Link Roundup – 04/25/13

Milo Yiannopoulos has some concerns about Google Glass.

In the future, robots will grade your college essays.

The IRS can probably read your email without a warrant.

The ATF, not wanting to be left out, would like to know more about you, and find it all out more easily.

UC Irvine law dean Erwin Chemerinsky thinks the only way to eliminate inequality is compulsory public schooling, and the outlaw of private schooling.

The NSA data center in Utah will be able to store a truly mind-boggling amount of data. Data on, you know, all of us… But hey, at least it’ll create jobs.

The EU becomes increasingly intolerant of free speech.

The Federalist Society has begun Executive Branch Review, a website keeping tabs on the acts of regulatory agencies (which, fun fact, produce some 90% of laws).

Jonathan Adler takes issue Rickie Solinger’s accounting of the effect of Roe on abortion statistics.

Lawmakers, having decided that what’s good for you is bad for them, are looking to exempt themselves from the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).

In other stupidity, the Obama administration thinks it would be a rather good idea to do the exact thing that eventually brought us the “economic downturn.”

And finally, in a rare bit of good news, a federal magistrate has refused a government request to compel decryption of a hard drive.

 

Privacy Link Roundup – 02/09/13

Your password is bad and you should feel bad. Seriously, review your passwords.

Facebook’s ‘Graph Search.’ Making something already horrifying slightly more horrific.

Speaking of Facebook, you do know they monitor, record, and turn over to police the things you write, right? Just making sure.

Your WiFi-enabled smartphone could be used to track where you go in stores, in the not-that-distant future. But maybe it’s not really that bad.

The NSA pinky-swears that there’s no domestic spying.

The DEA would very much like to snoop through the medical records of Oregon residents without the hassle of a warrant.

In a two-page paper, devoid of argument or analysis, the DHS concludes that it may seize travelers’ electronic devices for any reason at all. This power apparently extends 100 miles inland as well, which covers the entirety of Florida, Hawaii, several states in the northeast, and more than a handful of large cities.

They Shan’t be Content Till We’re All Naked and Tagged

“They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.” – Frédéric Bastiat

Or, perhaps another quote would have sufficed; “Who watches the watchmen?”

Technology marches on, steadily introducing new avenues for oppression. And it would seem that They won’t rest until the whole of us have been examined, numbered, and cataloged. “They” seems to encompass a variety of people and organizations, all of whom appear to believe that the key to making the world More Decent is just a little less privacy for everyone.

For example, the FBI wants tech companies to provide built-in back doors for government access. Presumably, if you oppose the idea of all your social media and communications software coming set up for government snooping, you probably support Terrorism and/or Child Pornography. The rhetoric nearly always frames these sorts of things as the false choice between either “Giving law enforcement the Tools It Needs” or “Letting the bogeymen win.”

The NSA, as part of their continuing efforts to elevate themselves to the status of comic book villains, informed the Senate’s Intelligence Oversight Committee that they essentially had no idea how many Americans had been spied on, couldn’t devote the manpower to figure this out without hindering their ability to continue spying, and would consider it a violation of citizens’ right to privacy to say, even if they did know. I don’t even know where to begin. I would certainly hope the NSA knows how many Americans it has intentionally spied upon. That should be simple math, counting up the files. I can certainly believe they may not know how many Americans have been accidentally spied upon. This is an agency that is attempting to analyze all communications. All. That they’d be unaware they were listening in on your calls to Aunt Mavis back at the farm until someone told them it was happening is completely believable. That doesn’t mean it’s okay, just that it seems like a very real possibility. But that they would tell the people in charge of their oversight that it would violate Americans’ privacy to know that their privacy was being violated is some kind of insane troll logic. It’s hard to formulate a good reply, because you don’t even know how they could arrive at that conclusion.

Or perhaps we do know how they arrive at these sorts of conclusions. These are the kind of statements and policies put forward by people who firmly believe themselves to be our betters. They’re doing important work; protecting the sloppy masses from the demons that live in this world. Demons we may not even be aware exist. Their power has made them arrogant, and given them a profound sense of entitlement. Good People do Good Things, and they are Good. As such, how could anything they do be Bad? They are the Holy Paladins, who’ve turned into the demons they fight.

Or perhaps they’re just thugs. It’s probably a coin toss.

But at least neither the FBI nor the NSA is advocating that everyone be bar-coded (at least not yet). Elizabeth Moon is suggesting just that. This is one of those fanciful ideas that probably seems just swell to the same sort of people who’d advocate for more surveillance. The idea being that our wise rulers are hampered greatly due to the fact that they’re not omniscient. So, naturally, instead of restricting their powers to minimize the damage they can do, we should instead try and get them as close to omniscience as possible.

Moving right along, a company called IDair has developed a system capable of reading fingerprints from six meters away.  The current customers are, predictably, military. But the creator sees the system being rolled out for civilian purposes, foreseeing, among other uses, being used as a way to purchase things without bringing your wallet. This presupposes a system where your bank account is tied to your biometrics. This is probably one of those things that either bothers your a lot, or not at all. I’m firmly in the first camp.

Perhaps IDair could be used right alongside the cameras being deployed around twenty San Francisco bars. SceneTap is the company installing the cameras, and the goal is apparently to build demographic data so that you know which establishments you’d like to go to, when you’re out on the town. Fair enough. But if we take a stroll down the slippery slope, how soon until a system such as this would be used for more objectionable purposes? Facial recognition linked to biometric databases could be used to determine whether a bar patron is of age. Or perhaps subpoenaed for a divorce case to cast one parent’s visits to the local watering hole as evidence of their unfitness to raise children. Crack open a cold one, and let slip the dogs of well-founded paranoia.

In the name of fighting the never-ending War on Drugs™, the DEA would like to scan the license plates of all vehicles travelling I-15 in Utah. Then they’d like to keep that data for two years. This would create a record of movement that I feel certain wouldn’t stay tied to only drug investigations. Mission creep inevitably sets in, and the data would surely be used for purposes that weren’t initially considered. And when they sort out who you are, they could just track you via your cell phone, even if it’s not GPS-enabled.

Or, as Futurama put it, describing the evil robotic Santa, “He knows when you’ve been sleeping! / He knows when you’re on the can! / He’ll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan!”

Yet Another Rehash of Social Media and “E-privacy”. Again.

It wasn’t “news” the last time I wrote about social media and the degredation of privacy, and it isn’t this time either. It wouldn’t have even been “news” if I’d written on this a couple of weeks ago, when I meant to.

Paul Venezia wrote a good article comparing what is being done in digital space to analogous situations in physical space. The thrust seems to be that these sort of snooping activities, all too common now, are widespread mainly because they’re very easy to do, and there aren’t as many laws concerning them. Reading your email is somehow different from reading your physical mail beacuse, well… it just is. Internet snooping, while it would certainly seem to violate the legal protections of privacy, doesn’t violate the letter. And that makes it A-okay.

A Texas researcher added an app to Facebook, allowing you to name enemies. I haven’t kept up with the story, if there’s indeed a story to keep up with, but by now the app could well have been axed. It’s well known that Facebook has consistently told users to get bent regarding a ‘dislike’ feature. The advertisers-first angle is, of course, spot-on. Facebook is an artificially friendly(ish) place, and that’s good for Facebook’s customers. If the only available options are to either like something, or ignore it, that suits companies just fine. No one can ever hate them, and they’re all seperated only by the degree to which people love them. It’s hard to fault Facebook, really. Most of us would probably do something quite similar, if hawking users’ information would net us $4.27 billion dollars during the year.

On the topic of Facebook, the House shot down a bill that would have outlawed the practice of employers requesting Facebook login information. Also fun, they’re claiming rights to the word ‘book.’ And here’s a look at what Facebook sends police if they subpeona your account.

More in privacy and security news:

Found on Popehat, the Ninth Circuit rejects the government’s attempts to base criminal prosecution on violations of usage agreements. The majority opinion is a pretty entertaining read, too.

The NSA, fattened on post-9/11 dollars, is building a gigantic data center in Utah. I’ll have more to say on this in the future, because it’s a Really Big Deal, but for now I’m just somewhat alarmed. I’d encourage you to be alarmed as well. I’d also encourage you to download a copy of TrueCrypt, and encrypt all your data. Maybe your email too, just for giggles. If my tax dollars are in some small way paying for this, I want to make sure they’ve got plenty to keep them entertained. AES encryption with a suitably strong password should keep even the government busy for a while.

Get out your chemicals and rubber hose, the FBI wants to “advance the science of interrogation.”