Tag Archives: privacy

The Evil of AI: Submit for Brain Scan

12 Sunday Jan 2020

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If you could read my mind, love,
What a tale my thoughts could tell…

-Gordon Lightfoot, If You Could Read My Mind

It’s coming.

A tiny fraction of the people is slowly waking up to the massive evil that is Faceberg, the socials, AI, and probably most modern technology.

Changing norms: Another big risk is that this neurotechnology might normalize a culture of mind-reading, causing us to give up — so slowly and subtly we almost don’t notice it’s happening — our expectations of mental privacy.

One day, our interiority could become a thing of the past, with the technology decoding not just the thoughts we’d like it to transcribe for our own convenience but also the thoughts we want to keep private. That could include everything we keep hidden in our inner sanctum, from sexual fantasies to political dissent.

“A lot of my concerns about Facebook accumulating this data are surveillance and civil liberties concerns. You’d worry about the way that Facebook would be helping build a surveillance state,” Nadler said, adding that being able to peer into the brain would be game-changing for law enforcement.

If you find it hard to imagine that a project incubated by Facebook could dramatically change norms around surveillance and law enforcement, just think for a minute about facial recognition technology. Facebook rolled out that tech years ago in an innocent context: tagging your friends in photos you posted on the social-media network. But now the tech is used for policing and surveillance, disproportionately harming people of color. And other giants like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are all mired in controversy over it.

It’s the other way around: the surveillance state helped build Farcebook and these other hellish companies. And, this won’t stop with implants, chips, and goofy helmets for playing Pong – those likely being a very short interim measure. The end goal is to REMOTELY read minds, either via some sort of intercept scanning beam or, more likely, through a continuous capture field, like that generated by, I don’t know … 5G.

They will not like my thoughts about them.

“1984” was an Optimistic Estimate

21 Saturday Dec 2019

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Tyranny – there’s an app for that.

This was the decade we gave our privacy away.

We took silly personality quizzes on Facebook Inc. that made Cambridge Analytica possible. We bought phones that tracked our locations everywhere we went. We plugged in smart speakers that sent recordings of our most intimate moments to humans overseas for transcription. We downloaded apps and plug-ins with reckless abandon. We installed security cameras everywhere. We clicked through terms of services without reading. We agreed to do whatever it took to make those pesky red badges on our phones go away. We are complicit in the corporate surveillance state we inhabit.

That doesn’t mean we weren’t duped. Companies tempted us with their free services. They downplayed the risks. They broke promises to safeguard our data. They presented themselves as silly apps, only to become world-changing communications platforms. They hired psychologists to manipulate us. They used the money they made from our data to buy lobbyists to fight off privacy regulations.

The New York Times explained on Thursday just what it means to hand over the kind of location data collected by our smartphones. The newspaper painted a terrifying portrait of the self-imposed surveillance state: “Within America’s own representative democracy, citizens would surely rise up in outrage if the government attempted to mandate that every person above the age of 12 carry a tracking device that revealed their location 24 hours a day. Yet, in the decade since Apple’s App Store was created, Americans have, app by app, consented to just such a system run by private companies.”

If you’re paying attention, this is not surprising. The Times wrote an article with many of the same revelations almost exactly a year ago. Other publications have been doing similar work for years.

The 2010s should be remembered as the decade tech turned dystopian.

Maybe it’s all best forgotten? Has anyone noticed that them internets are about as slow now as they were nearly twenty years ago? Half of the bogging down is the overkill graphics, ads, and disclaimers. The other half is surveillance. 5G is supposed to cure this. It won’t. Expect, in exchange for your health, perhaps a doubling of speeds – back to where we were in about 2010. The majority of the new capacity will be devoted to more spying. 5G isn’t a tool for transferring information. It’s one for gathering information. And they will love it. It’s not even amazing any more just how incredibly stupid most humans really are. Back to your cat videos.

You’re on Rancid Camera!

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

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The FBI loves all those pics the people post on Farcebook and the socials.

A government watchdog says the FBI has access to about 640 million photographs — including from driver’s licenses, passports and mugshots — that can be searched using facial recognition technology.

The figure reflects how the technology is becoming an increasingly powerful law enforcement tool, but is also stirring fears about the potential for authorities to intrude on the lives of Americans. It was reported by the Government Accountability Office at a congressional hearing in which both Democrats and Republicans raised questions about the use of the technology.

Who among the rabble is wise enough to have their fears stirred? And, what, exactly, have these concern troll Democrats and Republicans done? The shit stupid people deserve what’s coming.

What Facebook Thinks of You: “There is no privacy”

31 Friday May 2019

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That’s what they said in Court, to a judge.

A lawyer for Facebook argued in court Wednesday that the social media site’s users “have no expectation of privacy.”

According to Law360, Facebook attorney Orin Snyder made the comment while defending the company against a class-action lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

“There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy,” Snyder said.

In an attempt to have the lawsuit thrown out, Snyder further claimed that Facebook was nothing more than a “digital town square” where users voluntarily give up their private information.

Now, who out in the town square of old, sold your PRIVATE information, that you may or may not have willingly divulged, to the highest bidder? The first equivalent I came up with was ye old pickpocket.

5,400 Reasons to Rethink the “Smart” Phone

28 Tuesday May 2019

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Keep in mind, this resulted from a scan of a single man’s iPhone:

Monitoring software used by The Washington Post on an ordinary iPhone found that no fewer than 5,400 app trackers were sending data from the phone – in some cases including sensitive data like location and phone number.

It wasn’t too long ago that people paid a little extra for an unlisted phone number. You know, for a little more privacy. What a 180. If this concerns you – and why I bother with stories like this, I really don’t know – then consider a Faraday cage, some other signal blocker, or a dumb phone (no phone if you can manage and don’t mind). Or not.

Social Media is Not Your Friend

20 Saturday Apr 2019

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Just last weekend, someone told me that I really, really, really need to get on the Gram, Instagram. I never entertained the thought, even before I found out that Facebook owns Insta. And, surprise! they’re pulling the usual Farceberg tricks on the Gram too.

Given the terrible run of form it’s been on over the last year, it probably shouldn’t be that surprising that Facebook waited until the highly anticipated report on Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election to deliver some bad news.

While just about every reporter was poring over the document, Facebook updated a blog post from March indicating that passwords had been exposed, stored as readable text (as opposed to securely encrypted), for hundreds of millions of Facebook users and thousands of Instagram users. It added a new paragraph to the middle of the post today indicating that a lot more Instagram users were affected than it originally thought:

(Update on April 18, 2019 at 7AM PT: Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format. We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users. We will be notifying these users as we did the others. Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed).

Just a small update from “thousands” to “millions,” then.

Facebook said it would notify the impacted users and that there’s no evidence that anyone within or outside Facebook had access to the passwords. But still, those users, and perhaps anyone else, might want to change their password or enable two-factor authenticationjust to make sure. That’s never a bad idea anyway.

Now that I know what Instagram is and who runs it, there is no way in hell I’d have anything to do with it. If you’re okay with all of this, and most users are, then enjoy your post-literate pictures and videos and the loss of even the pretense of privacy.

Investigate Zuckerberg for Privacy Piracy, Whatever

19 Friday Apr 2019

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Ha! Here we go:

Screenshot 2019-04-19 at 8.07.29 AM

From the Washington Post’s Tech Page.

Federal regulators investigating Facebook for mishandling its users’ personal information have set their sights on the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, exploring his past statements on privacy and weighing whether to seek new, heightened oversight of his leadership.

The discussions about how to hold Zuckerberg accountable for Facebook’s data lapses have come in the context of wide-ranging talks between the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook that could settle the government’s more than year-old probe, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Both requested anonymity because the FTC’s inquiry is confidential under law.

If there’s to be no prison, then how about this: each individual account compromise amounts to a single regulatory violation, max fine for each violation, and the problem is $olved.

Why Would Anyone Want a New Car?

12 Friday Apr 2019

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Or, more accurately, a spy computer on wheels.

If you’re driving a late model car or truck, chances are that the vehicle is mostly computers on wheels, collecting and wirelessly transmitting vast quantities of data to the car manufacturer not just on vehicle performance but personal information, too, such as your weight, the restaurants you visit, your music tastes and places you go.

A car can generate about 25 gigabytes of data every hour and as much as 4,000 gigabytes a day, according to some estimates. The data trove in the hands of car makers could be worth as much as $750 billion by 2030, the consulting firm McKinsey has estimated. But consumer groups, aftermarket repair shops and privacy advocates say the data belongs to the car’s owners and the information should be subject to data privacy laws.

And, Congress fails to act for the people. Surprise, surprise.

It has been some time but I have covered this topic before. That was over four years ago. Things have changed; it’s worse now.  The alternatives are slim. One can get a used car as an end-around. But, one has to go back 20 years or so for a guarantee. Why do you think they did cash for clunkers?

Another possibility is for someone in tech to design a blocker or a patch that masks the car’s multiple computers. This is probably illegal. Congress, never quick to act for us, has acted for “them;” the car companies have proprietary software. You either take it to their dealership or to an independent who pays a fee for access. And, the way these things work, masking or shutting off the CPU may well totally disable the car.

We’ve been backed into a corner for a reason – total control. They will soon try to mandate automated bot cars that you can’t control and which log your every move. Goodbye, last shreds of freedom.

The only other possibility I can think of is a reverse EM shield that stops outward wireless transmissions. They’ll probably make that illegal too.

Drive on.

Kiss Internet Privacy Goodbye?

20 Thursday Sep 2018

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A “fight” looms:

Now industry groups are pushing Congress to pass a national privacy bill that would block states from implementing their own standards.

Privacy advocates are skeptical of the industry proposals and concerned that internet giants will co-opt the process in order to get protections that are weaker than the California standard implemented across the country.

“They do not want effective oversight. They do not want regulation of their business practices, which is really urgently needed,” Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), told The Hill. “They’re going to work behind the scenes to shape legislation that will not protect Americans from having all of their information regularly gathered and used by these digital giants.”

“They see federal law as an opportunity to preempt stronger rules,” he added.

Next week, executives from Google, Apple, AT&T and other major technology and telecommunications companies will testify before the Senate Commerce Committee as the panel’s Republican chairman, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), prepares to introduce a new privacy law.

I noted this potential probability back in April in a TPC column:

His other motive was the afore-mentioned collusion. A dirty little secret of the political world is that large corporations are absolutely, head over heels, in love with government regulation. State mandates price out competition, prevent startup challenges, foster monopolies, and raise profits. One of “your” political heroes hinted around this fact; Zuck nodded along sheepishly.

And preempt stronger rules. One will note that its the giant tech companies that are invited to speak to Congress, the same companies with a history of privacy violation, spying, and selling to the highest bidder. I imagine the law, as they want it, is already drafted. Just a matter of bribes now.

Another Rare (Odd) Victory for the Fourth Amendment

22 Friday Sep 2017

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Another court has quashed the warrantless use of “Stingray” devices by the police.

A device that tricks cellphones into sending it their location information and has been used quietly by police and federal agents for years, requires a search warrant before it is turned on, an appeals court in Washington ruled Thursday. It is the fourth such ruling by either a state appeals court or federal district court, and may end up deciding the issue unless the government takes the case to the U.S. Supreme Court or persuades the city’s highest court to reverse the ruling.

The case against Prince Jones in 2013 involved D.C. police use of a “StingRay” cell-site simulator, which enables law enforcement to pinpoint the location of a cellphone more precisely than a phone company can when triangulating a signal between cell towers or using a phone’s GPS function. Civil liberties advocates say the StingRay, by providing someone’s location to police without court approval, is a violation of an individual’s Fourth Amendment right not to be unreasonably searched. The D.C. Court of Appeals agreed in a 2 to 1 ruling, echoing similar rulings in the Maryland Court of Special Appeals and federal district courts in New York City and San Francisco.

For those only concerned with “law and order,” this was just a case of bad police work. That is why all of their evidence and any hope of subsequent conviction is gone. The perp had two stolen cellphones in his possession, either of which could have been tapped with explicit permission. Instead, they opted to spy directly on the bad guy’s phone, sans the warrant. You get what you pay for – or skip.

As a victory, I’m sure there is a technological way around all of this anyway. That, or the Supremes will ultimately find that such illegal spying is really just a tax or something.

For now, it’s another small victory for the Bill of Rights.