The Inquisitr » privacy

Rogue group hijacks hundreds of Facebook groups for your own good

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:50:11 +0000

Despite well-known privacy leaks and rampant availability of sensitive personal data, Facebook remains hugely popular.

Lulled into a precarious sense of security by friends locking accounts, most people feel fairly comfortable sharing information they might not otherwise like to see on the front page of The New York Times. (One of the litmus-tests for information sharing on the internet, that or “would you like to see it in your grandmother’s inbox?”) A common Facebook function for many users seems to be the practice of joining any and all groups that cross their news feeds, from “Celebrities I’d Like To Hit in the Face With a Bag of Doorknobs” to “I couldn’t give a flying f**k about what you’re up to on Farmville.”

Today, many users woke up to find the following message posted on the “walls” of groups taken over by Control Your Info, who state that the mass-hack was “strictly not for profit and done for a good cause.” (It did get their name in the news, though.)

Hello, we hereby announce that we have officially hijacked your Facebook group.

This means we control a certain part of the information about you on Facebook. If we wanted we could make you appear in a bad way which could damage your image severly.

For example we could rename your group and call it something very inappropriate and nasty, like “I support pedophile’s rights”. But have no fear – we won’t. We just renamed it Control Your Info. Because this is really all we want:

Think about the safety in your social media life to the same extent you do in your real life. Watch the videoclip for more information or check out www.controlyour.info for more tips soon!

We promise to restore your group name and leave the group by the end of next week. Don’t worry – we won’t mess anything up.

The loophole which allowed the group to gain administrative access to Facebook groups exists in groups in which the administrator has since jumped ship. Anyone belonging to a group without an admin can appoint themselves in charge of the group and then change the group name, contact members, and so on. While it’s unlikely to be the end of life as you know it, it’s certainly something to think about.

Facebook has commented on the matter and denied groups had been hijacked, asserting that no sensitive data had been compromised. The spokesman also addressed concerns with large groups and cleanup of the affected groups, many of which remain “hijacked”:

“The names of large groups cannot be changed, nor can anyone message all members,” he said. In cases where Facebook finds that a group name has been changed inappropriately, it will disable those groups, which is what it plans on doing in this case, he said.

The EU looking to head down Orwellian black hole

Steven Hodson — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:24:53 +0000

Under the guise of Project Indect, a five year research program that includes: Police Service of Northern Ireland, computer scientists at York University, and fellow researchers in nine other European Union countries, The EU wants to develop “automatic detection of threats and abnormal behavior or violence”.

These programs are meant to act as “agents” to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and individual computers. The project has already received £10 million in funding from the EU and is a part of its ever expanding role in crime fighting, terrorism and managing travel of people. Already this year the EU has increased its budget in these areas by 13.5% or nearly £900 million.’

This is all suppose to help develop what the European Commission is referring to as a “common culture” of law enforcement to be developed across the EU over the next five years.

According to the official website for Project Indect, which began this year, its main objectives include "to develop a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence".

It talks of the "construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p [peer-to-peer] networks as well as individual computer systems, building an internet-based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive".

Source: Telegraph Online – EU funding ‘Orwellian’ artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"

The program isn’t without its detractors however. Among them is Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty a human rights group, and Stephen Booth, and analyst with European think tank Open Europe.

Chakrabarti considers the massive type of surveillance that Project Indect and Adabts – the acronym for Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behavior and Threats in crowed Spaces, a separately funded program by the EU to the tune of nearly £3 million so far – are sinister steps for any country to be taking. Chakrabarti added that this type of action is absolutely chilling consider the it is to include all European Union countries.

For Stephen Booth the scale is “Orwellian” to say the least.

According to the Open Europe think tank, the increased emphasis on co-operation and sharing intelligence means that European police forces are likely to gain access to sensitive information held by UK police, including the British DNA database. It also expects the number of UK citizens extradited under the controversial European Arrest Warrant to triple.

Stephen Booth, an Open Europe analyst who has helped compile a dossier on the European justice agenda, said these developments and projects such as Indect sounded "Orwellian" and raised serious questions about individual liberty.

"This is all pretty scary stuff in my book. These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them," he said.

"The EU lacks sufficient checks and balances and there is no evidence that anyone has ever asked ‘is this actually in the best interests of our citizens?’"

Source: Telegraph Online – EU funding ‘Orwellian’ artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"

As well Open Europe believes that all this data collected by the likes of the Project Indect could be used by a little known EU agency called the EU Joint Situation Control (SitCen) which it believes is the beginnings of an EU secret service. It has been referred to by others as “Europe’s CIA”.

a big hat tip to papa

11 Million Britons will need to register before being allowed near kids

Steven Hodson — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:24:18 +0000

Using the argument that if this new vetting and barring scheme being handled by the Independent Safeguarding Authority of the Home Office even saves one child from the hands of a pedophile it is worth it.

The program will see anyone even remotely involved with children having to be registered by the ISA after being subjected to what some are calling some of the most unprecedented delving into a person’s background and private lives. As well they will be subject to on-going monitoring.

Those that will be required by law to register or face fines of up to £5,000 include

parents volunteering to transport children for club events or sports – this includes things like the Scouts
300,000 school governors
all the doctors
all the nurses
all the dentists
all the teachers
all the prison workers

From November next year workers taking new jobs which qualify for the scheme must be registered. Any activity which involves contact with children or vulnerable adults three times in a one-month period, every month, or once overnight, qualifies, as do jobs in specified places such as schools, prisons and children’s homes.

Source: Guardian – Parents who ferry children to clubs face criminal record checks

All I can say is beware the unintended consequences of something like but given England’s already high disregard for the individual this comes as no surprise.

Lure of technological convenience hides a nasty side

Steven Hodson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:57:55 +0000

There is no denying the fact that we all love our tech toys. Apple’s iPhone continues to sell, smart phones in general grow in popularity, GPS-based apps are just handy to have. Things like electronic swipe cards for subways, toll booths and quick payment at stores make life easier – and quicker. God knows I wouldn’t know what to do without my debit card – I hardly ever carry cash anymore.

The dark side to this though is that every time we use those ‘conveniences’ that data is collected and kept somewhere. Under the guise of aggregated data used for everything from profit projections to traffic flows this data is amassed painting a picture of where you have been and what you have done.

This collection of data has many privacy experts concerned as we are seeing cases of this type of data turning up in courtrooms. Whether it be the police using cell phone records to track people to things like E-ZPasses to show people’s travel routes at the times when crimes have occurred. Google searches have shown up in more than a few high profile murder trials.

As Adam Cohen notes in an editorial post at The New York Times this isn’t just the prevue of the police and lawyers.

Corporations and the government can keep track of what political meetings people attend, what bars and clubs they go to, whose homes they visit. It is the fact that people’s locations are being recorded “pervasively, silently, and cheaply that we’re worried about,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a recent report.

Sure we might realize empirically that we are probably being watched by an increasing number of CCTV cameras as we move around but in general people don’t realize the extent to which their everyday activity is recorded. People aren’t told that using that transportation card will also allow the transportation authority to track them (or that police have used those records in criminal investigations). Cell phone users aren’t told that even though they aren’t using the phone that if it is turned the companies can track their movements.

Not all of this information is being broadcasted and collected without our knowledge as the popularity of social media services like BrightKite which is a web service that let’s you broadcast your current location and the willingness of people to tell the world where and what they are doing. Sure the typical argument that advocates of these types of services, knowing or otherwise, is that if we have nothing to hide we shouldn’t be concerned about all this data collected.

Sorry but that’s a mug’s argument in my opinion. I can understand how some of this data can be helpful but in no way does it need any type of personal information attached to it. As Cohen points out in his editorial

As much as possible, location-specific information should not be collected in the first place, or not in personally identifiable form. There are many ways, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, to use cryptography and anonymization to protect locational privacy. To tell you about nearby coffee shops, a cellphone application needs to know where you are. It does not need to know who you are.

When locational information is collected, people should be given advance notice and a chance to opt out. Data should be erased as soon as its main purpose is met. After you pay your E-ZPass bill, there is no reason for the government to keep records of your travel.

While the lure of convenience is making this kind of data collection palatable that doesn’t mean that it is a good thing or that it should be being done.

Norway: It’s nice to see a country who cares about citizen privacy

Steven Hodson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:50:00 +0000

It is re-assuring in a point in time where entertainment industry trade groups, like the RIAA, are pressuring governments and ISP by either suing them or helping them write legislation that there are some countries – well one anyway – that isn’t buckling under. At the forefront of putting its citizen’s rights and privacy ahead of those of groups like the RIAA is Norway.

Back on June 10, 2009 the Norwegian agency in charge of data protection instructed two ISP – Tele2 and Lyse Tele – to delete all IP related personal information in their logs that is older than 3 weeks. In addition this instruction will also be applied against the rest of the ISPs in the country.

The fact that data can only be held for just 21 days will see the immediate deletion of IP information held on around 1.6 million subscribers by these Norwegian ISPs. However, the decision flies in the face of European Union rules which say that this type of data must be held for at least 6 months – right now in Norway, data retention can be anything from a few days to five months.

The process of monitoring file-sharers, gathering evidence and then collating it all into an acceptable format can be time consuming. Add this to the time taken to get into the system to obtain a court order from a judge to force the ISPs to hand over data on their customers, and you end up with a period longer than 21 days. By which time the data has gone and the evidence becomes useless, since it’s impossible to identity the alleged infringer.

Source: TorrentFreak

Now add to this the news out today that the law firm who had been granted a temporary license to monitor the countries ISPs in order to track down alleged pirates and collect their IPs won’t have that license renewed. The law firm of Simonsen used that data collected to gather the IP addresses of alleged pirates and then sue them.

Simonsen lawyer Espen Tøndel told Dagbladet that he was very unhappy with developments. “We believe that the decision is politically justified,” he said, noting that there should be no reason why the license shouldn’t be extended.

Tøndel further said that his law firm will object against the non-renewal of their license but if they fail, he fears that copyright holders will be completely powerless to stop illegal file-sharing.

Source: TorrentFreak

It’s good to see a country that actually really cares about its citizens rights in this stupid power play. I wonder if they would have room for a cranky old fart of a blogger?

No related posts.

Montana city backs off of requiring Facebook passwords as job requirement

Steven Hodson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:35:00 +0000

Remember a couple days ago when I passed along the news about Bozeman, Montana, requiring job applicants to had over their usernames and passwords as part of their job application?

Well according to a post on Ars Technica by Jacqui Cheng the city fathers of Bozeman have backed down from that requirement. The city announced (pdf) in a meeting at the beginning of the week that as of June 19th that it would stop the practice and the city web site would be updated with the information regarding this within 30 days.

GOING FORWARD: We will no longer be looking at password‐protected internet information for job candidates. With the assistance of our recently hired City Attorney, we recommend scheduling a Policy Meeting (within 30 days) for an update on city hiring procedures. This will include a discussion regarding the appropriate level of screening for public safety pre‐employment background checks.

This was an honest mistake. Human Resources, our Police and Fire Departments were doing something they believed was consistent with our core values. I take full responsibility for this decision and we will work hard to regain the trust and confidence of the City Commission and our community.

Source: PDF file of city meeting

As stupid as the idea was in the first place it is good to see that this in charge stepped back and re-thought the situation.

Montana city treading some dangerous ground

Steven Hodson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:05:15 +0000

I would bet that we’ve all heard more times than we care to count the old warning about being careful about what you post on the Internet because it could come back to haunt you. Companies are making social media searches an almost required part of any hiring practice in order to see what kind of person you are away from the glare of a job interview. Our online profiles are becoming a part of our real life persona.

As much as we might like to believe that what we say and do online won’t have an impact on our jobs, current and future, this isn’t always the case. Therefore it was only a matter of time before our online personas became a integral part of any company’s interest in us as possible employees. However being made to provide our log-in information to any of the many social media service we might belong to as a part of a job application is something new.

Such is the case if you ever decide to apply for a job for the City of Bozeman, Montana, as they have made it a requirement on any job application with the city that you must provide any an all log-in information, including your passwords, for social network sites that you are a part of. This is part of a larger waiver that you have to sign giving the city permission to conduct a background investigation.

Now let’s stop for a second and think about this. Regardless of whether it is a web forum, Facebook, Twitter or some IRC chat room you are being made as part of a job interview to give up information that makes your online doings an open book. It doesn’t matter if you have made your Twitter feed a private feed, or that your Facebook account is marked as private. In this case the City of Bozeman’s rights trumps your right to privacy.

City Attorney for Bozeman defends the action this way

The City takes privacy rights very seriously, but this request balances those rights with the City’s need to ensure employees will protect the public trust, according to city attorney Greg Sullivan.

"So, we have positions ranging from fire and police, which require people of high integrity for those positions, all the way down to the lifeguards and the folks that work in city hall here. So we do those types of investigations to make sure the people that we hire have the highest moral character and are a good fit for the City," Sullivan said.

Source: Montana News Station

I can totally understand the City’s desire to protect the integrity of its employees but this kind of invasion is no different than them asking for the keys to your home and coming in whenever they feel like it. Sure it’s plausible to defend this requirement for any public social media accounts – but then they wouldn’t need the passwords – however when it comes to any accounts that we have made private they have no business asking for this information, let alone making it a requirement for a job.

The EFF tracks companies and their changing TOS agreements

Steven Hodson — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:57:12 +0000

The one document that just about everyone dreads reading, and most don’t, has to be the Terms of Service (TOS) that we have to agree to before using their services. Even when we get notification of changes chances are most of us ignore them. We shouldn’t but we do because they have to be some of the most boring shit we could ever not want to read.

To make things easier for us though the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created the Terms-Of-Service Tracker. At TOSback.org you can see a real-time feed of TOS agreements that have been changed as well as updates to more than three dozen policies from the some of the most popular services on the Internet.

"Some changes to terms of service are good for consumers, and some are bad," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "But Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their ‘friends lists’ to their calendar — and sometimes even their medical information. TOSBack will help consumers flag changes in the websites they use every day and trust with their personal information."

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation

Currently TOSback.org is following the policies of these companies

Amazon
Apple
Automattic
Blizzard
Craigslist
Data.gov
DoubleClick
EBay
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Facebook
Flickr
GoDaddy
Google
MySpace
Organizing For America
Recovery.gov
Twitter
Whitehouse.gov
Yahoo!
YouTube

You can also grab their RSS (or use this RSS link)

Facebook possibly crossing legal line on censorship

Steven Hodson — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:49:44 +0000

Facebook seems to always be finding itself in the legal line of fire over the way it is doing business. The latest salvo comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) over the fact that Facebook is apparently censoring private email messages between Facebook members. This practice has come to light following Facebook’s recent blocking of The Pirate Bay file sharing links on the service.

However Facebook didn’t stop with just blocking them on the public profile pages but as Wired.com editor John C. Abell found out they are also censoring the private in-service emails of it’s members.

Wired.com confirmed Facebook is blocking private messages by sending a link to a Pirate Bay torrent feed of a book in the public domain . Such content is freely available to everyone, as all copyrights have expired. Nevertheless, the message bounced twice, returning the following failure notice: “This Message Contains Blocked Content. Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.” (Facebook’s link-censoring system is may be just tilting at windmills, however, because removing a single vowel from the domain name lets the URL go through.)

In the case of Wired.com’s test, there were only two Facebook users who should have been aware of the content — Wired.com editor John C. Abell and his message’s intended recipient, who was sitting five feet from him — and neither had the slightest objection to it whatsoever.

Source: Ryan Singel – Wired.com

Ryan also points out in his post that while Facebook is falling back on their Terms of Service as their protection those same messages are also covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which forbids providers from intercepting user messages. Additionally

EFF lawyers suggested that the legality of Facebook’s censorship turns on Facebook’s Terms of Service, how and when the blocking takes place, and whether the messaging system affects interstate commerce (thus giving the federal government jurisdiction).

It’s not clear, however, how links to torrents are spammy, harassing or illegal. Torrents themselves are not copyright-infringing, nor would Facebook be liable for their users’ communications under federal law even if the files were infringing.

Yup, Facebook is all about openness and transparency especially when it comes to them monitoring their users.

[Facebook email graphic courtesy of Wired.com]

Police in Denton Texas will make you Twitter famous

Steven Hodson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:33:04 +0000

It’s one thing to see the mugshots of famous people show up on the web but getting busted for anything in Denton Texas could see you show up on Twitter. To make it clear this isn’t an official Twitter profile for the Denton police but rather an experiment by an art student as a way to show just how much personal stuff ends up available on the web.

Through some simple scraping of the public information available on the Denton police web site the student creates a Twitter post of the date and time of the arrest, the age of the charged person along with their mugshot posted to TwitPic. I am sure there are some who think this is a pretty cool idea but it also shows just how scary Twitter can be as a publishing platform. Considering just how much personal stuff is available on the web the idea that it could show up on something like Twitter without you even knowing about it should make people just a tad nervous.

[hat tip to SlipperyBrick / bottom pic courtesy of SlipperyBrick]

How to get Google in Korea to ban you – use a fake name

Steven Hodson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:27:08 +0000

Government the world round are always trying to find new ways to get control over the Internet and the people using it. In Korea there is a state law that stipulates that if you run a web site in South Korea with at least 100,000 daily the visitors to that site must register with verifiable real names. One of the principal companies targeted by this law is Google or more specifically YouTube and as of April 1 they have started banning South Korean users from posting video or leaving comments unless they use their real names.

What strikes me as rather strange is that all you are hearing is the sound of crickets in the tech blogosphere, or even mainstream media for that matter, over this announcement from Google. As it is I only heard about this from reading a post about on Silicon Valley Watcher where Tom Foremski makes an interesting point

[…] this is the first time Google has ever done this.

It’s corporate philosophy states: "…we have a responsibility to protect your privacy and security." And its top executives and representatives have often spoken about Google’s commitment to privacy and free speech on the Internet.

What’s the point in Google portraying itself as company with strong principles when it won’t stand up and defend them? What would it be losing if it refused?

Now mind you the fact that the South Korean government is promising Google 1.2 billion yen (about $892,000USD) for research and development when the company enters the South Korean market just might have something to do with it. Seems like a pretty cheap price though for corporate integrity.

Facebook – the sleight of hand shillster

Steven Hodson — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:58:44 +0000

I see that Facebook it taking a lot of well deserved flack over it’s recent changes to its Terms Of Service (TOS) to the point that baby faced Zuckerberg had to come down from his ivory tower and try to stem the flow of negative comments about the changes. I won’t bother going into all the finer points of what has changed since many of the bigger voices are chipping in their two cents worth – even down to Perez Hilton calling for a boycott of the service (like that will ever happen).

In the process of all this verbiage flying back and forth people like Kara Swisher chimes in with the following little gem

Here’s the key definition of interactive: “mutually or reciprocally active.”

That means once you send something to others, it is out there in cyberspace forever, never ever to return.

And that goes double on social-networking sites, where–let’s be honest–people egregiously overshare and then get all righteous when it is explained to them that sharing means, um, sharing.

As in: You cannot take it back, if you have shared with 476 of your closest “friends,” your bikini shots from Cabo.

The fact is that the moment you sign up to any of the myriad of social media services you can kiss any concept of personal privacy goodbye. That is the trade off you make with you sign on the dotted line with the devil’s many cool little toys you want to play with. Privacy in this instance a thing of the past.

What bothers me is that no one is up in arms over the fact that once you upload anything to Facebook they own that material regardless of what it is forever. All those photos you upload belongs to Facebook, all those messages passed between ‘friends’ now belongs to Facebook and all you expressed opinions belong to Facebook. It is these facts of ownership that is being overshadowed by the bullshit argument about privacy.

From their TOS – just to refresh your memories

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service

While we are busy playing the shell game over the so-called privacy issue Facebook has at the same time etched in stone that for time immemorial it owns all the things you upload and it can do anything it wants with it – to which you have no say what so ever. If it wants to use that really cute picture of your granny in any way it seems fit there is nothing you can do about it. If it wants to use something you have said about a product or service there is nothing you can do to stop them – even if they take what you have said out of context.

We can argue until we are blue in the face about this so-called privacy issue but we will never reach any solid conclusion because how we each define what our own personal levels of privacy will affect how we behave; and on the Internet. What isn’t being talked about is who owns what because like a true magician Facebook – and other social media services – our attention is being misdirection by the big bugaboo called privacy.

The reality is that once you enter the gates of Facebook you own nothing – they do even after you delete your account or more permanently – die. That’s some deal with the devil if you ask me.

No more taking pictures of people in public in Europe anymore

Steven Hodson — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:27:00 +0000

Here we go folks down that slippery slope of stupidity once more.

It appears that the European Court of Human Rights has now ruled that the taking of a pictures without the explicit consent of the person being photographed is a violation of that person’s right of privacy – even if it is taken in a public and even if it is never used. This decision was the result of a court case involving a newborn baby who was put into a sterile unit when born. At that point as a part of a commercial service provided by the hospital they took a photograph of the baby.

The child’s parents in turn objected and demanded that the hospital hand over the negatives. the hospital refused and when the Greek courts refused to hear the case it went before the European Court of Human rights.

"The Court reiterated that the concept of private life was a broad one which encompassed the right to identity," said an ECHR press release about the ruling. "It stressed that a person’s image revealed his or her unique characteristics and constituted one of the chief attributes of his or her personality."

"The Court added that effective protection of the right to control one’s image presupposed, in the present circumstances, obtaining the consent of the person concerned when the picture was being taken and not just when it came to possible publication," it said.

The ECHR said that the taking of the photograph breached the child’s right to a private life as guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that the Greek courts had failed to uphold that right.

Source: Out-Law.com

This doesn’t bode well folks for all those photographers out there who bless us with some of the greatest pieces of art imaginable.

No related posts.

Yahoo: We’ll Only Keep Your Data For 3 Months

JR — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:10:19 +0000

Yahoo is cutting back the amount of time it hangs onto your data and hoping its competitors will follow suit.

The company announced it’ll now anonymize all collected user information after three months, down from a previous timespan of 13 months. Google, in comparison, masks user info after nine months — a recent change from its previous 18 month cycle. Microsoft is still sitting at the 18-month mark but has said it would consider shortening it to a six-month industry standard.

As for Yahoo’s shift, the new three month limit will include all search log data, page view and page count collections, and ad view/ad click records. The plan goes into place in January, though it won’t be fully effective until midway through 2010.

Both remaining Yahoo users were said to be excited about the change.

The 20 Most Trusted Companies For Privacy

JR — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:40:26 +0000

The Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe have released their annual list of the most trusted companies when it comes to consumer privacy. The list features the addition of Facebook into the top ranks, and the conspicuous absence of Google, which had ranked #10 in 2007.

The list is the result of a nationwide survey of nearly 6,500 U.S. adults. The participants were asked which companies they thought best safeguarded their personal information.

Coming in top for the second consecutive year was American Express, followed by eBay, IBM, and Amazon. Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, and HP all saw improved rankings from 2007 as well.

Here’s the full top 20 and how much they climbed/slipped from last year:

1. American Express (remained number one)
2. eBay (+6)
3. IBM (no change)
4. Amazon (+1)
5. Johnson & Johnson (+1)
6. Hewlett Packard (+10)
6. U.S. Postal Service (+1)
7. Procter & Gamble (+2)
8. Apple (new to the top 20)
9. Nationwide (remained the same)
10. Charles Schwab (-8)
11. USAA (+4)
12. Intuit (+7)
13. WebMD (-1)
14. Yahoo! (new to the top 20)
15. Facebook (new to the top 20)
16. Disney (-1)
16. AOL (-12)
17. Verizon (new to the top 20)
18. FedEx (new to the top 20)
19. US Bank (-2)
20. Dell (-7)
20. eLoan (-9)

WTF Is Up With England

Steven Hodson — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:10:51 +0000

If there was ever a poster child country for the world as foreseen by George Orwell it has to be England. This was the country of my birth and even though I originally left with my mother aboard the QE II at a very (very) young age I have been back twice with the last time when I was 14 years old. Since that time England has changed into a country I don’t even think I would recognize let alone want to call home.

It is a country where privacy is something that has disappeared totally as your every moved can literally be watched from the time you leave your home until you return. CCTV cameras literally have turned the country into one where the people are the most watched in the world. The interesting side note to this is that even with all this surveillance it hasn’t done anything to make anymore than a small dent in the country’s crime figures; unless you count petty crime as something worth spending billions of pounds on.

More and more of the average citizens actions on a daily basis are being scrutinized by council wardens; which is just a fancy way to say police without a badge, who can stop you as they please asking for your identification or even fine you for the smallest of civic infractions. As bad as these invasions of peoples lives and rights might seem as well as a total affront to us as human beings the people in England have proven to be even more lackadaisical about their lost freedoms that Canadians are – and I thought we were bad.

However the English governement has decided to step up this theft of privacy and increase government intrusion with a recent move to force English citizen to produce their passport everytime they purchase a mobile phone. Yes you heard that right – no passport no mobile phone. As the article in the Times Online said

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.

I am sorry but to be this has to be one of the most abusive uses of government powers using the fear tactics of fighting terrorism as another way to increase the policing of innocent people. There can be no other way to look at this move by the English government other than as one to further control a populace. This is a disgusting move by the government that will do nothing more than create a whole new class of innocent criminals.

One has to wonder just what else the English goverment can try and to to its people before Guy Fawkes decides to come back from the grave.

This is the end, my friend [Privacy and Social Media]

Duncan Riley — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:03:17 +0000

A new first for Ustream.tv and possibly the net, a birth was streamed live to the world today from West Pennsylvania. At the time of writing I can’t find a recording of the birth, with only a video of the child post delivery available, but from all accounts the whole thing was shown.

This is the end. To quote Jim Morrison:

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
Ill never look into your eyes…again

We have reached the point where nothing left is sacred, where our most intimate moments are now fair game for the world at large. It is the beginning of an age so well described in Ben Elton’s challenging novel Blind Faith (a recommended read for anyone interested in this area):

Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody. Where what a person “feels” and “truly believes” is protected under the law, while what is rational, even provable is condemned as heresy. A world where to question ignorance and intolerance is to commit a Crime against Faith.

Imagine it. Or just wait until After The Flood.

On a hot Sagittarian morning in the year 56 ATF, Trafford Sewell struggles to work through the usual crowds of near-naked commuters. He is confronted by the intimidating figure of his Parish Confessor. Why has Trafford not been streaming his every moment of sexual intimacy onto the community website like everybody else? Does he think he’s different or special in some way? Better than his fellow man and woman? Does he have something to hide?

Ben Elton imagines a post-apocalyptic society where religious intolerance combines with a confessional sex-obsessed, self-centric culture to create a world where nakedness is modesty, ignorance is wisdom and privacy is a dangerous perversion. A chilling vision of what’s to come? Or something rather closer to what we call reality?

We have reached the point of no return. From Twittering a birth to streaming it live, the floodgates are open. Where there is a willing audience, there will be those willing to expose themselves to the world at large, and as our lust for knowing and seeing all continues, so to will the frequency of everything exposed online.

The remaining question for those in social media is whether we embrace the change and ride the wave, or we rally against it. Where today is the line between privacy and sharing? Does sharing some things open the door to sharing all, or is there still a place for what perhaps can be described as antique ideas of private moments.

What ever the answers, remember September 2, 2008 as the day that the last remaining barrier came down between personal and public. The tipping point where a sea of copycats and unrestricted life streaming that will now surely follow.

Ustream.tv

Oops…Wrong Button

JR — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:00:31 +0000

Ticketek — the Australian equivalent to America’s Ticketmaster — seems to have an “Expose Private Info to the Internet” button within its internal mail client.

Someone at the ticketing agency recently sent out a message to all its customers about a concert pre-sale. The message also, however, contained tens of thousands of private e-mail addresses from its database. Anyone hungry for spam?

Ticketek told The Age the screw-up was a simple matter of “humor error.” They really should place that “Expose Private Info” button farther away from the “Send” command.

Apparently, Australia’s government is right now in the midst of revamping its Privacy Act to tighten restrictions surrounding electronic data breaches. Presently, commissioners say their guidelines are behind the times when it comes to these sorts of issues.

Ticketek, for its part, promised its staff will be apologizing to all of those affected by its slip-up. Of course, those apologies may be lost within the dozens of Viagra ads also now being received by those customers on an hourly basis.

You Can Soon Escape Yahoo’s Customized Ads

Dominic Rivera — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:58:31 +0000

Yahoo! Inc. will offer users greater choice in how they manage their privacy online by enabling them to opt-out of customized advertising on Yahoo.com.

This move came as Yahoo’s response to a letter sent by congressmen from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce asking 33 Internet ad telecommunications companies to detail their privacy policies. Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and AOL were among those asked to comply.

Yahoo’s opt-out capability is expected to be available for consumers by the end of August.

“Yahoo! strongly believes that consumers want choice when customizing their online experience and they have also demonstrated a strong preference for advertising that is more personally relevant to them,” Anne Toth, head of privacy and VP for policy, said. “However, we understand that there are some users who prefer not to receive customized advertising and this opt-out will offer them even greater choice.”

Your Public Photos Could Become My Disguise

JR — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:24:54 +0000

Your online photo collection could soon be used to disguise strangers.

Scientists at Columbia University have come up with facial swapping software that uses publicly posted pictures as a kind of high-tech camouflage. The concept’s being suggested to Google for its Street View program. The team believes its creation could provide a better alternative to blurring faces on Google’s street shots — a practice started a couple of months ago to protect people’s privacy.

The program works by randomly selecting a face from a database of more than 33,000 photos, pulled from sites such as Flickr and Yahoo Images. It then creates a composite, taking the eyes and nose from the new image and placing them on top of the original face. The software is smart enough to match lighting, pose, and resolution so the parts don’t look out-of-place. It then aligns the features, color corrects, and blends the new face together — and the whole thing happens without any human guidance.

The results are a bit jarring at times, but they definitely do their job. The scientists are looking at offering the software to military or police groups for identity protecting purposes. It could also be marketed for everyday use, letting you switch out a bad grin with a more pleasing shot of your face — or, if you prefer, someone else’s.