[LINK] unintended consequences of privacy

[Deus Ex Machina]

why have I got the shits with privacy? and I was the person who made the
IIA have a privacy policy. privacy has unitended consequences which I
certainly didnt forsee.

large corporates are harder to deal with. you have to play 20 questions
before theyll talk to you. they wont talk to anyone else unless you
physically authorise the other party. pain in the ass but you can live
with it.

debt collectors have become vastly less effective. again a nuissance
but you can live with it by tightening your credit process.

but the real crunch is government deps.

a certain gov dept who shall remain nameless.  has been harrassing me
for over 12 months about clid on dialups, specifically that we dont
permit access without clid.  they have gone out of there way to find some
justification to stop this under the guise of being a privacy issue. we give exceptions so
long as we sight id, then we were told the exception process was "too onerous".
the arguments used are now becoming so far fetched as to be ludicrous.

we dont provide access unless a customer enables clid. its a security
feature. it prevents accounts from being stolen. since we had this
feature the only people stupid enough to steal one of our customers
accounts where caught.

to cut a very long story short the outcome this gov dept wants is basically
that our accounts should now be easily stealable. how thats a good result is
beyond me.

does this gov dept really want to keep squandering taxpayers money to protect criminals?

and ultimately, ignoring the blatent empire building, thats what its really about
is protecting criminals.  that should never have been an outcome of
privacy law. and here is Schnier bleating on about how privacy is weakned
online when its often privacy which is facilitating crime online.

now with privacy in place you cant get almost any information about an online event from
anyone and you almost invariably cant get the authorities to take an interest in it unless your
name is westpac or optus or big money is involved.

Vic