Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
…and “marking” doors. 😯
| Census GPS-tagging your home’s front door
…140,000 workers hired…to collect GPS readings for every front door in the nation. |
Just because I thought you should know.
Disclaimer: I didn’t verify this information with other sources.
In yesterday’s news from the New York Times…
| Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law
The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews. Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional. |
But despite my repeated warnings on this blog, you continue to discuss all manner of stuff via email and phone. Don’t you?! Yeah, I thought so.
I, too.
“I don’t have anything to hide,” is such a lame defense or explanation or boast or whatever it is.
If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t mind telling me anything and everything about yourself. 😆
Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? 🙄
Facebook, Bebo and MySpace ‘to be monitored by security services’
| The private correspondence of millions of people who use social networking sites could be tracked and saved on a “big brother” database, under new plans being drawn up by the UK government.
Ministers revealed yesterday that they were considering policing messages sent via sites such as MySpace and Facebook, alongside plans to store information about every phone call, e-mail and internet visit made by everyone in the United Kingdom. There was immediate uproar from opposition parties, privacy campaigners and security experts who said the plans were over-the-top and unworkable. |
Yeah. Maybe so.
Google software bug shared private online documents
| Google has confirmed that a software bug exposed documents thought to be privately stored in the Internet giant’s online Docs application service.
The problem was fixed by the weekend and is believed to have affected only .05 percent of the digital documents at a Google Docs service that provides text-handling programs as services on the Internet. |
But a bunch of you wouldn’t listen to my earlier warnings (here and here), would you?!
Oh well. 🙄
Ah, yes. Transparency and openness — they’re the new wave. Well, you can surf it all you want. 😆
Oh, sorry me — I forgot — you know it won’t happen to you. Great. I will grant you that the .05% cited above gives you good odds. Still, what about the security lapses they haven’t even discovered yet? 😀
And how much comfort do the owners of the .05% derive from those “long” odds? 😯
Anyway, I’ll continue to store my stuff on CDs and DVDs and secondary PCs and external (almost always disconnected) hard drives.
Disclaimer: Despite the title above, I don’t know of any relationship between these two stories.
| California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, US energy secretary warns
California’s farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday. In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama’s cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration’s plans to combat it. |
Whoa! And woe! This is coming from a physicist. And one that won a Nobel Prize at that. Pretty impressive.
Five paragraphs later, though, this: “Chu is not a climate scientist. He won his Nobel for work trapping atoms with laser light.”
Oh.
So what about Google? Well, this:
| Google Offers “Latitude” to Track People
Google is releasing free software Wednesday that enables people to keep track of each other using their cell phones. CNET got a sneak peek at it, and CNET-TV Senior Editor and The Early ShowNatali Del Conte explained how it works on the show Tuesday. She says “Latitude” uses GPS systems and what’s called cell tower triangulation to do the job. The software seeks the closest three cell towers and, with GPS, combines the data to show where someone is. It is designed to work on any phone with Internet capabilities, except the iPhone. “Latitude” is being marketed as a tool that could help parents keep tabs on their children’s locations, but it can be used for anyone to find anyone else, assuming permission is given. |
What’s the history and rationale behind their name choice for this new “tool”?
Police look to hack citizens’ home PCs
| Police and state intelligence agencies from several countries may soon be working together to secretly hack into private citizens’ personal computers without their knowledge and without a warrant.
According to a London Times report, the police hacking process, called “remote searching,” enables law enforcement to gather information from e-mails, instant messages and Web browsers, even while hundreds of miles away. Furthermore, the Times reports, a new edict by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels has paved the way for international law enforcement agencies to begin remote searching and sharing the information with each other. According to the Times, the United Kingdom’s Home Office, the nation’s lead government department for immigration, drugs and counter-terrorism enforcement, has already quietly adopted a plan that would enable French, German and other European Union police forces to request remote searching be done on UK citizens’ computers. |
I haven’t much to say here except this: If you have DSL or some other form of “always on” broadband, disconnect your computer when you’re not online.
I keep trying to get the point across to people that email and cell phones should not be considered private and secure. I think most think I’m a paranoid kook. Or at least paranoid. Albeit a well-meaning one. Like a kindly old uncle (which I am, which I feel like, which I am) or a gentle befuddled grandpa (which I’m kinda, which I’m not, which I am) 🙄
Well, here’s something new I learned this morning while scanning the newsletter of a mission-related agency:
| 2) Is Cell Phone Security Even Worse Than We Thought?
Here’s a question from a field worker who writes, “Our mission team is located in a ‘police state.’ We know the police listen to our phone calls regularly. We also know they can use triangulation to locate us. We’re fine with that stuff. 🙂 But now we’re facing a couple of new concerns: “*** REMOTELY EAVESDROPPING WHEN WE’RE NOT ON THE PHONE — The microphones in cell phones are now being turned on remotely to allow eavesdropping on their owners anytime (even when you’re not making a call). We’ve figured out how to overcome this problem… but we kind of hate to always have the batteries out of our cell phones. 🙂 [By the way, if you think this worker has been watching too many episodes of “24”, just do an Internet search for the term, “FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool.”] “*** REMOTELY ACCESSING CONTENTS OF YOUR PHONE — We’re hearing (from some pretty tech-smart guys) that it’s easy to remotely hack into the contents of our phone, getting full access to our pics, calendars, docs, task lists, etc. The implications are huge. Can anyone confirm or deny this? |
Now what?