The intensive collection of data and the inherent advantages of the new technology have spawned the cynical idea that privacy is dead, and we might as well just get used to that fact. However, Tehilla-Shwartz Altshuler disagrees. Tehilla is a Senior Fellow and head of the Democracy in the Information Age Program at the Israel Democracy Institute. In an article in the TechCrunch web site, Tehilla describes three aspects of […]
A recent article in the U.Today web site tells of the experience of a Norwegian billionaire who openly bragged to friends that he owned $11 million worth of Bitcoin. Unfortunately, too many people heard about the Norwegian’s investment success. The man soon jumped off his balcony to escape from a home invader who threatened him with a shotgun. The criminal was going to lay his hands on the billionaire’s $11 […]
If you have one of Facebook’s Portal Devices, you can assume that the words you thought were private when talking with your family were not private at all. In fact, your words may have been transcribed and are now saved for whatever use and whatever purpose Facebook wishes. Given the company’s past actions, we can assume the desire is to invade your privacy in some manner is planned so that […]
Facebook’s reputation for protecting user privacy has taken a lot of hits over the past several years. That’s why so many consumers and advocates alike expressed alarm when Facebook first introduced its in-home hardware Portal last fall to compete with Amazon Echo. However, despite a cold reception for their first product, Facebook is preparing to release another device this holiday season that will specialize in streaming video. It makes sense […]
Government spying is invasive and obnoxious. However, perhaps an even bigger risk is the spying by corporations. One company maintains a surveillance database of 9 billion license plate scans (and growing), accessible by private investigators and most anyone else who can pay for the access. Who knows what these people will do with the information gleaned? The following is an excerpt from an article by Joseph Cox in the Motherboard […]
Here is one more reason why we cannot trust the FBI or any other government agency or law enforcement agency with “back doors” to encrypted information: the information obtained and supposedly kept secret by these agencies won’t be secret for very long. One of many examples is the recent revelation that Russian agents have dramatically improved their ability to decrypt certain types of secure communications and successfully tracked devices used […]
While you might think a “burner phone” is something only a criminal may use to avoid being tracked by authorities, law-abiding citizens may also appreciate the privacy awarded by a burner phone. The details may be found in a article by Marc Saltzman in the USA Today web site at: https://tinyurl.com/privacy190912. Here is another idea: An even more secure and private “telephone” can be fashioned from an Apple iPod touch. […]
If you want to avoid surveillance by automatic license plate readers, which use networked surveillance cameras and simple image recognition to track the movements of automobiles, one company suggests you wear one of their t-shirts. Or a dress. Or a hoodie. White hat hacker and fashion designer Kate Rose presented the inaugural collection of her Adversarial Fashion line at the recent DefCon cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. Several different items […]
From Simon Black’s SovereignMan newsletter: The Pentagon is currently testing high altitude surveillance balloons in several midwestern states. Flying at about 65,000 feet, the balloons are able to track multiple vehicles at once, in any type of weather, using radar. The Pentagon says the purpose of the solar powered unmanned balloons is to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats.” The data […]
To enable people to obfuscate facial-recognition software programs, Leonardo Selvaggio, an interdisciplinary artist who is 34 and white, made available 3-D, photo-realistic prosthetic masks of his own face to anyone who wants one. He tested the masks by asking people connected to him on Facebook to upload pictures of themselves in the prosthetic: It didn’t matter if they were skinny women or barrel-chested men; short or tall; black, brown, Asian […]
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