Tarek Fahmy: Cultural Critic

Solove, D. (2006) The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age
New York: New York University Press
Article Link: The Digital Person
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Notes/Quotes/Paraphrases

• “…everyday, rivulets of information stream into electric brains to be sifted, sorted, rearranged, and combined in hundreds of different ways.” p.1

• “…hundreds of companies that are constructing gigantic databases of psychological profiles, amassing data about an individual’s race, gender, income, hobbies, and purchases.” p.2

• Digital Dossiers use 3 types of information fow:
1. Information flows between large computer databases of private-sector companies
2. data flows from the government public record systems to a variety of businesses in the private sector.
3. Information flows from the private sector to government agencies and law enforcement officials.

• “In addition to isolating the company’s most profitable customers, marketers studied them, profiled them, and then used that profile to find similar customers.” p.18

• psychographic information = data about psychological characteristics such as opinions, attitudes, beliefs, and lifestyles. p.18

EXAMPLES: Blue blood estates, bohemian mix, young literati, shotguns and pickups. p.19
MORE EXAMPLES: Affluent hispanics, big spending parents, status spenders, waist watchers. p. 22

• The average consumer is on around 100 mailing lists, and is included in at least 50 databases.” p.19

• “The products we consume are expressive of our identities” p. 45

• “We are more the the bits of data we give of as we go about our lives.” p. 46

• “As Julie Cohen observes, people are not simply reducible to the sum of their transactions, genetic markers, and other measurable attributes.” p. 46

• Our digital biographies are very reductive. p. 46

• To maintain a semblance of privacy, we need a governing body to institutes definitions and laws pertaining to information and it’s privacy; Information Privacy law.

• Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis worked extensively on privacy law. p. 57
“In 1890, they wrote their profoundly influential article, “The Right to privacy”, considered by many to be one of the primary foundations of privacy law in the United States.” p. 57

• “…the moral general right of the individual to be left alone.” p. 58

“I’ve Got Nothing To Hide” And Other Misunderstandings Of Privacy
Daniel J. Solove
The George Washington University law School.
Article link: “I’ve Got Nothing To Hide”, Solove

I’ve been following many of the bibliography trails in articles/books that I have been reading. One article led me to Mr. Daniel Solove, currently a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School. I read the first 1/2 of his book, “The Digital person: Technology and Privacy in the Digital Age” and that led me to the “I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” Article.

Mr. Solove states that Privacy Laws for the internet need to catch up with the times. They need a major structural and ideological overhaul. He also breaks down many of the flaws of he most popular argument that supports the invasion of privacy by companies/governments that collect, disseminate, and even sell the information collected about people. That argument states that ‘if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear’ regarding data-mining and ‘dataveillance’.

“A society without privacy protection would be suffocating, and it might not be a place in which most want to live.” p. 15

He also objectively redefines the term ‘privacy’ and states that privacy is not necessarily about hiding bad things. Further, privacy is an innate human characteristic that needs to be protected, especially in a ‘democratic’ society.

He pays special attention to what he terms as “the problem of secondary use”, concerning the data mining. By secondary use he is referring to companies that collect data about their customers for one purpose, then using that data for ‘other’ purposes without that customers consent.

One way to curb this misuse of data-mining is judiciary oversight; such as warrants and reporting back findings to a court of law. This oversight is intended to curb abuses and misuses of surveillance and data mining.
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One of my friends told me that Mr. Solove was his professor of law at Seton Hall, a few years back. He was his favorite professor. This connection might allow me to interview Mr. Solove about my topic relating to data-veillance and data mining. I could def. include this interview in my thesis. (food for thought)