WASHINGTON (AP) - A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people’s private communications and financial information.
A recent story called Why is Everyone Connected With Google So Creepy exposes Google’s connection to a scheme to scan people’s DNA and extract medical information from it.
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Facebook is a rapidly growing social networking site. Here are some resources on why you should not use Facebook:
Related story: Government to Datamine Social Networking Sites.
A new device at airports uses X-rays to strip search you. In the near future you may have to get naked to get on the airplane. It’s for your own safety.
A new version of the device can be deployed in vans. This allows the government to strip search you anywhere without your knowledge as shown by these photos.
Conspiracy theorists often wonder how powerful the spy satellites that orbit the Earth are.
You can get an idea of the resolution of satellite spy cameras by looking at Google Earth and Google Maps. Google Earth only has civilian-grade satellite camera resolution, but take a look at how powerful it is:
Next time you look up at the sky, smile — you may be on camera.
Inforworld writes about how Microsoft has collaborated with the NSA in the development of Windows Vista’s security:
The U.S. agency best known for eavesdropping on telephone calls had a hand in the development of Microsoft’s Vista operating system, Microsoft confirmed Tuesday.
The National Security Agency (NSA) stepped in to help Microsoft develop a configuration of its next-generation operating system that would meet U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) requirements, said NSA Spokesman Ken White.
[…]
Still, the NSA’s involvement in Vista raises red flags for some. “There could be some good reason for concern,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). “Some bells are going to go off when the government’s spy agency is working with the private sector’s top developer of operating systems.”
Part of this concern may stem from the NSA’s reported historical interest in gaining “back-door” access to encrypted data produced by products from U.S. computer companies like Microsoft.
In 1999, U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon said that “high level deal-making on access to encrypted data had taken place between the NSA and IBM and Microsoft,” according to EPIC’s Web site.
With Vista expected to eventually power the majority of the world’s personal computers, it would be tempting for the government agency to push for a way to gain access to data on these systems, privacy advocates say.
More info from Microsoft here.
This problem is not new and exists even in earlier versions of Windows like Windows XP. The German military has even banned Microsoft software because they belive that the NSA is using Windows to spy.
Google has developed a prototype of a system that can use your computer’s microphone to eavesdrop on you. The eavesdropping system would listen for sounds that it could then process in order to target advertising to you based on what TV program you are watching. Of course, an eavesdropping system could be expanded for other uses also. TechnologyReview.com has an article on the Google eavesdropping software:
“Their prototype software, detailed in a conference presentation in Europe last June, uses a computer’s built-in microphone to listen to the sounds in a room. It then filters each five-second snippet of sound to pick out audio from a TV, reduces the snippet to a digital “fingerprint,” searches an Internet server for a matching fingerprint from a pre-recorded show, and, if it finds a match, displays ads, chat rooms, or other information related to that snippet on the user’s computer.”
Google claims that they are not gathering enough information to really spy on people:
“When word of the research first appeared in the media, some bloggers and other technology watchers reacted with horror; many assumed that the background conversation picked up by the microphone in Google’s system would be uploaded to Google. But the technology makes it impractical; at four bytes, the fingerprints don’t contain enough information to reconstruct the original sounds in a room. “Some people did get the impression that we had an open microphone that was going to listen in on them,” says Norvig.”
But — consider how fast technology is progressing. I remember when 1Mb 3.5 inch floppy disks were high tech. With the gear I have in my laptop bag at this moment I now have the equivelent storage space of 180,512 3.5 inch floppy disks. Bandwidth and memory are going to be even cheaper in the near future. A computer eavesdropping system, like the one that Google is developing, will not have limitations on how much information it can collect and store.
The privacy implications are terrible.
I discovered an article on Bruce Schneier’s blog that refers to an ABC article about how innocent people are being placed on ‘Watch List’ to meet quota.
From ABC News:
“You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.
The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.
‘Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft … and they did nothing wrong,’ said one federal air marshal….
What kind of impact would it have for a flying individual to be named in an SDR?
‘That could have serious impact … They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious,’ said Don Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change policies inside the agency.”
Spychips.com has a couple of interesting PDF files online describing IBM’s patent application: “Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items”:
“A method and system for identifying and tracking persons using RFID-tagged items carried on the persons. Previous purchase records for each person who shops at a retail store are collected by POS terminals and stored in a transaction database. When a person carrying or wearing items having RFID tags enters the store or other designated area, a RFID tag scanner located therein scans the RFID tags on that person and reads the RFID tag information. The RFID tag information collected from the person is correlated with transaction records stored in the transaction database according to known correlation algorithms. Based on the results of the correlation, the exact identity of the person or certain characteristics about the person can be determined. This information is used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas.”
In short, Big Brother keeps track of all the products that you buy in a database. When you walk into a store, the RFID chips in your clothes, ID cards, credit cards (and later in your implanted chip(s)), will be read by the store’s Big Brother scanners and added to the database. Your identity will be determined, and other sensitive personal data will be cunningly extracted with radio waves.
CNN reports that RFID passports are arriving soon:
“‘Basically, you’ve given everybody a little radio-frequency doodad that silently declares ‘Hey, I’m a foreigner,’” says author and futurist Bruce Sterling, who lectures on the future of RFID technology. “If nobody bothers to listen, great. If people figure out they can listen to passport IDs, there will be a lot of strange and inventive ways to exploit that for criminal purposes.”…
Kidnappers, identity thieves and terrorists could all conceivably commit “contactless” crimes against victims who wouldn’t know they’ve been violated until after the fact…
“The basic problem with RFID is surreptitious access to ID,” said Bruce Schneier security technologist, author and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a technology security consultancy. “The odds are zero that RFID passport technology won’t be hackable.”…
Schneier says there are a number of ways to improve the security of RFID passports but the best trick is to not create RFID passports at all. “Someone in the government got it in their head to make it RFID. Yes, its cool technology,” said Schneier, “but don’t do it because it’s cool.”‘
To read the full CNN article (highly recommended), click here.
