background preloader

Privacy and personal rights on-line

Facebook Twitter

Sherry Turkle’s ‘Reclaiming Conversation’ Photo.

Sherry Turkle’s ‘Reclaiming Conversation’

Florida teen charged with felony hacking for using password his teacher showed him. A 14-year-old middle school student in Holiday, Florida, was arrested this week and charged with "an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access," which is a felony, the Tampa Bay Times reported this week.

Florida teen charged with felony hacking for using password his teacher showed him

The student reportedly used an administrator password to log into a teacher's computer and change the background image to a photo of two men kissing. He was initially suspended for three days for the prank, but Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco suggested that the criminal charges relate to the level of access he had obtained by logging onto the network as an administrator, according to the report.

For example, he could have seen the questions for the state's standardized tests, although Green said he didn't actually tamper with anything other than the teacher's PC background image, the report says. Why I’m Saying Goodbye to Apple, Google and Microsoft — Backchannel. Part of my conversion stems from an abiding distaste for corporate and government control-freakery.

Why I’m Saying Goodbye to Apple, Google and Microsoft — Backchannel

If we believe in liberty, we have to realize that we take risks to be more free. If we believe in competition, we sometimes have to intervene as a society to ensure that it’s fair. One way we try to ensure fair competition is enforcement of laws designed to promote it, notably antitrust rules that seek to prevent dominant companies from abusing their dominance. Data_and_goliath_excerpt_the_best_ways_to_undermine_surveillance.2. Illustration by Robert Neubecker This essay is excerpted from Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier, published by W.

data_and_goliath_excerpt_the_best_ways_to_undermine_surveillance.2

W. Norton & Co. Inc. Surveillance is both a technological and a legal problem. Political solutions require group effort but are generally limited to specific countries. The death of privacy. Single Point of Failure: The Day Google Forgot To Check Passwords. How technical illiteracy threatened the privacy of hundreds of retired police officers. By Nathaniel Mott On March 18, 2014 The names, addresses, and social security numbers of 300 retired police officers and their dependents in Syracuse, New York were mistakenly shared Friday when a city employee sent an email with “an attachment” containing all of that information to another retired officer.

How technical illiteracy threatened the privacy of hundreds of retired police officers

That officer says that he immediately deleted the information from his computer and warned City Hall about the breach. A letter was sent to affected officers and their families, the local news station assured its viewers that the police department won’t make the mistake again, and this was labeled a small problem in a city about to enter the throes of March Madness. The Innovation of Loneliness. The Internet is Owned. How Your Data Are Being Deeply Mined by Alice E. Marwick. The recent revelations regarding the NSA’s collection of the personal information and the digital activities of millions of people across the world have attracted immense attention and public concern.

How Your Data Are Being Deeply Mined by Alice E. Marwick

But there are equally troubling and equally opaque systems run by advertising, marketing, and data-mining firms that are far less known. Using techniques ranging from supermarket loyalty cards to targeted advertising on Facebook, private companies systematically collect very personal information, from who you are, to what you do, to what you buy. After Checking Your Bank Account, Remember To Log Out, Close The Web Browser, And Throw Your Computer Into The Ocean. At Chase Bank, we recognize the value of online banking—it’s quick, convenient, and available any time you need it.

After Checking Your Bank Account, Remember To Log Out, Close The Web Browser, And Throw Your Computer Into The Ocean

Unfortunately, though, the threats posed by malware and identity theft are very real and all too common nowadays. That’s why, when you’re finished with your online banking session, we recommend three simple steps to protect your personal information: log out of your account, close your web browser, and then charter a seafaring vessel to take you 30 miles out into the open ocean and throw your computer overboard. Yes, online banking security is as easy as one-two-three! BFP Breaking News- Omidyar’s PayPal Corporation Said To Be Implicated in Withheld NSA Documents. For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe. Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent.

For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe

The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the locations of their customers to deliver calls and other services to them. Surveillance systems are secretly collecting these records to map people’s travels over days, weeks or longer, according to company marketing documents and experts in surveillance technology. The world’s most powerful intelligence services, such as the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ, long have used cellphone data to track targets around the globe.

But experts say these new systems allow less technically advanced governments to track people in any nation — including the United States — with relative ease and precision. Teenager. It's not a surprise that the judges in this case felt pressure to come down hard on Cam, since the local media has been quick to sensationalize the story and demonize a harmless teenager.

teenager

Before charges were even formally filed, local newspapers were already posting pictures from Cam's facebook and pointing to "disturbing" posts like "Fuck politics. Fuck Obama. Fuck the government! " and "satanic" imagery (like some image from a metal band's poster.) All of this is free speech that is 100% protected by the 1st Amendment. But Fox News went so far as to say that Cam's facebook profile had images that they "couldn't show on TV. " How Conspiracy Theories Go Viral. The baffling case of the disappearing Malaysia Airlines plane has been a breeding ground for wacky theories and conspiracies over the last week: That the plane was testing cloaking technology, was hijacked by China, was shot down by North Korea, was shot down by the US, was stolen, time-traveled back to the 70s and was reverse-engineered to create the original 777, was taken by aliens and is currently on Mars, or is hiding in Pakistan "like Bin Laden," to name a few.

How Conspiracy Theories Go Viral

It’s just the latest incident to garner this kind of wild speculation. Since the advent of the web and explosion of social media, unsubstantiated claims, false reports, and conspiracies both reasonable and ridiculous, tend to spread like wildfire, reverberating through the internet echo chamber and picking up steam along the way until truth and nonsense are indistinguishable. Indeed, last year a World Economic Forum report listed "massive digital misinformation" as one of the main risks for modern-day society.

Tweeting turns serious, teen girl stabbed in Bayard Sunday. By Susan Dunlap sdunlap@scsun-news.com on Twitter @SCSunNews Posted: 02/19/2014 06:22:58 PM MST SILVER CITY >> An argument that started on the social media site Twitter ended with a 17-year-old Bayard girl being stabbed in the early morning hours of Sunday. Cypherpunk rising: WikiLeaks, encryption, and the coming surveillance dystopia. 29inShare Jump To Close. The Internet is Owned. Oversight: Thank you for volunteering, citizen. Should Doctors ‘Google’ Their Patients? Spy Agencies Tap Data Streaming From Phone Apps. When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spies could be lurking in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information, according to secret British intelligence documents.

In their globe-spanning surveillance for terrorism suspects and other targets, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have been trying to exploit a basic byproduct of modern telecommunications: With each new generation of mobile phone technology, ever greater amounts of personal data pour onto networks where spies can pick it up. According to dozens of previously undisclosed classified documents, among the most valuable of those unintended intelligence tools are so-called leaky apps that spew everything from the smartphone identification codes of users to where they have been that day. Continue reading the main story OPEN Document And while Mr. Detailed Profiles.

Stallman: How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand? Editor’s Note: Given Richard Stallman’s longtime role in promoting software that respects user freedom (including GNU, which just turned 30), his suggested “remedies” for all the ways technology can be re-designed to provide benefits while avoiding surveillance — like the smart meters example he shares below — seem particularly relevant. The current level of general surveillance in society is incompatible with human rights. To recover our freedom and restore democracy, we must reduce surveillance to the point where it is possible for whistleblowers of all kinds to talk with journalists without being spotted. To do this reliably, we must reduce the surveillance capacity of the systems we use.

Using free/libre software, as I’ve advocated for 30 years, is the first step in taking control of our digital lives. We can’t trust non-free software; the NSA uses and even creates security weaknesses in non-free software so as to invade our own computers and routers. Remedy for Travel Surveillance. Naked Citizens - World. Texas teen charged with making terroristic threat after online joke. The Ecuadorian Library — Geek Empire. Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With That Location Data.