The Equifax scandal was the topic of a hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection on “Securing Consumers’ Credit Data in the Age of Digital Commerce” Nov. 1, 2017. https://energycommerce.house.gov/hear...

Schneier gave an interesting account of the Equifax ordeal. He identified how it happened through negligence and one basic source of the problem as the fact that privacy is being inevitably violated for people who are the "product" not the "customer". He gave some interesting technical proposals that the data brokers have no incentive to implement.

Schneier full testimony: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF1...

Video of Schneier summary presentation: https://youtu.be/4_ydofXb7mU?t=2460

Qustions and discussion followed the witness presentations in the video.

But instead of calling for defining and protecting property rights, he generally called for more vague government controls and rules for security ('authorize the FTC to figure out what to do') as the false alternative to what he calls "market failure".

As previously discussed on this page here https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post..., of course "the market" will not automatically protect rights; it isn't supposed to. That is what a proper government is for.

But this is being used to argue for more improper government controls of the usual kind, in the name of 'doing something', as a solution to the growing privacy problem instead of protecting the rights of the individual. Apologists for the data broker companies are just as bad as they try to avoid or minimize government action of any kind; they don't want their free ride off their "products'" property rights to be stopped. Others have no idea what to recommend and are likely to vote for anything to give the appearance they are supporting their constituents.

It should be changed. But that has to be done by protecting the rights of the individual. We can each take steps to protect ourselves online, like you have, but most data security is out of our control.

Don't worry about what you can't change.

It may seem so, and staying off sites like facebook and google is good, but there is more out there than you can keep up with and most of it you have no say about at all. There are many sites offering information about you that you don't even know about to be able to tell them to remove it. Almost everyone who has records on you for anything is digitizing them. You can try to minimize what is known what you think by not posting, but that would include this site, too, and you can't do anything about what is already out there.

As long as everyone else is digitizing their records you are vulernable. That is one of the effects of Obamacare requiring doctors to digitize their notes and records on you and make it accessible in centralized databases.

With all that plus the cameras everywhere they don't even have to try to track you with chips in the coins and paper bills you pay with.

Perhaps so. Maybe if you fill out a paper job appli-
cation (and often employers won't take those), when they do a background check, maybe they will put your information on the Internet, even if you don't. I get around some identity problems by not having a credit card. Mostly I pay for what I want with cash or money orders.

I'm still better off than if I had not done my best to erase all my info from the internet.

Sounds like premature ejaculation...

They call it a "better browsing experience". It doesn't mean anything because you are the product. They get the "better experience".

Comes down to choice as I see it.

I'm still waiting to be asked what I choose. To be or not to be...part of this system and if so...what's in it for me.

I have been following Bruce Schneier for years. He is an excellent source of information on this topic. It's sad that he's been captured by the establishment pragmatist statist crowd and its anti-market economic and political ideology, as if that were the solution and there is no other.

You may be far away, but the information on you is still there -- whether or not you ever used, or stopped using, facebook. It is not the only source.

This problem is far beyond 'putting it on the internet'. Credit cards and other forms of financial and private information existed long before the internet. Networking and computers have only provided a more efficient tool for transmission, surveillance, and hacking of data, and you can't avoid the modern network infrastructure no matter how careful you try to be..

Our private information should not be collectivized, leaving only a retention of a "share" of royalties or "fees". If you give up the right to it you have lost everything.

If you do not want something to be seen by everybody in the United States, don't put it on the Internet.
(Of course, no one has a right to fraudulently use your Social Security number, even if you are dumb enough to put it on the Internet, put putting it there is still a dumb thing to do).

I took care of this problem from erasing any personal info from the internet. I feel like a man on a faraway dark planet at times without facebook. But, it also feels very liberating.

PII (Personally-Identifiable Information) should belong to the individual - not the store. Their ability to use that information should hinge on the individual's being paid for that use. And they should have a fiduciary duty to safeguard any and all PII upon penalty of damages.

I would change the law so that companies you entrust with private data about yourself, including where you live, are fiduciaries, responsible to you to protect that data as you would yourself. This would also eliminate the "third party exception" to warrant requirements for search and seizure.

But as the law is now, we're stuck with the status quo. And I'm sure Google and the rest have plenty of lobbyists paying bribes to keep it that way.

EWV you are fountain of good information!

Yes it should or at least, like a licensing fee, one should be able to share in the profits like royalties.

In the business world, 'resources' are not Free and neither is an individuals profile.

I think most of the discussion on this topic misses the point. When you buy an equity, don't you have an expectation of anonymity? Why then would we have anything less in any "private" transaction. Credit reporting first and foremost has harmed this principle. At first it's benefits to creditors was mitigated by a multitude of assurances of privacy to the public. Yet now these very abusers contend your commercial record is their property? Not joint property held in trust. There's always been a reliance on the privacy of our transactional records. That such would not be subject to external scrutiny without our consent. This principle has been eroded by the very merchants to whom we've entrusted them. All commerce is based on trust. If we fail to honor historically reliable assumptions about our exchanges we will have the alternative, regulation and government control which is not personal or property at all.

(no gagging or laughing allowed, this is not April 1)

Too late for what?

I only posted it as a secondary follow up because I had mentioned that Law School group earlier in contrast to Schneier's other background. Otherwise it belongs in another topic, maybe like Hillary's book with the same nonsense..

I do not praise long posts in general but this one is good.
Your instruction about Harvard Law School came too late, I am pleased to report.

Here is an example of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (no gagging or laughing allowed, this is not April 1):

https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication...

Partisan Right-Wing Websites Shaped Mainstream Press Coverage Before 2016 Election, Berkman Klein Study Finds

"The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University today released a comprehensive analysis of online media and social media coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign. The report, "Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," documents how highly partisan right-wing sources helped shape mainstream press coverage and seize the public’s attention in the 18-month period leading up to the election.

"In this study, we document polarization in the media ecosystem that is distinctly asymmetric. Whereas the left half of our spectrum is filled with many media sources from center to left, the right half of the spectrum has a substantial gap between center and right. The core of attention from the center-right to the left is large mainstream media organizations of the center-left. The right-wing media sphere skews to the far right and is dominated by highly partisan news organizations,” co-author and principal investigator Yochai Benkler stated. In addition to Benkler, the report was authored by Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, and Ethan Zuckerman.

"The fact that media coverage has become more polarized in general is not new, but the extent to which right-wing sites have become partisan is striking, the report says."

https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/337...

"In this study, we analyze both mainstream and social media coverage of the 2016 United States presidential election. We document that the majority of mainstream media coverage was negative for both candidates, but largely followed Donald Trump’s agenda: when reporting on Hillary Clinton, coverage primarily focused on the various scandals related to the Clinton Foundation and emails. When focused on Trump, major substantive issues, primarily immigration, were prominent. Indeed, immigration emerged as a central issue in the campaign and served as a defining issue for the Trump campaign.

"We find that the structure and composition of media on the right and left are quite different. The leading media on the right and left are rooted in different traditions and journalistic practices. On the conservative side, more attention was paid to pro-Trump, highly partisan media outlets. On the liberal side, by contrast, the center of gravity was made up largely of long-standing media organizations steeped in the traditions and practices of objective journalism. "

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/ha...

"The more insulated right-wing media ecosystem was susceptible to sustained network propaganda and
disinformation, particularly misleading negative claims about Hillary Clinton. Traditional media accountability
mechanisms—for example, fact-checking sites, media watchdog groups, and cross-media criticism—appear
to have wielded little influence on the insular conservative media sphere. Claims aimed for 'internal'
consumption within the right-wing media ecosystem were more extreme, less internally coherent, and
appealed more to the 'paranoid style' of American politics than claims intended to affect mainstream media reporting."