Brainlink

The FTC has notified Apple & Google that they actually need to read, abide by and enforce their own privacy policies.  Specifically, these two operators can’t turn a blind-eye to what data the cell-phone application developers collect, and what they do with that data.

From The Register:

FTC tears into Apple, Google over kids’ privacy – or lack of

‘Impossible’ to know data collected by apps, watchdog fumes

By Brid-Aine Parnell

US regulators have told smartphone software makers to do more to protect the privacy of kids using their apps – or face the watchdogs’ wrath.

In a report that acknowledged the “tremendous” growth of mobile software, the Federal Trade Commission said app developers are not making “simple and short” declarations of their privacy policies. As a result, young users – picked out for their vulnerability – could be giving up their mobile phone numbers, contacts, location and other data without knowing about it.

It also warned that app stores run by Apple and Google needed to do more.

“Although the app store developer agreements require developers to disclose the information their apps collect, the app stores do not appear to enforce these requirements. This lack of enforcement provides little incentive to app developers to provide such disclosures and leaves parents without the information they need,” notes the report.

“As gatekeepers of the app marketplace, the app stores should do more.”

via FTC tears into Apple, Google over kids’ privacy – or lack of • The Register.

Don’t be evil.  That’s Google’s job.

In contravention of Apple’s policies, and their own statements about consumer privacy, Google bypassed Safari’s security settings to store permanent cookies on Apple devices.

From Mashable.com:

Google Caught Tracking Safari Users: What You Need to Know

Google is in a lot of hot water over recent revelations about how it tracks user activity on Apple devices — particularly iPhones and iPads.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, an independent researcher has discovered that Google embeds hidden software on many websites — software designed to circumvent the default settings on a web browser to record a user’s behavior.

via Google Caught Tracking Safari Users: What You Need to Know.

In US vs Warshak, the DOJ argued in court that since email accounts are hacked into, people die, and people forget their passwords, email should have no 4th amendment protections.

By this logic, NO HOUSE or APARTMENT in the US is safe.  Houses get broken into, people lose house keys, and some people die alone. (no wills, no heirs)

The FBI applied similar logic when attaching GPS trackers, without warrants, to college student’s vehicles in the US.

Now, if you buy a phone with a fake name, or rent an apartment under a fake name, they argue you’ve forfeited your 4th Amemdment rights.

From Gizmodi & Wall Street Journal:

Feds Want to Warrantlessly Track Phones Bought with Fake Names

If the DOJ gets its way, it won’t need a warrant to monitor people who buy cell phones and other electronic services using a fake name, according to a story in today’s Wall Street Journal.

The DOJ is arguing that because a California man used a fake name when he bought a broadband card, service and a computer (and rented his apartment) he’s not entitled to protection under the fourth amendment.

The government used a device called a Stingray to locate the broadband card being used by Daniel David Rigmaiden. The Stingray mimics a cell phone tower, and pings the target device. It measures the signal strength, and then moves to another location and measures it again. It uses that data to triangulate the phone’s position. They are increasingly being used by law enforcement.

The FBI didn’t get a warrant when it used a Stingray to locate Rigmaiden’s location. At his apartment complex, it found he had used a fake ID on his rental application. It used that to get a search warrant, where it found the broadband card.

The government’s argument is that it didn’t need a warrant to locate Rigmaiden because he gave up his fourth ammendment rights and had no reasonable expectation of privacy when he used a fake name to rent and purchase his broadband card, service and computer.

It’s in the courts, but if the DOJ wins this one, it could mean that even if you use a fake name to buy something in a non-fraudulent matter—say a burner phone—it can track you down, and perhaps even listen in. Beware, Stringer Bell.

via Feds Want to Warrantlessly Track Phones Bought with Fake Names.

According to the Economist, the German Federal & State intelligence services are stuck in the past.

Rather that focusing on current threats, like a neo-naze group that murdered 10 people, they have been focused on spying on former East German radicals…including those that have been democratically elected, and hold political offices.

We saw this in the US in the 1950s-1970s, where the government spied on it’s political rivals, not actual threats.

This is the biggest long-term threat to privacy from Social Media, Cloud Computing and ubiquitous surveillance.

Like roach motels, once your data checks in, it never checks out. 

Once you’ve been tagged as a threat / problem / terrorist or rabble rouser, the cops, governments and databases will treat you as such for life.

The Occupy Wall Street protestors were the most heavily photographed and video demonstration in the US.  You can bet their names, photos, addresses are in hundreds of threat databases.

From The Economist:

Protection racket

The spooks can’t keep their eyes off the left

Feb 4th 2012 | BERLIN | from the print edition

GERMANY’S intelligence services failed to detect a gang of neo-Nazis who murdered ten people over several years. Never mind. They have a vice-president of the Bundestag in their sights.

Times are awkward for the 17 Offices for the Protection of the Constitution, as the domestic intelligence agencies are known (one at federal level and one for each of the 16 states). The “Zwickau cell” killed with impunity until two of its members shot themselves in November after fleeing a bank robbery. Perhaps that is because the spooks were busy watching the Left Party, the fourth-largest in the Bundestag. The federal office is monitoring 27 of its deputies, including Petra Pau (a Bundestag vice-president) and a member of the committee that oversees the intelligence services. The party, or affiliated groups, are also targets in most states. This constitutes “defamation of the opposition”, complained Jan Korte, a legislator on the watch list.

There are reasons to keep an eye on the Left Party. It is the direct descendant of East Germany’s communists and expanded westward by attracting disgruntled Social Democrats. Although the party espouses “democratic socialism” it harbours some groups that seem unsure about democracy. It has seats in 13 state legislatures and has helped govern, mostly pragmatically, three eastern states. The federal agency has been watching it since 1995.

via Germany’s intelligence services: Protection racket | The Economist.

Do you recall how in The Minority Report, stores were trying to sell Tom Cruise products based on his retina scans?

What would you do if a Retailer knew you were pregnant, and when the due date was before you told your friends and family?

Or they figured out whether you got a bonus or were unemployed without you telling them?

This article in Forbes on Target’s Pregnancy Identifier database is eerily unsettling. Especially the way they created the “random coupons” baby book.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

[Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date.

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

 

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

This is how BIG DATA works, and this is how Facebook, Google, Twitter are making their billions.

Collecting data, analyzing data to show you better targeted ads, and further sell your data to retailers, advertisers, insurers and governments.

What the Supreme Court Giveth in 4th Amendment Protections (namely, GPS surveillance requires warrants), a lower court takes away in 5th Amendment protections.

Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

Declan McCullagh

by Declan McCullagh January 23, 2012 3:35 PM PST

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.

Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21–or face the consequences including contempt of court.

Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.

“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well.

Ramona Fricosu, who is accused of being involved in a mortgage scam, has declined to decrypt a laptop encrypted with Symantec’s PGP Desktop that the FBI found in her bedroom during a raid of a home she shared with her mother and children (and whether she’s even able to do so is not yet clear).

via Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops | Privacy Inc. – CNET News.

Celebrate!! The 4th Amendment isn’t dead…yet.

The feds will need warrants to install GPS trackers on your vehicles.

From The Register:

US Supremes: GPS tracking requires warrant

‘Stop! In the name of the 4th Amendment…’

By Iain Thomson in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Law, 24th January 2012 01:29 GMT

The US Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that police need to request a warrant before attaching GPS tracking devices to suspects’ cars.

“We decide whether the attachment of a Global-Positioning-System (GPS) tracking device to an individual’s vehicle, and subsequent use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements on public streets, constitutes a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,” the judgment reads. Their decision – after extensive hearings – was, at core, “Yes”.

The case reviewed by the Supremes revolved around Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner the police linked with the drug trade, and the decision to follow his car’s movements using a GPS tracking system. The police obtained a court order for the use of such a device, but were a day late in installing it. The data it obtained was then used to link Jones to a house containing $850,000 in cash, 97kg of cocaine, and a kilo of cocaine base.

via US Supremes: GPS tracking requires warrant • The Register.

Data Privacy Day: Social media ‘private’ data is fair game for e-discovery in court

Microsoft Trustworthy Computing released data about how posting on social networking sites can impact more than online profiles and reputation; it can also cause negative consequences in the real world. All that data, even the allegedly ‘private’ social media data, is not private but is fair game as e-discovery in civil litigation. Another study found who you are digitally on Facebook is who you are offline in real life. Lastly, the more data we overshare on social media, the more it becomes the “norm” for society . . . meaning for society as a whole, it lowers what is considered a reasonable expectation of privacy.

via Privacy and Security Fanatic: Data Privacy Day: Social media ‘private’ data is fair game for e-discovery in court.

I’ve waited a few days to post this, because with all things Google, there’s more obscured behind the clouds.

The US congress has a few questions for Google

Some old Congressional privacy watchdogs are nipping at Google’s heels

Whether any of this will improve the internet, privacy or cyber liberties is an open question.

What isn’t debatable is that Google is finally living up to Larry & Sergey’s grad school yearnings – they want to know you better than your mother, or your therapist does.

And as usual, The Register has the best take on the whole show.

Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU

Big changes to Terms of Service due in March

Posted in Platform, 25th January 2012 10:14 GMT

Mountain View’s Chocolate Factory is putting its vast userbase on notice of major changes to its privacy policies.

Come 1 March the 350 million people worldwide who have Gmail accounts, for example, will no longer be able to use that service in isolation of other Google products they browse to online.

That’s because the company’s Terms of Service are changing.

Some will argue that Google is merely doing some neat housekeeping by cutting and shutting the majority of its 70 privacy policies into one clean explanation of what will happen with the information users input into the company’s array of products.

Others might note that these privacy tweaks are coming ahead of any public antitrust battle Google potentially faces on both sides of the Atlantic where formal regulatory probes of the world’s largest ad broker are already well underway.

…

Google is reasserting that ALL of its products relate back to its search estate. In other words, Page’s crew are insisting that the company only really offers one service online.

via Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU • The Register.

Nietzsche declared “God is dead” (or “the death of God”) in Thus Spake Zarathustra.  For that work, and many others, he is widely created with creating whole new branches in Western philosophy.

In Indonesia, simply stating that “God does not exist” can land you in jail.

I wonder what the Indonesians (and others) would have done if Neitzsche were alive today.

From ZDNET:

31-year-old Alexander Aan faces up to fives years in prison after he declared himself an atheist on Facebook. The Indonesian man is in protective police custody because he fears physical assault.31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting “God does not exist” on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault.The posting was made on a Facebook Page titled Ateis Minang Minang Atheist, which Aan created. At the time of writing, it had over 1,700 Likes. Aan’s posting has been removed, but supporters on the Page are urging police to release him.

via Man faces five years for ‘God does not exist’ Facebook post | ZDNet.