Category: Privacy, Surveillance, & Security

Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance | WIRED

Many don’t understand why they should be concerned about surveillance if they have nothing to hide. It’s even less clear in the world of ‘oblique’ surveillance, given that apologists will always frame our use of information-gathering services like a mobile phone plan or Gmail as a choice. If everyone’s every action were being monitored, and everyone technically violates some obscure law at some time, then punishment becomes purely selective.

WE WON’T ALWAYS KNOW WHEN WE HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE

If the federal government had access to every email you’ve ever written and every phone call you’ve ever made, it’s almost certain that they could find something you’ve done which violates a provision in the 27,000 pages of federal statues or 10,000 administrative regulations.

Source: Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance | WIRED

Tools For Treason | TechCrunch

Our rights are extended and limited by the tools we use. The Internet has magnified our capability for free speech, but has pared down the reasonable expectation of privacy.

if we are to start over again, the founding principle of our tools for communication cannot be the establishment of trust, but the impossibility of trust.

The trick is to treat every communication as a potential act of terrorism. After all, isn’t that how the NSA does it? For them, it’s an excuse; For us, it should be a method. Start there, and you can build a system that works. Start there, and you will be told that you are building tools for treason. You are. … But your tools are neither necessary nor sufficient for such atrocities. Every kitchen knife is sharp enough to cut your fellow man; every hammer is hard enough to split skulls; every car is fast enough to mow down pedestrians. They have to be to fulfill their purposes, and it’s the same here.

because freedom is the freedom to do wrong as well as right

Source: Tools For Treason | TechCrunch

House members introduce bill to stop TV devices from monitoring consumers at home | TheHill

Reps. Mike Capuano (D-Mass.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) filed legislation that would regulate a new technology that targets TV ads to people by observing their activities and conversations while they watch TV via their set-top boxes and DVRs. Verizon, Intel and other tech companies have developed technology that utilizes infrared cameras and microphones built into cable boxes and DVRs to serve up targeted TV ads to people based on their conversations and activities while watching TV. Verizon had filed a patent application last year for a technology that would allow a set-top box to recognize when people are eating, cleaning, reading, laughing and doing other activities while watching TV and serve relevant ads to them according to that behavior. The application was rejected this past December.

Additionally, the bill requires a cable box or set-top device to notify consumers when the monitoring technology is activated and in use by posting the phrase “We are watching you” across their TV screens.

Source: House members introduce bill to stop TV devices from monitoring consumers at home | TheHill

Andrew Weissmann: FBI wants real-time Gmail, Dropbox spying power.

Last week, during a talk for the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C., FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann discussed some of the pressing surveillance and national security issues facing the bureau.

Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games (“the chat feature in Scrabble”) to Gmail and Google Voice. “Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,” he said.

Source: Andrew Weissmann: FBI wants real-time Gmail, Dropbox spying power.