Privacy of communications – Page 2

Dilemmas concerning privacy

16 June 2013

14:47

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Data Mining, Information Privacy, Privacy of communications, Territorial Privacy

Apple, Facebook, Google, PRISM, whistle-blowers

There’s a really fun article written by Daniel Sandström in the Svd Culture section (16 June). SvD is one of the two main Swedish national newspapers. It is in main about the dilemmas we face as 1) a citizen and, 2) consumer. It is about how our selfish choices made in the guise of (2) are in fact contrary to what we demand as (1).

For you non-Swedish speakers – The first paragraph talks about how Amazon dealt with the news that they had illegally allowed an e-book to be on their site. They removed it from all devices. It is quite funny because it was George Orwell’s 1984 😀

He discusses briefly PRISM, this I mention at the end of my previous post. This is an agreement between the main cloud, social networking spaces on logging/tracking. Main companies included are: Google, Facebook, Apple….. yep, all those places you share your personal information, including who is your family, who is your close friends vs. FB friends, maybe who you are drinking, sleeping with… oh my what a gold mine for our governments! And we share this information with pleasure. It really is irrelevant on your privacy settings here because the US government via the Patriot Act can request this personal information about you. He doesn’t mention this last part though.

Daniel talks about the choices he has made, i.e. he purchased a digital reader, after he forgot the ethical implications of what Amazon had done a couple of years ago. He states he placed his personal comfort over his principles.

He then continues to discuss how we as citizens want the cheapest food and share our buying habits for this privilege, but then complain that the government is tracking our communications! He says how we want cheap clothes for our children, but then protest at the atrocities going on in the sweat houses in India, etc., to produce these products. We still continue to purchase cheap clothes

Daniel’s leaving point is potent and true. He says that for himself he needs to think more seriously if he really will live for his comfort, or live as he has learnt, i.e. by principles. Clearly Snowden’s name popped up in this article, as he lived as a citizen and for freedom of the citizen.

NSA leak scandal and Snowden

by Karen

16 June 2013

12:37

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Data Mining, Information Privacy, Privacy of communications, Territorial Privacy, U.S.

CALEA, dragnet, NSA, PRISM, whistle-blowers

What a mess with all these emotions flying around on Ed Snowden and his actions. In the one camp are those proclaiming Snowden as a traitor, and in the other extreme camp, he is a hero, a whistleblower!

The fact that the US are wire-tapping has been known for years, it’s just that the fact has never been made official. In my book Virtual Shadows published quite some time ago in 2009, there is a section just on this

“US wiretapping practices
The US government has led a worldwide effort to limit individual privacy and enhance the capability of its police and intelligence services to eavesdrop on personal conversations. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) sets out legal requirements for telecommunications providers and equipment manufacturers on the surveillance capabilities that must be built into all telephone systems used in the United States.” (Virtual Shadows, 2009)

Then there is “another program, known as PRISM, has given the NSA access since at least 2007 to emails, video chats and other communications through U.S. Internet companies to spy on foreigners. American emails inevitably were swept up as well.”

There have been some embarrassing exposure before the Snowden escapade, for example “Mathematician William Binney worked for the National Security Agency for four decades, and in the late 1990s he helped design a system to sort through the digital data the agency was sucking up in the exploding universe of bits and bytes. When the agency picked a rival technology, he became disillusioned. He retired a month after the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, and later went public with his concerns.” As reported by the Los Angeles Times. Blinney called this a “digital dragnet”.

My opinion?
So what’s my take on all this. Well you should know me by now, I am a fervent believer in transparency. I believe that trust can only be built on a foundation of transparency. Clearly although the governments around the world need to ‘protect’ their citizens. But why can’t they just tell them what they are doing? “We are tracking your communications”. We are pulling information from your Facebook profile if a threat to national security is felt. Just as in the EU, data subjects should have a right to know when their personal information is being accessed. They should be informed… period.
This means they continue with their activities, but are transparent in their operations. The fact is most people don’t really seem to care. They most are selling their buying habits today for a free chicken in their shopping trolley 😉

Am I a supporter of Snowden’s actions as whistle-blower. Yes I am!

Google’s ‘Policy Violation Checker’

by Karen

23 May 2013

09:03

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Censorship, Privacy of communications

Google

OMG, I picked this article up on Janet Steinman’s feed in LinkedIn. So what Google are doing is patenting a technology that basically detects written policy violations, e.g. in email messages, even before it is completed. I am wondering it it could be likened to the Autocomplete function.

The article is stating that it will be like having a ‘big brother’ peeking over your shoulder when you write. But I am thinking that if it is similar to the ‘autocomplete’ or ‘spellcheck’ function, maybe it is just another useful function and maybe this article is making more of this than it really is?

However if an organisation was to implement this, and they controlled the ‘policy violation checker’ from a central place, would this mean they could see if a policy had been violated, could they control what employees write in the workplace context. Is this a bad thing? I’m still scratching my head over this one….

CISPA

by Karen

18 April 2013

09:51

2 Comments on CISPA

Cybercrime, Legislation, Privacy of communications, Territorial Privacy, U.S.

crowdsourcing, cybercrime, law enforcement, surveillance, Transparency

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISA) is not aligned with civil and privacy rights of the individual according to privacy advocates such as Electronic Frontier Foundation and Avaaz.org.

Neither Microsoft or Facebook support this bill. Imagine that everything you post on FB to be available for government authorities? Fine if you trust them I suppose, but I don’t.

Why is not crowdsourcing used more in the fight against terrorism? Transparency and the power of the people, of whom most want a safe society could provide an all encompassing safetynet. Crowdsourcing for example is starting to be used to locate missing persons and children, it is very powerful. There are so many people out there that can make a positive difference to this broken world we live in.

The Hacker Highschool project

by paulofil

19 May 2010

14:12

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Awareness, Information Privacy, Privacy of communications, Security, Teens, World

#privacy, awareness, security, teens, The Hacker Highschool project

“The Hacker Highschool project is the development of license-free, security and privacy awareness teaching materials and back-end support for teachers of elementary, junior high, and high school students.

Today’s kids and teens are in a world with major communication and productivity channels open to them and they don’t have the knowledge to defend themselves against the fraud, identity theft, privacy leaks and other attacks made against them just for using the Internet. This is the reason for Hacker Highschool.” (Source: The Hacker Highschool Project)

I think these two paragraphs explain quite well the project. Although started several years ago, it is sufficiently interesting to justify a reading.

Phone-tapping scandal in Portugal

by paulofil

10 May 2010

01:13

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Portugal, Privacy of communications

phone-tapping, Portuguese prime minister

In what seemed to be a regular police investigation, ended in a phone-tapping scandal. Almost six months ago, during a regular police investigation, José Sócrates, the Portuguese prime minister, was among those whose telephone calls have been recorded. The suspect under investigation would talk several times with the prime minister but the recordings would be considered illegal and couldn’t be used in court. Only the president of the Portuguese Supreme Court is allowed to authorise an investigation to the prime minister, and he considered the authorisation from the judge, invalid (although it would be impossible for the judge to know in advanced to whom would the suspect be talking to). Only after six months were the recordings destroyed, after what seemed to be a huge debate regarding privacy and law issues and the use of recordings in courts, particularly those from politicians. In the meanwhile, for the first time, a Portuguese prime minister has to answer to a parliamentary investigation commission.

Privacy commissioners vs. Google

by Karen

21 April 2010

18:44

1 Comment on Privacy commissioners vs. Google

Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, New Zealand, Privacy of communications, Spain, Territorial Privacy, U.K.

Google, linkedin

Oh dear, Google is in trouble…. they have been -surprise, surprise- criticized by privacy commissioners around the world on their privacy, or lack of privacy practices 😉

Read more at The New York Times. btw. I need to thank Jack for his tweet on this 🙂