Privacy Theft

It’s been almost a year ago that I got my Nexus card renewed; that would be the time at which the Nexus agents gave me a new name, one that I have never, ever used, and insisted that that was to be my real name from now on. Next time I have to renew the card, I guess we’ll go through some further unhappy conversations since my Nexus card now has a name that doesn’t match any of my other official ID cards.

But in the meantime, they’ve issued us all NEW Nexus cards. These cards are said to contain some amount of private data (which I take it means data that they have, not data that I have, although I may have it as well, I suppose), encoded in their little plastic bodies by means of microchips. And, this fabulous little microchipped card comes with its own secret covering, which looks to be the same kind of covering that the bank gives me for my ATM card, but may, indeed, be made of Kevlar, or have its own microchips for all I know.

I must always keep my Nexus card in this little coat. I must immediately destroy my old Nexus card, which has no coat and no microchips upon activating my new Nexus Card. I don’t know what happens if I don’t destroy it, but my first intuition was that the new one probably wouldn’t work, so I’d better hang on to my old one for awhile in case I need a backup.

But I used the new Nexus card yesterday, and it did work, so I guess I can bear to get rid of the old one. Actually, I’d be happy to get rid of the old one: it has a picture, alleged to be of me (with the odd name, of course), but it actually looks like a fish with glasses. The new Nexus card has the same picture, but it is covered up by some kind of holographic seal or something which almost completely obliterates the picture. Couldn’t happen to a worse picture. An act of kindness from Nexus.

But my question is about the little coat that the Nexus card is obliged to wear at all times. I am told (by whom I do not know—street talk) that I must keep the coat on the Nexus card at all times because people driving around with radio frequency scanners (And who would that be? The police? Terrorists? Identity thieves?) will pick up the secret information off my Nexus card and drive away to do something with it. Become identity thieves? Become terrorists? I really am not easily able to imagine this happening with any frequency. But it is technology and I’m not all that techno-savvy.

So I accept that you have to keep its coat on at all times (except when going through the border because if it has its coat on then the border people can’t read it anymore than the scanner thieves can read it) to protect something. But what’s actually on the card that needs protecting? My name? Well, actually, not. My Social Security number? The places that have my social security number are legion. When I lived in Massachusetts (1970-75), that’s what they used for your driver’s license number, which was then copied onto every check you ever wrote. My passport number? My awful photograph? My bank accounts, my brokerage accounts (not much left there), my insurance? My secret diary? My passwords????

Somehow, I have the feeling that this is just one of the last acts of incompetence brought to us by the Bush Administration. After all, if it’s so dangerous to have this information floating in the air, couldn’t it be encrypted? And if it’s so dangerous to have this information floating in the air, maybe the government shouldn’t have the information in the first place or shouldn’t be putting it on a card that is highly likely, sooner or later, in my hands or those of someone else, to lose its coat, its hat, its mittens, its every protection? And then will it be my/our fault if the terrorists come again? I'm checking with Dick Cheney about that.

No Shame

Two big border revelations this month. First one is that U.S. border agents now are entitled to remove your laptop computer from your hot little hands should you present yourself at the border with said laptop. And they may take it away from you for an indeterminate period of time, and forget about your Constitutional rights, I guess, because if you are presenting yourself to the U.S. border agents, you aren’t actually in the U.S., my friend. Furthermore, the 9th Circuit Appellate Court has agreed that this is a situation in which search does not require a warrant nor reasonable cause nor I guess any cause at all. You can read about this more fully here. Schneier, a security expert, also includes information about how to avoid having information on your laptop when you cross borders.

And the second? Well every border crossing now includes the creation of a permanent record of you making that crossing and your picture is attached to the record. Said record to be preserved by the government for fifteen years. Furthermore, it is not just the information obtained from your passport that is to be part of this record but any other information obtained during a secondary inspection. You can read about this part more fully here. Hard to know exactly who eventually will have access to such information.

The Congress, of course, has not authorized any of this, but then they haven’t yet been given the opportunity, I suppose. Inevitably, this offers enormous possibilities for irritating events here at the Point Roberts border where we make crossings so frequently. If nothing else, all of us Point Roberts’ residents’ back and forths to the laundromat and the thrift store and the grocery store will use up a lot of K’s of storage in the government’s data base, but I suppose we can learn to leave our laptops at home when going to those places. Don't say we weren't warned, because this is exactly what privacy advocates have been worried about with respect to new technologies for the past 30 years or more: that the government would simply have everything about us in its files, to be used for any purposes that it chooses. I know, they keep saying they’re doing it only to protect us from terrorists, but that ruse is getting a little old since they don’t seem to have shown much skill in catching any terrorists. And every day there seems to be some new story about misuse of data base information. I mean, think about all those medical records of celebrities being perused by interested staff at the UCLA Medical Center.

Some commenters have been surprised that Homeland Security has authorized both these significant lurches toward privacy invasion without any official authorization; other have been not surprised by the decision itself, but appalled by the fact that they don’t even bother to keep it a secret. No shame at all any more is the sorry conclusion.