I know the feeling.
And while we all agree about the fact the child porn should be stopped and people should go to jail for it, apparently "what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone" only until Apple says so.
After a bit of investigating I found out that I had been placed on the Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System because different spelling of my name had been used in previous applications. This was seen as an attempt to get past credit checking, in reality the people entering my name in to their systems mis-spelled/mis-typed my name. As a result of someones carelessness I was flagged as being risky.
In the end, they thanked me for cooperating (they were actually quite friendly and polite in general, not like going I to the US, for example) and explained that they were looking for someone with the same name as me.
He was denied an operation at the bank once, but was quickly able to clarify the issue and unblock it (probably he got lucky).
But he had to have himself removed from the white pages and the ring label (ring label? whatever, il citofono :D) because of violent threats.
This is a major part of the problem with algorithms: what if the issue is "computer says no" and that's the most detailed explanation you can get?
Do you suppose any government is going to pass laws which prohibits companies from scanning photos for CSAM either on-device or in the cloud? When half the time it's being done at the insistence of those self same governments?
I was lucky to have not one but two uncommon surnames. (grandmother remarried, children got an extra surname). There are only a dozen people with that combination of surnames.
How can you be sure of that?
For the benefit of non-Polish-speakers:
- Nazwiska - surnames
- żeńskie - female
- męskie - male
French immigrant mother so French first name and middle name, and then an uncommon British (Welsh I think, dad's parents didn't learn English until they got to secondary school) second name.
Casual identifiers have to be stored as plaintext. To facilitate record matching (linking) across data stores.
The only way to enable full field level encryption for data at rest is to issue everyone GUIDs.
If we're not willing to do that, for whatever reason, the status quo (a boring dystopia) will persist.
cite: Translucent Databases