HazDat
12Nov/09

Infidelity — There’s a map for that.

How Google might know what you did last summer -- even if you forgot.

google-latitude-781430Google Latitude is a service that allows users to see and share their location on a Google map live and in real-time. The service runs on most smart-phones, regardless of service provider, including Apple's iPhone, Windows Mobile, the Palm Pre, and, of course, Google's Android. Latitude relies on a combination of GPS, cellular tower triangulation, and wi-fi triangulation. Having brushed-up on the service for a recent National Public Radio (NPR) Interview, I have since considered Latitude one-part creepy, and two-parts cool. However, the creepy / cool ratio may be shifting.

This week Google introduced a new and improved Google Latitude -- with enhanced features like "Location History".  With Location History Latitude users can go back in time retrace their footsteps, and even see where they stayed-put, and for how long. Kind of cool...yet, very creepy. But practical?

Imagine, for example, you're the owner of a Palm Pre on Sprint's 3G Now Network , having trouble remembering where your were when you told your spouse you were somewhere else? Now, there's a map for that!

But wait -- there's more! How about "Location Alerts"? Certainly, a application that would alert you when a particular individual, say a family member, has left work or school, would be very practical. After a while of being alerted every time someone is, or has arrived, exactly where you would expect them to be, however, could get old. So, Google's geniuses stepped it up a notch. According to Google, Latitude will learn user's patterns and behavior so that alerts can be issued when a person has strayed from their routine -- left at a different time, or arrived at a different place.

For example, if you decide to  staycation with your mistress, you can receive a handy alert when your spouse leaves the office earlier than usual. Or, if traffic is particularly light, Latitude will let you know when it's time for a quick window-exit.

Best of all, when the jig is up, no one has to know, because -- for now -- Google is making all these free services available to you, and no one else... at least, without subpoena powers.

This is deception... on the Now Network.

Filed under: Big Brother, Cellular, Future Proof, GPS, Internet, Law, Privacy, Social Networking, Society, Surveillance No Comments
28Oct/09

Location, Location, Location.

Recently, I had a wonderful opportunity to play a game of hi-tech "phone tag" on the streets of San Francisco with Reporter Martin Kaste from NPR's "All Things Considered". Late last Summer I was  asked if I would be willing to sit down for an interview for a story he was researching about location privacy. But, instead of agreeing to meet Kaste, I told him he had to find me.

With the aid of his GPS-equipped smart-phone, some software, a little patience, and a good pair of walking shoes, he was able to "tag" me sipping a latte outside a coffee shop on Market St. Of course, with my own GPS, and software-equipped smart-phone, I was able to see him coming. What follows are the fruits of that encounter:

Digital Bread Crumbs: Following Your Cell Phone Trail

Jeff Fischbach is a little bit like those guys in The Matrix — when he puts on his shades and looks at the world, he sees data.

Walking down the street in San Francisco, he points out all the devices that record people's comings and goings: digital parking meters, apartment intercom systems, digital security cameras...

Audio and transcript: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114241860&ft=1&f=1019

Filed under: Big Brother, Cellular, Crime, Future Proof, GPS, Internet, Law, Privacy, Social Networking, Society, Surveillance, Tracking No Comments
28Sep/09

The problem is, banks have too many humans.

What do you call the sacrifice of one person's privacy in an attempt to save the privacy of over 1300? If you're a bank, you call it collateral damage.

rmb-logoWhen I was a kid I earned my first paycheck passing out fliers for a neighbor who was starting a pool cleaning business. With my first $13 in hand, my grandfather took me to the a bank in walking distance to my home, got me a tour of the vault from the branch manager, a neat pouch to hold all my coin, a full explanation of the principals of savings and loans, and helped me open my very first savings account. Believe it or not, back then, all my account information was stored on a double-sided index card behind the teller.

Today, things are much more complicated. Gone are the index cards and passbooks, most of the employees, tellers and branches, a good deal of the service, interest-bearing accounts with only $13 in them, and a lot of the customers' money. Today, it's all computerized, and most banks even attach various penalties to discourage human contact.

I know an awful lot about electronic data systems, but I don't pretend to fully understand how the modern banking system works. Sometimes, I think I do--from a mechanical (as opposed to financial) perspective. But then something convinces me that I don't. For instance, you know how every so often your bank emails its customers' names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and loan information to Gmail? ... CONTINUE READING »

Filed under: Computers, Crime, Duh, Identity Theft, Internet, Law, Privacy, Search & Seizure, Security Continue reading
23Sep/09

You Tweet, therefore: YOU ARE HERE.

TwitterVisionHow Twitter says they'll hide your location from twits with subpoenas.

Recently, Twitter announced that they would be adding geolocation features to their service, allowing users to embed their physical location in their Twitter feed. As not to alarm: Twitter has always maintained that this would be an opt-in feature. But, frankly, any web site you visit is privy to some information about your physical location by virtue of the IP address assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from a group of IP addresses reserved for your neighborhood. The logs kept by a web server, combined with a subpoena to the appropriate ISP, usually yield a street address for the subscriber assigned that IP address.

SmarterWare's Gina Trapani (formerly of Lifehacker.com) is attending the Twitter Conference in LA. She's posted updates explaining how Twitter plans to deploy this service and how they intend to protect its Twitter geolocation users from subpoenas. According to Gina, "Twitter will scrub geo-data stored in tweets more than 14 days old to avoid getting subpoena’d about a user’s location in the past. They will outright delete the location information from their database, not just anonymize." ... CONTINUE READING »

Filed under: Big Brother, Computers, Crime, Future Proof, GPS, Internet, Law, Privacy, Search & Seizure, Social Networking, Society, Surveillance, Tracking Continue reading
10Sep/09

Let’s play $100 Password!

$100 Dollar Password

You probably won't find much sympathy for Elane Cioni. A mistress scorned, she's been convicted of hacking into the email account of her former-boss, the man with whom she was having an affair, and then his wife, his other girlfriends, and even his kids. (I suppose, that doesn't engender much sympathy for her main-target either.) But, you might be surprised to find out Cioni's not a very good hacker.

You might also be surprised to learn that there's a market for professional hacking and, similar to many legitimate professions, the jobs are going offshore. When it comes to password hacking, those who can, do. Those who can't, outsource. When Cioni wanted back into her boyfriend's life she turned to one of an increasing number of web sites with offers like this:

"Need to monitor your Child? Your Spouse? Your Boyfriend/Girlfriend? We Hack Passwords for $100 USD. We Crack all major web based emails. This include Hotmail, Yahoo! AOL and Gmail. We Provide Proofs Before payment." ... CONTINUE READING »

Filed under: Computers, Crime, Future Proof, Hacking, Identity Theft, Internet, Law, Privacy, Search & Seizure, Security Continue reading
9Sep/09

Electronic privacy is for the birds.

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Wikipedia

In a match between Bird-brain vs. broadband, you might be surprised to see who wins.

An old friend of mine pointed out what sounded like an interesting story out of South Africa. Tired of slow download speeds, a South African call center pitted a racing pigeon against Telkom South Africa Ltd.’s ADSL data service to see which could move a 4GB file faster. In total it took just under three hours for the bird to fly approximately 50 miles--about 30 times faster than the ADSL service, which had only downloaded 4% of the file in the same time.

I'm afraid we're not really comparing apapane to apapane, or even apapane to ostriches. I doubt, for instance, that the pigeon would fair quite as well over, say, a 500 or 5000 mile "data run". ... CONTINUE READING »

Filed under: Computers, Duh, Future Proof, Hacking, Identity Theft, Internet, Law, Off-Topic, Privacy, Search & Seizure, Security, Surveillance Continue reading
7Sep/09

Taking a dump 21st Century style.

Gordon Bell (Source: Gizmodo)

Gordon Bell (Source: Gizmodo)

Every time Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell takes a dump he learns something about himself. For instance, he know knows that he's visited 221,173 web sites in the last 8 years, and written or received 156,041 emails. He also knows how well his heart is pumping, how many miles he's walked, where he's been, and even with whom he's spoken and visited. In fact, from what most of us consider a waste product, Bell can even decipher how many songs he's listened to, and see pictures videos of the places he's been and the things he's seen.

Fantastic as this may sound, Bell is not the only person on earth who can do this. The same product is flushed from nearly every person every day in North America, and other industrialized nations. More significantly, while most of us are ignorant or deny the very possibility, the government and large corporations are secretly extracting much the same information from each of us that Bell collects himself. ... CONTINUE READING »

Filed under: Big Brother, Future Proof, Internet, Privacy, Surveillance, Tracking Continue reading
31Aug/09

U.S. Gov. authorizes long-layovers for laptops.

DHSIt's sometimes hard to remember, but it wasn't that long ago that most carry-on's bypassed so much as an x-ray screening. Then came the obligatory laptop and shoe removal. And, eventually, the "drink 'em or lose 'em" rule, accompanied by the ever-perplexing debate over what constitutes a "liquid", and how many ounces of it you can carry through a TSA line.

(I once overheard a TSA agent explaining to a traveler that, "anything that can be liquefied is a liquid". I felt compelled to explain that, at the right temperature, the whole airplane could be liquefied--but kept my mouth shut, for fear of missing my flight.)

In recent months, some international travelers have been greeted with an indignity that makes the "patdown" look like a "fist-bump". In the past 10 months, over 1000 people had their laptop computers "detained" and subsequently searched. Most would assume that this was with probable cause, but, the DHS maintains that probable cause is not required for such a search. ... CONTINUE READING »

Filed under: Computers, Law, Politics, Privacy, Search & Seizure, Security Continue reading
28Aug/09

Win Ben Bernanke’s Money (Irony)

It looks like, for some, the stimulus package wasn't enough. In an ironic twist, the man often criticized for moving Trillions from the Federal Reserve Bank into the hands of failing corporations has had a far lesser sum removed from his personal bank account.

Conan O'Brien"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been a victim of identity theft. His credit card company became suspicious when they noticed repeated purchases of large, failing American car companies."

- Conan O'Brien (Aired August 27, 2009)

Just days after President Obama announced Bernanke's renomination to the Federal Reserve, officials revealed that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was a victim of a wide-spread identity theft ring ... CONTINUE READING »

Filed under: Crime, Politics, Privacy, Security, Society, Uncategorized Continue reading
27Aug/09

Search & Seizure: 9th Cir. Appeals calls “foul” on broad computer searches

When searching a spreadsheet containing the drug test results of 104 professional baseball players federal prosecutors went too far, says the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

After lawfully executing a warrant on a Long Beach, CA drug testing lab for the test results of 10 players, agents uncovered a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with results of every player that was tested in the program. The government argued that 94 of those results were in "plain sight".

In a 9-2 decision, the court ruled:

"The government should, in future warrant applications, forswear reliance on the plain view doctrine or any similar doctrine that would allow it to retain data to which it has gained access only because it was required to segregate seizable from non-seizable data. If the government doesn’t consent to such a waiver, the magistrate judge should order that the seizable and non-seizable data be separated by an independent third party under the supervision of the court, or deny the warrant altogether." ... CONTINUE READING »

Filed under: Better Late Than Never, Computers, Crime, Future Proof, Internet, Law, Politics, Privacy, Search & Seizure, Society Continue reading
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