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Posted on November 30th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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Why people “friend” others on social networks
From danah boyd’s “Facebook’s ‘Privacy Trainwreck’: Exposure, Invasion, and Drama” (8 September 2006):
Why does everyone assume that Friends equals friends? Here are some of the main reasons why people friend other people on social network sites:
1. Because they are actual friends
2. To be nice to people that you barely [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: social software, language & literature | No Comments »
The NSA and threats to privacy
From James Bamford’s “Big Brother Is Listening” (The Atlantic: April 2006):
This legislation, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, established the FISA court—made up of eleven judges handpicked by the chief justice of the United States—as a secret part of the federal judiciary. The court’s job is to decide whether to grant warrants requested by [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, history, law, politics, security, technology | No Comments »
How the Greek cell phone network was compromised
From Vassilis Prevelakis and Diomidis Spinellis’ “The Athens Affair” (IEEE Spectrum: July 2007):
On 9 March 2005, a 38-year-old Greek electrical engineer named Costas Tsalikidis was found hanged in his Athens loft apartment, an apparent suicide. It would prove to be merely the first public news of a scandal that would roil Greece for months.
The next [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, business, politics, security | No Comments »
Lots of good info about the FBI’s far-reaching wiretapping of US phone systems
From Ryan Singel’s “Point, Click … Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates” (Wired News: 29 August 2007):
The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.
The surveillance system, [...]
Posted on November 21st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, law, politics, security | No Comments »
Matching voters with their votes, thanks to voting machines
From Declan McCullagh’s “E-voting predicament: Not-so-secret ballots” (CNET News: 20 August 2007):
Two Ohio activists have discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems and Software and used across the country produce time-stamped paper trails that permit the reconstruction of an election’s results — including allowing voter names to be matched to their actual votes.
…
Ohio [...]
Posted on November 21st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, politics, security | No Comments »
How to wiretap
From Seth David Schoen’s “Wiretapping vulnerabilities” (Vitanuova: 9 March 2006):
Traditional wiretap threat model: the risks are detection of the tap, and obfuscation of content of communication. …
POTS is basically the same as it was 100 years ago — with central offices and circuit-switching. A phone from 100 years ago will pretty much still work today. [...]
Posted on August 20th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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Spy on no-good boss and lose your job
From Melissa Meagher’s “State Worker Spies on Boss, Loses His Job“:
For 22 years, [Vernon] Blake was a System Administrator for the Alabama Department of Transportation. It was a job he loved, with the exception of his supervisor. …
The running joke around the office? The boss blew off meetings and projects to play games on his [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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FBI used OnStar for surveillance
From Charles R. Smith’s “Big Brother on Board: OnStar Bugging Your Car“:
GM cars equipped with OnStar are supposed to be the leading edge of safety and technology. …
However, buried deep inside the OnStar system is a feature few suspected - the ability to eavesdrop on unsuspecting motorists.
The FBI found out about this passive listening feature [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, business, law, security, technology | Comments Off
PATRIOT Act greatly expands what a ‘financial institution’ is
From Bruce Schneier’s “News” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 January 2004):
Last month Bush snuck into law one of the provisions of the failed PATRIOT ACT 2. The FBI can now obtain records from financial institutions without requiring permission from a judge. The institution can’t tell the target person that his records were taken by the FBI. And [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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Another answer to “I have nothing to hide”
From John Twelve Hawks’s “ How We Live Now” (2005):
“And so what if they know all about me?” asks the honest citizen. “I’m good person. I’ve got nothing to hide.” This view assumes that the intimate personal information easily found in our computerized system is accurate, secure, and will only be used for your benefit. [...]
Posted on July 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, law, politics, security | Comments Off
Government-created viruses for surveillance
From John Twelve Hawks’s “ How We Live Now” (2005):
The Traveler describes for the first time in any book the secret computational immunology programs being developed in Britain. These programs behave like the leucocytes floating through our bloodstream. The programs wander through the Internet, searching, evaluating, and hiding in a person’s home PC, until they [...]
Posted on July 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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What RFID passports really mean
From John Twelve Hawks’s “ How We Live Now” (2005):
The passports contain a radio frequency identification chip (RFID) so that all our personal information can be instantly read by a machine at the airport. However, the State Department has refused to encrypt the information embedded in the chip, because it requires more complicated technology that [...]
Posted on July 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, history, law, politics, security | Comments Off
Surveillance cameras that notice aberrations
From John Twelve Hawks’s “ How We Live Now” (2005):
And everywhere we go, there are surveillance cameras – thousands of them – to photograph and record our image. Some of them are “smart” cameras, linked to computer programs that watch our movements in case we act differently from the rest of the crowd: if we [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: security, technology | Comments Off
Why disclosure laws are good
From Bruce Schneier’s “Identity-Theft Disclosure Laws” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 May 2006):
Disclosure laws force companies to make these security breaches public. This is a good idea for three reasons. One, it is good security practice to notify potential identity theft victims that their personal information has been lost or stolen. Two, statistics on actual data thefts [...]
Posted on June 19th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, business, law, security, technology | Comments Off
L.A. police using drones to spy on citizens
From Zachary Slobig’s “Police launch eye-in-the-sky technology above Los Angeles” (AFP: 17 June 2006):
Police launched the future of law enforcement into the smoggy Los Angeles sky in the form of a drone aircraft, bringing technology most commonly associated with combat zones to urban policing.
The unmanned aerial vehicle, which looks like a child’s remote control toy [...]
Posted on June 19th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, law, politics, security, technology | Comments Off
4 ways to eavesdrop on telephone calls
From Bruce Schneier’s “VOIP Encryption” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 April 2006):
There are basically four ways to eavesdrop on a telephone call.
One, you can listen in on another phone extension. This is the method preferred by siblings everywhere. If you have the right access, it’s the easiest. While it doesn’t work for cell phones, cordless phones are [...]
Posted on June 19th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, law, politics, security, technology | Comments Off
It’s easy to track someone using a MetroCard
From Brendan I. Koerner’s “Your Cellphone is a Homing Device” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2003):
Law enforcement likewise views privacy laws as an impediment, especially now that it has grown accustomed to accessing location data virtually at will. Take the MetroCard, the only way for New York City commuters to pay their transit fares since the elimination [...]
Posted on June 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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Tracking via cell phone is easy
From Brendan I. Koerner’s “Your Cellphone is a Homing Device” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2003):
What your salesman probably failed to tell you - and may not even realize - is that an E911-capable phone can give your wireless carrier continual updates on your location. The phone is embedded with a Global Positioning System chip, which can [...]
Posted on June 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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Kids forcibly sent to re-education programs
From Nadya Labi’s “Want Your Kid to Disappear?” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2004):
RICK STRAWN IS AN EX-COP WHO STARTED HIS COMPANY in 1988 to help police officers find off-duty work guarding construction sites. Ten years later, he was asked by a member of his United Methodist church to transport the churchgoer’s son to Tranquility Bay in [...]
Posted on June 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, education, law | Comments Off