Five Ways We re Killing Our Own Privacy

Michael theprez98 Schearer ShmooCon FireTalks Washington, DC

Michael theprez98 Schearer

Founder and Owner, Leverage Consulting & Associates 8+ years in the U.S. Navy as an EA-6B Prowler Electronic Countermeasures Officer
Veteran of aerial combat missions over Afghanistan and Iraq Spent 9 months on the ground in Iraq as a counter-IED specialist

Founding member of Church of WiFi and Unallocated Space, and father of four

Why you should be skeptical

I am not a lawyer My presentation is (both) unintentionally and intentionally biased by my own beliefs This isn t a political presentation, but it is inevitably influenced by political issues Bottom line: Don t take my word for it; read the source material and make up your own mind!

United States v. Jones

9-0! Majority opinion: The Government s attachment of the GPS device and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle s movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment Sotomayor concurrence: it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. Most important Fourth Amendment decision in decades

Five Ways
Ignorance
don t know, don t care, don t care to know don t know, uneducated, carelessness

We are Consumers
rumors, gossip, we want to know!

We are Social Animals

desire to share, social media

Convenience
better, faster, cheaper

Acquiescence
permission by silence or passiveness

Ignorance FIVE WAYS WE RE KILLING OUR OWN PRIVACY

Innocent Ignorance

Innocent Ignorance

We are Consumers FIVE WAYS WE RE KILLING OUR OWN PRIVACY

We are Consumers

We are Social Animals FIVE WAYS WE RE KILLING OUR OWN PRIVACY

We are Social Animals

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. --Aristotle, Politics

Convenience FIVE WAYS WE RE KILLING OUR OWN PRIVACY

Convenience

Third-Party Doctrine
This Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed. UNITED STATES v. MILLER, 425 U.S. 435 (1976)

Intercounty Connector (MD-200)

Electronic tolling (highways speeds) EZ-Pass only or Video tolling at 150%

Is it really worth it?

Acquiescence FIVE WAYS WE RE KILLING OUR OWN PRIVACY

Reasonable Expectation of Privacy FIVE WAYS WE RE KILLING OUR OWN PRIVACY

Reasonable expectation of privacy

1. Actual expectation of privacy 2. Your expectation is reasonable to society as a whole

Reasonable expectation of privacy

Reasonable expectation of privacy

Reasonable expectation of privacy

<script type="text/javascript"> var a = "actual expectation of privacy"; var b = "expectation of privacy is reasonable"; if ((a == 1) && (b == 1)) { document.write("Reasonable expectation of privacy"); } else { document.write("Unreasonable expectation of privacy"); } </script>

Reasonable expectation of privacy You know, I don t know what society expects, and I think it s changing. Technology is changing people s expectations of privacy.
--Justice Samuel Alito, United States v. Antoine Jones oral arguments

Key takeaways
If you have an actual expectation of privacy AND society finds that expectation to be reasonable, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy If either variable is false, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy Both values are in fact variables, meaning we (you and I) can change them in meaningful ways We are actively responsible for the life and death of our own privacy

Five Ways We re Killing Our Own Privacy

Michael theprez98 Schearer ShmooCon FireTalks Washington, DC