Dial-a-Word

by Diana K

Hi,

It has been awhile since I spoke with you; I have not ghosted you on social media and sorry that I have asked you to contact me the old fashioned way, leaving a message on my dumb answering machine phone number that I actually bought last year even though it operates on VoIP.  My phone messages cannot get accessed and my home network is closed to snooping by phone monitoring.

It may seem odd to leave a message for us to meet at our favorite fast food restaurant at a certain time and take meeting notes with paper and pen only, no putting them on our phones or even writing memos with our old Smith Corona and Montgomery Ward typewriters on carbon paper.

It seems like we're operating as an intelligence or security organization when we are really concerned about sharing how we feel among us and our family members and yet don't want a third-party to misconstrue that our feelings are the effect of not thinking properly.

We are not AIs, we are not machines, we are not a drugged work force like in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World yet.  But I am concerned about what has happened with Internet policy in the changing definition of privacy from when we started in the late 1980s to now, 2029.

The above is a sample message to a friend in the future where the teaching of encryption and peer-to-peer privacy is banned, along with even full computer science and engineering - if society continues to lose the ability to really talk to friends about how they feel without fear of some third-party official and how that third-party official will use any current law to achieve an end.

In the 1980s, many of us had our first Internet account.  To send email, we needed to look at a USENET map of nodes to add the routing so that our email could be received by a friend at another university.  Today, a central domain server adds the routing information to your email; you can see this when you look at the email header.  But the result of a central domain server is that your email can get blocked or logged even if you are just sending a "Happy Birthday" to your girlfriend.

Also, in the late-1980s and 1990s, many who were transgendered and living in communities without protection liked the privacy and protection of the "alt.*" newsgroups and administrators.  By the 1980s, many states had protections, but in the Midwest you were only protected if you were gay or lesbian; you were not protected if you were trans, bi, or queer.  You were subjected to DSM-1, which meant being committed to a mental hospital until DSM-4 (1999) and DSM-5 (2010) were put into practice.

So with the alt.* groups, many transgender persons could talk about what they were feeling in their daily lives and many administrators made sure their posts did not go into server farms for later use by third parties.  The practice meant that messages were only alive for a short period of time (about 72 hours).

From the late-1980s to the mid-1990s, before the development of second-generation browsers with origins in Lynx or Mosaic, it was hard for robots to parse pages and even newsgroups to get messages.  So privacy was protected by the limitations of technology.  For many of us who were transitioning online, this helped to save many lives from suicide because there was a support group.

One could say that on the east coast and in San Francisco, there were doctors who were compassionate to AIDS/GRIDS patients.  But when I worked as a medical researcher in the Midwest at a major research park, some of the doctors I had to work with felt that those who died of AIDS/GRIDS or experienced homelessness or lack of proper jobs due to being LGBTQ were part of 'God's" response.  I put "God" in quotes to emphasize their viewpoint reflecting the false teaching of their churches and not of a belief that there is better reality than what we are living.

During the period of the late-1980s to 1998, even with second- and third-generation browser privacy, communities like GeoCities, USENET, and others existed where all could share and talk as well as use Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to chat with others overseas.  The environment of privacy and practice was good.

In 1999, the Internet changed.  First, with the establishment of a central domain server, you could no longer add your own routing nodes.  Everything had to be routed through this central domain name server.  A name server is like a streaming service when you watch movies or listen to music, except that the server's function is to receive an email, add the routine information, and log all receipts and transmissions.

To most people, this seemed better than adding your own routing information to the email.  But a big exception is that when you added your own routing information, your email was not logged as being received or sent, so you had end-to-end privacy.

With a central domain name server (or how the Internet has been done since 1999), you do not have end-to-end privacy unless you can use an email client that has good encryption.  However, email clients and messaging apps, along with their top people, are facing third-party scrutiny and even trial for vowing to keep their users' information private.

In the late-1990s (before 1999), one email routing site called anon.penet.fi faced the same fight to keep their users' emails private.  For many in the LGBTQ community, those facing political prosecution, or anyone afraid of how their local authorities would act, anon.penet.fi provided a free exchange that helped build the Internet into a positive dream - not a commercial dream.

What is my response due to the diminishment of privacy and practice?  I keep certain areas of my home in 1990s décor and technology - no Alexa, no Siri, and I have a VoIP answering machine on my phone for messages.  Also, I have gone back to making my business cards with a phone number and no Internet email address or website.  If someone calls and does not leave a message, I will not call them back.  Again, back to mid-1990s business practices because my privacy has been violated too much in the past.

The best way I can describe the current philosophy and practice of privacy is like someone who is in a homeless shelter; the shelter staff have signs and posters showing (((DEI, equality, social justice, and LGBTQ rights))).  Yet, when the shelter staff talk amongst themselves, it is not small talk - it is what gossip that they've heard about their clients which tells them which client is most amenable to conversion to recant their beliefs as a person - America's version of The Hanoi Hilton.  I would not wish this treatment on my worst enemy.

So I am glad when professors tell their students that an employer does not have a right to your Facebook login and page, even your LinkedIn page, or any page.  But it's a problem if you do not have an attorney to fight for your right to work at your job and you get sent to a lower job for not playing ball.

The reason I've brought up the above examples is that I am concerned about privacy on the Internet from what I've seen in the news regarding messenger services such as Telegram, 𝕏, and Facebook.

With too much chatter directed towards the Internet and the commercial Internet, I think it is time to rethink the old BBS method using new technology that is owned by the individuals and with a hands-off policy for third-parties.