Re: [projectvrm] Senator Wyden's focus on personal data

[Doc Searls < >]

Detail —

This Washington Post piece is an important one, because it lays out a problem with the way we (in the large) think about privacy online, and what we (as VRM developers) bring to the table.

Here's the text:  ." Here's how the body copy begins:

Sen Wyden: Your data’s yours no matter on whose server it lives

At the TechFestNW event in Portland on Friday, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden called for legal reforms that embrace an understanding that the mere act of handing over digital data doesn't mean giving way a user's right to privacy.

"Some will still argue that by sharing data freely with Facebook, Google, Mint, Uber, Twitter, Fitbit or Instagram, Americans are choosing to make that data public. But that is simply not the case," the Democrat said,according to prepared remarks released by his office. He added, "When I send an e-mail to my wife, or store a document in the cloud so I can review it later, my service provider and I have an agreement that my information will stay private. Neither of us have invited the government to have a peek."

What Wyden, long a spirited privacy advocate, is pressing for is reform of the so-called "third-party doctrine," or the idea that by releasing data to another person, business or entity one gives up some Fourth Amendment protections. The doctrine is rooted in the 1979 Smith v. Maryland decision, in which the Supreme Court found that telephone users had no reasonable reason to believe that their calling records are private. "We doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial," the court found then. But what's more, held the court, privacy is eroded by the knowledge that such data is used for "a variety of legitimate business purposes," like for the processing of billing, for example.

The concept, though, takes on new light at a time when both data forms the basis of the business models for so many modern companies, from Uber to Instagram, and when government have an ability to collect and process data not reined in by technological limitations. And so, argued Wyden, it must be limited by law.

There are two framings here, and both are in policy.

One framing is Wyden's: data the individual considers theirs should remain so no matter where it is stored and no matter who or what can see and use it. For this he wants assurances provided by new law.

The other framing is Smith vs. Maryland, which held that people should have no expectation of privacy when their personal communications paths are provided by companies with "legitimate business purposes" to which those communications could be put. This is standing law.

There are two other framings to consider as well, and these are both in our wheelhouse (especially the first). One is technical and the other is social.

Because we lack technical means for creating private zones around ourselves and our data in the networked world, we feel a need for policy: e.g. laws such Wyden's and  legal decisions such as Smith vs. Maryland.

And because we lack social conventions for respecting what is clearly personal in the networked world, many (e.g. businesses, spammers, governments) have taken full advantage of personal exposure.

Our job in the VRM development world is to invent the tools required for creating private spaces, for making data private, and for making truly private communications possible. Without those inventions we'll be stuck with answers in the form of policies new and old, and social conventions that are ill-mannered to start with.

We have a few of those tools already. But we've still barely started.

Doc

On Aug 17, 2014, at 11:18 AM, John Havens < "> > wrote:"

FYI.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/15/sen-wyden-your-datas-yours-no-matter-on-whose-server-it-lives/>