Re: Secrecy: My life as a nym. (Was: nym blown?)

Hal Finney wrote:

: Are there other measures which parents could take while their children are
: young to get them off to a good start, privacy-wise?

I doubt it's ever too late to start. Sure, it seems as if old, crufty
bits sit on the 'Net just waiting to embarass us ("oh, yeah, maybe I
*did* post to alt.naughty.stuff 'way back then...") but there *is*
such a thing as bit rot and perhaps it really is our friend after all.

The first question, always, when evaluating security measures is to
ask "What are you trying to protect?"

This gets really weird when you don't know what the threats really
are, which is true of this situation. I don't really see "privacy"
itself as something you can pursue as an absolute objective. I think
Black Unicorn's tale illustrates this well -- he doesn't try for
non-existence, instead he describes a series of well reasoned and
consistent steps. Basically, though, it has to be a personal choice.
So it's hard to judge perfectly for another, even your own kids.

IMHO you have to find a reasonable balance for your kids. The problem
is that you don't want your kids to disappear -- there are times they
will WANT their records found. The problem is to make verification
easy when they're directly involved and difficult otherwise.

The basic and obvious rule to most of us is to control the SSN and
don't give out a correct one except when absolutely necessary.  One of
the banks in Minneapolis refuses to pay interest at all if you don't
have your SSN on file.

I toyed with the idea of manipulating birthdates, but it wasn't clear
what the benefit was. Also, it required my wife's help, and I'll defer
to Tim May's recent discussion of his'n'her anarchy if you wonder why
this might be an impediment. If the kids know their "real" birthdate
they'll *always* report it to their teachers. And if it's consistently
incorrect in school records, then what does it mean for it to be
different?

When faced with peculiar situations I try to choose a disclosure that
meets whatever the immediate requirements are but doesn't make it easy
to automatically match up records. Often the best you can do is reduce
certainty and increase the likelihood of multiple matches with other
records. It doesn't hurt if you last name is Smith here in the U.S.A.

Rick.
smith@sctc.com

At 3:41 PM -0600 11/12/96, Rick Smith wrote:

>When faced with peculiar situations I try to choose a disclosure that
>meets whatever the immediate requirements are but doesn't make it easy
>to automatically match up records. Often the best you can do is reduce
>certainty and increase the likelihood of multiple matches with other
>records. It doesn't hurt if you last name is Smith here in the U.S.A.

Hardly very effective, Mr. Rick Smith. You are not nearly so anonymous as
you seem to think. Your "Smith" disguise falls apart in a few cycles of a
Pentium.

(And bit rot is rarely effective...trust me. With XORs and comparisons,
even highly damaged records will be trivially reconstructable, with a
ruthless efficiency that will give capabilities 10 years from now that will
stun nearly everyone on this list. Deja News and Alta Vista on 10 years of
steroids, located offshore to enable regulatory arbitrage.)

To illustrate, let me call up my BlackNet Dossier Service entry on you.
www.black.net... I'll just pick _part_ of your entry, from exactly 30 years
ago:

[,,,,much stuff about Mr. Smith elided....]

....1966-67, student, Langley H.S., Langley, VA...interest in "Cretaceous
extinction" [Agency note: this interest in "extinction"...is it abnormal,
or just precocious?]...known to associate during this year with
troublemakers, incl. J. Landua, W. Winkowski, and [deleted for security
reasons by ONI]...

...

So, Mr. Smith...is the dossier entry basically correct? Were you in fact
living near Langley? Why? Is it true that your high school was on the other
side of the fence from the CIA?

Nationally enquiring minds want to know.

--Tim May

"The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM
that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology."
[NYT, 1996-10-02]
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Tue, 12 Nov 1996, Rick Smith wrote:

> Hal Finney wrote:
> 
> : Are there other measures which parents could take while their children are
> : young to get them off to a good start, privacy-wise?
> 

[...]

> The basic and obvious rule to most of us is to control the SSN and
> don't give out a correct one except when absolutely necessary.  One of
> the banks in Minneapolis refuses to pay interest at all if you don't
> have your SSN on file.

All banks require this.
Exercise for the reader:  How does the bank verify SSNs?

> Rick.
> smith@sctc.com

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