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I Have a Deep Dark Secret

[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 6, 2013 by admin in Technology

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

And when I decide to share it, you can rest assured I won’t do it on the upload site MEGA using the Silent Circle app on my iPhone.

If I sold you a lock and key for twenty dollars, and told you that no-one in the world would be able to unlock it except you, would you believe me? Probably not. And that’s the analogy I keep thinking of as a result of the recent launches of two services that are supposedly going to revolutionize privacy and file transfers. You may have already heard of one of these services; the infamous Kim Dotcom whose MegaUpload file sharing empire was taken down when he was arrested last year  launched MEGA last month. One of the cleverest things about the new service is probably the hilarious domain name “mega.co.nz”, because the basic idea behind MEGA is simply that, as they themselves put it: “All files stored on MEGA are encrypted. All data transfers from and to MEGA are encrypted” adding that “unlike the industry norm where the cloud storage provider holds the decryption key, with MEGA, you control the encryption“. This is all fine and dandy from a basic technical standpoint, but what about the human element? As the hilarious XKCD five dollar wrench gag points out, there’s a level where massive encryption simply becomes irrelevant. I mean, it wasn’t only the technology that tripped up alleged Anonymous member Higinio O.Ochoa when he got collared by the FBI, it was pride. And his girlfriend’s breasts. And it wasn’t rubber-hose cryptanalysis  that allegedly broke LulzSec leader Sabu, it was the threat of never seeing his kids again. So – including human nature as an element in the equation, could you logically trust a guy who looks and dresses like this to be selling you a trustworthy product that only has your best interests in mind? Likewise with a service that was getting some spin yesterday called Silent Circle. No, not the band Silent Circle, the app developer of tools like Silent Phone. The service promises to revolutionize mobile privacy. Some of the most impressive names in security and encryption  are involved, and they swear that they will not bend to the feds when the feds inevitably get uppity about what this service actually does. But hold on. One of the developers is a former Navy SEAL. You don’t have to be wearing a tinfoil hat to ask how that is supposed to make you feel confident that the US government doesn’t have a backdoor into the service, do you? Personally, if I want to share a secret safely, I don’t think I’d do it through total strangers.

 

Via XKCD

Hope & Change You Can Be Bereaving

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 21, 2011 by admin in Politics

Friday, January 21st, 2011

I’ll be watching the State of the Union address next week, but I’m bereaving hope more than I believe in it.

A couple of years ago, I asked When Did Americans Become Such Chickenshit Crybabies?, so it was kind of a relief when Patrick Smith, the “Ask the Pilot” guy, went public with a more serious and calmly reasoned treatment of the idea. Because if you look at the entire history of airline terrorism, things haven’t changed much over the years, only our reactions have. Which is at the core of just one of many reasons I take issue with the treatment of privacy rights since the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. All along, I’ve been of the opinion – which I consider to be informed rather than paranoid – that various parties both inside and outside of government have capitalized on public fear, whether in the interest of invasive data collection or manipulating national sentiment. With President Obama’s State of the Union address coming up next week, I’m reminded of how profoundly disappointed I am with myself for falling for his campaign rhetoric and tone in 2008. One of the only reasons I voted for the man was that I foolishly believed he was sincere about troop drawdowns, lowering America’s hostile presence abroad, doing away with some of the Bush administration’s executive secrecy, and easing up on the incessant erosion of citizen’s privacy and freedom to move about. I was disappointed when Obama supported the FISA bill before he was even elected, but blew it off to a campaign-time necessity, and believed him when he said his administration would pursue a sincere review of wiretapping policies. Well, not only have none of these things come to pass in two years, he has completely contradicted himself repeatedly on almost all of them. Last year was the deadliest year so far in the Afghan conflict, with troop increases of 3,000, and a 134% increase in drone attacks and 54% increase in related deaths. The Obama White House has endorsed Bush era secrecy on torture and rendition, been worse about wiretapping issues than Bush, and made virtually no changes regarding the inept, out of control, and revenge-driven TSA, which many travelers have described as providing an experience they haven’t encountered since the Berlin Wall days. I could go on about how the Obama health care plan was a back door corporate sellout, but I won’t. The Republicans will be spending enough time deriding the plan as a dog and pony show in the coming months. No need to throw more sand in the gears of government; American politicians seem to have things pretty well ground to a halt on their own. I honestly hope to see something inspiring from next week’s SOTU address, but only because I’m idiotically optimistic about life in general. Not because I have any rational reason to do so.

Facebook To Demand DNA Sample For Log In

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 5, 2011 by admin in Technology

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

In addition to the blood of your firstborn, a retinal scan, and other biometric methods. Do you trust Facebook to be the issuer of your “Internet Driver’s License”?

Sometimes I feel like I’m Charlton Heston’s character in Soylent Green, running around screaming “it’s made of people!” while the masses around me munch away muttering through full mouths “but it’s so yummy“. Recently I asked the opinion of friends on Facebook about which e-mail client I might switch to after having a nightmarish experience “upgrading” to Thunderbird 3 (an experience that many have shared, by the way). One thing that surprised me a little was that a few tech-savvy friends said “why not G-Mail?” to which I replied “because it’s a web service not an e-mail client” and added “besides, I don’t like all my messages eternally remaining in the hands of a company whose CEO has so much contempt for personal privacy“, to which one of these friends said “privacy is an illusion”. Which let me use one of my favorite ironic quotes, i.e., Obama’s Cynicism Is A Sorry Kind Of Wisdom. Because while it’s true that certain lifestyle choices insure that most of your life is an open book, that doesn’t mean we all have to roll over, shave our heads, get our citizen ID tattoo, and start living like we’re in the movie THX 1138 or something. Call me a Luddite, but in spite of the fact that I have nothing to hide, I’m not going to give all my trust to Google and Facebook when it comes to my personal communications, and I’m certainly not going to start “checking in” with services like Foursquare or Facebook Places. I feel like there are degrees of privacy, and that we’re all entitled to maintain as much as we like or are able. I was a little annoyed that Google captured me sitting on my porch a few years ago, but I’ve since moved, and clearly, I blew my own cover in that instance out of amusement. But how would you feel about Facebook being your Internet Driver’s License? That idea doesn’t appeal to me too much, for a few reasons. First, on top of the fact that Mark Zuckerberg has already declared privacy dead, ex-Googler and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg agrees, and is probably more eager to sell your data than Zuckerberg is. And since that’s a Gawker Media article I just linked to, let’s just take a moment to remember what can happen to millions of us at once when we entrust our personal information to a site that thrives on verified users but doesn’t care about their privacy. Facebook has done little to improve the security of your information as they’ve grown; anyone can still easily download this Firefox plugin and start hacking nearby users’ accounts with a method called sidejacking, and Facebook’s one time password solution for mobile users has a profound intrinsic flaw that I’m surprised hasn’t gotten more attention. My recent favorite was when I went to log in and Facebook put on a little Security Theater (see nice overview of the process here if you haven’t experinced it yet ) for me by asking for another e-mail, my mobile number, and then asked me to identify my friends in a lineup. Something that apparently has created real problems when people have been asked to identify friend’s dogs and Gummy Bears to get into their account. Becoming the sole single sign-on service provider so far remains the holy grail of huge tech companies like Google and Microsoft, but now it looks like Facebook has a chance of pulling it off. How would you feel about Facebook being the primary issuer of your internet traveling papers?

TSA To Implement Cattle Prod Wielding Robots

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 20, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

Okay. Maybe that’s a few years away.


This is a still from a video of a training
session with the new TSA robots.

I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I have a profound fear of flying. It’s not that I’m afraid of flying per sé; in fact, I’ve skydived, gone hang gliding, been in a hot air balloon, and actually love being in any kind of flying vehicle. If I could afford it, I’d love to get a pilot’s license. No, my fear of flying is a very recent development, and is restricted to a fear of flying on a major airline, especially in America. Mostly because I’m afraid of how I’d react to the latest advancements in TSA procedures. And so really I guess my fear is for the well-being of TSA personnel. I really, really do not understand people who accept the newly-instituted TSA pat-down policies. I mean, I can understand why President Obama says they’re frustrating but necessary, and why John Boehner brags he’ll be flying commercial airlines more than his predecessor. Obama gets to go straight from Air Force One to Cadillac One, and Boehner – like other politicians – is exempted from all the ass-grabbing going on. What I don’t understand is why apparently 4 out of 5 Americans support the new scanners. It’s hard to decide which recent incidents are most appalling. The woman who had her breasts exposed while agents laughed? The 4-year-old boy who was strip searched? Or in light of the UCSF scientists’ letter highlighting radiation risks, perhaps the recovering cancer patients like Thomas Sawyer, who had his urostomy bag knocked loose, leaving him covered in urine, or the former flight attendant and breast cancer survivor who was forced to remove her prosthetic breast. Or maybe the absurdity of patriotic soldiers returning from the wars that are supposed to be saving us from the terrorists having their nail clippers confiscated. Keep in mind this was one of 233 people toting assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns. For a much saner and complete roundup by an actual security expert, see this Bruce Schneier post from the other day. More images and video below. Read the rest of this entry »

Google And The CIA Invest In “Temporal Analytics Engine”

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 31, 2010 by admin in Technology

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Google and the CIA may sound like strange bedfellows, but not in an era in which the ad industry is building “databases of intentions” based on your surfing habits. Learn how “harmless” sites like Dictionary.com are tracking where you surf, and what you type while you’re there. And how to prevent it.

Love it or hate it (and in spite of occasionally hilarious results) the Google auto-complete feature can be uncannily accurate when guessing the rest of what you’ll type. So wouldn’t it be great if in the future, Google would know what you’re searching before you even search for it? If this sounds more like the movie Minority Report to you than reality, you should take a look into the kind of marketing and data mining methods that are in common usage on the web. For those of you who miss the “Big Brother” vibe of the Bush era and the Patriot Act, ponder this: Google and the CIA are both investing in a company called Recorded Future that “goes beyond search” to “visualize the future, past or present” using what Recorded Future calls a “Temporal Analytics Engine”. Although a disturbing alignment of interests, this isn’t so far from what other companies are already doing. Dig deep into the links in the recent WSJ feature What They Know to learn about who’s poking and prodding your browser, and which tracking technologies are at work. The days of simple cookies are over; these services use Bugs, Beacons and Flash Cookies (more on these insidious Adobe doodads below) not only to store information about which sites you visit, but even what you type while you’re there, or in the case of Flash Cookies, to re-insert the conventional cookies you’ve deleted without telling you! And we’re talking about “harmless” sites that you visit all the time, like Dictionary.com and CNN. While one might argue that you’d be happy to be served up ads based on the things you actively look at – which is a big part of what the intention is with these technologies – there are a few problems with that line of thinking. First of all, for people like me, this is an utterly useless approach; I do a lot of research looking at things that really don’t interest me. So when I write a piece about the billions being made by Farmville, for instance, I then get fed a constant stream of REALLY dumb ads targeting people who play web-based games and shop at Walmart. Another problem is that these third party services are often based on predictive marketing, and attach your data in ways that really DO very nearly identify you specifically with IP addresses and other information. BlueKai, for instance, is “aggregating valuable shopping and research behaviors across the Internet” to build “the world’s largest database of intentions”. Yes. You read that right. A “database of intentions”. If this stuff doesn’t trouble you, try putting what these companies are doing in a real-world scenario. Imagine going to the mall, buying something at The Gap, and then having a little attendant walk up and say “I’m just going to follow you around and watch what you buy, so we can improve your experience here at the mall today”. That would of course be annoying and unsettling, but wouldn’t it be even creepier if you knew a team of attendants were doing it with remote surveillance techniques? Below are some basic tips for easily blocking these rather invasive marketing tools. Read the rest of this entry »

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