Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts

  Recently Facebook was caught tracking their users internet activity even while logged off of Facebook. They defended themselves by claiming that tracking in this manner was not the intention of the program. That can be seen as an outright lie now that the patent has been found for the program responsible for causing the privacy concerns. 
See patent here: Communicating Information in a Social Network System about Activities from Another Domain

Abstract
In one embodiment, a method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain. The method includes maintaining a profile for each of one or more users of the social networking system, each profile identifying a connection to one or more other users of the social networking system and including information about the user. The method additionally includes receiving one or more communications from a third-party website having a different domain than the social network system, each message communicating an action taken by a user of the social networking system on the third-party website. The method additionally includes logging the actions taken on the third-party website in the social networking system, each logged action including information about the action. The method further includes correlating the logged actions with one or more advertisements presented to the one or more users on the third-party website as well as correlating the logged actions with a user of the social networking system.

 After reading the abstract (above) and the details (full text) it is hard to believe that it wasn't the intentions of Facebook to track all of a users internet traffic. This just adds to the repeated lies from Facebook about users privacy concerns.
     Everything done online can and will be used against us in some way, somehow.

 Here is just a little update on the internet security issues that were brought up recently.

Internet firms co-opted for surveillance: expert
Georgina Prodhan
(Reuters) - Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly co-opted for surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies, Web experts said this week.
Although such companies try to keep their users' information private, their business models depend on exploiting it to sell targeted advertising, and when governments demand they hand it over, they have little choice but to comply. 
Suggestions that BlackBerry maker RIM might give user data to British police after its messenger service was used to coordinate riots this summer caused outrage -- as has the spying on social media users by more oppressive governments.
But the vast amount of personal information that companies like Google collect to run their businesses has become simply too valuable for police and governments to ignore, delegates to the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi said.
"When the possibility exists for information to be obtained that wasn't possible before, it's entirely understandable that law enforcement is interested," Google's Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf told Reuters in an interview.
"Then the issue would be, what's the right policy? And that, or course, engenders a lot of debate," said Cerf, who is recognized as one of the "fathers of the Internet" for his early work in areas including communications protocols and email.
Demands from governments for Internet companies to hand over user information have become routine, according to online privacy researcher and activist Christopher Soghoian, who makes extensive use of freedom-of-information requests in his work.
"Every decent-sized U.S. telecoms and Internet company has a team that does nothing but respond to requests for information," Soghoian told Reuters in an interview.
Soghoian estimates that U.S. Internet and telecoms companies may receive about 300,000 such requests in connection with law enforcement each year -- but public information is scarce.
While U.S. courts are obliged to publish reports on wire-tapping of telephone lines, no similar information is required to be made public with respect to the Internet -- which grew up after the laws on electronic communications were passed.
Google does voluntarily publish a transparency report every six months in which it details the number of requests it receives from governments around the world to remove content from its services or hand over user data.
But the numbers do not reveal how many users are affected by each request -- only trends country by country (www.google.com/transparencyreport).
Some governments are requiring Internet companies to collect more data and keep it for longer, said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, executive director of Poland's Panoptykon Foundation, which campaigns for human rights in light of modern surveillance.
"Government agencies throughout the world are pushing companies to collect even more data than is needed for their business purposes," she told the conference.
"For example, we have a very controversial data retention regime which is currently under review. This requires people to store data for a period up to two years so it can easily be accessed by law enforcement agencies."
The ease and cost of surveillance are at an all-time low, Soghoian said, with Google charging an administrative fee of $25 to hand over data, Yahoo charging $20, and Microsoft and Facebook providing data for free.
"Now, one police officer from the comfort of their desk can track 20, 30, 50 people all through Web interfaces provided by mobile companies and cloud computing companies," he said.
"The marginal cost of surveilling one more person is now essentially approaching zero."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/30/us-internet-security-idUSTRE78T2GY20110930

   With more and more information coming out about customer privacy concerns, you might want to know how long your cell phone company keeps your information. If concern over privacy is not enough lets also remember that even when police request this information the carrier makes money off of fulfilling their requests.

Cellphone carriers retain customer data for up to 7 years

WASHINGTON (WLS) - A leaked document from the Justice Department intended for law enforcement officials describes the length of time major cellphone companies retain sensitive customer data, including text message details and content.
Wired magazine reported that T-Mobile keeps a list of users’ text message recipients for up to five years and AT&T for up to seven years, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ) document dated August 2010.
Wired lists the retention periods of other carriers’ data, such as who keeps call detail records the longest (AT&T: up to seven years) and post-paid bill copies the longest (AT&T and Sprint: up to seven years).
Verizon Wireless is the only carrier that keeps text contents, although for three to five days.
The document, entitled “Retention Periods of Major Cellular Service Providers,” was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in North Carolina through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, said in an email to ABC News that the company would not comment on the details in the report.
But, he said, “Verizon Wireless keeps data for various periods of time in order to provide services to our customers, including responding to customer inquiries about their own accounts. We take the privacy of our customers very seriously, and have policies and procedures in place to safeguard customer information.”
Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T, said the company addresses data retention in its privacy policy. AT&T’s privacy policy states the company retains personal information (including name, address, telephone number, email address, Social Security number and financial account number) “only as long as needed for business, tax or legal purposes, after which we destroy it by making it unreadable or undecipherable.”
Its privacy policy says it may provide personal information to non-AT&T companies or other third parties for purposes such as responding to 911 calls and other emergencies; complying with court orders and other legal process; assisting with identity verification, and to prevent fraud and identity theft; enforcing AT&T’s agreements and property rights; and “obtaining payment for products and services that appear on your AT&T billing statements, including the transfer or sale of delinquent accounts to third parties for collection.”
Jason Gertzen, a spokesman for Sprint, said the company “respects and protects the privacy and security of the personal information of our customers.”
“Responding to public safety or law enforcement requests is not unique to Sprint. We act as good stewards of our customers’ personal information while also meeting our obligations to law enforcement agencies,” he said in an email to ABC News. “Different categories of data are retained for varying lengths of time depending on the type and sensitivity of data, the applicable laws and regulations governing the retention of such data and the business purpose of the data.”

Do we not understand the importance of privacy any more. We need to guard it (especially now) because lack of privacy welcomes discrimination. Eventually judgments will be passed on those things that will make you different from others. When this kind of information is given up to government or authorities eventually pressure to be within the parameters of acceptable will come along. 
*Check out the links at the bottom to see the trend*

We here about DNA with police investigations all the time. Britain has taken it to the level of keeping DNA databases. They have taken it to a new level. Beware what is coming home soon.... 

Police arresting people "just for the DNA"

By Peter Griffiths
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has built the world's biggest DNA database without proper political debate and police routinely arrest people just to get their DNA profiles onto the system, the genetics watchdog said in a report on Tuesday.
The Human Genetics Commission, which advises the government on the social, legal and ethical aspects of genetics, called for a review of the database and said new laws must be passed to govern its use.
In a damning report, the commission said "function creep" had transformed the system from a DNA store for offenders into a database of suspects.
More than three-quarters of young black men aged between 18 and 35 are on the system, the report said.
Set up in 1995, the database contains the DNA profiles of five million citizens, eight percent of the population, making it the world's biggest in proportion to population size.
"Parliament has never formally debated the establishment of the National DNA Database and safeguards around it," commission chairman Professor Jonathan Montgomery said in a statement.
"It has developed through amendments to laws designed to regulate the taking of fingerprints and physical evidence before DNA profiling was developed.
"It is not clear how far holding DNA profiles on a central database improves police investigations."
The report quoted an unidentified retired senior police officer as saying that "it is now the norm to arrest offenders for everything" in order to obtain a DNA sample.
'VITAL TOOL'
A Home Office spokesman said the database was a "vital crime-fighting tool" that had linked more than 410,000 crime scenes with a DNA match and a possible lead to an offender between 1998 and March 2009.
"Research shows no clear link between the level of offence for which an individual is arrested and the seriousness of any subsequent offence with which they may be associated," the spokesman said. No one from the Association of Chief Police Officers could immediately be reached for comment.
Opposition politicians and human rights groups said the report provided further evidence that Britain is becoming a "surveillance society," where people's personal details are stored and their movements constantly monitored.
Conservative Home Office spokesman James Brokenshire said Gordon Brown's government had allowed the DNA database to grow "for the sake of it, regardless of guilt or innocence."
"Under Labor's surveillance state, everyone is treated as a potential suspect," he said.
The report recommended that parliament pass new laws that clearly outline the powers of the police and the DNA database.
An independent panel should be set up to review the evidence on who has given DNA samples and why. The type of offences which require suspects to give a sample must also be reviewed.
Police in England and Wales can take and store the DNA of anyone arrested for a recordable offence, a category that includes all but minor crimes.
(Editing by Steve Addison)

North America's electrical grid is one of the greatest technological achievements of the 20th century. However, at the time of its design, the main goal was to make sure the lights stayed on, with no serious thought to energy efficiency, environmental conservation, alternative energy sources, consumer-tailored choices, or cyber security. But times have changed, and today the grid offers a virtual window into your home – providing granular levels of information such as when you cook or shower, and for how long.
The information and communications technology revolution has changed our society in profound ways and these new technologies are being used to make the current electrical grid "smarter," commonly referred to as the "smart grid." But this is not the future. The deployment of smart meters in Ontario homes is already widespread, and the Ontario government has committed to installing this technology in all homes and small businesses by the end of 2010. President Barack Obama's infusion of $3.4 billion (U.S.) to build the smart grid is greatly accelerating the delivery of the program across the U.S.
Smart meters record and report electricity consumption on an hourly basis – even at the appliance level. Consumers can access their meter data and make individual choices about their energy use, benefitting by taking advantage of future rates.
While this technology is clearly beneficial in terms of valuable efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and reduce consumers' energy bills, it will also give rise to a new challenge – privacy protection. Privacy is the smart grid's sleeper issue. Whenever technology is utilized that targets individual consumers, there is invariably a dramatic increase in the amount of personally identifiable information that is collected and stored, leading to very real concerns regarding privacy. This is why we need to bake privacy into the smart grid at the design stage – known as "privacy by design" – a concept developed to ensure the protection of privacy by making privacy the default in the design of new technologies and business practices.
We must take great care not to sacrifice consumer privacy amid an atmosphere of unbridled enthusiasm for electricity reform. But we need not forfeit one for the other in a zero-sum manner; we can adopt a positive-sum approach, where both interests may prevail.
Information proliferation, lax controls and insufficient oversight of this information could lead to unprecedented invasions of consumer privacy. Intimate details of individual hydro customers' habits, from when they eat, when they shower, to when they go to bed, plus such security issues as whether they have an alarm system engaged, could all be discerned by the data, automatically fed by appliances and other devices, to the companies providing electric power to our homes.
These concerns, however, are not meant to scare us away from the value of monitoring electrical usage data on the grid – giving consumers more control over their electricity usage and giving electricity providers the ability to manage demand requirements – what we need to embrace is the idea that the dissemination of personal information must be done in a privacy protective and transparent manner.
That is why – along with co-author Christopher Wolf – we are releasing a white paper today, SmartPrivacy for the Smart Grid: Embedding Privacy in the Design of Electricity Conservation, which not only emphasizes the necessity of building privacy into the smart grid, but also provides guidance as to what concrete steps can be taken.
For example, data minimization is key: only the minimal amount of personally identifiable information should be provided, based on the nature of the relevant service, such as the first three digits of a postal code, which may be sufficient for services that allow for comparison of neighbourhood averages and other features such as regional electrical usage.
In addition, when an electrical utility company is sharing data with a third-party service provider, a pseudonym, such as a unique ID number, may be utilized instead of a customer's name or some other piece of information that can identify the individual. Further, third-party service providers should enter into contractual agreements not to correlate consumer data with data obtained from other sources, without the consent of the consumer. These are only a few of the steps that may be taken to ensure privacy protection on the smart grid.
The time for action is now, before the smart grid becomes a fully established part of our infrastructure. We cannot allow privacy to become the Achilles heel of this new method of energy management. The information collected on the smart grid will form a large and complex library of personal information, the mishandling of which could be highly invasive of personal privacy. There will be major concerns if consumer-focused principles of transparency and control are not treated as essential design principles. Both public and private sector organizations responsible for the processing of customers' personal information on the smart grid must ensure that privacy is embedded into the design of the smart grid, from start to finish – end-to-end.
If we give consumers assurances that their privacy is protected, we can then ensure consumer confidence and trust, which will allow for the widespread acceptance of the smart grid, in turn contributing to the overall goal of using energy in more efficient and environmentally friendly ways. We cannot and need not sacrifice privacy for energy efficiency. We can have both privacy and a fully functioning smart grid. A positive sum (win-win) outcome for all – electrical utility providers, consumers, the environment and privacy – is there for the asking.

The paper discussed in this article can be viewed at www.ipc.on.ca.

Obama announces $3.4 billion in grants for smart grid

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It was the largest award made in a single day from the $787 billion stimulus package approved by Congress. The White House said the award will create tens of thousands of jobs while upgrading the U.S. electric grid.
Republicans have heavily criticized the stimulus as wasteful spending that has done little to reduce America's 9.8 percent jobless rate.
The grants, which range from $400,000 to $200 million, will go to 100 companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners in 49 states -- every state except Alaska.
Obama made the announcement after taking a tour of an array of 90,000 solar panels that line a grassy plain of cow pastures deep in the muggy heart of Florida, apparently more panels than there are people in Arcadia.
Obama, doffing his suit coat against the heat and humidity, told a crowd the program was an important investment in the types of clean energy he would like to foster in the United States to wean the country off carbon fuels.
He said the grants would go to private companies, utilities and cities and were aimed at creating a "smarter, stronger and more secure electric grid."
"At this moment, there's something big happening in America when it comes to creating a clean energy economy," Obama said.
Carol Browner, Obama's top adviser on climate change and energy issues, told reporters that the current grid system was outdated and dilapidated.
"Not only do we need to make the current system bigger and add more watts, but we need to make it function better," she said.
"MORE THAN A FACE-LIFT"
The grants will not be used to build new power lines, but improve the capabilities of the electrical system. "I would say it's more than a face-lift," Browner said.
The money will pay for about 18 million smart meters that will help consumers manage energy use in their homes, 700 automated substations to make it faster for utilities to restore power knocked out by storms and 200,000 smart transformers that allow power companies to replace units before they fail, thus avoiding outages.
The winning companies have secured an additional $4.7 billion in private money to match their government grants, creating $8.1 billion in total investment in the smart grid.
One of the winning companies is Constellation Energy's Baltimore Gas and Electric Co, which will receive $200 million in grants to add to $250 million in private funds to deploy a smart meter network for all of its 1.1 million residential customers.
Constellation Energy chairman Mayo Shattuck said the new technology would put the country on the brink of the "greatest transformations of the electric grid ever."
"This technology allows consumers to have the opportunity to reduce their bills and it allows utilities to increase their efficiency," Shattuck said.
The White House will act fast to get the money into the economy, with the funds expected to be in the accounts of the winning companies within 60 days. The projects themselves will last 12 to 36 months.
BGE customers can use the meters to view their electricity use in real-time, allowing them to run appliances when there is less demand on the grid and power prices are cheaper.
Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas and Electric Co subsidiary will get $28.1 million on top of the $32 million it plans to spend to connect 1.4 million smart meters.
(Additional reporting by Tom Doggett and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by David Storey)

For all those who thought Verichip only wanted to help with security of health records. Now you can see the aim of implantable chips go into the economic realm as well. With the government moving to control America's health care industry the combination of these two industries threaten government regulation and involvement in every aspect of life. Our economic activity is going to be under massive scrutiny soon by our governments across the world, in order to save the economy and environment. This will facilitate the government to do so with ease in the future.

VeriChip Buys Steel Vault, Creating Micro-Implant Health Record/Credit Score Empire

VeriChip (CHIP), the company that markets a microchip implant that links to your online health records, has acquired Steel Vault (SVUL), a credit monitoring and anti-identity theft company. The combined company will operate under a new name: PositiveID.
The all-stock transaction will leave PositiveID in charge of a burgeoning empire of identity, health and microchip implant businesses that will only encourage its critics. BNET previously noted that some regard the company as part of a prophecy in the Book of Revelation (because the HealthLink chip carries an RFID number that can be used as both money and proof of ID) or as part of President Obama’s secret Nazi plan to enslave America.
The most obvious criticism to be made of the deal is that it potentially allows PositiveID to link or cross-check patient health records (from the HealthLink chip) to people’s credit scores. One assumes that the company will put up firewalls to prevent that. PositiveID CEO Scott Silverman said:

“PositiveID will be the first company of its kind to combine a successful identity security business with one of the world’s first personal health records through our Health Link business. PositiveID will address some of the most important issues affecting our society today with our identification tools and technologies for consumers and businesses.”

Unless, of course, consumers don’t actually want to be implanted with chips, have their health records available over the internet, or have their medical records linked to their credit scores.