privacy.md

Privacy

• "Anonymity is not a fundamental right": experts disagree with Europol chief's request for encryption back door - Experts react to Europol chief's endorsement on encryption backdoor

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. _{Edward Snowden}

cryptography is pointless, you must use your digital identity to speak

• Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

  • Breakown of how data is collected from apps and how it's aggregated over a range of services to disclose your location.
  • Sadly (or thankfully) common everyday people can't get this data, it costs £100,000 for large dumps, but larger organizations can do this to individuals.
  • HN comments 1000's

• Prediction: Bias - Predictive Policing Software Terrible At Predicting Crimes

• TechScape: How police use location and search data to find suspects – and not always the right ones

• The boiling frog of digital freedom

  • How our tools are going lock us into being unable to create content
  • [wei]
  • [c2pa]
  • If You’ve Got a New Car, It’s a Data Privacy Nightmare Bad news: your car is a spy. Every major car brand's new internet-connected models flunked privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla

• The problem of creeping commercial surveillance

  • explains how the McDonaldes app rather than a coffee/stamp reward scheme leads to a hunger for more data

• 'Facial recognition' error message on vending machine sparks concern at University of Waterloo

  • Vending machines that monitor gender, ethnicity and footfall

• Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads. Here’s what you need to know

  • Privacy sandbox - the sites you visit profiled by google and the profile is sent to adversisers

• 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy 2007 Daniel Solove

  • Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: "I've got nothing to hide." According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.

• Two types of privacy

  • Tracking Reduction
  • Tracking Evasion

• Why to Care About Privacy After Years of Sharing Data

  • “oh wait, this isn’t the way to get where I’m going. This is the way to get to [another place I frequent]!” Do you just keep going? The answer is “of course not!” That’s totally ridiculous.

• Do you want your money to be secure when you bank online. Of course you do. So you want encryption!

• Ask HN: How to move away from Google

• privacytools.io

  • You are being watched. Private and state-sponsored organizations are monitoring and recording your online activities. privacytools.io provides services, tools and knowledge to protect your privacy against global mass surveillance.

• Privacy matters even if “you have nothing to hide”

  • We all care about our privacy, though we might not know it. It is why we lock the door when we go to the toilet; or why we close the curtains to stop people looking into our homes.

• Your Computer Isn't Yours

  • osx Big Su 2020 - Every app load MUST contact apple. This is unencrypted and apple can refuse to launch your app
  • Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look - it just sends developer certificate
  • Developer certificate isn't quite as bad as app hash, but it still makes apple gatekeeper and can hold other companies to ransom

Windows 10 "Welcome to your new machine" .. No, it's mine .. I get to welcome you to it .. I dislike the wording.

• My Phone Was Spying on Me, so I Tracked Down the Surveillants Dec 2020
  • There are 160 apps on my phone. What they’re actually doing, I don’t know. But I decided to find out
• location-tracking-cell-phone
• Smart Move, Google
  • maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps - google have your location across all it's services
• Spy pixels in emails have become endemic bbc 2021

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/technology/article-what-kind-of-data-is-my-new-car-collecting-about-me-nearly-everything/

Privacy over ad's? https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2020/01/were_banning_facial_.html https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/Chameleon-Attack.aspx

https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/online-advertising-strategies/

w3ctag/design-reviews#467 (comment)

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/special-sunglasses-license-plate-dresses-juggalo-face-paint-how-to-be-anonymous-in-the-age-of-surveillance/

I know what torrents your download

Headphones are collecting too much personal data - Headphones collect menstruation data?!

• Look Up Unknown Phone Numbers using Facebook Reset Password or WhatsApp
  • reverse image search profile picture

Facial Recognition

• How Normal am I? Local facial recognition algorithm and commentary video
  • Lie about ago
  • Facial fingerprint - find social media profiles with your face
  • Assess emotion at interview
• Live Facial Recognition MET Police UK 2022

GeoTaging Images

• I Know Where Your Cat Lives
  • Searches for images of cats and if the image has a geotag, put it on a map

  • This project explores two uses of the internet: one that promotes sharing for the sociable and humorous appreciation of domesticated felines, and one in which the status quo of personal data usage is exploited by startups and international mega-corporations, who are riding the wave of decreased privacy for all

Encryption

https://latacora.micro.blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted.html

• Security through encryption and security despite encryption
  • The EU want encryption (for their own industry, commerce, population) .. but at the same time don't want encryption because they want to fight crime and things they think are against their interests.
  • They want their cake and eat it?

Censorship

• Edward Snowden on the Dangers of Silicon Valley Censorship - System Update with Glenn Greenwald youtube video nov 2020 31min
  • Marketing/Advertising, what's the difference between that and public manipulation?
  • In the old days
    • people choose their name/identity
    • people were there by choice - nobody needed to be on the internet to get a job
  • Increasingly Competitive and commercial space as governments and companies moved in. A space less for the individual
  • Decentralised ot centralised
  • Even if you setup your own email server - when you send an email - google has a copy of it because the recipients have gmail accounts
  • No process - if your gmail account goes - your stranded - you are not a google customer
  • there is already a law for if you incite volence that you go to court - more power?
  • the emotionaly charged game - if you don't give us these powers you agree with pedophila or terrorisum
  • how many pedophiles and terrorists are there?
  • preasure can be applied to companies. Compaines can go beyond what the law affords and take action against these minority groups. Compaines are advertising platoforms and have to bow to pressure.
  • If you don't trust the govenment to make these descisions, then why would you trust companies? Companies can change without elections are and largely out of your control
  • influence == power
• TED: How we take back the internet | Edward Snowden 2014
  • We have warrents and due process for monitoring because giving a gonvenment complete overside is simply too great to be ignored
  • The public interest is not always the same as a national interest
  • Going to war with people that are not our enemy and are not a threat does not make us safe. The intenernet is not the enemy, our encompy is not the enemy. Any other company (regarless of country) is a part of socity
• A Joint Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community
  • Anti-Censorship do good work in helping people in China and Iran stay connected annonimously without leaking identity. This is important for their life

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51732042

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-opt-out-illusion/

https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/

• Blocked.org.uk - Find out which providers block your site

  • ORG’s Blocked project finds almost 1 in 5 sites are blocked by filters
  • Local singing teacher blocked because of - drug references - WTF?! So I alerted her with blocked.org.uk

• ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

• DNS Watch - No Censorship. No Bullshit. Just DNS.

Ethics

(link to computingAcrossCurriculum) https://macwright.org/2020/06/21/ethics-in-geo.html

• Age of Surveillance Capitalism Chap 1 Section VI

  • Summary of the book by the author

• ‘You Have Zero Privacy’ Says an Internal Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) Presentation. Inside the Force’s Web Spying Program - ‘Project Wide Awake’ files obtained by The Tyee show efforts to secretly buy and use powerful surveillance tools while downplaying capabilities.

  • It’s one thing to understand that an individual will see your passing communication, and quite another thing to assume that everything you’ve ever written will be subjected to an analysis by the state.

  • It changes the relationship between the citizen to the state, and their expectations of privacy in their communications,

Telemetry

Software collects metrics by default. some software is so poorly tested they they will not start without dns. (I had a container (I inspected docker-compose source) that would not init. Wish I could remember the case study in more detail)

• Disable all Telemetry and Data Collection in Mozilla Firefox Quantum
• Intent to Remove: HTTP/2 and gQUIC server push - A case study of why/how telemetry is useful and important.

Email

• What's in email tracking links and pixels?

Browsers

• "Brave", the false sensation of privacy

Cookies

EU has law of consent

• [cookies]

Ownership of digital

You don't own your Kindle books, Amazon reminds customer

Unsorted

• Anonymous Review Site Glassdoor Not So Anonymous

  • Don't trust companies to protect your identity - they wont

• Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon

  • The "Server-Side Tagging" version of the Google tool allows you to bypass browser and other adblocker protections

  • Good explantion of client-side tag manager - this is a server side tag manager - can't be blocked

• A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector - Get report of trackers/cookies on any website

• No More Google Privacy-friendly alternatives to Google that don't track you

• You might not need to store plaintext email addresses - when you run a webservice, do you NEED to store the email address?

• Microsoft files patent to create chatbots from your dead loved ones

• How to leave Google and why

• Developer of #Terraria

  • @Google my account has now been disabled for over 3 weeks. I still have no idea why, and after using every resource I have to get this resolved you have done nothing but given me the runaround.

  • My phone has lost access to thousands of dollars of apps on @GooglePlay. I had just bought LOTR 4K and can't finish it. My @googledrive data is completely gone. I can't access my @YouTube channel. The worst of all is losing access to my @gmail address of over 15 years.

  • I absolutely have not done anything to violate your terms of service, so I can take this no other way than you deciding to burn this bridge. Consider it burned. #Terraria for @GoogleStadia is canceled. My company will no longer support any of your platforms moving forward.

• There is no recourse or process to get your account back.

• De-Google

  • Android without Google? How is that Possible?
  • Is loading the Android Custom ROM - LineageOS Safe for Privacy?

• Apple image hash checker

  • I’ve had independent confirmation from multiple people that Apple is releasing a client-side tool for CSAM scanning tomorrow. This is a really bad idea.

  • Hash colisions - government enforcement

• Messaging and Chat Control - The End of the Privacy of Digital Correspondence EU July 2021

• Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California (again!)

  • Tried to ask Signal for all their user data, but they simply do not have any data on their users. It's all end to end encrypted

• Google says geofence warrants make up one-quarter of all US demands

  • geofence warrants == court order to identifying all people in a radius
  • Can be used to target decent and identify innocent bystander's are troublemakers

• Biometric and Behavioural Mass Surveillance in EU Member States

• Mullvad VPN We are removing the option to create new subscriptions - no more credit card and PayPal recurring payments - privacy has to win

• Facebook Says Apple is Too Powerful. They're Right.

  • That means that Apple doesn’t just control which apps its mobile customers can use; it also has near-total control over which literary works they can listen to. Apple may have not set out to control its customers’ reading habits, but having attained it, it jealously guards that control. When Apple’s customers express interest in using rival app stores, Apple goes to extraordinary technical and legal lengths to prevent them from doing so.

• Help me identify possible tracking device found in my car (gist.github.com) *

• This Is the Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

  • ... obtained court documents that show Facebook gave police a teenager’s private chats about her abortion. Cops then used those chats to seize her phone and computer

• iOS Privacy: Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

• It's crazy how much Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data

Censorship

• “Terminated” - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

  • YouTube terminated the entire Cornell University Library account on their site. All of it.

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• Cory Doctrow - Article about CS students and heat sensors under desks to monitor desk use - privacy violation + saga

• Blog / Extracting Zooming Shots From 600 hours of Police Helicopter Surveillance Footage

  • Surveillance helicopter footage, a lot of nothing - but futuristic tech!

• The internet is about to get a lot safer 2023 - Europe's big tech bill is coming to fruition. Here's what you need to know.

• Smartphones With Popular Qualcomm Chip Secretly Share Private Information With US Chip-Maker

• Some observations on the final text of the European Digital Identity framework (eIDAS) Nov 2023

  • Weakening the security of the web

• The People Behind Project 2025 Want to Reveal the Identities of Wikipedia Editors

  • The Heritage Foundation sets its sites on the world's free online encyclopedia.
  • Find the identity of the jews behind the page updates ... oh my god!