{"id":707,"date":"2013-11-20T17:14:26","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T17:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=707"},"modified":"2012-11-20T06:01:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T06:01:00","slug":"collected-private-data-will-always-be-abused-with-mathematical-certainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/collected-private-data-will-always-be-abused-with-mathematical-certainty\/","title":{"rendered":"Collected Private Data Will Always Be Abused, With Mathematical Certainty"},"content":{"rendered":"

People who defend today\u2019s mass surveillance tend to claim that the collected data on everybody\u2019s private communications and movements won\u2019t be abused. History tells us that they are horribly and dangerously wrong: the most benign data collections have been used for outright genocide. We need to learn from history and realize that such collected data not only can be abused, but will<\/em> be abused, with mathematical certainty.<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the risk of invoking Godwin\u2019s Law<\/a>, I\u2019d like to tell a story from early last century, when the collecting of private data was far less intrusive. This story illustrates the dangers of collecting private data with horrible precision. More specifically, the data point is from when the Netherlands included people\u2019s religion<\/em> as part of the public population records.<\/p>\n

It could be trivially observed that somebody\u2019s faith, while still private, is several orders of magnitude less sensitive than somebody\u2019s complete communications, movement, search, and browsing history. But this data was still private \u2013 what was the justification at the time for asking people for their faith in order to include it in the public records?<\/p>\n

Urban planning.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not national security, not any \u201cwar on terror\u201d, no pedophile scare, not propping up an obsolete copyright industry or anything like that. The citizen wasn\u2019t an enemy in this case.<\/p>\n

It was as simple as making sure that city planning met the needs of the citizens by having a somewhat proportional distribution of synagogues, Catholic churches, and Protestant churches that matched the density of respective faiths and the locations of where the people wanted them lived. It was the most benign reason imaginable for collecting private data \u2013 and it wasn\u2019t even collected forcibly.<\/p>\n

What happened next is in the history books. World War II came around. The Netherlands were swiftly invaded by Germany, who had a profound dislike at the time for one of the faiths listed in the public records.<\/p>\n

There were almost no Jews at all<\/em> in the Netherlands after World War II.<\/p>\n

Having this private data collected made the German genocide campaign horribly effective in the Netherlands \u2013 and we need to remember that this was data we don\u2019t typically consider sensitive,<\/em> which had been collected for a clearly benign<\/em> purpose. How can today\u2019s collected data be abused? It\u2019s useful to consider that question now, because it will.<\/p>\n

According to Wikipedia, less than 10%<\/a> of the Dutch Jews survived (14,346, compared to an earlier population of 154,887). As it turns out, it was very convenient for the\u2026 new \u201cadministration\u201d\u2026 to have access to the collected data, and it was indeed used against the citizens, as it always is in the end.<\/p>\n

Since no private surveillance data is ever deleted, and there is a nonzero chance of that data being horribly abused, then it will<\/em> be abused, with mathematical certainty.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(No private surveillance data is ever deleted. Even if the records are \u201cpurged\u201d, there are always backups of the database, and such backups have been brought out on occasion. Besides, even if governmental agencies claim that a piece of data has been deleted, there is no way to verify such a claim. The only way to make sure it\u2019s not there is to not have it collected in the first place.)<\/p>\n

Governmental agencies now have pretty much complete access to records of how you have walked and driven about the city, your flight records, your call records, your Internet browsing habits. If somebody\u2019s mere religion can be abused to this degree, and we need to remember that it was,<\/em> how can today\u2019s surveillance be abused?<\/p>\n

Privacy remains your own responsibility. No government is on their citizens\u2019 side today.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People who defend today\u2019s mass surveillance tend to claim that the collected data on everybody\u2019s private communications and movements won\u2019t be abused. History tells us that they are horribly and dangerously wrong: the most benign data collections have been used for outright genocide. We need to learn from history and realize that such collected data … Continue reading “Collected Private Data Will Always Be Abused, With Mathematical Certainty”<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCollected Private Data Will Always Be Abused, With Mathematical Certainty<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"People who defend today's mass surveillance tend to claim that the collected data on everybody's private communications and movements won't be abused.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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