Boston Globe: Overlapping technologies track individuals and share information
The Boston Globe has an interesting story about how personal privacy can be invaded multiple times daily by overlapping technologies. The story includes an interview with Andrew Blumberg, a Stanford postdoctoral fellow and co-writer (with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Peter Eckersley) of a recent white paper, “On Locational Privacy, and How to Avoid Losing it Forever.”
[Blumberg] is among a growing number of academics and tech nologists who are starting to raise concerns about what’s being called “location privacy,’’ the idea that the proliferation of mobile devices, smart cards, tracking technologies, and Internet databases is creating an environment in which citizens are under a constant threat of surveillance. As overlapping technologies and systems start sharing this information, location privacy advocates say, it will become easier for governments, employers, and interested parties to track an individual’s everyday movements. [...]
Hari Balakrishnan, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT who is a principal investigator with the CarTel group, said, “Right from the beginning, we’ve been thinking about privacy.’’
Traffic monitoring, toll collecting, auto insurance, and law enforcement are all areas where technology has enabled more powerful tracking tools, Balakrishnan said. CarTel has been investigating ways to use applied cryptography and system design to protect consumers from the excessive collection of personal location data in such scenarios.
Balakrishnan said the challenge is that each technology demands its own privacy-enabling solution. [...]
According to Balakrishnan, the good news is that it’s often possible to create a technological solution that allows users to have the convenience that comes with connectivity without sacrificing privacy. The bad news is that these solutions often demand difficult cryptography and system design. [...]
Realistically, Blumberg said, the most that he and other privacy advocates are hoping for in the near term is to get people to “be aware of what you’re giving up’’ when they take actions that compromise their location privacy. Blumberg said that he’s also hoping that companies that collect location data will increasingly feel pressure to establish privacy policies, which may speed the implementation of technology to protect users.
In the meantime, Blumberg said, we will probably be living with only limited location privacy protections for a while.
Possibly related posts: