Practical Ethics:
Enlightened Surveillance? Surrendering on surveillance might be the least bad option – of all likely civil liberty encroachments, this seemed the less damaging and hardest to resist. But that’s an overly defensive way of phrasing it – if ubiquitous surveillance and lack of privacy are the trends of the future, we shouldn’t just begrudgingly accept them, but demand that society gets the most possible out of them.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Apr 18, 2013 -
23 comments
Why Privacy Matters, Even If You Have Nothing To Hide, by Daniel J. Solove
The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." ... To evaluate the nothing-to-hide argument, we should begin by looking at how its adherents understand privacy. Nearly every law or policy involving privacy depends upon a particular understanding of what privacy is. The way problems are conceived has a tremendous impact on the legal and policy solutions used to solve them.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Dec 9, 2012 -
67 comments
Karsten Nohl and a team of fellow researchers has
cracked the 64-bit encryption used in 80% of the world's GSM phones.
Nohl had previously cracked the encryption in the
MIFARE smartcard system,
demonstrating that the encryption on that device can be cracked in approximately no time whatsoever. These, of course, aren't the first gaping holes in cellphone security to come to light; indeed,
lack of security seems to be part of the design spec. Perhaps all new cellphones should be just be
distributed with a deck of cards.
posted by kaibutsu
on Dec 28, 2009 -
51 comments
Two years ago, then NSA-chief Gen. Michael Hayden said its domestic surveillance program was "not a driftnet over Lackawanna or Fremont or Dearborn, grabbing all communications and then sifting them out."
Today,
a story in the Wall Street Journal alleges this is precisely what is happening.
Total Information Awareness seems to not have died, but to have just been quietly absorbed into the NSA's already extensive surveillance apparatus, all without the hassle of any kind of transparency or oversight.
posted by [expletive deleted]
on Mar 10, 2008 -
70 comments
Tired of standing in line at the airport? Worried that you might share a name with a known terrorist or subversive on the TSA's mysterious no-fly lists? Relax. Get fingerprinted and/or iris scanned. And pay $79.95 a year to become a
Registered Traveler, and
fly Clear in the fast lane. (And note how quickly
conceptual art projects become indistinguishable from
reality.) Meanwhile, the Feds
settle an ACLU lawsuit over the no-fly lists... while revealing no information about them. [Lists recently discussed
here].
posted by digaman
on Jan 25, 2006 -
52 comments
Southeast Airlines has plans to
install digital video cameras throughout the cabins of its planes to record the faces and activities of its passengers at all times. Furthermore, the charter airline will store the digitized video for up to 10 years. And it may use face recognition software to match faces to names and personal records.
posted by Irontom
on Jul 18, 2003 -
17 comments
BBC's Newsnight reports on a massive security oversight that makes unencrypted NATO video surveillance available on the Internet "Nato surveillance flights in the Balkans are beaming their pictures over an insecure satellite link - and anyone can tune in and watch their operations live," reports Mark Urban of BBC2's late-night news analysis show.
Near-realtime footage of NATO surveillance operations in the Balkans is routinely gathered by spy planes and returned to base as an encrypted signal and then forwarded to intelligence facilities in the US. However, when they are beamed back to Europe for analysis at NATO headquarters, no encryption is used. It is possible to tune into and watch these live video feeds (complete with map references and information about the type of aircraft in use) and so, in theory, an unfriendly agency could use the pictures to see what troops are up to and who they are watching. How long before this loophole is acknowledged and closed? Or should all surveillance data be made
ever more available to whoever wants it?
posted by hmgovt
on Jun 12, 2002 -
13 comments
