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(More notes added 10/7/08 at the end:)

In 1979 when I first returned to China mainland, I had a difficult time explaining the American concept of “privacy” to my Chinese friends and audiences. The equivalent Chinese words “隐私” were not invented until several years later. But the advent of the Internet and the digital age change our notion of privacy forever without most of us even know about it. Did you know:

1. If you print a page from a laser printer, then it is possible to determine the date and time and from which one of the billions of printer this page was printed. This is because such information were printed as microdots undetectable by human eye as part of the software built into every  printer. Thus, those of you thinking hiding behind the anonymity of the printed page, beware!
2. So long as your cell phone was not completely turned off, it sends out a signal automatically letting the phone company know where you are approximately so that the nearest signal relay tower is ready for you.
3. Phone company and government agency can remotely turn on the microphone on your cell phone and listen to every sound about you even if you have powered off your phone. The only way to defeat this is to remove the battery from the phone.
4. Every time you present your loyalty card when shopping at your supermarket in order to get a discount, you are letting the company have a complete record of your shopping so that they can target advertisements to you for your next trip.
5. Of course most of us are aware of the fact that when we use office computer for e-mail, none of our correspondence are private. The company has perfect right to monitor our messages. But how often we think of this when we use e-mail? Are you sure you are willing to let all you messages public?
6. How many of us “AGREE” to but never read the fine print on many online websites in order to sign up for various free newsletters, lotteries, and chance at prizes.  A typical agreement permits the company to install software “ to monitor all of the internet behavior that occurs on your computer  . . .  including . . . filling a shopping basket, completing an application form, or checking your  . . . personal financial or health information. “. And you agree this is fine!
7. The business of intelligence (spying), unlike what are romanticized in James Bond novels/movies, heavily depends on piecing together and correlating a large number of obviously anonymous and seemingly innocent data to produce real and valuable information that people or government do not wish to be made known. But because of the wide availability of computers and digital data, what was public but inaccessible before (such as court record, census data, etc) are now readily accessible.. The technique of “re-identification” is now within reach of everyone. Piecing together anonymous data published in medical journals about disease distribution with Google Earth and other large databases, it is possible to identify who lived on what street in Chicago and have been tested HIV positive.
8. Parking garages and toll booth routinely take photos of license plate of every car that pass through its gate and match them with any other electronic device on the car (e.g., electronic pass that automatically deducts charges from your bank account) to assure the particular car is authorized to use the pass.
9. In 深圳 China, resident are issued identity cards which carry not only the obvious information of name, address, but also hidden information about work history, educational background, religion, ethnicety, medical insurance status, Landlord’s phone number, and reproductive history in the embedded microchip.

 

These and other remarkable and surprising bits of information are in the recent book “Blown to Bits” by Harry Lewis (former dean of Harvard College and professor of computer science), Hal Abelson (professor of EECS at MIT and founding director of Free Software Foundation), and Ken Ledeen (CEO of Nevo Technologies), Addison-Wesley 2008, ISBN-13-978-0-13-713559-2

 

I am only quarter way through the book but recommend it highly.

(Note added: after the posting of this article, I just came cross the special issue (Sept. 2008) of Scientific American which is devoted to Privacy, Spying, and Surveillance. After browsing the articles therein, it is proibably prudent to assume that all international telephone calls are being monitored by various government agencies of different nations. Nothing can be considered as  private.)

More note added 10/7/08: Today I went to a seminar given by the three authors of the book mentioned above. They had more interesting stories to tell. General conclusion:

1. Very little is private anymore

2.We should be very aware and protect however privacy we have left

3. "THEY know everything about me. But that is OK since I am not doing anything wrong" is not a sufficient reason to feel complacent.

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