Showing posts with label Privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Privacy. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

California Has 48 Hours to Pass This Privacy Bill or Else





Recent headlines have suggested that California lawmakers are considering a bill that would give Californians “unprecedented control over their data.” This is true but that is not the whole story.

What’s really happening is that California lawmakers have 48 hours to pass such a bill or the policy shit is going to hit the direct democracy fan. Because if lawmakers in the California Senate and House don’t pass this bill Thursday morning, and if California governor Jerry Brown doesn’t sign this bill into law Thursday afternoon, a stronger version of it will be on the state ballot in November. Then the 17 million or so people who actually vote in California would decide for themselves whether they should have the right to force companies to stop selling their data out the back door. Polls predict they would vote yes, despite the claims of tech companies that passage of the law would lead to businesses fleeing California. And laws passed via the ballot initiative process, rather than the legislative process, are almost impossible to change, so California would likely have this one on its books for a very long time....
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NSA SPYSCRAPERS ACROSS USA REVEALED



...Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.

The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.” It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it “has access to information that transits the nation,” but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies....





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Saturday, June 23, 2018

What’s striking about these revelations is they want to weaponize our phones to spy on us through the cameras and microphone.

Sahil Chinoy of the New York Times looked at some of the patents Facebook has applied for and the results he discovered are very creepy.


Here are some of the specific patents discussed in the New York Times article:

  • Predicting whether you’re in a romantic relationship by monitoring how often you visit another user’s page and the number of friends you have of the opposite gender
  • Using your posts to determine your personality traits, including emotional stability
  • Detecting defective pixels or lens scratches on your camera to find a connection with someone else who might be using the same camera
  • Detecting interference in the electrical power cable running to your TV to figure out what program is playing
  • Detecting your phone’s location in the middle of the night to capture your home address

Considering that Facebook has two billion active users, imagine the data they are amassing. If just a couple of these patents are put to practice, it dramatically increases the personal knowledge they will have about their subscribers. And from previous revelations, they are just as interested in learning personal details about those of us who don't use Facebook by gaining that information from our friends that are on Facebook.
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Wednesday, June 6, 2018

"This could be a very big problem. If @Facebook granted Huawei special access to social data of Americans this might as well have given it directly to the government of #China"



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Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Rep. David Cicilline, the ranking member of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, "Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress about whether users have 'complete control' over who sees our data on Facebook."





The New York Times reported late Sunday that Facebook may have shared user data with hardware companies as well. The social network "reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade," according to the report.

The story says Facebook began winding down the partnerships in April, but raises questions about whether they violated a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Under that agreement, the company committed to get users' express affirmative consent before doing anything running counter to their privacy preferences.

Lawmakers of both parties joined Cicilline in registering their displeasure....
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Thursday, May 24, 2018

“Facebook continued to explore and implement ways to track users’ location, to track and read their texts, to access and record their microphones on their phones, to track and monitor their usage of competitive apps on their phones, and to track and monitor their calls”



The claims of what would amount to mass surveillance are part of a lawsuit brought against the company by the former startup Six4Three, listed in legal documents filed at the superior court in San Mateo as part of a court case that has been ongoing for more than two years.
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Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Zuckerberg to the American people: Says Obama Staffer Lied About Alliance With Facebook






While testifying in front of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the former Obama campaign staffer who claimed the company allowed the Obama campaign to do things “they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side” was lying....

Scalise asked:
… One of the lead digital heads of the Obama campaign said recently: “Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn't stop us once they realized that was what we were doing. They came to office in the days following election recruiting and were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn't have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.” Now, that's a direct quote from one of the heads of the Obama digital team. What would she mean by they, Facebook, were on our side?
Zuckerberg responded that Facebook “didn't allow the Obama campaign to do anything that any developer on the platform wouldn't have otherwise been able to do.”

















“...We Vermonters believe in privacy,” Sen. Leahy proudly proclaimed.

Yet, a quick visit to his website, https://www.leahyforvermont.com/​, with the Chrome extension “Facebook Pixel Helper” reveals that Sen. Leahy has a Facebook pixel, invisible to users, that gathers user data of Facebook users who visit the site. (For a quick primer on what “pixels” do, visit Facebook’s resource guide on the data-gathering tool.)

That’s right, if you visit Senator Leahy’s campaign website, it’s likely your data, including your demographics and what pages you looked at on the site, have been placed into a custom data targeting audience by Leahy’s team....

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Watch Ted Cruz Confront Zuckerberg On Facebook's Huge Political Bias



"A great many Americans...are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship," said Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The Facebook CEO responded that he is committed to free expression of ideas on the social network.



































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Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Here's how to watch Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Senate testimony today









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Monday, April 9, 2018

"An apology from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not enough. "They have not changed and they continue to make billions of dollars."



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Wednesday, April 4, 2018

FACEBOOK Monitors Photos and Links in 'Private' Messages...



















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Thursday, March 29, 2018

How to download your data from Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat





Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal has raised awareness of the data it gathers on its users, and what's done with it.

Of course, Facebook is not alone. All social networks that turn their users' activity into money retain lots of information - some of it posted by those users, others generated by behavior.

And many give you the opportunity to download and view it. As I wrote last week, Facebook has a data-download feature. So do many of the major online services, including Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat.

Want to see what these networks have on you? Here's a guide to downloading your data from them.



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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

APPLE'S TIM COOK REBUKES FACEBOOK/ZUCKERBERG: PRIVACY A 'HUMAN RIGHT'





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Tuesday, November 21, 2017

No, you’re not being paranoid. Sites really are watching your every move



..."Collection of page content by third-party replay scripts may cause sensitive information, such as medical conditions, credit card details, and other personal information displayed on a page, to leak to the third-party as part of the recording," Steven Englehardt, a PhD candidate at Princeton University, wrote. "This may expose users to identity theft, online scams, and other unwanted behavior. The same is true for the collection of user inputs during checkout and registration processes."

Englehardt installed replay scripts from six of the most widely used services and found they all exposed visitors' private moments to varying degrees. During the process of creating an account, for instance, the scripts logged at least partial input typed into various fields. Scripts from FullStory, Hotjar, Yandex, and Smartlook were the most intrusive because, by default, they recorded all input typed into fields for names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, addresses, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth....

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Friday, November 17, 2017

An NSA breach and the new Hobbesian war on our privacy




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Tuesday, March 28, 2017

House passes bill undoing Obama internet privacy rule



The bill passed 215 to 205, with 15 Republicans joining 190 Democrats voting against it.

The FCC rules would have given consumers greater control over what their internet service provider can do with their data by requiring those companies to get permission from customers before using their information to create targeted advertisements.

The rules had not yet gone into effect....

The opposition to the regulations was led by Republicans and the telecom industry, who argue that they are too costly and confusing. They say the rules would have subjected internet service providers to restrictions that do not apply to websites like Facebook and Google, which also collect consumer information for data-driven ads....

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican who opposed the rules as a minority commissioner in October, applauded the vote in a statement, saying that he will work to impose a technology-neutral privacy regime.

“Moving forward, I want the American people to know that the FCC will work with the FTC to ensure that consumers’ online privacy is protected though a consistent and comprehensive framework," Pai said.

"In my view, the best way to achieve that result would be to return jurisdiction over broadband providers’ privacy practices to the FTC, with its decades of experience and expertise in this area.”

Democrats and activists waged a furious campaign against the bill, trying to peg Republicans as anti-privacy....

MEANWHILE:



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Thursday, March 2, 2017

Court says officials' emails are public records





The California Supreme Court says the public has the right to access emails and text messages about government business sent on California officials' private accounts.

The ruling by a unanimous court on Thursday clears up a murky area of law in the Golden State.

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Saturday, December 31, 2016

A Pentagon subcontractor (for Healthcare) has leaked personnel data on military staff, inc. top-secret clearance holders.



A Pentagon subcontractor has exposed reams of highly sensitive details belonging to active military healthcare professionals online, some of which hold top-secret security clearances.

Potomac Healthcare Solutions, a subcontractor brought on board to supply healthcare professionals to the US government and military organizations through its parent Washington, DC.-based contractor Booz Allen Hamilton was the source of the data....

Many of those named in the leaked personnel files are linked to SOCOM's Preservation of the Force and Families (POTFF) program, a scheme that aims to ease the psychological and physical burdens often placed on military personnel and their families through unit-specific teams of healthcare professionals and counsellors.

The files include names of social workers, physical therapists, nurses and assistants, doctors, and psychologists, which alongside detail the states of their residency, pay scales, contract start and term dates, units and work locations.

The documents supplied by Vickery also revealed a "master tracking list" of POTFF personnel personal data and their security clearance levels.

Some of those possess "top secret" clearance, including access to sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI) -- typically only granted to vetted staff who are then hired to work on sensitive special access programs.
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Friday, August 5, 2016

Every move you make. Every click you take. Every game you play. Every place you stay. They’ll be watching you.

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Thursday, July 7, 2016

TECHNICAL STUFF:

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