International Law

Mass surrender of online privacy

One of the most interesting phenomena (at least to me) is that privacy is not only being taken away on a number of fronts, the wider front is the mass surrender of privacy by the millions of people who put loads of personal data online.

Some people may think it's ironic that I'm on Facebook or Flickr, but I'm pretty mindful of what I put online and who is my "friend". When I was young and foolish, I posted stuff that's still to be found on the internet. Nothing scaldalous: stuff like a travelogue of a visit to Romania and contributions to listservs about academic freedom. But kids these days, armed with digital cameras, are posting vast quantities of personal information that will hang around for years. And is there for those who may not be their friends.

I happened upon an interesting illustration of this on MetaFilter today (It's not dead, it's just resting MetaFilter). Check out these two videos in which private investigator Steve Ramblan discusses his tradecraft:

Hope2604 ? Privacy Is Dead ? Get Over It In 2006, privacy expert Steven Rambam?s two hour panel was disrupted by federal authorities who arrested him at the conference just prior to its commencement. In the end, he was completely vindicated and went on to finally give his talk several months later to a packed house at a local university. This year, Steven will be on for three hours, in part to make up for what you may have missed last time, but mostly because what he says about the state of privacy in our society will captivate you. Since 1980, Pallorium's investigators have successfully closed more than 9,500 cases, ranging from homicide investigations to missing persons cases to the investigation of various types of sophisticated financial and insurance frauds. Steven Rambam has coordinated investigations in more than fifty (50) countries, and in nearly every U.S. State and Canadian province. Steven specializes in international and multi-jurisdictional investigations, and within the past few years he has conducted investigations in Israel, South Africa, Holland, France, England, India, Mexico, Guatemala, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Germany, Abu Dhabi, China, Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Jordan, Vietnam and Brazil, among other locations. For More Information Visit www.pallorium.com

Full post as published by The Canadian Privacy Law Blog on September 02, 2008 (boomark / email).