Slashdot | Data Miners Moving to Offshore Data Havens

Slashdot | Data Miners Moving to Offshore Data Havens

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Privacy is so dead -- except for the ultra-rich. The interesting question is how the privacy market will evolve in an essentially libertarian market.

One may expect all kinds of interesting trends. I think all these and more have been covered in science fiction stories of the past 20 years or so.

1. Noise generators: software and techniques that create false data, creating privacy by masking real data in a cloud of flase data. The same techniques used to filter spam may be used to identify the "true data".

2. Privacy scams: a form of noise generation. Since this is an unregulated industry a variety of data vendors will undercut one another on price -- while faking their own data.

3. High quality high cost vendors. Vendors who guarantee truth and accuracy and command a premium price. They might even allow victims to correct their (once) personal data.

4. An entire industry devoted to helping people create fake profiles, obscure their profiles, counter false and/or negative data ...

The current practices of Homeland Security into the low (fraudelent, lowball) range of the privacy vendor spectrum.

PS. The US government has dodged governmental rules for decades, including privacy rules, by moving data projects out of government and into the private sector. This offshore move, mediated by longtime government contractors, is just the next logical step.