Spies, lies, and private eyes

Robert Mitchell posted a terrific interview with private investigator Steven Rambam on The Grill last week, during which Rambam said (and I quote):

Privacy is dead. Get over it. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

I'd like to respectfully disagree with Rambam, or at least qualify his remarks a bit.

The question really is, privacy from whom? Keeping your life out from under the nose of somebody like Rambam or our Uncle in DC is one thing; privacy from your neighbors, companies you do business with, companies that want to do business with you, and your employer is quite another.

Rambam is right that it's extremely hard to hide from the long arm of the law without breaking the law -- and as a PI, he's got access to the same databases as the local and federal cops.

But as Rambam points out, it's not folks like him you really have to worry about; it's your Big Brother and mine. These days, He seems to be accountable to no one. Per Rambam:

...we are more accountable than the U.S. government. You can sue us; you can subpoena us. You can hold us to task if we do something improper. Not so the U.S. government.

If you think the government isn't spying on you (in the name of national security, of course), you need to think again. It's not just NSA drones listening in on phone conversations from journalists and aid workers in Iraq, as ABC News reported last week. It's technology that's been installed in network data centers all around the US.

Retired AT&T network technician Mark Klein spilled the beans on how AT&T cooperated with the NSA back in 2005. The Electronic Frontier Foundation used Klein's report as part of its ongoing fight against warrentless wiretaps. Bruce Schneier details it here:

Klein's job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.

Wired News' Kim Zetter has a lot more on NSA surveillance operations in the US.

But it's OK because they were just looking for terrorists, you say? Not exactly. Over the last seven years, the feds have used their expanded anti-terrorist surveillance powers to spy on political activists who have no connection to the evil scumbags who blew up the towers on 9/11. There are many documented cases of this; a story in today's Washington Post details a case where federal spooks spied on nuns, anti-war activists, and a former candidate for Congress in Maryland.

Genies are notoriously hard to stuff back into bottles (they keep wriggling, and those silk pajamas are so slippery). But if you really want to make your life private, there are a few things you can do.

The first, most important thing you can do is to not accept statements like "privacy is dead - get over it."

If you really want to pull a Ted Kaczynski (minus the bombs), you can always move to a cabin in Montana, dig a water well and use a generator. But it doesn't have to be that drastic.

The next time you move or change jobs, don't update your information with the post office and the phone company. Use a private PO box service for your mail. Buy property through legal trusts and other proxies. Cut up your credit cards (at least for as long as cash is in use and remains untraceable). Use anonymizing software when you traverse the Net.

In other words, you let the trail go stale. Your information is still in their databases, but it's so old and out of date it's virtually worthless. The feds may still find you, but marketers and run of the mill snoops will not.

The other alternative is to stay and fight. Oppose unwarranted intrusions into your private life. Make your government accountable (we'll probably have to wait for a new administration for that one). Demand legislation that gives you control over the information held by massive data brokers like Choicepoint and Axciom.

Above all, don't say "It's OK for my Uncle to spy on me, because I have nothing to hide." Everyone has something to hide from somebody, even if it's merely whom you voted for in the last election. Like they say on TV, anything you say can be used against you.

On this issue, though, you should not exercise your right to remain silent. It's too important.

Blogger Dan Tynan (Tynan on Tech) is author of Computer Privacy Annoyances, which despite the geeky title is mostly about how to reclaim your privacy in a world where it's rapidly disappearing. The tech stuff is a bit outdated (it was published in 2005) but most of the rest still applies. Tightwads can find it on Google Books.