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January 19, 2006
Social-engineering a database
Social-engineering a database: WIRED has an article here on how Bad People access the telephone records of Good People via pretense. Meanwhile, memeorandum shows lots of bloggers reacting against a governmental request for search engine records. For me, there's a mismatch -- the core issue seems to be that any sufficiently exhaustive private database will become an attractive target, vulnerable to social-engineering techniques, or employee-blackmail, or even just outright invasion through hackery. The rules surrounding use of such a database will deter Good People, but not Bad People, and the latter are the ones who should really inspire the most concern. (I know lots of people are happy with centralized social services on the web, but I'm not entirely at ease with putting so much personal data into one silo somewhere.)
Posted by John Dowdell at January 19, 2006 03:52 PM
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Comments
..any sufficiently exhaustive private database will become an attractive target
That sounds like something Arthur C. Clarke would say. I like it.
Posted by: since1968 at January 20, 2006 02:32 PM