The Pirate Party of Canada has threatened to unleash its anti-surveillance software on its own government, promising to let Canadian citizens browse safely under a Virtual Private Network.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/23/0534222/Pirate-Party-of-Canada-Promises-VPN-For-Freedom?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed via Byline

“The Pirate Party of Canada has announced that it will extend a VPN originally set up to allow people in Tunisia to browse freely while internet censorship was imposed there. Canada may soon be added to that list since the ruling Conservative Party has vowed to introduce a bill that would provide unprecedented systematic interception and monitoring of Canadians’ personal communications. So the Pirate Party of Canada has announced it will extend that service to Canadians.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meanwhile, back in north Africa…

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/04/13/1326255/Engineers-Hijack-Libyan-Phone-Network-For-Rebels?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed via Byline

“A team led by a Libyan-American telecom executive has helped rebels hijack Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s cellphone network and re-establish their own communications. The new network, first plotted on an airplane napkin and assembled with the help of oil-rich Arab nations, is giving more than two million Libyans their first connections to each other and the outside world after Col. Gadhafi cut off their telephone and Internet service about a month ago.”

Iphone Tracker Ippolito 2011 01 19Privacy advocates Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden have released a free visualization tool to demonstrate how the iPhone stores your movements in a file easily accessible by anyone with access to your phone or computer. (Shown here, my January 19th presence in the Philadelphia International Airport.)

Nothing like a good visualization of your own movements to give you the creeps.

Continue reading »

Deutsche Telekom tracking graphicIf Big Brother comes for you, you’ve got seven minutes to make yourself scarce after tossing your cell phone in a nearby dumpster. That’s what a German politician learned when he took his telephone carrier to court to find out how often they tracked his position–and learned Deutsche Telekom tracked him 35,000 times in 6 months, even though he never explicitly chose to share his location.

The results make for a compelling interactive graphic, but also seem to vindicate free software guru Richard Stallman’s choice never to carry a cell phone.

Continue reading »

In January Facebook staff realized that the Tunisian government had installed software that tracked its citizens in unconscionable ways. Fortunately Facebook has now repaired that glaring security hole, and returned to its usual routine of tracking its own users in unconscionable ways. Like putting your face on Starbucks ads without your permission.

Continue reading »

Kinect eye-viewFacebook quietly rolled out face recognition in its photo service earlier this year, prompting some to speculate that Facebook users might soon get ads correlated to what they look like or where their pictures appear. But Facebook may not be the only one targeting ads according to what the lens sees. Last month Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer for interactive entertainment let slip that Kinect’s camera feed offered his company “a bunch of new business opportunities.”

What sort of business opportunities? Well, once their system is trained on actual faces thanks to tags from its own users, Microsoft or Facebook could sell Haar classifiers to other companies for ad targeting (think X-box ads for acne cream) or the government for surveillance (think a “Total Information Awareness” database of every person ever caught on a security camera).

Of course, as new media artist and innovator Mark Daggett pointed out to me, this face-harvesting could have productive applications, such as an iPhone app that scans a crowd and displays each person’s Facebook profile above their heads. Then again, it could have detrimental applications, such as an iPhone app that scans a crowd and displays each person’s Facebook profile above their heads.

Continue reading »

High-tech engineering for those who want more privacy for their privates. Will Victoria’s Secret come out with a Kevlar-lined bra in time for the holidays?

http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/11/23/150207/Underwear-Invention-Protects-Privacy-At-Airport

Thanks to Jeff Buske you don’t have to be embarrassed while going through the full body scanners at the airport. Buske has invented radiation shielding underwear for the shy traveler. From the article: “Jeff Buske says his invention uses a powdered metal that protects people’s privacy when undergoing medical or security screenings. Buske of Las Vegas, Nev.-Rocky Flats Gear says the underwear’s inserts are thin and conform to the body’s contours, making it difficult to hide anything beneath them. The mix of tungsten and other metals do not set off metal detectors.”

Google sent the following email (which serendipitously ended up on NMDnet automatically!) to the effect that it has quickly settled a class-action lawsuit about privacy violations. The same lawsuit targeted Facebook and Zynga.

The bottom line? The lawyers involved take home $2 million and users get nothing, except perhaps for a world in which the dominant Web service provider is a bit more conscious of privacy violations.

Google rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we’ve reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (http://buzz.google.com), a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year.

Shortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case.

The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users’ concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.

Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before December 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on January 31, 2011. This email is a summary of the settlement, and more detailed information and instructions approved by the court, including instructions about how to opt out, object, or comment, are available at http://www.BuzzClassAction.com.

We’ve probably all heard about this already, but it’s certainly apt, so here it is.  Facebook apps (such as Farmville) have been giving (inadvertently or not) non-anonymous personal information to advertisers, a violation of Facebook’s privacy policy.  So basically, you could have chosen the most restrictive privacy settings on Facebook, but if you used Farmville (or if one of your “friends” used Farmville) or one of the other offending apps, your info (your Facebook ID) could have been leaked.  I think it’s kind of vague right now as to exactly what was leaked and why it happened, but any way you slice it, privacy was violated; and that’s another strike for Mr. Zuckerberg, the first being the leaked ims from 2004.  Good thing none of us would be caught dead using as passe a piece of software as Facebook.  Right?  Metaphor:  Facebook is to the year 2010, as AOL was to the year 2001.

New in the “They Can Do That?” Department: Your Facebook friends can add you to groups without your approval, and the only way to make sure that never happens is to *have no friends*. Oh, and the FBI can bug your car without a warrant. While it’s in your driveway.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10/08/1358232/Lighthearted-Facebook-Friends-Could-Make-You-Join-NAMBLA-Group?from=rss via Byline mykos writes “The Facebook groups feature is causing bit of a stir with its users. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington was allegedly added to a group about NAMBLA, and in turn, he added Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It’s all in good (albeit tasteless) fun, except when a harmless joke goes awry and you find yourself being detained by customs when a friend decided to drag you into a mock terrorist group. Facebook representatives are aware of the matter, but are dismissive of it. A Facebook spokeswoman said, ‘If you have a friend that is adding you to Groups you do not want to belong to, or they are behaving in a way that bothers you, you can tell them to stop doing it, block them or remove them as a friend — and they will no longer EVER have the ability to add you to any Group.’ In somewhat related news, guillotines ensure you won’t have dandruff on your shoulders anymore.”

Did I mention the guy with his car bugged was a college student? The FBI was pretty keen to get it back, too.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/10/08/1413240/College-Student-Finds-GPS-On-Car-FBI-Retrieve?from=rss via Byline mngdih writes with this excerpt from Wired: “A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back … His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals saying it’s legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect’s car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway. … ‘We have all the information we needed,’ they told him. ‘You don’t need to call your lawyer. Don’t worry, you’re boring.’”

Do RFID tags in clothes for preschoolers make them more or less safe? Check out the ACLU’s timeline of cracked RFID schemes.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/dont-let-schools-chip-your-kids

“On Tuesday, preschoolers in Richmond, California showed up for school and were handed jerseys embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags are tiny computer chips that are frequently used to track everything from cattle to commercial products moving through warehouses. Now the school district is apparently hoping to use these chips to replace manual attendance records, track the children’s movements at school and during field trips, and collect other data like whether the child has eaten or not.

“While school officials and parents may have been sold on these tags as a “cost-saving measure,” we are concerned that the real price of insecure RFID technology is the privacy and safety of small children. RFID has been billed as a “proven technology,” but what’s actually been proven time and again (PDF) since the ACLU first looked at this issue in 2005 is just how insecure RFID chips can be:

“RFID chips in US passport cards were cracked and copied from a distance of 30-feet using $250 in parts bought from eBay (2009).

“RFID chips used in building access cards across the country were cracked and copied with a handheld device the size of a standard cell phone that was built using spare parts costing $20 (2007).

“California State Capitol RFID-based identification cards were cracked and copied and access was gained to member-only, secure entrances (2006).

“RFID chips implanted in humans were cracked and copied (PDF) (2006).

“The RFID chips used in the Dutch and British e-passport were cracked (PDF) (2006).

“Without real security, RFID chips could actually make preschoolers more vulnerable to tracking, stalking, and kidnapping….”

Another item for your checklist of what to do after graduation: change your name.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/08/18/1512200/Googles-CEO-Warns-Kids-Will-Have-to-Change-Names-to-Escape-Cyber-Past

Google’s Eric Schmidt says that people’s private lives are so well documented now that the young will have to change their names when reaching adulthood to avoid their youthful indiscretions. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Schmidt says: “I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time.”

Intriguing, if disturbing, news from scientists who’ve managed to track people’s recent travel based on how water isotopes end up in their hair.

Bottled water was already suspicious, but now I’m going to assume anyone drinking Poland Spring could be the next Anna Chapman.

Continue reading »

Bookmark this category

Via Bruce Sterling, who enjoyed the irony of students making a group to protest this invasion of privacy–on Facebook.

*I know it’s natural to assume that anything happening in Arizona these days must be insane by definition, but….

http://badgerherald.com/news/2010/05/04/ariz_college_to_posi.php

Students at Northern Arizona University will have a hard time skipping large classes next fall because of a new attendance monitoring system.

The new system will use sensors to detect students’ university identification cards when they enter classrooms, according to NAU spokesperson Tom Bauer. The data will be recorded and available for professors to examine.

Bauer said the university’s main goal with the sensor system is to increase attendance and student performance.

“People are saying we are using surveillance or Orwellian [tactics] and, boy, I’m like ‘wow,’ I didn’t know taking attendance qualified as surveillance,” Bauer said.

University President John Haeger is encouraging professors to have attendance be a part of students’ grades, but he added it is not mandatory and up to each professor to decide, Bauer said.

Haeger added the sensors, paid for by federal stimulus money, initially would only be installed in large freshmen and sophomore classes with more than 50 students.

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/05/arphid-watch-class-attendance/

Via Bruce Sterling, who enjoyed the irony of students making a group to protest this invasion of privacy–on Facebook. *I know it’s natural to assume that anything happening in Arizona these days must be insane by definition, but….

http://badgerherald.com/news/2010/05/04/ariz_college_to_posi.php

Students at Northern Arizona University will have a hard time skipping large classes next fall because of a new attendance monitoring system.

The new system will use sensors to detect students’ university identification cards when they enter classrooms, according to NAU spokesperson Tom Bauer. The data will be recorded and available for professors to examine.

Bauer said the university’s main goal with the sensor system is to increase attendance and student performance.

“People are saying we are using surveillance or Orwellian [tactics] and, boy, I’m like ‘wow,’ I didn’t know taking attendance qualified as surveillance,” Bauer said.

University President John Haeger is encouraging professors to have attendance be a part of students’ grades, but he added it is not mandatory and up to each professor to decide, Bauer said.

Haeger added the sensors, paid for by federal stimulus money, initially would only be installed in large freshmen and sophomore classes with more than 50 students.

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/05/arphid-watch-class-attendance/

Bookmark this category

This Slashdot comment sums it up:

this is finally a thing that really made me thinking of just closing my Facebook account. Not just opt-out from the new features again and again, since they just seem to always be more and more privacy intrusive.

This doesn’t use any kind of login button but shares the data automatically to a website when you visit it, so they instantly know who you are along with other data. IP data is still anonymous enough (from the view point of website operator – they don’t know who you are without going through police with a valid reason), but now the third party website owners have your name and other details without you never giving them those.

And just wait until every website will start to require you to use this. A good path for throwing all the anonymous cowards off the net and to get everyone comment and visit websites under their real name.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/6isJsO8s7FY/Facebooks-Plan-To-Automatically-Share-Your-Data

This Slashdot comment sums it up:

this is finally a thing that really made me thinking of just closing my Facebook account. Not just opt-out from the new features again and again, since they just seem to always be more and more privacy intrusive.

This doesn’t use any kind of login button but shares the data automatically to a website when you visit it, so they instantly know who you are along with other data. IP data is still anonymous enough (from the view point of website operator – they don’t know who you are without going through police with a valid reason), but now the third party website owners have your name and other details without you never giving them those.

And just wait until every website will start to require you to use this. A good path for throwing all the anonymous cowards off the net and to get everyone comment and visit websites under their real name.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/6isJsO8s7FY/Facebooks-Plan-To-Automatically-Share-Your-Data

Facebook Founder Accused of Hacking Into Rivals’ Email Slashdot – kdawson Published Mar 7, 2010 8:28 PM

An anonymous reader notes a long piece up at BusinessInsider.com accusing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of hacking into the email accounts of rivals and journalists. The CEO of the world’s most successful social networking website was accused of at least two breaches of privacy. In a two-year investigation detailing the founding of Facebook, Nicholas Carlson, a senior editor at Silicon Alley Insider, uncovered what he claimed was evidence of the hackings in 2004. “New information uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of the complaints [in a court case ongong since 2007] against Mark Zuckerberg are valid. It also suggests that, on at least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private login data taken from Facebook’s servers to break into Facebook members’ private email accounts and read their emails — at best, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company’s systems and changed some user information with the aim of making the site less useful. … Over the past two years, we have interviewed more than a dozen sources familiar with aspects of this story — including people involved in the founding year of the company. We have also reviewed what we believe to be some relevant IMs and emails from the period. Much of this information has never before been made public. None of it has been confirmed or authenticated by Mark or the company.” The single-page view doesn’t have its own URL; click on “View as one page” near the bottom.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wOLWZBARD0w/Facebook-Founder-Accused-of-Hacking-Into-Rivals-Email

Bookmark this category
Facebook Founder Accused of Hacking Into Rivals’ Email Slashdot – kdawson Published Mar 7, 2010 8:28 PM

An anonymous reader notes a long piece up at BusinessInsider.com accusing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of hacking into the email accounts of rivals and journalists. The CEO of the world’s most successful social networking website was accused of at least two breaches of privacy. In a two-year investigation detailing the founding of Facebook, Nicholas Carlson, a senior editor at Silicon Alley Insider, uncovered what he claimed was evidence of the hackings in 2004. “New information uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of the complaints [in a court case ongong since 2007] against Mark Zuckerberg are valid. It also suggests that, on at least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private login data taken from Facebook’s servers to break into Facebook members’ private email accounts and read their emails — at best, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company’s systems and changed some user information with the aim of making the site less useful. … Over the past two years, we have interviewed more than a dozen sources familiar with aspects of this story — including people involved in the founding year of the company. We have also reviewed what we believe to be some relevant IMs and emails from the period. Much of this information has never before been made public. None of it has been confirmed or authenticated by Mark or the company.” The single-page view doesn’t have its own URL; click on “View as one page” near the bottom.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wOLWZBARD0w/Facebook-Founder-Accused-of-Hacking-Into-Rivals-Email

The creators of the site said: ‘Don’t get us wrong, we love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information is less awesome.’ How long until the first actual robbery takes place?”

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/18/1340202/I-Use-Twitter-Please-Rob-Me

:

“A Pennsylvania high school is using laptops they issued to students to spy on them in homes and outside of school. According to a class action filling the webcams and microphones in these laptops could be remotely activated by school officials, and have been used in this role. One student was accused of ‘improper behavior in his home’ and the school provided a photo taken via his laptop as proof.”

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KOiPcu-Dn7s/PA-School-Spied-On-Students-Via-School-Issued-Laptop-Webcams

© 2011 UMaine NMDNet Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha