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‘privacy’ Archives
Panopticlick: EFF’s tool for telling you how unique your browser profile is
Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Peter Eckersley has published some new research showing that individual browsers can be identified to a high degree of accuracy without cookies or other tracking technology. EFF has produced a tool called "Panopticlick" that tests how unique your browser is, and they're using the results from it to [...]
United States Government data-laundering: Using corporate databases to get around privacy law
"Buying You: The Government's Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about 'The People'," a paper by Columbia Law School's Joshua L. Simmons in the Columbia Business Law Review, describes the way that US government agencies circumvent the fourth amendment and privacy statutes by outsourcing their surveillance to private credit reporting bureaus and [...]
Has your laptop been searched at the US border?
The EFF's Jennifer Granick is looking for people who've had their laptop hard-drives searched at the US border... In U.S. v. Arnold we fought for a requirement that customs agents have some reason before searching your computer and in our FOIA work on border searches, we have pushed the government to reveal its policies and practices in this [...]
Body scanners can store and send images
A privacy group says the Transportation Security Administration is misleading the public with claims that full-body scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images. The TSA specified in 2008 documents that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) [...]
“Come Back With a Warrant” doormat
...apropos of bloggers being bullied into parting with their hard drives: check out this nifty doormat, available at Target and Amazon for 18 bucks and some change. Haha, if you're gonna violate my 4th amendment rights, you're gonna have to literally walk on them and photos or video of the mat in front of your door probably wouldn't be a bad [...]
TSA subpoenas bloggers and demands names of sources
TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public. Frischling said he met with two TSA special agents Tuesday night at his Connecticut home for about [...]
The EFF ebook buyer’s guide to privacy
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has pored over the terms of service for several popular ebook services and devices and come up with "An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy," a handy chart that tells you what information about your reading habits you "agree" to send to these companies by simply standing in the vicinity of the device, clicking a [...]
CMU professor: New privacy issues are emerging
As people's personal information from cell phones and computers is used in more and more new software applications, America's leaders need to deal soon with how to protect people's privacy in the process. That's the theme of a perspective article written by Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Tom Mitchell in tomorrow's issue [...]
Google: Only miscreants worry about net privacy
If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing. At least that's the word from Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of incredulity from the [...]
What do ISPs charge the law to spy on you?
Cryptome is hosting several ISPs' pricelists and guidelines for "lawful spying" activities on behalf of law enforcement. Included is Yahoo's price-guide (hilariously, Yahoo tried to send them a copyright takedown notice to make this go away). One of the more remarkable elements of Yahoo's document is the sheer quantity of material that Yahoo [...]
Google expands tracking to logged out users
Anyone who's a regular Google search user will know that the only way to avoid the company tracking your online activities is to log out of Gmail or whatever Google account you use. Not any more. As of last Friday, even searchers who aren't logged into Google in any way have their data tracked in the name of providing a 'better service'. The [...]
Survival School.Why more Americans are learning to pick locks, bust out of handcuffs, and avoid surveillance.
It's a sticky Saturday morning and I'm handcuffed in the back seat of a Jeep Grand Cherokee parked on the side of a Philadelphia street. On one side of me is my boyfriend, Bruce, and on the other his best friend, Nick. Both of them are also cuffed—and like me, sweating like pigs. I reach into my hair and pull out a bobby pin that within seconds [...]
HOWTO: Kill wiretaps when making a phone call
CALEA is the terrible US federal law that requires that all switches that carry voice-traffic be built with an easy-to-access remote wiretapping capability so that cops (or bad guys who know cop secrets) can listen in on your voice conversations without cooperation from the phone company. A team of University of Pennsylvania researchers (already [...]
TSA doesn’t understand what “random” means
Deirdre Walker, the 24-year police veteran and former Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police who wrote up a sharp, professional critique of the TSA's checkpoint procedures, has written a follow-up, showing a huge flaw in the "random" screening process used at the BWI airport... I asked, "How are people selected [...]
Kiss Your Freedoms Goodbye If Health Care Passes
Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn’t care about the Constitution, it doesn’t care about your inalienable rights. If this health care bill becomes law, America, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it and privacy as you have enjoyed it will cease to be. Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will vote on [...]
Freedom of press takes HUGE blow. Congress passes bill that forces reporters to reveal sources in “national security” cases. Obama WILL sign.
The White House, key senators and media representatives have reached a compromise on legislation to protect reporters from being forced to disclose their confidential sources in federal court. Senate supporters of the so-called media shield bill said Friday that the deal gives the government authority to override those rights in certain [...]
The raid that rocked the Met: Why gun and drugs op on 6,717 safety deposit boxes could cost taxpayer a fortune
It's gonna cost the cops, and us taxpayers, probably 10 times what they netted in actual criminal proceeds once the operation's finances has been collated from all the investigations and several hundred court cases of "slightly suspect" boxes with the cops paying out a 6 figure sum in each to resolve the trials on the basis that the suspects are [...]
Repository of Freedom of Information Act docs
Government Attic is a searchable repository of government docs released through Freedom of Information Act requests... governmentattic.org provides electronic copies of hundreds of interesting Federal Government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Fascinating historical documents, reports on items in the news, oddities and [...]
Wanted by the FBI: Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit, was investigated by the FBI for participating in a project to take the publicly owned US court records from the PACER database (where they were very expensive to access) and put them on the web. He's requested his FBI file and put it on the web: AARON SWARTZ has a profile on the website LINKEDIN, at [...]
New York City to Establish Surveillance Network in Midtown
We're only going to see more and more of this. Ugh. The plan devised to protect downtown Manhattan, known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, was introduced by Mr. Kelly in 2005. That raised concern among civil liberties groups, which have called for more public discussion as the police peer, with greater intensity, at more corners of the [...]
