On September 25 the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee held a hearing to learn about current practices by broadband providers to protect a person’s “privacy.”
Gigi Sohn, president and cofounder of Public Knowledge, testified regarding, in her opinion, what level of privacy should be provided and what individuals should expect. During the course of her testimony she was critical of deep-packet inspection (a form of filtering that examines the header and data packet, often to help stop viruses, spam or other intrusions). Ms. Sohn described this as "the Internet equivalent of the post office reading your mail," and went on to express outrage that this filtering could be deployed.
Putting aside that this information in a broadband network is used between machines for the efficient flow of data and rarely seen in a readable form, we wondered, given that mail is a readable form and that humans walk the mail door to door--what does the postman know?
Where we work
Our real names
Our real address
What we really look like
If we have kids
Our children’s names
If we are married
Our spouse’s name
Where we go to church—IF we go to church
Where our kids go to school
The cars that are in our driveway
The license plate numbers of those cars
That we have credit cards
Which credit cards we have
Where we went for any post secondary education
Where we have our investments
Some idea of how much wealth we have (by knowing the house we live in)
The likely places we shop (given the catalogues we receive)
As e-commerce continues to grow, a better idea of our purchases
The organizations to which we belong
The real names and locations of our relatives and friends
ALL information sent on a postcard
Who we see for health and dental care
If we have a professional certification
Some idea of how often we go to the doctor
What gym we belong to
Who provides our health, auto, life and home insurance coverage
And what periodicals we read
WHOA! Ms. Sohn may be right in being worried about all the information that is out there through simple observation.
The postman, and hence the government, knows all of this and can share it with family friends without ever having to open a thing….