Your DSL modem is watching you.

[Stephen Tashiro]

An interesting web page says the Qwest DSL modem actually keeps a log of your internet activity. And its firewall doesn't block the port that the outside world would use to administrate the modem. http://blog.kgrothoff.net/2006/08/12...-activity-log/


Oh well, I guess there is no escaping surveillance. My city is installing the auto-ticketing cameras at intersections too.

[Pat Germain]

I don't know about the modem, but your ISP logs all activity from your modem MAC address. (Unlike the IP address, the MAC address doesn't change.)

Search engines, like Google, also keep logs of what people are searching for. They gather the information for trends and to target advertising. And they can track it down to MAC address, and thus individual users, if they really want to.

Typically, the logs at an ISP and on search engine servers are just overwritten after so many days and nobody looks at them. If someone is suspected of criminal activity, then the logs are examined, but only with a warrant.

[David G Baker]

Stephen,
Don't know about the spies around us but I do know that several cities have been sued over the traffic camera ticket scam and have lost. After spending a fortune to install them they had to remove them. Big Brother lost that battle. Before Las Cruces goes that route they should do a little legal research.

[Joe Pelonio]

Stephen,
Don't know about the spies around us but I do know that several cities have been sued over the traffic camera ticket scam and have lost. After spending a fortune to install them they had to remove them. Big Brother lost that battle. Before Las Cruces goes that route they should do a little legal research.

Can you name a few that have taken them out? Here they are going in all over the place, it's like a cash cow.

[Robert Eiffert]

a bit more on electronic surveillance--

Analysis Of The Provisions Of The USA PATRIOT Act
That Relate To Online Activities http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillan...t_analysis.php

[Mike Henderson]

Stephen,
Don't know about the spies around us but I do know that several cities have been sued over the traffic camera ticket scam and have lost. After spending a fortune to install them they had to remove them. Big Brother lost that battle. Before Las Cruces goes that route they should do a little legal research.

Around here, after you've watched someone fly through a red light, significantly after it's turned red, you don't just start off when the light turns green. You look both ways to make sure no one's coming flying.

I wish all intersections had cameras. And while I know of a few places where they took them out for one reason or another, the overall trend is that a lot more are going in. Phoenix is the worse. They have cameras on the freeways to check speed. It seems like the cameras are every couple of miles.

Mike

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I will caution everyone to keep this thread from getting political.

[Greg Peterson]

Saw an interesting video about Facebook. It's easy enough to find via Google. Suffice it to say the people involved in setting up and running Facebook are very well connected with certain federal agencies that tend to work on the dark side. Some very direct connections. Just reading the terms of service is chilling. The Internet is not anonymous.

As for traffic cameras, bring 'em on. I think the cameras are an effective deterrent. To bad the law by itself doesn't work.

[Lee Mitchell]

It had been a couple of years since I had a computer. Recently bought this one and got back on line. Frankly, I was both surprised and annoyed when google started displaying LOCAL vendors during product searches. I wondered how they knew my location, since I didn't include that in my search criterior.

Thanks for the info on how it's being done.

Lee in NC

[Scott Shepherd]

If you use Google (and most search engines), then they are logging every single thing you do. If you use Google Desktop, which indexes your entire computer and all you do, you give Google permission to use that data however they want. You don't give them rights to the files on your computer, but I believe you give them the rights to just about everything else.

[Tim Morton]

I will caution everyone to keep this thread from getting political.

So no comments on the girls homepage letter to obama then?

[Jeffrey Makiel]

I believe personal internet activity has been monitored for years. It's really nothing new.

As for traffic cameras at intersections, I fully support them. I would also like to see traffic cameras at highway ramps to catch lane moochers. I see this as an improvement to my personal safety and quality of life.

-Jeff

[Belinda Barfield]

We have cameras on many of our intersections. The cameras were removed from one, but only because no revenue was being generated. Prior to the cameras going up locals followed the five car rule. On green don't proceed into the intersection until the fifth car has run the red light.

[Eric DeSilva]

If you are interested in internet privacy, I'd suggest doing some reading at www.eff.org.

If you are very serious about internet privacy and monitoring, I'd suggest googling "tor network." Tor is a secure, encrypted network within a network developed by EFF and others for, among other things, countries where going to the wrong web pages might get you a visit from the secret police. It is very secure and your ISP will have no idea where you are going.

When I travel, I carry a USB key with Geekmenu (a system for easily launching applications off a USB key), Portable Firefox (a version of firefox that requires no installation on the host PC, no admin rights, and doesn't leave traces cached on the host machine), Portable Tor (a version of tor that can run off a USB key), and Torbutton (a firefox plug in that turns Tor on and off).

The downside is that it is slower and the fact that the nodes shift mean that google may think you are coming in from Paris and serve you up a search page in French.

[Bob Genovesi]

Oh well, I guess there is no escaping surveillance. My city is installing the auto-ticketing cameras at intersections too.

Generally I'm against this sort of thing but having been hit once and too many near misses to count from all the IDIOTIC MORONS that run red lights these days I'm greatly in favor of it.