Obvious Really

I'm not interested in concealing my identity, exactly, but I don't put my real name on these because any security writing that uses real-life examples will sometimes be about Fail, even if it's Fail rectified, and who wants to go public about their own employer's Fail?

Even so, I've always been circumspect about what I say because I've felt that the intersection of the things I talk about -- Kent, Finance, Computer Security, Old man -- is going to be a pretty sparse set. Anyone who cares could find out who I am.

So it's interesting to see Schneier blogging about some research from PARC. Apparently the end-points of a regular commute are sufficient to identify a huge proportion of people. Pretty much all that required is that the granularity is fine enough for people to be working in a different zip, county or whatever from the one they live in.

I'll be more careful in future. I have a plan.

We are Them

Interesting session with Mrs U in which she dammed her mother's eccentricities. I think she was completely unconscious that the traits she found most obnoxious were those shared most identically between mother and daughter.

We believe that introspection is the most reliable source of knowledge -- it certainly feels that way. In fact, we are strangers to ourselves.

For an accurate portrait we need the opinions of those who know us, expressed in their private conversation and writing. But an accurate portrait is almost unbearable. The shocked diary snooper or eavesdropper -- the relationship changed needlessly but forever -- is one of those cliches that's trite because it's so real and so common.

I wonder whether this is the real reason why words like "nosing" and "prying" carry such an ugly load: not defence of privacy, but psychic self-protection. We can't bear to know.