net.wars: An affair to remember Politicians change; policies remain the same. Or if, they don't, they return like the monsters in horror movies that end with the epigraph, "It's still out there..." Cut to 1994, my first outing to the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference. I saw: passionate discussions about the right to strong cryptography. The counterargument from government and law enforcement and security service types was that yes, strong cryptography was a fine and excellent thing at protecting communications from prying eyes and for that very reason we needed key escrow to ensure that bad people couldn't say evil things to each other in perfect secrecy. Eventually, the Clipper chip was cracked by Matt Blaze, and the needs of electronic commerce won out over the paranoia of the military and restrictions on the use and export of strong crypto were removed. Cut to 2000 and the run-up to the passage of the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. And so to this week. Wendy M.
What's Good About iPhone's Location Tracking - Darkreading The iPhone tracking disclosure this week showcases an unfortunate tendency for device manufacturers to focus excessively on their needs and forget those of their users Over the past week there has been a lot of time spent by seemingly outraged people finding that the iPhone tracks and records the user's location. The problem, as I see it, is that the file isn’t secure -- not that Apple was misusing the information, but there has yet been no identification of anyone misusing that information yet. Granted, now that folks know it is there, that will likely change. I think the real problem with this capability whether it is found in an Apple or Android device (Android phones have this capability built in as well, and you can generally turn it off) is that it isn’t overt and used for our benefit. I’ve actually been a big believer in location-tracking but that is because I’m concerned about protecting loved ones and getting help should I need it quickly. More Insights
Blog de NADIA RAKIB Alors, la discrimination devient l'acte par lequel on met de côté ou on distingue une personne notamment par sa couleur de peau, son genre, sa sexualité, sa religion, ses opinions, un handicap, le physique, etc. Plus pernicieuse, la discrimination peut-être directe ou indirecte. Dans le premier cas, la discrimination est patente et peut-être constatée et dénoncée. Pour y voir plus clair, constitue une discrimination directe toute « situation dans laquelle, sur le fondement de son appartenance ou de sa non-appartenance, vraie ou supposée, à une ethnie ou une race, sa religion, ses convictions, son âge, son handicap, son orientation sexuelle ou son sexe, une personne est traitée de manière moins favorable qu’une autre ne l’est, ne l’a été ou ne l’aurait été dans une situation comparable ». Lire la suite ...
On Facebook Apps Leaking User Identities The Wall Street Journal today reports that many Facebook applications are handing over user information—specifically, Facebook IDs—to online advertisers. Since a Facebook ID can easily be linked to a user’s real name, third party advertisers and their downstream partners can learn the names of people who load their advertisement from those leaky apps. This reportedly happens on all ten of Facebook’s most popular apps and many others. The Journal article provides few technical details behind what they found, so here’s a bit more about what I think they’re reporting. The content of a Facebook application, for example FarmVille, is loaded within an iframe on the Facebook page. The content loaded by farmville.com in the iframe contains the game alongside third party advertisements. And there’s the issue. Facebook policy prohibits application developers from passing this information to advertising networks and other third parties.
Apple, Google summoned to Senate hearing on mobile device privacy Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has called upon Apple and Google to participate in a hearing with the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law in order to discuss consumer privacy. The hearing will take place on May 10 at 10am EDT in Washington, where witnesses from the US Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Center for Democracy and Technology, and others will talk about what the latest mobile technology means for privacy and the law. “Recent advances in mobile technology have allowed Americans to stay connected like never before and put an astonishing number of resources at our fingertips,” Franken said in a statement. Device privacy has been an increasingly important topic to lawmakers in recent years, but discussion came to a head last week when two researchers revealed that the iPhone and 3G iPad keep a log file of every location the user has ever been, whether the iOS Location Services are turned on or not.
Actualit?s droit du travail, par Artemis/Velourine Probation Limitations on Internet and Facebook Use Violate First Amendment -- In re J.J. [Post by Venkat] In re J.J., Case No. D055603 (Cal. Ct. J.J. is a 15 year old who was found to have received a stolen motorcycle. [J.J.] shall not use a computer that contains any encryption, hacking, cracking, scanning, keystroke monitoring, security testing, steganography [explanatory link added for others who may have also thought that this was a typo], Trojan or virus software. He challenged these conditions as being overly broad and vague. The court acknowledges that juvenile courts have broader discretion in fashioning conditions of probation than courts do with adults, but nevertheless noted that probation conditions must comport with constitutional restrictions. Through the use of chat rooms, any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox. [We know which side the court comes down on in the debate Malcolm Gladwell started over the efficacy of cyber-activism!]
Applesauce Wendy M Grossman looks at the iPhone tracking 'scandal' and argues that it is just a symptom of a wider problem! Image: CC-AT-SA Flickr: bojo (Bobbie Johnson) Modern life is full of so many moments when you see an apparently perfectly normal person doing something that not so long ago was the clear sign of a crazy person. They're walking down the street talking to themselves? Last week's net.wars ("The open zone") talked about the difficulty of finding the balance between usability, on the one hand, and giving users choice, flexibility, and control, on the other. The story emerged this week when two researchers presenting at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference presented an open-source utility they'd written to allow users to get a look at the data the iPhone was saving. So the news is not quite as bad as it first sounded: your device is spying on you, but it's not telling anybody. The question is: how best can consumers be enabled to make informed decisions? Wendy M.
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