Sara Donnelly: 'They're watching you'

Bugged Levis, unauthorized sex tapes, leaked medical records -- is nothing
sacred anymore?

Sara Donnelly, The Boston Phoenix

These are not times for the shy. Post 9-11, it's perfectly legal for large
portions of our daily lives to be covertly monitored by the government,
often without a court order. And then there's the Internet and its virtual
network of instantaneous humiliation. Or the identity thieves who experts
say pick through trash for useful tidbits with which to ruin your credit.

Here in Maine, concerns about the federal government's warrantless
wiretapping program have hit especially close to home. The Maine Civil
Liberties Union is representing 22 residents who want the state's Public
Utilities Commission to investigate whether Verizon secretly released Maine
phone records to the government's National Security Agency. Last Monday,
August 21, the US Department of Justice sued the Maine PUC and Verizon to
stop any investigation into the alleged leaks; the feds have filed similar
suits in New Jersey and Missouri to quash state efforts to stop covert
surveillance. Verizon, for its part, has released unsigned statements to the
Maine PUC denying illegal sharing of records but has not sworn under oath
that these denials are true.

Evan Hendricks, editor of the Washington, DC, newsletter Privacy Times, has
studied privacy in the US since 1977. He says these days are "the best of
times and the worst of times" -- the worst because new technology allows
information to be collected easier, the best because, he says, "in 1977,
this was all a theoretical issue. It was all like, 'Well, if they do this
then this can happen.' Now all these things have happened, there's been
misuse of information, there's been security breaches, so you have a growing
consciousness and we're at a stage where no politician can get up and say 'I
favor invasion of privacy as good policy.'"

No politician except the president, that is.

Since George W. Bush entered the Oval Office, consumer privacy, patient
privacy, and personal privacy have been significantly hampered thanks to the
USA PATRIOT Act and other rule changes. So, in honor of keeping your
business your business, here's a brief list of common invasions of privacy
and what, if anything, you can do to stop them.

1. Make sure what you read isn't held against you

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? In October 2001, just after the September 11
terrorist attacks, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which among other
increases in government surveillance abilities allows federal investigators
easier access to library records. Under a gag order attached to the bill,
libraries are not allowed to reveal that they have been asked for the
information, let alone that they have given it.

WHAT CAN I DO? Go to libraries that erase patron check-out records every 24
hours, like the Baxter Memorial Library in Gorham. The Portland Public
Library system erases a book's check-out record as soon as you return it and
does not attach visitor names to Internet search records at their communal
computers.

2. Keep your illnesses to yourself

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? In 2002, the federal Department of Health and Human
Services changed privacy rules to make it easier for hundreds of thousands
of medical entities to share your medical records between them. This
includes health practitioners, insurance companies, pharmaceutical
manufacturers, and medical marketing companies. While most records are
shared between practitioners and insurance companies for processing payments
or for the benefit of the patient's health, in June the Washington Post
reported that the federal government has received nearly 19,500 complaints
about alleged medical privacy violations, including reports that personal
medical records were not protected. The Bush administration has prosecuted
only two complaints, but has not imposed any fines.

WHAT CAN I DO? Dr. Deborah Peel, founder of the Texas-based advocacy group
Patient Privacy Rights and a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit to reverse
the slackening of medical privacy, says "there's a great deal of threat to
privacy" in healthcare today -- anonymous patient records can be sold to
pharmaceutical companies for marketing purposes, practitioners are not
required to notify patients of privacy breaches involving their records, and
patients can't sue medical companies in federal court if their privacy has
been violated. But there is light at the end of the tunnel -- you can try to
negotiate additional protection with your doctor. Peel recommends forgetting
about the "privacy notice" your doctor hands you and instead using her
group's "Statement of My Right to Medical Privacy" which can be downloaded
at www.patientprivacyrights.org. If both you and your doctor sign your
special agreement, says Paul Feldman, deputy director of the Health Privacy
Project in Washington, DC, your doctor is bound by it, at least in state
court. If you're being tested for HIV or another potentially
reputation-damaging condition, Feldman says you can patronize an anonymous
testing clinic or negotiate special secrecy for just that part of your
record -- but get it in writing.

3. Ditch a PI who's trailing you

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? According to Douglas Calderbank, owner and chief
private investigator of Calderbank Investigations, Inc., in Portland, PIs do
in fact rely on the covert shadowing TV snoops like Columbo used. Calderbank
usually shadows people for health insurance companies trying to rout
worker's comp frauds, but he also does do the occasional "domestic," which
means he's following targets looking for evidence of "excessive flirtation"
and cheating.

WHAT CAN I DO? Calderbank says most firms, including his, own a few
different cars to make it tough for targets to catch on that they're being
followed. To add to the intrigue, the PI car will never be right behind
you -- Calderbank stays two or three cars back in urban traffic -- often in
the other lane. But, wherever the PI is, he will stay close. If you see a
suspicious car going where you go, or you're up to no good with your
best-friend's wife and you just want to play it safe, pull over to the side
of the road and look around all pissed off. You could also loop the block.
Calderbank says he'll often ditch a trail for a while if he thinks the
target's on to him.

4. Settle down and live nowhere

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? In personal privacy expert JJ Luna's classic tome of
paranoia, How to Be Invisible, Luna devotes a whole chapter to why it's a
serious danger to let anyone know where you live. If your home address is
held by your local postal office or any other company, organization, or
loose-lipped family member, your sanctuary can be disturbed by random
criminals, identity thieves, or sketchy exes.

WHAT CAN I DO? You need to make your home disappear, at least on paper. Set
up what Luna calls a "ghost address" -- basically, some spot other than your
home where you can regularly retrieve your mail. This could be a rented room
(rented under the name of a business or a trust), a mailbox you've erected
on a rural road, or a company which has agreed to accept mail for you.
Needless to say, searching for such a ghost can make you seem mighty
suspicious, but Luna explains that if you dig around long enough, with
enough money to flash, you can eventually have all of your mail delivered to
your ghost and make your real address -- poof -- disappear.

5. Place a worry-free phone call to your dealer

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? Well, it's a little unclear at this point. According
to a now-famous May article in USA Today, phone companies like AT&T and the
former MCI have given their customers' call records (but not conversation
transcripts) to the government's National Security Agency. (The paper has
since retracted original claims that Verizon and BellSouth helped the NSA.)
The NSA began monitoring international phone calls to and from the US in
late 2001. But on August 17, a federal district court judge in Detroit ruled
that the NSA's warrantless wiretapping of America's phone lines is
unconstitutional. She ordered it stopped immediately, although the Bush
administration has requested the NSA monitoring program continue pending
their appeal.

WHAT CAN I DO? There's not much you can do, according to Shenna Bellows,
director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, which has asked the state to
investigate whether Verizon handed Maine phone records to the feds. You
could use a payphone to place all of your calls, but then you'd never have a
reliable contact number. Since the privacy infraction we're concerned with
here is perpetrated by the federal government, the best course of action is
to lobby your US representatives to get the laws changed, although that can
be an uphill battle with two Republican senators. "It's become tiresome to
say 'Contact Washington. Contact senators Snowe and Collins,'" says Bellows.
"There's definitely a sense of helplessness unless they step in."

6. Block hackers from accessing your computer

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? David Jacquet, an "ethical hacker" and director of
education services for Sage Data Security in South Portland, specializes in
identifying weaknesses in computer systems that hackers can exploit -- and
there are usually plenty of them. Hackers can pluck personal information
from your e-mail, trick you into revealing that information on a fake Web
site, or infect your computer with keystroke-monitors, which record and
share everything you type.

WHAT CAN I DO? "The first thing that people need to be aware of is that
there is a risk to their privacy whenever they are online," says Jacquet. He
recommends you be as suspicious of a stranger online as you would be of one
in the real world, never give out your Social Security number through
e-mail, never answer an unsolicited e-mail asking for personal information,
and always run a firewall program and anti-virus program like Norton
Antivirus. Update your virus program and operating systems daily, and check
your credit report every four months to make sure no one has frigged with
it.

7. Come up with an uncrackable password

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? Identity thieves can use published lists of the most
common passwords (like the one at www.geodsoft.com) to break through weak
protections and have free reign over your credit cards, bank account, or
utilities.

WHAT CAN I DO? Jacquet says never use birthdays, your name, or the names of
those closest to you as passwords. Pet names are also easy for a thief to
figure out. Come up, instead, with a jumble of at least eight characters --
and try to include numbers. Jacquet says a good way to remember a
meaningless password is to select an opening line to a song -- and not one
from a genre you're known to like. For example, the first line from the song
"Oh What A Beautiful Morning," from the musical Oklahoma! goes like this:
"There's a bright golden haze on the meadow." The password would then be
tabghotm. Also, don't use the same password for different things, and change
them every three months.

8. Keep your sex tape off the Internet

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? How can't they? Just follow the sordid bread-crumb
trail of defrocked Hollywood stars -- Pamela Anderson has two sex tapes
online, Colin Farrell is fighting to keep his off the Web, J. Lo just sued
Suge Knight because she thought he had plans for one of hers, you can Ask
Jeeves about Scott Stapp and Kid Rock's romp with four skanks, and, of
course, the Gone With the Wind of classic sex tapes is still mightily
downloadable -- Paris Hilton's "One Night In Paris." Romance ebbs and flows,
but the Web is forever.

WHAT CAN I DO? Try suing the Web distributor for breach of privacy to halt
distribution of the tape. In March, a Hollywood judge temporarily upheld
Colin Farrell's stay of ejaculation. But though this keeps Farrell's ex from
marketing the tape online for the moment, it does nothing to get the lawsuit
squashed for good. Pam Anderson and her ex, Bret Michaels, won their case
against a company that intended to distribute a video of their love-making,
but eventually had to return to court because the video showed up online
anyway. If you don't want to bother with all of that legal in and out, you
can just take it as it comes. In 2004, Paris Hilton reportedly dropped her
lawsuit against her tape-pimping ex in exchange for $400,000 and a share of
future sales of "One Night," much of which, she says, will go to charity.

9. Avoid insidious tracking devices

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? In 1999, a new mini-tracking device called the radio
frequency identification technology chip (RFID) inserted its way into the
American consumer market. RFID chips are about the size a grain of sand, can
be read by receivers tens of feet away, and are used in E-Z pass
transponders, card-keys, and, if implanted inside a human, can store vital
records or credit card numbers. In 2005, Wal-Mart began requiring its
largest suppliers attach RFID tags to their warehouse crates. The tags are
then used to track products from supplier to warehouse more efficiently. But
according to Katherine Albrecht, co-founder of spychips.com and co-author of
the 2005 book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track
Your Every Move with RFID, these largely unregulated devices could also
track people. Albrecht says RFID in clothing, shoes, and any other consumer
product would mean RFID readers placed strategically "can ID people as they
move around" by attaching objects to the credit card number used to purchase
them and, consequently, the person who has registered the credit card. IBM
has even created an RFID reader with a pending patent titled "Identification
and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items." Besides Wal-Mart, Albrecht
says Target, CVS, Best Buy, Levi Strauss, Gillette and dozens of other
companies have tested RFID or are actively engaged in their development. So
far, most stores and product makers claim not to use the chips, mostly
because consumers have freaked out about their people-tracking potential.

WHAT CAN I DO? RFID tags work by transmitting information to a remote site
via radio waves through a tiny antenna. In March 2006, the New York Times
reported that a group of European computer scientists found the chips are
vulnerable to hackers. According to spychips.com, surface RFID antennas are
fairly easy to spot -- the antenna ranges in size from just under an inch to
the size of an 8.5-x-11-inch sheet of paper, and it looks like a
mini-metallic labyrinth. In shoes, try looking under the inner pad. Some
chips are embedded in the product, and those you'll need an X-ray to find.
If you find the RFID, spychips.com says you can disable it by cutting out
the chip and running it through with a needle or crushing it (the chip is
the tiny black spot where all of the antenna lines connect). Or you can stop
shopping at the stores listed on spychips.com which have shown support for
RFID.

10. Fly under the boss's radar

HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? According to federal law, your boss can record you,
read your e-mail, even monitor you with a grid of 20 compact mirrors
suspended from the ceiling if she wants to. You are working in her domain.
Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the Privacy Journal in Providence, Rhode
Island, says that, on top of this, the federal government has easier access
under the USA PATRIOT Act to whatever information your boss holds about you
and, like your library records, no one can alert you that your files have
been investigated.

WHAT CAN I DO? At the very least, Smith says, ask your employer not to use
your entire Social Security number to identify you in the company database.
This won't save you from the feds, but it might cover your ass if the
database is hacked. Also, keep in mind that anything you do (or write on
e-mail) could be monitored by your boss. So play nice. But, remember -
bosses can watch you, but they can't use their power for overly-nefarious
purposes. If a video monitor has lingered on your naughty bits, you can sue.
As for the feds' trolling, working to rein in the Bush administration's lax
snooping laws is about all you can do to stop it.

If you can figure out where Sara Donnelly can be reached, go ahead and
e-mail her.

Copyright (c) 2006 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group

Source: Boston Phoenix
http://thephoenix.com/PrinterFriendly.aspx?id=21630

--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson