Tag archives for privacy

  1. Facebook Android app update is insane …

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    … even for me.  I’ve been saying for a while that the privacy is pretty much dead, but this new update of Facebook Android app is asking for way too may permissions even for my taste.  Some of the things that it “needs” now are: access to make phone calls without user intervention, accessing information about other running applications, and drawing over other applications’ screens, so you won’t even know anymore who is responsible for what you are seeing.

    When I got an update notification, I thought, at first, that that was a mistake of some sort or a really late and lame April 1st joke.  Albeit it’s not.  Even Slashdot runs the story.

    For now, I’ll hold the old version.  Maybe Facebook will rectify this new change.  If not, then I’ll get rid of it and go back to Twitter and, possibly, Google+.

  4. Police can film people without consent under certain circumstances →

    POLICE may film or take photographs or people without consent under conditions to be specified by the attorney-general, justice minister Loucas Louca said yesterday.

    “Following a meeting with the commissioner for the protection of personal data, the attorney-general, the police chief and I, it was decided that the police may video-record people under certain circumstances,” Louca said.

  5. Debunking “If you have nothing to hide …” argument

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    I am quite a publicly open person.  There are very few things about me, which are not published online or which I am not open to discuss with strangers.  So one could say that I am not much concerned about my privacy.  Given that, and the recent advance in technology – photo and video cameras, storage space, centralized database, and search – I do often say that the privacy is dead.  Some people hate it, some people like it, yet others are neutral.  But I see it more as a fact, rather than a distant future possibility.  And that often gets me into discussions about privacy with people who fill different.

    Since I don’t really care much about it, I might have used the “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” argument.  Not because I strongly believe it, but because I think this is the case most of the time.  Today I came across an article that provides a few reasons for why that is a dangerous argument to use.  And I have to say that it made me think and agree with a few points that it raises.

    It’s not you who determine if you have something to fear: You may consider yourself law-abidingly white as snow, and it won’t matter a bit. What does matter is whether you set off the red flags in the mostly-automated surveillance, where bureaucrats look at your life in microscopic detail through a long paper tube to search for patterns. When you stop your car at the main prostitution street for two hours every Friday night, the Social Services Authority will draw certain conclusions from that data point, and won’t care about the fact that you help your elderly grandmother – who lives there – with her weekly groceries. When you frequently stop at a certain bar on your way driving home from work, the Department of Driving Licenses will draw certain conclusions as to your eligibility for future driving licenses – regardless of the fact that you think they serve the world’s best reindeer meatballs in that bar, and never had had a single beer there. People will stop thinking in terms of what is legal, and start acting in self-censorship to avoid being red-flagged, out of pure self-preservation.

    I still think that the privacy is dead.  And it’s still not a big issue for me.  But I do understand people who worry about it a bit better now.

  6. When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide: ‘People Staring at Computers’ →

    This is a rather lengthy story, but it touches on many different topics – art, privacy, Apple, law, government, and more.  And even though it is long, it is very well written and is absolutely worth the time.

    Later that year I worked with interactive artist Theo Watson on an extension of “Important Things,” called “Happy Things,” which took a screenshot every time you smiled, and uploaded it to the web. We got pictures from all around the world, with people smiling at everything, from cat memes to the Wikipedia article for Nicholas Cage.

    Sometimes this kind of work is associated with “human-computer interaction,” but this term makes it sound like we’re interacting with computers, when in fact, most of the time, we’re interacting with each other. I like to think of it as “computer-mediated interaction.”

    In mid-May, 2011, I took a timelapse using my laptop’s webcam to get a feeling for how I looked at the computer. After a few days of recording, I watched the video.

    I was completely stunned.

    There was no expression on my face. Even though I spend most of my day talking to and collaborating with other people online, from my face you can see no trace of this.

  8. EU supports eCall – GPS in every car

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    Slashdot reports:

    the European Parliament has pass a resolution in support of eCall, an initiative to install devices in vehicles that automatically contact emergency services in the event of a crash. The resolution calls on the European Condition to make it mandatory for all new cars starting in 2015.

    Sounds good, doesn’t it?  But just think about it for a second.  There you go, driving your car around.  And all of a sudden – BOOM – crash!  Not to worry.  Your car has a device installed that dials the emergency services and there is a digital conversation similar to this:

    - Hello, this is emergency services.  How can I help you?
    - Hello, this is Mitsubishi Galant GDI.  Registration number XYZ123.  I’ve just crashed and need assistance.
    - OK, please remain calm.  The help is on the way.  Whereabouts are you now?
    - My map suggests that I am Pentadromos, Limassol, Cyprus.  My GPS coordinates are 34.680635, 33.043198.
    - We’ve got you.  There is a unit nearby.  It should be at your location in approximately 2 minutes.
    - Thank you. Bye.

    This sounds so good, for when you really need help.  But there is another side to it – vehicle tracking.  How comfortable are you with someone else knowing where you went, how fast you went there, and for how long you stayed there?  And we aren’t talking just about the authorities here.  Think of all those hackers, script kiddies, private investigators, and then authorities.

    Now, back to the original application – emergency services.  It obviously comes at a price of your privacy.  Is that too much to pay?

  9. All your base are belong to … USA

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    Slashdot reports:

    The European Parliament has approved the controversial data transfer agreement, the bilateral PNR (passenger name register), with the US which requires European airlines to pass on passenger information, including name, contact details, payment data, itinerary, email and phone numbers to the Department of Homeland Security. Under the new agreement, PNR data will be ‘depersonalized’ after six months and would be moved into a ‘dormant database’ after five years. However the information would still be held for a further 15 years before being fully ‘anonymized.’

    I’m so glad that I managed to visit the USA before it became a paranoid concentration camp.  The way things go, I don’t think I’ll live long enough to visit it again, without being worried for an arrest and endless detention.

    P.S.: And some people still talk about privacy.  What privacy?