We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
Here is my sixth list of good stuff on our surveillance society that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment.
We are not the customer; we are the product. Remember that when you are using services of any large internet company that offers “free” services:
Schneier on Security – Surveillance as a Business Model – Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 11-26-13”
Here is my fifth list of good stuff on our surveillance society that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment.
Washington Post – NSA infiltrate links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say – Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 11-1-13”
The steady drip-drip-drip of daily news shows there is more bad news yet to be revealed. Several times a week the boundary of the surveillance scandal grows. This mess will get worse before all the news is out.
Here is my fourth list of good stuff that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment.
Start with something a bit lighter. Be forewarned the author sometimes uses naughty words…ah, make that normally uses naughty words:
Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 9-17-13”
Here is my third list of good stuff that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment.
Washington Post – Here’s how phone metadata can reveal your affairs, abortions, and other secrets – the phone number you called, time of day, and duration can give away information you may not want to give away.
Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 8-29-13”
There are a lot of articles discussing the surveillance world we now live in. I would like to comment on many of them in a full post. Alas, time does not permit.
Here is my second list of good stuff that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment.
Here’s two new phrases for you:
Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 8-15-13”
I think the most serious damage from the feds spying on everything is that the effort could rapidly destroy our trust as citizens in our government. Collateral damage is that the big tech companies could wipe out our trust in them.
Bruce Schneier has been discussing this often, especially in a recent column at Schneier on Security – Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet
Look at these technically true comments that are actually very clever deceptions: Continue reading “Damage to trust in our government is most dangerous risk of the spying fiasco”
(Cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)
Recent news reports indicate federal intelligence agencies are gathering up a lot more information than we knew. That data is available to undisclosed lists of unknown people and will be retained for a very long time.
So what?
Here’s just a few circumstances in which you might not want access to your data by a long list of unidentified persons from various federal, state, or local agencies who were granted access to various unidentified parts of the various databases: Continue reading “12 situations when it might matter to you that the Feds are tracking everything you text or email and making note of everywhere you go.”
There are a lot of articles discussing the surveillance world we now live in. I would like to comment on many of them in a full post. Alas, time does not permit.
I will start putting up a list of good stuff that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment. Hopefully this will be a frequent list of links.
Here’s my first list:
Foreign Policy – The CIA’s New Black Bag Is Digital – When the NSA can’t break into your computer, these guys break into your house – Continue reading “More good stuff on surveillance – 7-23-13”
That’s the idea some people are advancing to suggest the extensive data gathering conducted by the federal government is okay.
I plan to discuss this in detail. In the meantime, I want to start putting some pieces of information on the table.
Moxie Marlinspike has a superb article in Wired: Why “I Have Nothing to Hid” Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance.
You may think you haven’t broken any laws.
But are you familiar with all 27,000 pages of the United States Code?
Continue reading “The folly of “I have nothing to hide” in a surveillance society”
Seems like every morning there is a big story with details of the vast array of surveillance conducted by the federal government. Here is a broad overview of news in the last 2 weeks.
How do you talk to a reporter with minimum risk of being found out? What does the answer to that question tell the rest of us who don’t have really juicy stuff to spill to a national reporter?
You leave digital crumbs every time you use the internet or your computer or any device that accesses the ‘net. How then to securely leak info to the media?
Continue reading “How do you securely leak information in a surveillance society?”
Privacy on the Internet is gone. It’s toast.
That is the point of Bruce Schneier’s post, Our Internet Surveillance State.
We leave crumbs of data spread around every time we use our computer or smart phone. With the cost of storing data essentially zero, every provider keeps a record of everything you do. And why not? The cost is zero to record your last Internet search or which cell tower has connection to your phone this moment.
Our privacy is shot when you put huge numbers of crumbs together.
Continue reading “Surveillance society, or, there is no privacy on the ‘net”
We are being recorded and logged and photographed everywhere we go. We need to be aware.
I’m not sure we have all caught on to the extent that we are tracked. Andy Kessler ponders where we are in his Wall Street Journal article, In the Privacy Wares, It’s iSpy vs. gSpy – Big Brother is watching us. But we are watching back.
Boundaries of monitoring
He reminds us there is a log and probably a photo from every time you interact with a toll booth, cell tower, ATM, or commercial security cameras, of which there may be as many as 30M around the country.
As cheap as storage is, those records will be retained for years, if not decades.
Ponder the new boundaries of the monitoring:
Continue reading “Downside to cameras everywhere and the near-zero cost to record data”
Previously discussed the amazing stuff that little drones can do.
This week’s issue of The Economist has several great articles in the Technology Quarterly section. One in particular that caught my eye – Unblinking eyes in the sky.
The article says drones that police might use for their operations will fit into the trunk of a car and can be had for the price of a police cruiser. Quite a bargain for surveillance in a crisis situation when you might otherwise need a helicopter which costs $1.7M to buy (according to the article) and require 1 pilot & 1 observer at operating cost of $5k or $10k an hour (my wild guess).
The Wall Street Journal has been running a series of posts on how technology can be used for censorship and surveillance of government critics. They call their series CENSORSHIP INC.
Today’s article, Life Under the Gaze of Gadhafi’s Spies, continues a discussion of how not-so-nice governments can track dissidents in real-time.
This long-running series is showing the downside to the cool, nifty technology that we enjoy today. That same stuff used to make your web browsing so wonderful and allows me the platform to pontificate in this blog, can also be used by dictators to suppress dissent. From today’s article discussing the experiences of Mr. Khaled Mehiri, a human-rights advocate:
Continue reading “Cool internet capabilities can be used for censorship and suppression of dissent”