privacy » Absurd Intellectual

The case against Facebook

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 3 May 2010 Everything Else

May 032010

I urge you to read this post over at BoingBoing, regarding the creeping anti-privacy of Facebook. It’s a good roundup of recent posts on other blogs that strongly make a case about Facebook’s increasing evil activity.

I’ve been spending a little bit of time, recently, adding custom filters to my AdBlock Plus in Firefox, so that I no longer see customized-for-me Facebook widgets on websites like the Globe and Mail. (Normally, you can block the iFrame, and it works pretty well.)

Although Facebook is great at some of the things it does, it is also terrible at others — does anyone really think that Facebook Chat is better than MSN, for example? Or that Facebook messaging somehow trumps email?

What I’d really like is for an open-source social network to become viable. I don’t really like the closed-gardens of Facebook and MySpace and Bebo and Twitter. I mean, imagine if email was a closed garden — if Hotmail couldn’t email to Gmail, or if Outlook users just wouldn’t get messages from Eudora.

Since I don’t see that on the horizon anytime soon, I will just point out that Facebook is not providing you a service — at least, not for free. They only provide you the amount of service that best enables them to sell you to advertisers. Or, in a quote that BB uses, from Tim Spalding, “you’re not their customer, you’re their product.”

Cameras that can see through walls (deliberately misleading post title)

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 1 February 2010 Modern Life

Feb 012010

You can hook up two cameras and a a computer to let one camera see “through” walls by hithchiking on the other camera’s perspective.

This New Scientist video shows it off, and theorizes that someday — perhaps using heads-up displays in your car windshield of embedded in your contact lenses — people will avoid car accidents by using networks of these cameras to see around blind corners and stuff:

I say, if you allowed cameras to broadcast stuff into your eyes willy-nilly, it would take about 30 seconds before some juvenile hacker started making you watch porn.

Orson Welles proposed an International Society for the Protection of the Individual Against Officialdom

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 14 January 2010 Modern Life, Vintage/Retro

Jan 142010

In a 1955 BBC programme, Orson Welles was filmed doodling in his sketchbook and talking (apparently extemporaneously) about whatever struck his fancy. The program was called, straightforwardly enough, Sketchbook. Apprently, there were six episodes, each about 15 minutes long. I wish I could find them on YouTube. Apparently, if you are in the UK, you can see them on the BBC page, but all I get is a “no” page.

In one episode, however, Welles speaks about his experiences with the police and with customs officials as he travels (which he did a lot). He finds the growing power of the cops to be officious and dangerous. His words are perfectly applicable today.

You can read the transcript of the episode here; I particularly liked this part:

I’m willing to admit that the policeman has a difficult job, a very hard job, but it’s the essence of our society that the policeman’s job should be hard. He’s there to protect, protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals, that’s an incidental part of his job. The free citizen is always more of a nuisance to the policeman that the criminal. He knows what to do about the criminal…. I’m not an anarchist, I don’t want to overthrow the rule of law, on the contrary, I want to bring the policeman to law.

There’s a lot of well-reasoned points made in the whole transcript — I urge you to read it. At the end, he proposed a “union” of sorts for people who oppose this growing police stat, with a posse of lawyers at their disposal, and a card that stated something along the lines of:

This is to certify that the bearer is a member of the human race. All relevant information is to be found in his passport. And except when there is good reason for suspecting him of some crime, he will refuse to submit to police interrogation, on the grounds that any such interrogation is an intolerable nuisance. And life being as short as it is, a waste of time. Any infringement on his privacy, or interference with his liberty, any assault, however petty, against his dignity as a human being, will be rigorously prosecuted by the undersigned.

It’s an idea whose time has come (again). I just wish there was someone of Welles’ stature around to push it.

The only people who worry about surveillance are people who have something to hide?

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 28 December 2009 Modern Life

Dec 282009

Try this one on for size: Walmart puts surveillance cameras in washrooms. (And they weren’t the only ones.)

privacy ≠ wrong

What the Internet knows about you — dot com

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 2 September 2009 Modern Life

Sep 022009

Now, I know the concept of “privacy” is nebulous on the Internet, but I’d still like to maintain a wee bit of circumspection around my browsing habits, thank you very much.

So this was an eyeopener:

http://whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com/

It displays a selection of your browsing history — including many popular websites, but also some of what you did there.

It’s currently uber-popular, and getting a bit slammed, so if you test it out, be prepared to wait a while, or come back later. Still, it’s worth visiting, just to see how much your web browser rats you out.

Try the (even slower) “all” page to see the full trail you leave behind you.

Now remember, the next site that seeks out this data might not be named “what the internet knows about you”. It could, in fact, just be code that’s hidden on whatever server supplies ads to one of your favourite sites.

And if you don’t care what your browser history tells, what about the saved passwords for your online banking, etc?

Use the web to watch security camera feeds

Posted by T. Keith Edmunds on 21 August 2009 Modern Life

Aug 212009

Grant has already lamented the fact that we seem to be entering an era of little or no privacy. In this post he wonders how long it will be before we can use others’ cameras to view a specific place in the world. Perhaps it’s a testament to the privacy concerns of others, but it’s a popular post.

Although it doesn’t have the type of interface that Grant fears, nor can I figure out a way to specify a location (mind you, I haven’t given it any thought), WikiHow gives the following step-by-step instructions for watching security camera streams on the Internet:

Open up your web browser.

Go to a search engine of your choice (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.), and input any of the search queries listed below.

After you Google one of these queries, you will see some search results, click on any one of them. Then you will either see a whole bunch of images of a security camera, or the screen of a single camera.

Depending on the type of camera that you have access to, you may be able to zoom, pan, and tilt the camera to see what you want to. If you cannot pan the camera, check the top of the control panel. If it displays “Locked” the motion controls for the camera have been disabled by the device’s administrator.

Do not repeatedly maintain long or continuous connections to the feed (30 minutes is a good limit). Access logs for the devices can be created, and may be monitored by administrators. Many administrators will disregard brief attempts to access low importance devices when no harmful use is found.

There follows a fairly long list of search queries you can use to find these streams. In the interest of keeping you in the company of the Absurd Intellectuals, here are a few to get you started:

inurl:/view.shtml

intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml^

inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=

inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh

inurl:axis-cgi/jpg

If you find any really cool streams, leave us a comment with a link.

Use a shredder? Now those documents can be put back together

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 31 July 2009 Modern Life

Jul 312009

Using an ordinary office-grade scanner and some simple character recognition, at least one company promises to recreate shredded documents. That’s just one of the things I learned in this Slate article about “unshredding”:

Before advances in scanning and computer technology, documents had to be reconstructed by hand. Assuming all the pieces are in one place, reassembling a shredded document is a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle; the reconstructionist must painstakingly sift through the shreds, looking for matches. During the 1979 Iranian Revolution, students and militants who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran turned to local carpet weavers to reassemble classified CIA documents they found that had been shredded. These pages were later published in a set of about 60 volumes called Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den. And in 2002, former FBI agent William Daly took about an hour to reassemble a shredded page from the dictionary on Good Morning America.

Other takeaways? Some “shredders” go way further than that — they pulverize the paper into dust, says Slate. I should tell my sister. She’s been a ferocious user of paper shredders since she was about a pre-teen. Anything — even junk mail — that has her name or address on it goes into the shredder. Once, we got her a crosscut shredder for Christmas, which cuts the paper into small squares, rather than long strips and is much harder to reassemble. She was delighted.

“Sexting?”

Posted by Amy Breen on 16 February 2009 Modern Life

Feb 162009

Apparently, the act of “sexting” — where teens send naked pictures of themselves to someone through their cell phone — is becoming a huge problem in the states.

Slate has an article that says sexting is on the rise, and examines the ramifications such an action is having on teens.

Last month, three girls (ages 14 or 15) in Greensburg, Pa., were charged with disseminating child pornography for sexting their boyfriends. The boys who received the images were charged with possession. A teenager in Indiana faces felony obscenity charges for sending a picture of his genitals to female classmates. A 15-year-old girl in Ohio and a 14-year-old girl in Michigan were charged with felonies for sending along nude images of themselves to classmates. Some of these teens have pleaded guilty to lesser charges; others have not. If convicted, these young people may have to register as sex offenders, in some cases for a decade or two. Similar charges have been filed in cases in Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.

It’s a scary prospect to think that teenagers could be faced with child pornography charges or be required to register as sex offenders for sending their boyfriend/girlfriends naughty texts.

Sending naked pictures of oneself over a phone, the internet, or anywhere, is generally a bad idea, one that no adult (or anyone with hindsight) would recommend. But is charging these kids really the best way to deal with this?

The Slate writer thinks not, and ponders how to get these narcissistic teens to cut it out. Ultimately, I think it comes down to education. Try and teach these kids that things on the internet are forever, and that if you want to give your boyfriend a treat, maybe do it in person.

Today is Data Privacy Day

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 28 January 2009 Modern Life

Jan 282009

I had big plans for a long series of posts breaking down the threats to privacy and what you could do to address them, but life got in the way.

Surely, I’ll address them at some point in the future, but I would like to say one thing, just to honour the occasion.

When people say “if you’re worried about privacy, you must have something to hide,” I get annoyed.

I think that’s false. It’s like saying the only people who care about freedom must have somewhere to go. Privacy, like freedom, is about more than that — it’s more fundamental.

Not only is it about keeping things that are personal, personal, it’s about choice. No, I don’t have anywhere but Brandon to be, right now, but I cherish the freedom that I could drive to Vancouver or Halifax next week, if the impulse struck.

Similarly, I’d prefer to have the choice about what personal information I release — and when, and to whom. Once I’ve given that up, once I’ve given my personal, private information away, it’s no longer under my control. There are thousands of companies out there with some piece of my information, and I know that they don’t care about me at all.

Some people will say that because they don’t care about me, they won’t care enough to abuse my privacy. But I think it’s the opposite: I think they won’t care enough to protect it.

So think about that, the next time you’re asked for your phone number or your postal code or your drivers license. Does the person or company asking really need it? Or do they just want it? And if they want it so badly, why are you giving it away for free?

January 28 is Data Privacy Day

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 22 January 2009 Modern Life

Jan 222009

I was floored when I got this press release in my email today at work. The Canadian government is celebrating Data Privacy Day, next Wednesday, and they sent out a press release warning people to be aware of their privacy. It’s given me a great framework for a week’s worth of post’s on the subject. I’m chomping at the bit, and can’t wait to get started.

First, a fun fake poster.

Full press release after the jump. It’s definitely worth reading — and thinking about. If there were still such things as Civics classes in schools, where people were taught how to be good citizens in society, I’m sure I would rail against them. But I’d rail a lot less if they included privacy rights among the curriculum. (And, I don’t mean the way “free speech” rights are often taught in school — the only thing you learn are the limits of free speech.)

Anyway, check out the release — it’s great that someone is concerned on our behalf.