Children & Privacy

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

At 8:26 AM -0800 11/11/96, Hal Finney wrote:
>
>>I have two kids entering their teens, and I'm sure other list members are
>>parents as well.  What can we do for our children to help them enter their
>>adult lives with better chances to retain privacy?  

Perfect privacy is very difficult to achieve but with practice, one can
learn (and teach one's children) much improved privacy.  The following
suggestions are not the most radical ones.  They represent things that you
can do at little cost or risk. 

Things you can do to teach your children to protect their privacy.

1)	Practice privacy yourself.  Children learn by example.
2)	Don't apply for an SS# for your child.
3)     Do apply for a passport for your child (without an SS# of course).
Use it as the foundation for an ID pack for your child because passport
apps don't contain much useful information on a person and can even be
obtained without a birth certificate when the child is an infant.
4)	Make up some facially valid SS numbers for future use using a freeware
program like ssn.exe.
5)	Teach your child to give your accommodation address and voice mail
number as his address and phone number whenever asked (just like you do --
you do do that, don't you).
6)	In descending order of importance: keep him out of government schools,
keep him out of private schools in your country of residence, home school
him.  (Government schools give the government a direct opening into
information about your family.  Handing a child over to the government
effectively ends any parental rights you might have while he is in school.
Additionally, he may never learn to read and write.)
7)	Introduce privacy concerns into your ideolect: Whenever you are driving
around and see a police car say "There's the Geheime Staatspolizei" and
explain who the "Home State Police" were.  
8)	Play privacy games like:  Let's think of things we can say to people who
ask us why we're not in school."  "Let's think up some neat names to give
to people when we don't want them to give them our real name."  "Let's
practice giving random answers to the question 'What's your name, address,
and phone number.'"
9)	When driver's license time comes teach them how to get a license in
another state or country than their state of residence (and why this is
important).
10)	Get them a secured credit card in their true name to add to their ID
pack.  If you like, you can get them one in a nom de guerre as well.
Secured credit cards are the best ID money can buy. (Because people think
they're ID but they're not).

DCF