Every Dark Cloud And All That Dept.

There has been one good (and surprising) outgrowth of the Patriot Act: a growing sensitivity to the issue of privacy. (Identity theft also pushed this along, yes, but still, give the devil its due part of the credit.) As an example, this editorial from the February 18 New York Times describes how American Online

announced plans to provide its customers with software that detects and disables "spyware" - covert programs that can secretly record a user's movements through the Internet for use by marketers and identity thieves. The screening programs, which are already available from at least one other Internet provider, Earthlink, are an important tool in the campaign to protect users from intrusive marketers and information thieves. Finishing the job will require action from Congress, which is just waking up to the spyware problem.

Congress recently passed a law aimed at stemming the rising tide of electronic junk mail. But that law will do nothing about the covert programs - variously known as adware, spyware and snoopware - that secretly invade our computers.... The most sinister are illegally installed "keystroke recorders," which allow remote users to capture secure passwords, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data, making victims especially vulnerable to fraud and information theft. ...

A better solution, as proposed recently by the Center for Democracy and Technology, is to develop privacy standards that protect computer users from all programs that covertly collect information that rightfully belongs to the user. A good start would be to require all such programs to announce themselves clearly and define their functions, allowing the users to reject software that strikes them as intrusive.

Computer geeks will know that adware and spyware are not precisely the same thing, with the latter being more intrusive: Adware usually enables a host to send you ads, while spyware tracks info about you and sends it back to the host. Also, adware is sometimes upfront; some shareware will tell you that installing it will allow the sending of ads to you. (The more insidious kind will maintain that function on your computer even if you uninstall the program.) Spyware never is.

No matter. The very fact that attention is being directed toward these sorts of programs is encouraging. Now if we could only get legislation that would ban the use of social security numbers for any purpose unrelated to social security programs and tax administration, we'll have made a real stride forward.