ASlyJD: Re: Combinations.
Mohammed is the most popular given name in the world. Wu is most common family name in the world.
Yet why doesn’t anyone know a Mohammed Wu?

Since you asked:

http://www.icgt.org/SpecialArticles/Countries.htm:
“A survey on common names revealed that the most common name in the world was Mohammed Wu, because of the number of Muslims in Oriental countries.”

And this:
http://www.spoke.com/info/pAOCYwA/MohammedWu

I figure any employer foolish enough to decide not to hire you (for a non-political job) because of your political beliefs deserves his or her own resulting loss of productivity and standing in the community.

And do you deserve the inability to eat and pay rent?

There’s a reason people get jobs, you know. When the employee suffers by being unemployed, it’s scant comfort that the employer is suffering by hiring a substandard employee–the guy who’s constantly not hired because he’s discriminated against suffers a heck of a lot more.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by VolokhConspirac: Protecting Your Privacy in the Age of Google: Many wonder how much privacy you can have when a simple Google qu.. http://bit.ly/7qBc8J...

kdacksonYes, public records for property transfers, but why do they need to publish what you paid?Most of the time, these are records that NEWSPAPERS print and are picked up on the web.Same with birth, death, wedding, bankruptcy.Newspapers are the worst offenders of invading privacy, because governments typically do not put this in electronic format for the world to see.

Meh. Do what I did – if you don’t want people connecting your house with your name, create another legal entity to buy the house, give the money to that entity, buy the house, and then live in the house. When people search the records for the house, they don’t see your name, they see the name of the blind trust. When people search for your name, they find nothing.

Works a treat.

Mohammed is the most popular given name in the world. Wu is most common family name in the world.

Yet why doesn’t anyone know a Mohammed Wu?

Hey, I just changed my name to Orin Kerr. Now I can really let my sarcasm freak flag fly.

When I was young and foolish, I was online – I’ve been online since I was 6 years old (thanks, Daddy,) and every boneheaded, strange, silly thing I have ever done or said is accessible easily, because I’m the only person on Earth with my exact name. Googling me turns up bad poetry I wrote when I was 14 (pre-Google!), though I’m proud to say that it’s no longer on the first page of the results. It turns up online petitions I can’t remember why I signed in the first place, me raging about how annoying my little sisters were, etc. Every place I’ve lived since I was 11 shows up online, and there are over 20 addresses thanks to college and divorced parents and so forth.

Basically, the entire world has as much access to information about me as, in Ye Olden Times, anyone had about the vast majority of people they interacted with. Maybe the expectation that your employer, potential lovers, etc., don’t know anything about you is the weird part. Policing used to depend heavily on local enforcement simply knowing everyone, and distrusting heavily anyone they didn’t know, right?

Maybe we should consider the lack of this sort of privacy a solution to the trust/identity problems introduced by a modern, impersonal society. The government-power-abuse angle is really about the government having too much power, not so much about the use of publicly-available information. The problem with the USSR was that it was run by the Soviets – it was a problem when everything was on paper and you could make someone not exist, officially, by scratching him out of a photo, and your actual neighbor had to actually turn you in by actually reporting you on purpose specifically to someone in authority.

No internet is required for despotism to be terrifying and awful; the internet and corresponding lack of privacy is like having a tool in that bad guys can use it badly and good guys can use it well.

(having said all that, note how I don’t go around posting under my full name anymore…)

There is no ‘right to privacy’ in the Constitution.

If someone parks on the street, or rents the neighboring property, with a parabolic microphone aimed at my window, and I want to keep my conversations private, then I should put up a wall or install plywood curtains.

If there’s one place in the world very attuned to the idea that lots of people could have the same name and/or address, it’s China. There’s like a thousand people named “Wang Tao” in the Shanghai phone book alone. And household registration system notwithstanding, people move all over. So travel with confidence.

I do not have a particularly unusual first or last name, but I am to date the only one on the internet with the combination. My life since just after college pops up when you Google me. I often wish I had a slightly more common name, just because I feel so exposed. There’s nothing bad out there, it’s just more than most people need to know. It just seems like at this point it would be hard to undo.

I’m lucky. I share the same name as a US Congressman.

Or maybe that’s -unlucky-.

But your examples notwithstanding, aren’t things more efficient if people can discriminate against you based on true facts?

Not necessarily, because people aren’t rational. Someone who denies me a job because he thinks I’m a Republican and he doesn’t trust them is not making things more efficient. In fact, he’s making things less efficient, since his beliefs about Republicans are not based on reality. Spreading more information causes that person’s irrational beliefs to create negative externalities on Republicans and positive ones on everyone else.

You could argue that those externalities balance out, but even so, I don’t consider efficiency to be desirable. Every job lost to a Republican goes to someone else, so on the average, there’s no harm from the discrimination. However, I’d consider a society where joblessness is evenly distributed to be less bad than a society where Republicans (or suspected Republicans) are preferentially jobless, even though both societies are equally “efficient”.

PatHMV: Now for your government-obtained data [...]

Do you mean (1) data pertaining to you that you have knowingly provided to the government, or (2) data pertaining to you that the government has obtained by subpoenaing credit agencies, phone companies, or internet service providers like Google or Facebook, without your knowledge?

I am OK with private actors making judgements about me from the traces I have left online. I view it as a cost of making my voice heard on the internet – that’s the personal privacy policy I have set for myself. If someone makes erroneous assumptions about me because another guy named Curt Fischer is the principal of an elementary school or ran a marathon faster than I can, so be it.

But I’d prefer that the government not be able to use, collect, or rely on any of that data. The government has a legal monopoly on the ability to imprison me, after all. So I sometimes worry about providing data to Internet companies like Google or Facebook. Not because I think that Google or Facebook will expose my data or use it to nefarious ends, but because I think the government could probably go to Google or Facebook and collect data about me without my knowledge. What if an investigation revealed that a certain pedophile was a school principal and fast marathon runner (not me) named Curt Fischer? Could I be arrested and detained for some time until someone figured out that I wasn’t the right Curt Fischer? What if I wanted to travel to China on a tourist trip, but the guy who lived in my apartment before me was a known Chinese dissident? Could I be arrested when I arrived in China?

Maybe I am paranoid…and I am certainly NAL, so maybe I don’t understand the legal safeguards already in place to stop the government from going to third parties to get data about me. But I do worry. And for that reason I wish there were more middle ground.

Yes, it’s public information. But that does not mean theat it has to be easy for anyone to find.

I have dealt with privacy issues when I lived in China. I set up a bank account for wire transfers. I made a relatively small transfer to test the system. When I arrived to start my assignment on the ride from the airport, my interpreter informed me that I should not worry because the wire transfer went through. She knew the exact amount.

Never did another wire transfer while living in China.

Ken Arromdee: Because large parts of the world can discriminate against me based on those true facts.

But your examples notwithstanding, aren’t things more efficient if people can discriminate against you based on true facts?

On a related note, IIRC there is one other person in the US that has the name Monica Lewinski. Poor lady.

BTW, “ASlyJD” comes from the pronunciation of my last name, not from any attempt to claim I am subtle or sneaky.

Actually, I think it is a very clever nom de blog.

I use a pseudonym here largely because my views are, well, mine and not my employer’s. A Google search won’t find a single VC comment under my name though I have provided enough information on this site that anyone who really cared could find out who I am.

As for Google and privacy, my name is rather unique and there are still 1.2 million Google hits when I don’t put quotation marks around it (though only 6,900 when I do).

I do share the privacy concerns when there are deranged people out there who may wish others harm. I wish I knew what the answer was, though.

Not true. Google neither knows nor cares what your legal name is. If you find yourself in AslyJD’s position but lack a middle name, simply insert one in your pen name.

“Problem” solved. :P

If your name is Jernicky Washington, for example, just change your first name to “George.”

Except there aren’t that many [“george washington”+”name of hometown”] listings.

kdackson: Yes, public records for property transfers, but why do they need to publish what you paid?

Because selling price of your property is partially what the value of all your neighbors’ property is based on for property taxes.

Pintler: I believe I have heard of police officers obscuring the ownership of their home to avoid their ‘clients’ from dropping by for a visit. I don’t recall the details

Texas law has a legal process for that purpose. Cops, district attorneys, etc. can use a business address on drivers licenses, etc. There’s also a procedure to establish a state PMB to shield the location of someone being stalked.

But don’t worry…. just remember to recycle President’s Bush’s line: “When I was young and foolish, well, I was young and foolish.” There’s always the Churchill quote, too.