March 22, 2008
The Anti-Information Age
By Max Buzzell
CORAL GABLES (Fountain of Sooth) - I'm "shocked, shocked" that information has leaked, . . . yet again. It has just been discovered that the passport information of specifically the "final three" presidential candidates—John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama—have been viewed by . . . people. Might they be the only "victims?" With all the leaking going on these days, one can only suspect that information, formerly though to be solid, is more like a liquid, or a gas.
Might there be something that could ignite information? We know we are swimming in information. Could it be that all information could just leak out of the State Department, other government agencies (at all levels), banks, credit bureaus, search engine companies, department stores, any web site that takes charge cards, and your neighborhood supermarket and gas station? Then perhaps we wouldn't have any information left. Or if it did all leak out, but we still had it, then it would be everywhere, just floating around like air, and there could be potentially millions of John McCains, Hillary Clintons, and Barack Obamas running for the chance to lead in different arenas.
Might all the candidates now be blackmailed into not running? What might someone do with all of the information about someone else? Surely, someone could be, at various times: John Q. Public, Paris Hilton, Donald Duck, and Alexander the Great. Names and photos could belong to anyone (this is already the case in much of what passes as "social networking"), but the same could happen to fingerprints, retinal scans, dental charts, and DNA information. (Just a little switcheroo, as in the Sandra Bullock movie: The Net.) Who knows where this may lead. And what might someone do with all the information about everyone? There are many organizations striving for such accumulations. There's big money in it. If every asset has positive and negative uses (like the proverbial sword), with the possible exception of nuclear or biological weapons I can think of nothing else that could have a more deleterious effect than the coordinated misuse of information on a large scale. As we see repeatedly, companies and institutions don't always stay on the straight and narrow. It could be that our presumed wholesomely-benign Information Age has the potential to explode in our faces. And the solution is not likely to be as simple as coding software more carefully, or shredding your old bank statements.
It's the same old thing: Apollo (the god of formal expression, and civic order) and Dionysus (the god of excess, fluidity, and civil disorder) are meddling in the affairs of mere mortals. And it's all our fault, . . . again.
At a time when most people still use an exposed mailbox, in an era where it costs megabucks to change/improve computer systems, and everyone's job is to look at other people's information, and while we are continually told that we have forever lost our privacy, I'm wondering whether we will all go back to cash, trade, and here-and-now credentialing? (For those of us that are hoping to become famous through the leaking of financial, medical, and relationship information rather than by, say, getting a five-album recording contract, this might be a major disappointment.) If we abandon forever the feverish data collecting that has so dominated the Computer Age, what would computers do? Will there ever be a widespread self-defense need to spread disinformation? Is there such a social phenomenon as "information overload?" Will background checks, passwords, and encryption ever really prove to be of much use in this area? Might our "going green" be accompanied . . . by our becoming "electronically invisible" again? Will people ever get to vote on such issues? If so, how many votes will famous people like Alexander the Great each be allowed?
(In keeping with the theme of this article, I either did or did not write this, or say this, or think this, and it definitely should not be kept along with any file about me, or anyone else, or emailed, copied, or . . . leaked.)
Exposures/breaches of note: Bank of America, Wachovia, HSBC Bank, Mastercard, Ameritrade, LexisNexis, ChoicePoint, Time Warner, Ford Motor Co., Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Blockbuster, Ameriprise, Verizon, Wells Fargo, Univ. of CA, Berkeley, J.C. Penney, T. Rowe Price, T.J. Maxx, Polo Ralph Lauren. Makes you wonder what large company has not had a major data security breach? In the days where there is no such thing as bad publicity, it is just another way to get you logo and name advertised. Is this just another way to scare me into submission? Yes, I know that everyone knows about my every action, so I'll stop acting. And yes, those with the most data are best able to predict the actions of the rest of us, so who am I to get all entrepreneurial? Again, I pause, and look sideways like an herbivore.
When is the next shoe going to drop in this continuing saga?
More info here:
At www.privacyrights.org: Chronology of data breaches
At www.consumeraffairs.com: Consumer affairs info
At software.silicon.com: breach info
At www.mxlogic.com: breach info
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