{"id":1658,"date":"2015-08-29T06:56:36","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T13:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=1658"},"modified":"2014-08-29T01:55:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T01:55:00","slug":"ashley-madison-when-will-privacy-breach-liability-be-as-serious-as-other-safety-breach-liability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/ashley-madison-when-will-privacy-breach-liability-be-as-serious-as-other-safety-breach-liability\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashley Madison: When Will Privacy Breach Liability Be Taken As Seriously As Other Safety Breach Liabilities?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake of the Ashley Madison privacy breach, people have killed themselves<\/a>. This is a breach that should be no different from a breach of any other safety promise from a vendor: it has been the case for years that when privacy is breached, people die. It has just happened in remote areas where the Western world can drone<\/a> people based on surveillance data without news crews reporting much about it. With people dying from the Ashley Madison breach, the very real fallout from privacy breaches becomes more visible and tangible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

People in the privacy sphere have long talked about how data breaches aren\u2019t solely the fault of a \u201crogue hacker\u201d, as mainstream media (with a considerable vested interest in the matter) like to put it, but also a matter of following best privacy practices and having solid security engineering. If you don\u2019t build a bridge to best practices, people die. If you don\u2019t build a computer system to best practices, people die. Why is it the vendor\u2019s fault in one case, but not in the other?<\/p>\n

In other words, why is privacy always your own responsibility, and never the liability of those who promise it to you?<\/p>\n

In this case, we have a database of twenty million people who are seeking to break somebody\u2019s trust. Regardless of what one thinks of that as such, it\u2019s arguably very sensitive information, in a database that Ashley Madison promised to keep private \u2013 and even charged heftily to delete profiles from (which, it turned out, wasn\u2019t actually done). There are thousands and thousands of other companies that have sensitive data on you, in various forms, and which likewise have promised you in various ways to safeguard that confidence.<\/p>\n

Sadly, such promises are mostly in the form of \u201cprivacy policies\u201d that have something in common with \u201cenvironmental policies\u201d, \u201cdiversity policies\u201d, and \u201csocial responsibility policies\u201d, in that more often than not, they are write-only documents:<\/em> they are ticks in a box, rather than something intended to ever be read \u2013 and much less adhered to. \u201cDo you have a privacy policy? Yes, we have a privacy policy.\u201d (\u201cWhat does it say? I have not the faintest idea.\u201d)<\/p>\n

From experience, we can tell that companies typically don\u2019t care the slightest to safeguard your private data \u2013 mostly because there\u2019s no penalty whatsoever for ignoring their own privacy policies. They can sell a promise that doesn\u2019t exist, one that there was never any intention to deliver on (or even awareness of what the written promise was!) and there\u2019s no consequence at all.<\/p>\n

Compare this to a \u201cbuilding construction safety policy\u201d, which most certainly isn\u2019t a write-only document: it\u2019s read thousands of times daily at construction sites to make sure people don\u2019t die from substandard engineering. Further, construction engineers who are ordered to cut corners blankly refuse to do so out of professional conduct, whereas in software engineering, it\u2019s rare<\/a> that software engineers are even aware they are cutting corners in security and safety. There is no requirement to deliver on your promises. There is not even a requirement to be aware of what safety you promised.<\/p>\n

When somebody kicks their sneakers at the concrete base of a building and it collapses from the soft impact of an ordinary kick, we don\u2019t blame the person kicking (the \u201chacker\u201d). We blame the constructors who obviously tried to get away with cornercut cheap substandard engineering. Why isn\u2019t this also the case with software engineering and sensitive databases containing private data?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Privacy is safety.<\/p>\n

A privacy breach should be considered as serious as any other safety breach.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, sadly, your privacy remains your own responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake of the Ashley Madison privacy breach, people have killed themselves. This is a breach that should be no different from a breach of any other safety promise from a vendor: it has been the case for years that when privacy is breached, people die. It has just happened in remote areas where … Continue reading “Ashley Madison: When Will Privacy Breach Liability Be Taken As Seriously As Other Safety Breach Liabilities?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAshley Madison: When Will Privacy Breach Liability Be Taken As Seriously As Other Safety Breach Liabilities?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the wake of the Ashley Madison privacy breach, people have killed themselves. 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