Late yesterday the much-hyped "privacy aware, personally controlled" Diaspora social network platform (discussed previously) published its open-source developer release. "Feel free to try to get it running on your machines and use it," the team urged, "but we give no guarantees. We know there are security holes and bugs, and your data is not yet fully exportable." The Register's initial report is less than rosy: Code for open-source Facebook littered with landmines
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis on Sep 17, 2010 - 58 comments

Carnivore, the gold standard for conspiracy theory, has apparently been mothballed. An interesting element of this is that Carnivore has been removed from service not because it is invasive of civil liberties, but rather because it has failed to perform against commercially-available monitoring technologies. Of course, since we do not know what those technologies *are*, it may be that they have built into them considerations of individual rights to privacy that Carnivore could not be altered to respect. However, given the drift of the US on matters of data privacy, this seems unlikely... So, what are the programmes that do it better than Carnivore? What do they have to offer that Carniviore doesn't, or is it just the ISPs are now offering information straight to the government? And does this mean that it is no longer fashionable to append long strings of exciting-sounding nouns to emails? (Apologies if this is old news to the more plugged-in - this report has only just been released under FOI)
posted by tannhauser on Jan 16, 2005 - 27 comments

At InfoSecuity 2002, an annual corporate security conference, new "computer forensics" software is on display, including software "that allows corporate IT folks to research employees' criminal histories, credit information, financial asset details, friends and associates. "

The software is called Red Alert 2.0, and more specifically the research software is an optional subscription based add-on called Intelligent Information Dossier plus. Isn't this tantamount to your employer spying on your private life, in real time?

As I work for a very large military contractor myself, I could easily see something like this being used where I work. Would you feel comfortable working for a company that uses this sort of intrusive software?
posted by SweetJesus on Dec 13, 2002 - 21 comments

WE ARE WATCHING YOU. "The FBI added that its research is 'always mindful of constitutional, privacy and commercial equities,' and that its use of new technology can be challenged in court and in Congress." No really, go ahead, try and stop us if you don't like it. That's your (snicker, snicker) right.
posted by rushmc on Nov 24, 2001 - 12 comments

We'll forget it for you wholesale. Privacy portal company Safe Web sells powerful anonymizing software to the CIA. Which can then use it to spy on ? As well as for protecting their agents, of course . . . ;]
posted by aflakete on Feb 12, 2001 - 1 comment