Is privacy coming back?

[Pat Barry]

It seems to me that recrimination infringes upon basic rights granted to us by the constitution:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".

I think that data mining of the sort being now conducted violates the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure.

[Scott Shepherd]

[QUOTE=David Weaver;2316701]

It was a generalized comment, not directed at you. Whether or not your search items are sold to someone else is not necessarily a matter of rights, it's a matter of legality. I wouldn't ever search for anything on the internet, or view anything and make the assumption that I can dictate whether or not it can be used, sold, etc. It can, and it will be, and even if it's illegal, it probably still will be. That's just reality at this point.

And that's exactly my complaint. If people had any clue, even a tiny bit of a clue about the profiles built on them by these companies, there would be public outcry and it would stop. However, most people aren't geeks and don't understand what's happening. As a point of reference, it's not so much Google, but there are many private companies who's names aren't publicly known, that are companies that do nothing but work on putting together all the pieces about each of us. They gather the data, buy it, and start building a profile on each and every one of us. Then they sell that profile to companies. To me, it's like having a private investigator researching you for years, then taking an ad out in the newspaper and posting everything about you that they know. To me, that's just incredibly wrong.

Again, if people knew and understood what was being done, it would stop. But no one ever listens to the geeks

[David Weaver]

[QUOTE=Scott Shepherd;2316711]

And that's exactly my complaint. If people had any clue, even a tiny bit of a clue about the profiles built on them by these companies, there would be public outcry and it would stop. However, most people aren't geeks and don't understand what's happening. As a point of reference, it's not so much Google, but there are many private companies who's names aren't publicly known, that are companies that do nothing but work on putting together all the pieces about each of us. They gather the data, buy it, and start building a profile on each and every one of us. Then they sell that profile to companies. To me, it's like having a private investigator researching you for years, then taking an ad out in the newspaper and posting everything about you that they know. To me, that's just incredibly wrong.

Again, if people knew and understood what was being done, it would stop. But no one ever listens to the geeks

I would bet any of the dozens of fake personas of me built up by these companies could more accurately guess what I like or would like to see than I could on my own! I'll bet they are all a lot more comprehensive than we know, too.

[David Weaver]

I think the writ of assitance (I think that's what they were called) was in the minds of the people who wrote those laws. The search you make is being conducted on something that is someone else's property, and not our own. It's a much different situation than the writ of assitance type situation where agents of the law were allowed to enter any house and turn it upside down without knowing if there was anything troublesome that they were even looking for.

Things like phone records have been made of us forever.

Also, the data mining issues seem to go to the FISA court (especially where the data is requested by the government - even if they are taking privately collected data and requesting it for their own use), and not to a regular court where the information is more publicly visible. If there was going to be any real improvement in any of this stuff, the hearings would need to be in a regular federal court, and i don't expect we'll see that. It seems that the value of the data for other people has enough value that it could go quite a bit further before it creates enough of a negative swell (and even after that it would still be collected, anyway. Someone would just tell us they did something about it, wait for us to find out that they didn't, that changes were cosmetic, and the same "fix" would happen again at the next outrage).

[Andrew Pitonyak]

What's that have to do with it? If you forget your password, you follow the steps to create a new one, like always. When you forget your password now, it's not known because someone at Apple or whatever site has access to it.

If I forget my encryption password, that is pretty much the end of it.... Well, if I have an inkling of what my password is, I could always try to brute-force (guess) the password. That is why you should always write the password on the drive in permanent marker right

My primary interest in encrypted media is so that when I lose a drive (or similar) under warranty, I do not need to stress about sending it back for warranty replacement. Also, if I decommission a drive, well, I have no strong need to wipe it.

[paul cottingham]

I considered using Tor years ago (for those that don't know what Tor is, it's free software that links 1000's of computers across the world and allows one to use the internet anonymously). Then I read an article that said that the guts of Tor were created by the military, so they knew how it worked, and basically how to defeat it. If they knew, then you know everyone else knows, so what's the point?

I'm pretty sure that is not true. It is open source, so glaring back doors would probably have been found by now. (I know the current BASH debacle creates some arguments against this position. But that's a bug, not a back door.) from my understanding, TOR gives the US government fits. You know, the whole "if you have nothing to hide" nonsense.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'm pretty sure that is not true. It is open source, so glaring back doors would probably have been found by now. (I know the current BASH debacle creates some arguments against this position. But that's a bug, not a back door.) from my understanding, TOR gives the US government fits. You know, the whole "if you have nothing to hide" nonsense.

Might want to read TOR's own page, it states exactly that it was a Navy project.

https://www.torproject.org/about/overview

[paul cottingham]

The other issue that people aren't considering is metadata. That is the stuff that Snowden was so concerned about, and what most privacy advocates are freaking out over. With good reason, I might add.
Again, the issue is not whether or not I have anything to hide. It's the fact that I shouldn't have to worry about people gathering information from and about me without my knowledge, to be used who knows how.

[paul cottingham]

Might want to read TOR's own page, it states exactly that it was a Navy project.

https://www.torproject.org/about/overview

Yes, sorry, I know it's a navy project. But it's an open source navy project. The source tree is right on the web page.

[Scott Shepherd]

The other issue that people aren't considering is metadata. That is the stuff that Snowden was so concerned about, and what most privacy advocates are freaking out over. With good reason, I might add.
Again, the issue is not whether or not I have anything to hide. It's the fact that I shouldn't have to worry about people gathering information from and about me without my knowledge, to be used who knows how.

Did you read the article in last month's Wired Magazine about Snowden? It was an interview with him and it was fascinating to me. Nothing new, but it showed his path. He says he intentionally left breadcrumbs on all the things he took so that they would know exactly what he had taken, to give them a little "heads up" on what to expect and years later, he still sees reports about various things that indicates no one ever picked up on the breadcrumbs he left for them to find.

He also said that they were collecting data on political people, basically, people that has been visiting websites they shouldn't be, and it was to be used against them when legislation was moving through the political process to kill anything that would stop them from their snooping.

He was in the CIA as well as the NSA, before leaving and working for Dell, working directly with the CIA under Dell. It was an interesting read.

[Tom Stenzel]

I'm not embarrassed at all. If you think this is about being embarrassed, you've strongly misunderstood my concern. I don't do anything on the internet that would embarrass me (other than posting stupid things from time to time), but my concern isn't based on embarrassment, it's based on my privacy. I have a right to search for "brain cancer" without that information being sold to a medical company and my general address targeted and mapped as someone looking into "brain cancer", at which time insurance companies are quoting my insurance higher because I keep searching for symptoms of brain cancer. It might be because I know someone that's going through it and I'm trying to learn and help them. However, it's not mapped and sold as such. It's all pinpointed to a unique person and those things are mapped into a profile, one that's not accurate.

If I search for anything, that's my private information. The reasons behind my searches are not your business, not should they be sold to the highest bidder because you're a snake. To me, it's the equivalent of coming to my house and going through my trash, collecting all the information about what I bought or what mail I threw away, then taking that data from my trashcan and selling it to someone. If someone did that at your house, you'd call the police on them, if Google does it, then it's supposed to be okay.

Scott, why are you such an optimist? :-)

I think it's far worse than rummaging through your trash. It's going through your file cabinets reading your bills and payments. It's fingering stuff in your nightstand, reading the love letters you sent and the ones that were sent to you.

It's using your cell phone (not sure if it needs to be a smart phone) as a bug in your house listening in to all conversations within reach of the microphone. Supposedly the equipment is sold to law enforcement only, but what if some was sold (or lent out by a salesperson for a small pocketable fee) to do a little corporate espionage?

I really dislike the way things are going. You want privacy? You criminal you! Think of the children! We have to save the babies!

-Tom

[paul cottingham]

Did you read the article in last month's Wired Magazine about Snowden? It was an interview with him and it was fascinating to me. Nothing new, but it showed his path. He says he intentionally left breadcrumbs on all the things he took so that they would know exactly what he had taken, to give them a little "heads up" on what to expect and years later, he still sees reports about various things that indicates no one ever picked up on the breadcrumbs he left for them to find.

He also said that they were collecting data on political people, basically, people that has been visiting websites they shouldn't be, and it was to be used against them when legislation was moving through the political process to kill anything that would stop them from their snooping.

He was in the CIA as well as the NSA, before leaving and working for Dell, working directly with the CIA under Dell. It was an interesting read.

The book by Glen Greenwald is excellent, although filled with an awful lot of self serving crap about Greenwald (he seems to be his own biggest hero.) I came to admire Snowden, the more I read and researched, despite the fact that I initially had a very dim view of him and his actions.

[Phil Thien]

He also said that they were collecting data on political people, basically, people that has been visiting websites they shouldn't be, and it was to be used against them when legislation was moving through the political process to kill anything that would stop them from their snooping.

If he believes that, he is delusional.

About the only thing I can imagine being useful in that regard is proof someone was viewing child pornography.

And telling someone you're going to have them charged for viewing child pornography (or go public with the information) unless they support your legislation could very easily backfire (the pervert would be better off going public and insisting he was threatened that if he didn't support said legislation, that the spooks would use planted child pornography to discredit him).

The problem with most people like Snowden is they don't get the big picture. They have all these beautiful small pictures, but they can't put them all together and see the panorama.

[David Weaver]

I don't see it as being that far fetched. They all have jobs that depend on legislation being passed or not being passed. If people send things in email that could be incriminating, it would benefit the NSA to collect it and use it as leverage. Whether or not it's legal isn't really the issue, it's whether it's useful.

[Phil Thien]

I don't see it as being that far fetched. They all have jobs that depend on legislation being passed or not being passed. If people send things in email that could be incriminating, it would benefit the NSA to collect it and use it as leverage. Whether or not it's legal isn't really the issue, it's whether it's useful.

Here is the problem: Either such a method would ALWAYS work, or it has never really been employed.

Because not everyone can be blackmailed. And as soon as you try blackmailing them, some people will go public.

But because nobody has gone public (indicating the spooks are attempting to blackmail them), then the technique has never been employed.