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March 24 2012
“— Twitter sticks together with OWS protesters — RTTwo weeks ago the New York District Attorney’s sent a subpoena to Twitter, seeking information about the account belonging to Jeffrey Rae.
Rae himself received an email, which included a copy of a subpoena from the DA requesting data from his account.
“You are commanded to appear before the criminal court of the County of New York as a witness in a criminal action prosecuted by the People of the State of New York against Jeffery Rae,” the subpoena reads.
It also says the activist must “produce” in court all tweets that came from his account, @jeffrae, from September 15 to October 31 of last year, "as a witness in a criminal action.”
Legal gray area emerges in social media privacy
Now the OWS protesters are sure authorities want to use social media data as evidence against them to stop the movement against “corporate greed”.
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March 03 2012
February 21 2012
“— Secret Service Seizes JotForm.com, Nuking Millions of Online Forms (Updated) | Threat Level | Wired.comJotform.com, the domain name of a business providing hosting for online forms, has been seized by the Secret Service, essentially gutting the company’s business.
The Wednesday seizure of JotForm.com, with the assistance of the domain name’s registrar, GoDaddy, disabled about 2 million JotForm.com forms, said Aytekin Tank, the site’s founder. The embeddable forms are hosted by the company and let sites quickly put up contact and sign-up forms online.
GoDaddy told Wired it took the site down at the request of law enforcement.
Tank has informed its “hundreds of thousands of users” in a blog post to alter their form URLs to jotform.net, which should revive a customer’s hosted forms.
“They have disabled the DNS without any prior notice or request,” Tank said of GoDaddy. “They have told us the domain name was suspended as part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation.”
(...)
The agency did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment. ”
February 18 2012
“— Google Tracked iPhones, Bypassing Apple Browser Privacy Settings - WSJ.comGoogle Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.'s Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.
The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple's Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users. Safari, the most widely used browser on mobile devices, is designed to block such tracking by default.
Google disabled its code after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
”
February 17 2012
“— The bloodlust faced by the 'blaspheming' Saudi journalist | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.ukThe case of Hamza Kashgari, a young Saudi journalist who has just been deported from Malaysia to face trial on charges of blasphemy, is one that should frighten and disgust anyone who cares about freedom of speech or religion.
His supposed offence was to have tweeted part of an imaginary conversation with the prophet Muhammad. "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you," he wrote; and: "I will not pray for you."
(...)But the really chilling fact about this story is that his persecutors are the online commenters in Saudi. Some 30,000 tweets, mostly condemning him, came within 24 hours. A Facebook group has been set up to demand Kashgari's punishment (and Facebook has not taken it down). There are 20,000 members already. Some bloggers, it's true, have defended him; but they too have been threatened by the more orthodox contingent.
”
“— Twitter stores full iPhone contact list for 18 months, after scan - latimes.comTwitter has clarified that it does not store names from address books, only email addreses and phone numbers. The company initially told the Times that names were among the types of data it gathered from users'mobile contacts lists.
When users activate the service's "Find friends" feature, "the email addresses and phone numbers in your address book will be shared with Twitter," wrote Carolyn Penner, Twitter's spokesperson. "Later, if one of your contacts signs up for Twitter with one of those email addresses and chooses to be discoverable by the address, we can connect you two."
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“— Unmanned Drones Go From Afghanistan To Hollywood | Fast CompanyEach and every one of us is living in a sci-fi novel, and this spills into real life into a million different ways ... like the way that Hollywood location scouts and real estate agents now routinely use unmanned drone aircraft. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gone from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to simply becoming a routine movie industry tool. The FAA isn't too sure about how to deal with the drones of Hollywood.
And neither is the LAPD.
This past January, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a highly unusual warning against the use of drones by real estate agencies. The LAPD sent a letter to the California Association of Realtors, a trade group, warning that Realtors “who hire unmanned aircraft operators to take aerial photographs for marketing high-end properties” were in violation of FAA rules and local motion picture filming ordinances. Users were warned that the LAPD's Air Division intends to prosecute violators in the near future. However, the letter appears to be hot air: Unmanned aircraft flying at heights under 400 feet are currently unregulated by the FAA.
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February 16 2012
“— Facebook Launches Verified Accounts and Pseudonyms | TechCrunchTomorrow, some users with many subscribers will be notified through their profile of the option to verify their identity, Facebook confirmed with me. There’s no way to volunteer to be verified, you have to be chosen. These users will be prompted to submit an image of a government-issued photo ID, which is deleted after verification. They’ll also be given the option to enter an “alternate name” that can be used to find them through search and that can be displayed next to their real name in parentheses or as a replacement.
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February 15 2012
“ While the Terrorism Act 2006 authorizes British law enforcement agencies to order certain material to be removed from websites, lawmakers on the Home Affairs Committee stated that “service providers themselves should be more active in monitoring the material they host.” Their report raises serious concerns that political and religious speech will be suppressed. Security expert Peter Neumann who testified before the Committee asked why websites like YouTube and Facebook can’t be as “effective at removing . . . extremist Islamist or extremist right-wing content” as they are at removing sexually explicit content or copyrighted material that violates their own terms of service. ”— Members of UK Parliament Recommend Censoring Online Extremism | Electronic Frontier Foundation
February 13 2012
“— Canadian Govt To Introduce Massive Internet Surveillance Law - SlashdotCan we start a petition to evict Canada from North America? They're giving us a bad name. Mexico is welcome to stay.
So you have no problem with that form the DHS now requires all US citizens to fill out when they "leave" the US for any reason be it business trip or vacation? I don't know of any other country in North America that requires its citizens to report to the government when the "leave".
”
February 11 2012
“ Yet Facebook’s inventory of data and its revenue from advertising are small potatoes compared to some others. Google took in more than 10 times as much, with an estimated $36.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, by analyzing what people sent over Gmail and what they searched on the Web, and then using that data to sell ads. Hundreds of other companies have also staked claims on people’s online data by depositing software called cookies or other tracking mechanisms on people’s computers and in their browsers. ”— Op-Ed at New York Times: Facebook Is Using You
February 07 2012
“ In collaboration with the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian, Privacy International today published a database of all attendees at six ISS World surveillance trade shows, held in Washington DC, Dubai and Prague between 2006 and 2009. ISS World is the biggest of the surveillance industry conferences, and attendance costs up to $1,295 per guest. Hundreds of attendees are listed, ranging from the Tucson Police Department, to the government of Pakistan, to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. ”— New surveillance industry database reveals small-town US police departments browsing surveillance tech alongside Libyan and Egyptian intelligence agencies | Privacy International
January 26 2012
“ Now, it’s obvious where Google is going with this: It wants to be more like Facebook and Apple, both of which have a completely-unified, walled-garden approach — and both of which are enjoying huge leaps in revenue and profits, while Google falls short of quarterly expectations. Nothing happens on an Apple device without Cupertino’s knowledge, and as a result Apple can perfectly tailor its devices for its users (and ratchet up record-breaking quarterly earnings in the process). Facebook — because everything is centralized under the facebook.com domain — enjoys unprecedented access to the surfing habits, likes, shares, and messages of its users. On the other side of the fence, with a slew of discordant, disconnected properties, Google seems to be flailing. SPYW and the March 1 privacy changes are simply the next step in Google’s (rather messy) attempt to weave everything together, before it loses any more ground. ”— Google is FUBAR | ExtremeTech
“— 2011: November - February Political Notes - Richard StallmanGoogle plans to combine its various user-surveillance data bases so as to know more about each user.
It may be possible to overcome this by having several user names, one for each Google service. However, it is much better if you prevent Google from knowing who you are. For instance, if you make sure that your Google searches are not even known to be from one person.
”
January 11 2012
“— Are Drones Watching You? | Electronic Frontier FoundationMany drones, by virtue of their design, their size, and how high they can fly, can operate undetected in urban and rural environments, allowing the government to spy on Americans without their knowledge. And even if Americans knew they were being spied on, it’s unclear what laws would protect against this. (...)
The market for unmanned aircraft in the United States is expanding rapidly, and companies, public entities, and research institutions are developing newer, faster, stealthier, and more sophisticated drones every year. According to a July 15, 2010 FAA Fact Sheet (pdf), “[i]n the United States alone, approximately 50 companies, universities, and government organizations are developing and producing some 155 unmanned aircraft designs.” According to one market research firm, approximately 70% of global growth and market share of unmanned aircraft systems is in the United States (pdf). In 2010 alone, expenditures on unmanned aircraft “reached more than US $3 billion (pdf) and constituted a growth of more than 12%.” The market for these systems is only expected to increase: over the next 10 years the total expenditure for unmanned aircraft “is expected to surpass US $7 billion.” And some have forecast that by the year 2018 there will be “more than 15,000 [unmanned aircraft systems] in service in the U.S., with a total of almost 30,000 deployed worldwide.”
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December 25 2011
“— Cash is trash: Big American Brother gives hints on how to spot citizen terrorists — RTAnd that’s really what this boils down to: a war on privacy. A potential terrorist, argue the US security agencies, is much easier to track if he uses a credit card. Credit card use provides Big Brother instant access to the buyer's contact information, purchase history – and, if need be, the ability to cut off his financial supply in an instant. (...)
Don’t want to live on credit? Potential terrorist. Nervous? Potential terrorist. Don’t want to be disturbed? Potential terrorist.
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December 24 2011
“ The growing role of the Internet in everyday life and business is creating a rich trove of digital information about people, companies, and nations, Deibert noted in a recent blog post. "Unsurprisingly, a massive cyber industrial complex has sprouted around the commercial exploitation of [it]," he wrote. Deibert notes that censoring the Web used to be considered an undertaking for only hubristic, authoritarian regimes, but is now being considered by defense departments worldwide being courted by corporations like those featured in the new Wikileaks documents. ”— The Cyber Security Industrial Complex - Technology Review
December 15 2011
“— Facebook: Releasing your personal data reveals our trade secrets | ZDNetThe privacy policy is vague, unclear and contradictory. If European and Irish standards are applied, the consent to the privacy policy is not valid. Facebook tried improving it earlier this year. The new face recognition feature is an disproportionate violation of the users right to privacy. Proper information and an unambiguous consent of the users is missing. Access Requests have not been answered fully. Many categories of information are missing. Tags that were “removed” by the user, are only deactivated but saved by Facebook. In its terms, Facebook says that it does not guarantee any level of data security. Applications of “friends” can access data of the user. There is no guarantee that these applications are following European privacy standards. All removed friends are stored by Facebook. This was reconfirmed recently. Facebook is hosting enormous amounts of personal data and it is processing all data for its own purposes. It seems Facebook is a prime example of illegal “excessive processing”. Facebook is running an opt-out system instead of an opt-in system, which is required by European law. The Like Button is creating extended user data that can be used to track users all over the internet. There is no legitimate purpose for the creation of the data. Users have not consented to the use. ”
October 08 2011
“ (Broad surveillance)— 2011: July - October Political Notes - Richard StallmanInternet services such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are making broad surveillance easy and cheap for governments around the world.
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