Spock.com and sites like it
Joseph Dunphy
http://www.globalpov.com/archives/2007/04/i_see_youthere_you_are_spock.html
I've signed up for a Spock.com invitation for one reason - I want to
know what information will be available about me, and just how badly
my right to privacy will be violated by this new site. To quote a
news.com article linked to from Spock.com:
"Spock, a start-up that wants to make it easier to find personal
information about people on the web ..."
Excuse me for obsessing on reality when everybody else is getting
ecstatic, but isn't that pretty much what privacy violation is? So why
is this a good thing? Reading further, we find that rather than just
relying on the "great unwashed" to fill their data base, spock.com is
going to rely on "publicly available information". Judging from what
has already been seen from sites like privateeye.com, you might be
surprised at how much that includes, much of it coming from
governmental agencies which one is not free to withhold information
from.
For example, try getting around the state of Illinois without a
driver's license or a state ID card. If one gets stopped by the police
for any reason at all, including one as stupid as the cop feeling that
"your kind" needs to be kept on its toes, failure to produce
identification can get one arrested. One can't apply for work, cash a
check, travel by plane - really, do much of anything, so one really
isn't free to not apply for that identification. Yet the secretary of
state's office feels completely free to give out the information
individuals submit to get that identification without concerning
itself with whether or not the individual whose personal information
gets divulged wants it to be or not, and if they should end up helping
a stalker find his target in the process? "Hey, s**t happens."
What does that do to one's privacy and how consensual is the loss,
really? What sites like spock.com are doing is taking the government's
abuse of our right to privacy and isolated incidences of private
companies (eg. the Ameritech incident connected to with my homepage
link) and individuals abusing their access to confidential information
and in turning what would have been temporary leaks into a permanent
ones in some cases, making those abuses go viral. Illinois and other
states doing what it does with involuntarily surrendered information
need to be slapped down hard, preferably with the passage of some
badly needed and long overdue federal laws - individual rights should
trump states rights - but getting the states that divulge personal
information without specific prior consent to cease and desist from
doing so will do no good if the information wrongly put into
circulation is not removed from circulation.
Am I interested in this new site? Try concerned, and considering
whether or not I should be infuriated.
Joseph Dunphy
The post on my own blog referred to is this one:
http://groups.google.com/group/joseph_dunphy/web/spock-redirection