Category: Territorial Privacy

No surprises……you are being hacked by your government!

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10 December 2011

15:07

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Cybercrime, Privacy of communications, Territorial Privacy

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Everything you do online is probably being hacked/surveilled by your government. This includes, activities on Facebook or any social networking sites, Skype conversations, chatting, texting from your mobile phone, anything that is stored or transmitted digitally.

Companies are now selling, and they are selling hot in all countries, of-the-shelf hacking and surveillance products to governments… all in the name of national security. These tools have been used by middle-east during unrest earlier this year. There was a secret conference held in Dubai earlier this year that was not open to the public, and reporters were not welcome to attend sessions. Read more here.

Happy bunny finds iPhone

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3 December 2011

13:04

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Territorial Privacy

Well so here I am preaching on the dangers of location services, and I enabled this service eventually, just two weeks ago on my iPhone. Started to get quite convenient with the purchase of my personal Mac Airbook (11″) and then I synced everything into the iCloud. Furthermore, I often lose my mobile phones, you know I have two, one for work and other for personal use… just as I now have again my HP PC for my work and beloved Mac for my playtime.

Well today I used the service. I couldn’t find my iPhone. Really thought this time I’d blown it, lost it and it was lying somewhere lost. And I was hoping…. did I enable that service, or did I do as usual and decide not to? I had enabled the service, and I found my iPhone. So I’m a happy bunny today… although still torn by the dilemmas that personal privacy presents.. i.e. convenience and safety vs. personal privacy..

You are being tracked!

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6 September 2011

06:04

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Territorial Privacy

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Unless you opt out. At least that’s what some researchers are claiming. It seems that certain mobile phones, namely those hosting windows7 OS and the iPhone. Apparently the windows smartphone does this even after you’ve switched off this functionally.

This has gone to the law courts in the US now http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/01/microsoft-location-tracking?cat=technology&type=article.

Now you maybe thinking that well it is common knowledge that our phones can be tracked? And sure this is correct. However what is important here are 2 things 1) consent, the phone holder needs to consent to this, and 2) the data is actually in this example being collected and stored in a database. This means that not only are you being tracked without your knowledge, but this data can later be mined. Powerful personal data. And this is happening for your children who have mobile phones too…..

Your right to opt-out of Google’s Street View service

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8 November 2010

17:06

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European Union, Germany, Information Privacy, Territorial Privacy

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I love what is going on in Germany during a few months now, in that almost 250,000 Germans have told Google to blur pictures of their homes on the Street View service. Which is quite right. The EU directive on data privacy gives the data subject the right to consent to any personal information being stored. I wonder why it is only happening in Germany and not elsewhere in the EU, after all it is our right as data subjects.