Choose Privacy Week: May 1-7

In late March, the FCC released its proposed rules for consumer Internet privacy. If adopted, these rules could mark first step in implementing strong net neutrality rules (stay tuned for our blog post on Net Neutrality). Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699) in a landslide vote. The Email Privacy Act provides a reform to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act: the government is now required to obtain a warrant to access digital communications stored in the cloud.

Choose Privacy Week, put on yearly by the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, reminds us to assert to our individual rights to privacy, lest we forget we ever had them.

You may think that you don't have anything to hide, so you don't care who sees what you do -- but that's kind of the point. Accessing information, even that of a sensitive nature, is not indicative of guilt. In fact, many believe there should be reasonable suspicion before the government should monitor you. Public libraries have long championed the privacy rights of their patrons, though sometimes their hands are tied to guarantee privacy in the library (see sign at left).

If you feel passionately about your privacy, there are a few things to consider. On the one hand, you worry about hackers, phishers, and other Internet ne'er-do-wells. On the other hand, you worry about mass government surveillance. On the third hand, you could resign yourself to the inevitability of being monitored and conduct yourself accordingly online -- actually, that's pretty good advice, but there are more steps you can take to protect yourself and lay claim to your civil liberties. What better time than Choose Privacy Week?

Let's talk about the privacy policy. 

It's common discourse that most people don't actually read the terms of service before they click agree and get started. This is a gaping hole in most people's personal privacy - you should know what rights you are retaining and which you are signing over by agreeing to the contract.

Life Hacker has a pretty good guide to finding the important parts of the terms of service agreement.

The growing Terms of Service; Didn't Read initiative rates the terms of service of many popular web services, so you can at least get an idea of what the terms are. Their ratings focus on indicators of a good or bad terms of service agreement: how your usage data is being used by that service, the rights you retain or sign over by agreeing to their terms (your copyrights, for example - FYI: anything you create in a fixed, tangible medium is protected by copyright automatically), and whether the terms can be changed without notification, among other indicators.

Maybe it's time to update your Browser's Privacy Settings

• Turn on "do not track" 
• Disable third party cookies (these are files from sites you haven't actually visited - you may want to keep cookies from sites you have visited)
• Hit ctrl + n to open a private browsing session

Find more in-depth instructions and more suggestions here and here.

Individual Freedom and National Security

The conversation about individual freedoms and it's supposedly inverse relationship with security is still up for debate - despite the fact that we no longer see terror updates every night on the news...

According to the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom's 2012 documentary, Vanishing Liberties: The Rise of State Surveillance in the Digital Age, the 9/11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act shaped the state of privacy as it stands today and mass surveillance became the standard operating procedure. Michael German, former FBI special agent specializing in domestic terrorism and covert operations, and current Senior Policy Counsel for National Security and Privacy for the ACLU Washington Legislative Office explains why mass surveillance has been massively counterproductive in this video. In short, German says more data is not necessarily good data, and that current data mining technologies rely on picking out suspicious patterns - but because actual terrorists are always changing how they operate so as not to get caught like the last guy, this allows for a lot of false negatives. It also allows for a lot of false positives - which can pose a real problem for innocent citizens: being erroneously placed on the government watch list is a fairly common occurrence, affecting travel and job prospects for years.

TL;DR: In order to assert our right to not be surveilled without suspicion, we have to take steps to choose privacy - that's what this week is all about. Start informing yourself about terms of service; update your browser's privacy settings; finally, contact your local, state, and federal representatives to let them know you support strong limits on government data mining programs.

-Sarah

SOURCES

American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom. [20K Films]. (19 April 2012). Michael German will discuss “data mining, government surveillance, and civil liberties” [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://vimeo.com/40650629

American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom. [20K Films]. (3 May 2012). Vanishing liberties: The rise of state surveillance in the digital age [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://vimeo.com/41484072

Brunner, G. (13 August 2015). The ultimate guide to staying anonymous and protecting your privacy online. Retrieved from: http://www.extremetech.com/internet/180485-the-ultimate-guide-to-staying-anonymous-and-protecting-your-privacy-online

Conger, Cristen. (7 April 2008). How to land on the Government Watch List. Retrieved from: http://people.howstuffworks.com/government-watch-list.htm

Grabionowski, Ed. (6 July 2007). How the Patriot Act works. Retrieved from: http://people.howstuffworks.com/patriot-act.htm

Schmitz, D.T. (30 July 2013). 5 Ways to improve your privacy online. Retrieved from: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/78590.html