Priva (shhhhhh) cy 101

Every day I get an email from another company advising me of their privacy policy, that as of a soon-coming date, they had to let me know that to be compliant with some governmental regulations, I had to agree to their revised, updated, new terms of service. I don't even have to click a box. I don't have to sign anything. I just have to agree by using their application or their store's credit card or something by the next date.

I'm weary just re-reading that first paragraph.
I'm weary of receiving these legal mumbo-jumbo notifications.

They came from eBay, from the Sydney Morning Herald, from Twitter, and the grocery store Coles here in Australia.

I appreciate the law and the legal requirements and compliance. Even in Jews for Jesus we have established j4j.co/privacy to assure people from the European Union that we are compliant with GDPR and our exposure to lawsuits is nil. Phew.

What about Joseph James De'Angelo of California? An illegal but effective use of information obtained from ancestry.com specifically the DNA data brought this 30-year-old cold case to boiling point.

According to this website, the suspect, "72-year-old Mr DeAngelo, was arrested earlier this week in connection with the famously unsolved serial rape and murder case, which included as many as 50 confirmed rapes and 12 murders over a 10-county area in California between 1974 and 1986. DeAngelo worked as a police officer for a six-year period during the most active part of the investigation."

How legal is it for police to use or companies to sell information obtained from non-compliant privacy abusers?

Vox.com says, "But this manner of DNA collection, and its use in criminal cases, is also controversial. Matching DNA markers against large databases can often lead to misleading results because many specific markers can be shared by a large swath of the population. Also at issue are concerns of privacy, informed consent — especially given how confusing the terms of use are on many DNA collection websites — and the long-term ramifications of having a DNA profile on file with law enforcement, even if you submit voluntarily to being swabbed.

(Currently, a 2008 law known as the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA, prevents a scenario in which insurance companies or other private businesses could deny service or otherwise discriminate against you on the basis of your DNA profile.)"

I guess that's why the daily barrage of company emails is so important just now. After Facebook was caught out earlier this year with 87 million of its membership exposed to Cambridge Analytica due to a security breach, privacy became a more significant issue than ever before.

The same thing happened a few years ago when Ashley Madison, an American dating website that helped people cheat on their spouses, was hacked. Two years later the company agreed to an $11.2 million settlement for approximately 37 million users whose personal details were exposed in that massive data breach. Though the parent company of Ashley Madison, Ruby Corp., denied any wrongdoing, the company pledged to pay around $3,500 to each of the hack's victims for the settlement.

This issue of privacy has become the lynch pin in most political speeches of late, and a turning point for concerns about terrorist organizations and who knows or knew what?  Who knew what and could have stopped the Columbine boys from rampaging and killing 20 years ago? The FBI had files on certain gunmen like Nikolas Cruz. The FBI revealed in February this year, that it had received at least two separate tips about this 19-year-old charged with killing 17 people at his former high school in Parkland, Florida. The first tip came five months before. However, the FBI said agents were unable to link the tip to Cruz at the time. In the second tip, made six weeks before the shooting, the bureau admitted protocol was not followed and the information was never investigated. 

We want security and we want privacy. 

Settling the issue is not going to be easy. We want protection, but we don't want Big Brother. 

God knows what we need from government and from companies. Think about it. If you didn't ever cheat on your wife, you wouldn't worry about Madison's information leak. If you didn't say wrong things on FB, that data dump would not have caused you worry. Keeping God's Word in our heart allows us to have His words on our lips and thus we will have nothing about which to be ashamed.

Yeshua said, "What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear,  proclaim upon the housetops." (Matt 10.27) Again he warned, "For nothing is hidden that shall not become evident, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light." (Luke 8.17)

I'm not diminishing the controversy and the legal realities. I'm saying that if we love the Lord our God with all our heart, our soul, mind and strength, and if we love our neighbours as ourselves... we will have nothing about which to be ashamed. 

As we glimpse the true nature of our spiritual and moral bankruptcy, we can only wonder what kind of God this is who can not only stand to see and know it all, but who patiently and mercifully works in us, and with us, toward turning these dreadful liabilities into song. God is surely for us.

In fact, our lips will proclaim the excellencies of Him who is the Light. We will live in the Light. Shadows are not our home. He is our Home. It's all about a relationship with the One who knows all things about us, and LOVES US just as we are.  

I'm going to shout that from my housetop just now.

Is there really hope?

Mention the words Columbine or Colorado Springs, Sandy Hook, Port Arthur, Paris' Bataclan Theatre, and 9-11 and immediately images of terror and pain, mass murder and head-shaking fill your mind. The world is bad and getting worse. When the G-20 gathers, when Congress or Parliament in Australia or the UK conduct talks and seek answers, most thinking people simply wish them well, but doubt any real substantive changes will occur. Where is there hope?

Last summer I stood in Amsterdam, in the shelter/ home of Anne Frank. If anyone knows daily fear and chronicled it well enough to become the journalist of the new world, it was this mature teenager. She wrote in her diary, “Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.” Hope gives life, to be sure, and real hope is even deeper. But in light of recent and continuing terror, I ponder the question, "Is there such a thing as false hope?"

William Ruddick writes in Bioethics, Vol. 13, #3-4, 1999, in his abstract of his piece Hope and Deception: "Convinced of hope's therapeutic benefits, physicians routinely support patients' false hopes, often with family collusion and vague, euphemistic diagnoses and prognoses, if not overt lies. Bioethicists charge them with paternalistic violations of Patient Autonomy." He begins his essay with Ambroise Paré's maxim, "Always give the patient hope, even when death seems at hand." (XVI)

Bildad, a friend of Job the ancient in the bible said these words, "Can the papyrus grow up without a marsh? Can the rushes grow without water? While it is still green and not cut down, yet it withers before any other plant. So are the paths of all who forget God; and the hope of the godless will perish, whose confidence is fragile, and whose trust a spider’s web. He trusts in his house, but it does not stand; he holds fast to it, but it does not endure. He thrives before the sun, and his shoots spread out over his garden. His roots wrap around a rock pile, he grasps a house of stones. If he is removed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, ‘I never saw you.’ (Chapter 8.11-18)

Bildad is saying that there is such a thing as false hope. Planting roots of a plant in a rock garden will cause disappointment. So he says, 'the hope of the godless will perish.' What if my hope in education or in government or in a new candidate for government is misplaced? What if my hope is false hope? Where can I turn?

Many of us have been disappointed. We have placed our hope in people and things and they have failed us. The dashing of our hope has caused deep disappointment and the pain of our disappointment has filled us with the fear of being hurt again. That fear has held us back from entering new relationships as freely as we once could. Once burned-twice shy, as the saying goes.

Job says that the hope of the godless fails. He is talking about godless hope-a hope that excludes God and makes us dependent on the things and people of this world for our core fulfillment. This kind of hope often fails because it requires others to be what they don’t have the resources to be – the answer to our need for a relationship with God. In contrast, hope that doesn’t disappoint is centered first in God because it knows that no one can be faithful in a way that God is faithful. No one can love as God can love us. God alone is fully dependable. God alone will not let us down.

Hope is most real when it is based on what we know about someone. It is most dangerous when it is based on unrealistic expectations because that sets us up for another failure.

That's why this picture is so powerful to me.

It's the picture of someone from above a pool, reaching to rescue someone drowning. The actual story which inspired this painting is in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 14. In that chapter of the Bible, Yeshua is seen walking on water. Then Peter is looking around and says, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” And Yeshua said, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Yeshua." Wow, that would have been thrilling. And exhilarating and full of glory! "But seeing the wind, Peter became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Yeshua stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?"

This story is real to me just now. The Bible makes it clear that God wants to be in relationship with us, not only those who never have heard of Him, or who go from sinner to saint in a prayer. He wants to be in relationship with us who have walked with Him for decades. Each of us fails. Each of us is still walking in feet of clay. God's hand is not so short that it cannot save us. (Isaiah 59.2) Our sins separate us from Him, but His hand is ever reaching to get us out of the troubles in which we find ourselves. Hope "does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us." (Romans 5.5)

This is for believers AND for unbelievers. This is for those who are new to the faith and those who are long involved. Hope does not disappoint. Thanks be to God!