be influenced toward their issues" we see, "Citizen Jane gave money to Kerry, I don't think we want her representing the U.S. on that delegation." It has certainly chilled my interest in donating money to political groups and candidates.
Regarding information collection on individuals and their actions, the phrase that occurred to me the other day is "robotic panopticon"... there are now so many automated feeds of information on individuals that they're beginning to overlap, or becoming sufficiently rich that individuals can be extracted by exclusion, that, when necessary, one can assemble a near continuous history of most anyone, across a variety of issues, or for various purposes. Robotic in the sense that there's no way anyone could, a la the East German Stasi, organize enough humans to keep tabs on all this, but fear not, it's all recorded against the possibility that someone will trigger interest.
Ross ---- Ross Stapleton-Gray, Ph.D. Stapleton-Gray & Associates, Inc. http://www.stapleton-gray.com http://www.sortingdoor.com ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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