Changes between Version 1 and Version 2 of privacy

Timestamp:

Nov 5, 2015, 2:37:57 AM (10 years ago)

Author:

Steve Revilak

Comment:

Draft of privacy presentation outline/handout

privacy

@@ -2 +2 @@
 = Privacy =
 
-This privacy overview is part of a four part series originally developed as part of the 2015 Membership Meeting.
+''This privacy overview is part of a four part series originally developed as part of the 2015 Membership Meeting.''
+
+
+== What is Privacy? ==
+
+You can find many definitions for the word ''privacy''.  A dictionary
+will say something like "The state of being private; the state of not
+being seen by others."  Judge Louis Brandeis called it "the right to
+be left alone".  Dan Geer called it "having the ability to
+misrepresent oneself."  The UK's CCTV program used the motto "If
+you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear".  I'm not very
+fond of these last two: they imply that privacy's usefulness is
+limited to people who wish to misrepresent themselves, or having
+something to hide.  That's simply not the case.
+
+I'd like to talk about privacy as it relates to communications -- how
+we talk and interact with one another.  In the physical, face to face
+world, this is very easy to understand.  If you can a friend are
+having a loud roudy conversation on the bus, then the whole bus is
+going to hear it.  Both of you knew it, and probably didn't care too
+much at the time.  On the other hand, if you pull your friend aside
+into a quiet corner of the room, you're not expecting anyone else to
+hear what you're taking about.  And if someone is creeping up and
+trying to listen, one of you will probably notice.
+
+Communications in the digital world are very different.  Even solo
+interactions are very different.  For example, people have very
+personal relationships with their phones, with video streaming
+services, and with internet search engines.  Years ago, Netflix and
+AOL released large collections of "anonymized" user searches; in both
+cases, people were able to de-anonymize some of the data.  Google
+recently announced that it's been recording and retaining voice
+queries.  Even if companies don't release this kind of information to
+the public, lots of people in the company have access to it.  As do
+the employees of other organizations they share data with, or sell
+data to.  Your personal relationship with your phone, or a third party
+service probably involves a lot more people than you realize.
+
+== Risk Management ==
+
+When we get into digital communications, privacy really turns into a
+game of information security, and your ability to have some control
+over how information about you is used.
+
+Information security falls under the broad heading of risk management.
+Risk management is about as exciting as buying insurance (which itself
+is a form of risk management).  The basic idea is that we start with
+something bad that might happen.  Risk management is whatever you do
+to prevent that bad thing from happening, or to make it less bad when
+it eventually happens.  I've already mentioned insurance.  A couple of
+other examples:
+
+* locking your door
+* wearing a bicycle helment
+* looking both ways when you cross the street
+
+This sort of thing happens on a continuum, and it involves a balancing
+act.  Having two locks on your front door is safer than having one,
+and having fifteen locks on your door is safer than having two.  But
+who wants to deal with fifteen locks?  It really comes down to what
+you perceive as a risk, and how much inconvenience you're willing to
+tolerate in order to mitigate it.  That's security in a nutshell, and
+it's different for everyone.
+
+In terms of communications privacy, what do you guys see as risks?
+
+== Resources ==
+
+I expect that much of this discussion will be driven by folk's
+perceived risks.  However, here are some general resources.
+
+* EFF's surveillance Self-Defense guide.  https://ssd.eff.org/
+* PRISM Break.  https://prism-break.org/en/
+* Guardian Project.  https://guardianproject.info/
+* Email Self-Defense.  https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/
+* A large collection of presentations from the Tor Project.  https://media.torproject.org/outreach-material/presentations/
+* [https://gnupg.org/ GnuPG], [http://www.gpg4win.org/ GPG4Win], [https://gpgtools.org/ GPGTools]
+
 
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