Epilogue

I found it interesting how Simson Garfinkle came back and wrote about how things are one year after he wrote the book, however, I feel that this was a way for him to toot his horn even more by saying, "hey, see... I was right!" Maybe I'm just cynical but that's what I thought about it.

How funny and naive is it for the government to think that voluntary privacy policies are sufficient? Come on, it hasn't worked in the past so why would it work in the future where technology is just going to continue expanding? I liked the example about the library where BC's Privacy Commissioner checked to see how he could improve the security cameras to not invade privacy but still deter theft. Why can't we just pass legislation that would allow for things like this to happen? This is a great example of how easy it would be to enhance the privacy of Americans while still keeping an eye on the bad guys. I think that the government needs to step up and admit that privacy is a huge concern and actually implement legislation ensuring the privacy of all Americans, not just some voluntary guidelines.

The MTA example was profound because it showed me how, because of the travel information of one criminal, New York thought it would be a good idea to track the movements of every person going through the subway "just in case". You don't have to actively track everyone all the time. It worked when it was a passive system so why intrude on people's lives anymore than has to be done? I guess that was the theme of the whole book though.

Chapter 11

The very first part of this chapter was great. I like how he listed the fundamental rights. The one that stuck out to me was the last one saying that "Without privacy of communications, there can be no politics and ultimately no true relationships." This is so true because if everyone said everything they were thinking, no one would like them. Your thoughts are private and there is no reason for anyone to know what it is that you are thinking at any given point in time. That being said, I'm not writing anymore.............





J/K!

Technology is definitely not neutral.... Well, let me put it this way, the people that use technology are not useful. If a company tried to prevent every possible negative use of their product from being used, products would cost an arm and a leg. I feel that if people would not be looking for ways to use technology against others then there wouldn't be the issue of "neutral" technology.

I liked the quote saying about privacy, "those who need it usually can afford it." This is so true. I might want the security measures that would prevent anyone from knowing anything about me but I do not need and sure cannot afford it. I think that what he is saying here is that people that are super paranoid about their privacy have something to hide. People running for president surely wish that they would repress select things from their past and they usually have to money to get it taken care of or pay the person bringing forth the information to keep quiet. Cryptography is pretty much useless to me. Simson made a good point about it comparing it to locks on your doors. It may make you feel safe but if someone really wants in, they'll get in and take anything that they want.

Chapter 10

This chapter started to get more into the technological breakthroughs that have been made recently. I found the prediction made by Kurzweil to be very interesting but, as you probably noticed, he was more accurate in predicting things a few years out. With the way that technology is increasing, there is no way to fully predict what is going to happen in the next few years. 30 years ago, I was going to be driving a flying car today. 20 years ago I was going to be having a conversation with my maid robot and 10 years ago I was going to have a computer with the processing power of a mainframe sitting in my lap. I'm typing on a laptop but I still don't have a maid (alive or robot) and my car has no aspirations of flying. The point I'm trying to make is that what might seem like a viable option for technology at one point in time might not be a pressing need for technology once that time comes around.
I must admit, the Doppelganger program sounds like a pretty neat piece of technology but I'm still weary about having this program send my information over a system called Pretty Good Privacy... I want the best security! This could be made possible with the quantum computers that we learned about in class. These computers could constantly update encryption codes keeping intruders out. That is the type of technology I want.
I laughed when I read the heading "Simulated Humans Can't Be Trusted" because I was thinking back to the previous chapter about terrorists. Apparently real humans can't be trusted either. All kidding aside though, Simson made a great point about robots not sharing the same emotional language as humans. It is going to be very hard to get a robot to understand emotions because there are so many variables that go into emotions (people cry when they are sad, happy, or mad)...

Chapter 9

"The world has always had it's crazies".... This could not be any more true. There are always going to be people that feel that they have to let everyone else in on their cause and disrupt the lives of innocent people. Obviously, this is why I have to be "randomly" searched at an airport and show my ID 3 different times to get on the plane (Why 3 though? why not 5 or 10?). Terrorism is not solely air based. The story about the Jewish organization that got the package of anthrax.... wow, I mean, wow. There are people that will do anything to harm others that have "wronged" them in the past. 15 years ago, this chapter would seem like a fantasy. Even as few as 7 years ago this would have seemed like hogwash. But after the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, Americans are more aware of terrorism than ever before.
The story of the Salmonella poisoning was kinda interesting to me. There were many questions that I came up with after reading that part, the main one being, "Why in the world would a biomedical supply firm send out this bacteria to some kooks in The Dalles, Oregon?" That makes not sense to me. I for one would have thrown up a HUGE red flag when the order came in. And imagine if someone would have been killed from dehydration do to the bacteria. Talk about a law suit. That company would be bankrupted in a minute. It is beyond my imagination as to why anyone would want to intentionally hurt someone else (I guess these guys really wanted to be politicians).
Another thing that I found interesting about this chapter was the fact that it showed the progression of terrorism. The last part about brain-tapping.... Come on. Really? There is no way to read peoples minds and I cannot see there EVER being a way. I'm starting to think that this guy should start writing Sci-Fi books.

Chapter 8

Patrick Kimbrough..... Feel free to use it because I apparently do not own it, corporations own it and can sell it to anyone they feel would benefit from knowing it. It shocks me to know that there is not really a way to protect yourself from having your name used at any point in time. I mean, celebrities are always talking about a right to privacy but, since they are public figures, they forgo that right. The question becomes though, do private citizens have a right to not have their name used? The answer is no, just ask Mr. Avrahami. He found out the hard way that names do not constitute the person and, therefor, are not protected. Kinda scary.
Iceland is a very isolated country. It is in the middle of the north Atlantic ocean and there aren't very many people that immigrate there. With just over a quarter million people who mostly share a common 20,000 ancestors, it is a geneticists dream! That is why deCODE was developed. I find it interesting that this program could help solve the mysteries of many diseases and help prevent them from occurring in the future. The thing that I found the most shocking was that there were only 9,000 people that opted out of the study. I guess that Iceland is a more collectivist society than the USA but I did not expect a number that low. That would be like my home town opting out..... that's not a lot of people. Anyways, I think that it is great that they are tracking peoples DNA because it may lead to numerous breakthroughs in medicine. Who knows, they might cure cancer from this project... I think that my DNA is worth curing cancer.

Chapter 7

Ahhhhh, finally! My cup of tea! I have a degree in marketing and I worked in sales for a year before starting this program so I can relate to everything Simson said in this chapter. Sales is all about numbers. It's a numbers game and is very much a contact sport. The more people you contact, the better shot you have at making money. In my industry, on average, 50 touches accounted for 3 sales (or there about) so you had to contact as many people as possible to try to get the sale. This is what is being said in this chapter. With the help of technology, CRM systems are being more and more advanced allowing people to market to individuals, not groups. I get emails from Best Buy and Circuit City telling me about the newest DLP TVs and other electronics. Why? Because I purchase electronics and DVDs at those stores. It really is genius how firms are able to massage data to determine who would be best to advertise to. Like was said early in the chapter, "you don't sell dog food to a cat person". This is why I am not getting information about the latest appliances that are on sale. I simply do not buy those items. Technology has enabled companies to predict future purchases based on previous ones. It has really changed the marketing industry because it used to be, "throw it on the wall and whatever sticks is good". Now it's more like a sniper. You target who you want and go for them with out wasting time or resources on people that you do not want.
Unfortunately, there are people who buy information and use it against others. These people are the scammers who try to get you to donate money or invest in the "lastest and greatest" invention ever! There are no laws prohibiting this though as long as the amount of money people are sending is relatively small. So a word of advice to you is never send anyone money...... It's just not smart.

Chapter 6

Now this chapter's content came as a surprise to me. I don't know why but I did not expect this book to delve into something that I grew up listening to. Both of my parents are in the medical industry and have been since I was born (My mom is an X-Ray Technician and my dad is the Director of Imaging Services). I remember my mom telling me stories about how things used to be before HIPAA was introduced and how easy it was for anyone to get your medical history. I for one do not feel that I have anything to hide in my history (only a shoulder reconstruction and some MRIs). Other people are not that fortunate though. I could not imagine people, especially potential employers, looking at my medical history as a way to hire me. The one thing that stuck out with me was the story about how the girl and her fiance were in the hospital and the medical staff said something about how the baby was doing, a baby that her fiance had no clue about. It was an innocent slip but it still hurt that relationship. With the new forms of technology out there today, it is so much easier to get anything about anybody at anytime if you work in the medical industry. Even janitors can see patient information if they take a peak at the computers or even the charts.
Technology can also hurt the health care industry. My dad was working at a hospital that was installing a piece of hardware called Night Hawk. It was supposed to send digital x-rays to doctors in Seattle so that someone could read the images at night when there were no doctors on staff. He came to the hospital in the midst of the install and a year later they were still having problems with the system. Patients weren't getting their images read on time and in the medical industry, that can mean life or death.

Chapter 5

This was a good chapter because it dealt with some really cool applications of technology, specifically cameras. I don't know if you have but, if you haven't, download Google Earth! What an amazing application. It takes images from worldsat (the same thing Simson was talking about in the chapter) and combines them to make a fully interactive model of the globe. Now, you can even make it have a relief of the building in the city.... pretty cool stuff! Back to the chapter though. Surveillance cameras are a very useful technology when it comes to asset protection in a company. If something is ever stolen or misplaced, you can track it down and see exactly what happened to that order of Playstations. I feel that it gets to be a little too intrusive though because I don't like to be watched or feel like I'm being watched when I'm shopping but it is something that I am going to have to get used to because it isn't going anywhere any time soon.
Webcams, on the other hand, freak me out. I had a room mate freshman year that would always be on his webcam, talking to his girlfriend (she was in Chicago so I guess it was cool that he could have real time video of her from over 1500 miles away). It just kinda made me uneasy though when I found out that he would leave his camera on but turn off his monitor (not on purpose) and whomever was on the other end could see everything that was going on in the room. I found that to be very intrusive, obviously.

Chapter 4

I like how the book explained RFID because I feel that RFID is the wave of the future in shipment tracking. It is just a fool proof technology in my opinion. As someone that is looking to get into purchasing and supply chain management (yeah, I know..... I'm a boring person), I find this technology to be great! It allows you to track your shipments anywhere they are in the world as long as they are within distance to a reader and a computer. If you keep multiple readers in a warehouse or a truck/train that are all connected to a computer network, you can find your products anywhere in the world. It's like the IBM help desk commercial where the lady says that she can see that the truck is lost. It would be great to be able to track your products in real time. Another benefit is that RFID tags are going to be getting super cheap and are small enough to hide anywhere in the packaging of the product. It is the wave of the future..... I guarantee it!

Chapter 3

Finger prints have been used for such a long time. People know that they can be used to identify you and that they never change for the course of your life yet some criminals are still dumb enough to leave some of them behind. I find it interesting that even back in King Solomon's time that people knew that finger prints were unique to you and they used the print to distinguish their pottery from others. I am not sure if I agree with Simson on the notion that people used finger prints because they were racist and couldn't tell the difference between the Chinese people that were getting off of the boats to immigrate to San Francisco. I think that they were being proactive in starting to get a registry of all members of the city and they knew that that was the best way to get the prints of the immigrants.
I find computerized biometrics to be very invasive for the average citizen. I can understand the need for them when it comes to government jobs (Mission Impossible 1 shows the need of these systems when that guy has to do a retinal scan and a voice scan just to get into the room that has to door to the computer.... Man, that's my second Tom Cruise reference in as many posts.... I swear that is purely coincidence). To me, there is no real need for every citizen to have their fingerprints or DNA on file in some government database so that they can have a record of every citizen. It really bothers me but, as you probably can tell, I am very careful and cautious about giving my information away. I just don't trust people (or the government) I guess.

Chapter 2

This was an interesting chapter. The main thing that stuck out to me was how easy it is for your credit report to get messed up but how hard it is to get it fixed. The example of Steve and Nancy really made me think a lot. I am looking to take advantages in different countries upon graduation and I could only imagine the bits and pieces of information that I would not receive due to either the postal service not forwarding certain materials or companies or people not being willing to pay the postage on international mail. Knowing my luck I would be in the same boat and get a lien placed on my house because of an administrative error that is of no fault of my own. I know of people that go overseas and lose touch with what is going on in America much less what mail you are not receiving.
I also found it interesting about the creation of IBM being from a man that made taking a census easier. That was a handy piece of knowledge that I did not know. (sorry, I know that was random)
The other thing that stuck out to me about the chapter was the advent of the Social Security number. I had no idea that every number carried information and didn't have a check number at somewhere in it to help verify information.... Made me kinda lose faith in my SSN as being a good way to keep your information safe.

Chapter 1

This chapter made me think long and hard about what technology is doing to us these days. Yes, it is making things a whole lot easier (I can pay all of my bills online, have conversations with people that live on other continents, and download my favorite sporting events that I might have missed) but it is also taking away from the anonymity that I enjoy. Everywhere you look online it's user name this and password that. This chapter pointed out that, no matter what you do online, people can track your movements and save them into any database that they choose and call it "marketing". I feel that it is more like spying. When the Patriot Act was implemented, I was shocked because, in theory, the government could literally follow your every move with no repercussions. Very scary stuff.
The main point that this chapter was trying to make was that as much as technology is aiding in the well being of humans, it is also taking away from our privacy with every click of the mouse. There is no where that you can hide from it either. Companies are sending automated messages for telemarketing from other countries and calling you from those countries. It is pretty scary to think that people will be able to track who calls you the most and then mask the caller ID to show that a certain person is calling you when it is in fact someone completely different. I am very weary about giving my information out over the internet and I still know that I should be less cavalier in the way I give out information.