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By Dr.
Philip Baczewski, Director of Academic Computing and User Services
Where in the world is
Carmen Sandiego?
Palm Inc. may know, especially if Carmen's carrying one of the new
Palm Pre smart
phones. One
tech-savvy
blogger noticed recently that the Palm Pre was uploading information
to Palm on a regular basis that included GPS location, applications
used, and certain log files. Palm would tell you that they are doing so
to provide you with better service and they may very well be sincere in
their
assertions to that effect. Given the best of intentions, or even the
incentive to preserve market share by not making customers mad,
companies like Palm may indeed be using such personal information in
benign ways.
Privacy?
As we've seen, however, sometimes not all parties have the best of
intentions. In a case related to the
warrantless wiretapping that was reported to have occurred during
the recent Bush administration, it is
alleged that AT&T "provided the NSA with its customers' phone and
Internet communications for a vast data-mining operation." If recent
events have taught us anything (and if Americans haven't displaced those
memories already with the latest season of
American Idol),
it's that individual privacy along with the truth may be among the first
casualties of war.
But as pointed out in this column
before, just the expansion of our information technologies makes the
preservation of privacy more problematic without even bringing the
complicated equation of human behavior into the picture. And, not even
companies espousing the
best of intentions are immune to questions regarding the information
related to you that they collect and use. So what are we to do?
Go off the grid?
As an IT aficionado, I'm not ready to recommend that you abandon all
this technology, but it is an option. Turn in your cell phone,
disconnect the Internet, put away your credit cards and just pay with
cash, and move out of the watchful eye of Google. This might get you a
bit of privacy for a while. But if you're not ready to give up all of
the convenience we've become used to, as Ronald Reagan was fond of
saying, "Trust,
but Verify" which is another way of saying don't really trust
anyone.
Reading the fine print ...
How many of us have taken the time to read the usage and privacy
terms that we agree to when we use our iPhone, or Pre, or Gmail? You
don't have to be a lawyer to understand most of them, but you do need to
apply a degree of common sense in interpreting them. Some online
services will tell you that they will not share your personal
information. In the case here of the Pre, Palm
defines
personal information as "information directly identifiable to you, such
as your name, address, email address, and phone number, as well as other
non-public information associated with such information." They further
state that they will potentially share that information with affiliates,
subsidiaries, third party services, and possibly in response to lawsuits
or law enforcement requests. If you use Palm's backup service, then
anything on your phone could possibly be shared by Palm in this way. I'm
not saying they would do so, but they are certainly absolved by their
one-sided privacy policy if they do.
Palm collects data via "Remote Diagnostics and Updates", "Back-up and
Restore", and "Location Based Services". One of the objections raised by
this recent issue, is that there's no apparent way to opt out of the
data collection other than to "hack" the phone's OS. In other words, the
normal consumer is not provided a way to manage their privacy and thus
is forced to provide Palm with a great deal of
trust.
Who can you trust?
Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide who to trust and how
much trust should be given. This is a balance between what's at stake
and what's to gain. The potential for personal information collection on
an iPhone is the same or more than on the Pre, but at least Apple
states, "Apple takes
your privacy very seriously. Apple does not sell or rent your contact
information to other marketers." If companies want our trust, they need
to at least provide assurances that they can be trusted. And, in spite
of missing out on the coolest new thing, if their assurances are not
sufficient for your trust, don't use the product. You can choose to
trust, but first you must verify.
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