On the way

Boston-based Representative Michael Costello is backing a bill in Massachusetts that would set forth a scheme to hold "commercial entities" (profit or non-profit) to bear financial responsibility when they are robbed of sensitive customer data. This reimbursement proposal only covers bank fees, reissuing fees and reimbursement for fraudulent charges, and this money will be paid to the banks. (Full story - http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-6161536.html)

I wish I could be excited about this news, but there is still not enough accountability being laid out by this scheme. When we agree to a transaction with a company, we do so on per-transaction basis. Of course, the record of the transaction necessarily requires them to store our data, but for how long? And then, for what purpose? Will some of these companies deny that they resell the information to other companies, or use that information to advertise other commercial holdings they may have to consumers? This is not public-domain information, and the fact that personal information that we give over for purpose of transaction can be used as a commercial advertising tool is a disgusting perversion and intrusion into consumer rights.

I support the Representative from Boston in his ideological push, but I can't support the limited effect of his bill. It's almost sad that we need a written law to compel these "commercial" entities to reimburse reissue costs and fraudulent charges - it was their negligence that led to the theft, it seems painfully obvious whose responsibility it becomes to pay out. The bill should push harder, requiring these companies to restrict storage, access and utility of this information. It should also account for personal damages done to individuals - damage of trust, potential damage to credit history, and other mental damages that many people experience when such vital information is stolen. This is a reiteration of something I've said before - in an age where our social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. can provide skilled individuals access to our entire history, there need to be proper penalties and compulsion to protect and limit the dissemination of this information. The U.S. government traces credit records to build cases against people supplying money to terrorist fronts and organizations. It then deprives them of basic civil rights while it detains those individuals. This is dark reality, and as ID continues, it becomes a clear that people will be falsely accused and detained.

There need to be harsher penalties and compelling rules to force "commercial" entities to restrict their use and storage of this sensitive data. I appluad these beginning efforts, although they come a little late in the game, but also reproach the bill's weak language. The information being lost is not the bank's. It belongs to the individuals who place trust in the security of these companies, and in the strength and security of this economy. Such weak legislation acts as a simple slap on the wrist, and the real victims remain shadowed by the dealings of large private financial institutions.

Information Responsibility

In a country and economy that increasingly relies upon and utilizes data storage and light speed data transfer technologies, is it any surprise that privacy rights are changing, as well? Or at least, that the lack of protection of those rights is being exploited? I'm talking about the plethora of news stories and cases that involve the gathering, storage and eventual "loss" of sensitive personal data. This unfortunately predictable series of events has come to characterize the modern lack or privacy and responsibility, at least in the US, that centers around information transfer.

The Veteran's Affairs data loss and the TJX loss are two prevalent and fresh events that characterize the laissez-faire attitude toward data aggregation. The sensitive data which we provide about ourselves to companies or organizations that don't take adequate precautions to protect that data MUST STOP. Whether it is by contactual agreement/obligation or voluntary surrender of this information, there should be an expectation that this data is provided the utmost security. And in the event that this data is captured or stolen, there should be public outrage and reimbursment for those effected.

In a recent courtcase in Great Britain, a government financial agency fined Nationwide Building Society for what it has reported as a stolen laptop computer containing sensitive consumer information (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6360715.stm). What is astounding is that more decisions of this kind are not happening. In the two cases mentioned above, the only action that will most likely take place will be initiated by private individuals who were victimized by the events. This is a ridiculous state of affairs regarding government regulations, and by extention the lack of political will of consumers to stand up against this sort of irresponsible business behavior.

If you gave these businesses a physical object to be kept for safekeeping and they lost it, you would be outraged and likely to seek compensation. Why aren't consumers equally outraged when these businesses REQUIRE the disclosure of sensitive information, gather this information for sale as consumer statistical data, and then lose that sensitive information because of their own incompetence. At the very least, there should be compensation for the mental anguish of having to worry about the potential difficulties one might face in the future: Stolen identities, ruined credit scores, etc. In an age where identity is linked to measured transactions, misidentification of an individual can lead to indeterminate detention. In a time where suspected terrorism provides reasonable grounds for detention, data theft should be a hot-button issue.

Furthermore, the fact that this information is being collected not just as a financial record, but also as saleable information to marketeers is a major invasion of privacy. Given the current state of intellectual property rights, it's surprising that individuals haven't started to copyright their consumption habits. This information does not exist publicly, it is not overtly observable, it is the product of calculated and invasive methods to determine what ads to send your way, what purchasing behaviors to reinforce, and how to most likely convince you to buy something you may or may not need. This is shameful data theft, and its justification is unprecedented.

Does this happen because many people are unaware that it's actually taking place? Probably. If people were aware that their membership cards were being used to record their consumption habits, not just to give them "rewards", and if they knew that such data was being sold amongst companies, they would either want a piece of the sales, or (most likely) they would want it to stop. But adding the most insult to that injury is the carelessness with which that sensitive data is treated. Laptops and portable hard drives are stolen because they are left recklessly lying about. Computer systems aren't incrypted while they transmit whole credit card accounts.

Our identities are property, and this portrait provides a new way to conceive of that identity. If businesses want to tell us that their corporate image is intellectual property, then I say that my consumption habits are my intellectual property, and if you want to make money of that, then you'll have to reimburse me for taking that - if I let you take it at all. I don't see the targeted ads aimed at me as any sort of pro-consumer activity, it's just another way to determine HOW to sell things to me, not an evaluation of what I might need. Unfortunately, I have very few rights as a consumer any more. I don't have the financial power, and I don't have the bargaining power. But hopefully this issue becomes more apparent, as I'm sure it will as more and more instances of data theft and identity theft take place.

Internet influences legal paradigm shift

The following will analyze Ray Kurzweil's explanation of the law of accelerating returns, and how it pertains the paradigm shift in the modern legal process. Kurzweil's piece (http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1) deals with evolutionary biology. However, "With the advent of a technology-creating species, the exponential pace became too fast for evolution through DNA-guided protein synthesis and moved on to human-created technology." So, when the pace of an old paradigm becomes too slow to drive the survival-needs of the biological or social organism, a new system emerges to take its place.

The law of accelerating uses exponential growth to model the progress of biological and technological evolution - not only are we progressing faster and faster, but the rate at which we are progressing faster is progressing even faster. The rate of technological advancement comes into direct conflict with biological advancement then, in my mind. Where our species had to suddenly rely on its own fabrications to overcome its own biological restrictions, there is a major reconciliation that must be addressed. And we see it today, as humanity begins to recognize that technological acheivement does not always mesh well with a sustainable environment.

But that is a conversation for another time. I'm infinitely more interested in how technological evolution meshes with social evolution. The evolution of governments, social order, and with the technological advancement of literacy - laws has had a significant impact on social order. The law tells us our place in a society, and the history of the law tells us how to act properly in a society. Laws help most of us to feel comfortable, they give most of us a pillar of stability to look toward for guidance and justice. Legal systems, in general, have this reputation.

According to Kurzweil, the rate of technological evolution is such that we will experience a what would be a century of technological growth within the next 25 years. Drawing on a Mcluhanist idea, indeed an almost common sense maxim, technology has drastic ramifications on social order. The printing press ushered in a era of massive literacy, and was instrumental in breaking the strangle-hold of the catholic church in European government, for example. If within the next 25 years, the world were to experience technological breakthroughs that equaled a century's woth of achievement, then within the next century the world will see technological achievements on an monumental scale - this could be extrapolated to also mean rapid, drastic social change on an unprecedented rate and scale. So, how does a conservative institution such as law handle this potential situation? How can a highly bureacratic, traditional monument to order handle rapid changes in the movement of ideas, commerce, social stratification, etc.?

As the system currently operates, at least the American legal system (which I'm most familiar with), by the time decisions are considered for review, they will be obsolete socially. This is happening even as we speak. The years it takes to set up cases and arguments, the time it takes to hear them, and the time it takes for appeals and re-decision render these issues moot by the time they meet any substantial legal end. The approaching paradigm shift will see methods of restructuring the lega system to take on cases and issues with greater speed and accuracy, but also will usher in a revolution in human cognitive growth.

Societies and their constituent members must begin to evolve to not rely on central authorities and physical boundaries as safegards - whether they provide real protection or perceived protection. The rapid change of pace due to, say, the internet, will only increase as new methods or transmitting data (i.e. information) become available, and as more and more people gain access to those terminals. The resulting system relies on the countless voices informing its processes and substance, and the system loses its physical boundaries. The evolution of this legal system pushes it to recognize all voices, otherwise it faces extreme inefficiency and invokes rage and disorder.

The legal system cannot define the future landscape of social and global relationships based on its traditional ways of conduct. It can try to redefine old legal concepts to conform with growing virtual spaces, but to do so will result in either failure, or in hindering the capabilities of emerging technologies. The intertia of evolution will break those constraints, however, and the revolution may become bloodied. Instead of looking to the past for predictability, the legal system needs to look forward to the massive cloud looming. Traditional legal institutions may stand in a few decades, but their power will certainly be diminished. Physical boundaries, political boundaries, and even social boundaries are being erased, redefined and reorganized via virtual space.

Redefining law in an interconnected, virtual environment

Whatever the original intention of the internet, the outcome has been interconnectivity. I wouldn't begin to suggest that the internet is the device that will necessarily bring the world together. Too many people remain disconnected, and such an outcome requires an amount of popular will unprecedented in history. Instead, the internet has heralded a new virtual community, created by anonymous characters who can assume whatever identity, postulate whatever philosophies, and post their ideas where they remain accessible almost forever. What the internet has done is created a virtual New Land of opportunity, one that doesn't require a lengthy voyage and massive capital to get to.

The result of all of this is an online entity that embodies the shared beliefs, conflicts, philosophies, stereotypes, ingorance, intelligence and willingness to progress that has always characterized a community of human beings. The instantaneous capability to communicate with an individual around the world - whose ideas may be completely different, or dazzlingly similar means that there is a degree of community that occurs. Without invoking a cliche, the global village is taking shape, although certainly not as simply as we might want to hope.

With new community come new problems, conflicts and pressures that the human race has never encountered before. This new community, however, being global in nature - separated by physical and cultural space, but brought together through virtual capabilities, as it becomes better defined and attempts to place boundaries around its composition, must turn to a codified set of rules to govern its own behavior. This is how law interacts with the internet on a global social scale.

Certainly there are national and international laws that have been created, are being discussed, and that will be created to dictate an individual's ability to access and utilize the internet. But the most important laws involving the great form of global information exchange have yet to manifest themselves. The new unity, or perhaps it should simply be called a new society, will incorporate the beliefs of phsyically separated people as they attempt to navigate a common space which is made to seem physical and scarce by time and technology restraints. The laws of this new landscape must address this issue.

Traditional notions of legal procedure will become obsolete. What will jurisdiction mean? What court structure will settle disputes between individuals across the world? The issues don't simply involve physical distance, and creating a system that is not economically prohibitive is important in creating a legal system.
Whose notions of justice and morality will be applicable? By the time this new society begins to turn to legal system to codify conduct, will there be new, globally recognized notions of justice? The meeting of so many philosophies will certainly alter notions of power based on race, class and geographic realities.

Most importantly,who will be excluded? Current costs prohibit many from accessing the internet. Those voices will be exlcuded as a new global law, created from the bottom up instead of handed down through traditional institutions, is given a history. These years, and the coming decades will establish the precedent of conduct when future courts look to commonly practiced behaviors over this medium. Will it be an anglo-dominated legal system? Will it be a system that finally recognize complicity and that injustice is a fact of traditional legal systems? Will the new legal system use traditional methods of administration, or will online dispute resolution come to supplant old legal structures to cope with the virtual nature of the internet?