Modernity means digitization

In the news now.  In the context of bin Laden's death, it is said that the house had a satellite dish but didn't have a landline telephone, and that someone thought that was suspicious.  He apparently used a "sneakernet" and not the internet.  These are all the the kinds of facts that confirm that "modern" means "using digital means."

State Farm insurance announced an "app" for smartphones here that reminds us that nothing is private.  The app will grade your driving performance.  At this point apparently State Farm is not harvesting the information, but you can imagine that someone will use an app like this to price auto insurance.

It has long been my view that the state-issued license plates will include a chip --- something like EZ Pass --- that will record where you have been, how fast you were going, how close you came to other cars, and the like.  Then the state will charge you for your use of the highway.  State Farm has just started the ball rolling with collecting data.  There is really nothing private about this data.  There is no particular basis on which to argue that this is unreasonable search.  Driving on a public highway in full view of all the other drivers is not a private act.  Driving on a public highway incurs costs that the public must pay.  This is a developing area.

I talked about the State Farm app in the web-based program I led this week about confidentiality agreements.  If a company promotes an app like this, what are the trade secrets that go with it?  The names of the individuals who download the program?  The information collected?  Who has a right to look at the information collected?  Does the user have a right to underlying data or only to the score?  Does the state insurance commissioner have a right to look at the data?  How do we create a contract-based web of privacy surrounding this information?  How do we describe all this data?  

What can the police search when they arrest you?
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/atoms-vs-bits-your-phone-in-the-eyes-of-the-law/237853/

Your phone knows where you are:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/04/20/iphone.tracking/

Police intercepts:
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/382991/us_police_increasingly_peeping_e-mail_instant_messages/

Michigan Police
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20055431-1.html

Tom Tom speed trap article:
http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2011/05/police-use-tomtom-gps-data-shared-by-users-to-set-targeted-speed-traps.html

It's a bad idea to set this all up as based on law enforcement.  These arrangements should come as a result of our collective living together, not as a result that some among us turn out to be criminals.  We in the US these days tend to emphasize the individual over the collective.  Conservatives base their arguments on the general outlook that "it's every man for himself."  If we are really going to succeed, we need leaders to emphasize that "a rising tide lifts all boats."  If conservatives are going to argue for the primacy of the individual, we need tham to apply that rule over a much broader swath of public policy issues than they do.  Not all of the value of being an American derives from the Pentagon, the Second Amendment and law enforcement.  If modernity comes out of digitization, then we need to apply modernity to a lot of areas besides law enforcement.