Loss of Privacy

It seems that TSA agents don’t know what makes up gunpowder, so you can feel free to bring it onto the plane with you.  Just make sure you put in clear plastic baggies and label it correctly.

Last Thursday, December 5, I brought five ounces (140 grams) of old-fashioned black gunpowder to San Francisco airport. I also brought along a boarding pass for United flight 720 to Denver that I had created at home, in an computer art program. TSA agents accepted the boarding pass. They also took no notice at all of the gunpowder. Accepting the boarding pass was reasonable. Boarding passes that we design and print at home look just like ones designed by the airlines that we print at home. I had thought, though, that I might elicit a short conversation about the gunpowder. Mind you, I had packed the stuff safely. It was in three separate jars: one of charcoal, one of sulphur, and one of saltpetre (potassium nitrate). Each jar was labeled: Charcoal, Sulphur, Saltpetre. I had also thoroughly wet down each powder with tap water. No ignition was possible. As a good citizen, I had packed the resulting pastes into a quart-sized “3-1-1″ plastic bag, along with my shampoo and hand cream. This bag I took out of my messenger bag and put on top of my bin of belongings, turned so that the labels were easy for the TSA inspector to read.

After a check, and a swab for explosives, Rhona Mahony was allowed on her way.  I agree with her, maybe the TSA needs some more thorough training and Star Trek’s Arena episode should be included.

A Georgia law, set to take effect today, aggressively targets sex offenders, forcing them to hand over their online passwords.  This includes passwords, screen names, and e-mail addresses.  Georgia now joins a few other states that are complying with a 2006 federal law that requires authorities to track sex offenders’ IP addresses.  The main difference with Georgia is that it has added the extra step of forcing sex offenders to turn over more than is required by federal law.

“There’s certainly a privacy concern,” said Sara Totonchi of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights. “This essentially will give law enforcement the ability to read e-mails between family members, between employers.”

Staton said although the measure may violate the privacy of sex offenders, the need to protect children “outweighs a lot of the rights of these individuals.”

Oh, it’s for the children.  Alrighty then.  That makes it all okay, right?  I mean, it’s not like the whole world isn’t safe for children.

“We limit where they can live, we make their information available on the Internet. To some degree, we do invade their privacy,” said Staton, a Republican from Macon. “But the feeling is, they have forfeited, to some degree, some privacy rights.”

If you’ve done your time and allowed to leave prison, you were deemed not a threat to society.  Otherwise, there really is no equality under the law.  No one, ever, should be punished in perpetuity for their crimes.

So, if you live in Georgia and you’ve been convicted of urinating in public, this law applies to you.  If you live in Georgia and have been convicted of having oral sex with your girlfriend/boyfriend because she/he was under the age of consent, this law applies to you.  If you live in Georgia and take naked photos of yourself and put them online, this law applies to you.  If you live in Georgia and go streaking, only to be arrested for indecent exposure, this law applies to you.

If you are a violent felon, such as a pedophile or rapist, I don’t have a problem with the government making sure you don’t continue to commit your crimes, but only for a certain time.  After that, much like a car thief or embezzler, you should be free to go.  The law must change to reflect the severity of your crime.  Those who are required to be on the list, but are in no way going to re-offend, should not be required to follow this law.

If the people allow this “inch” the government will take a “mile” and soon, even though you think you’re innocent, you will have to turn over this information as well.  It starts with “save the children” and ends with “do it for your own good.”

Remember, everyone in America has the right to the Fifth Amendment and Ex Post Facto.  These laws violate both.  The Courts will continue [pdf] to have opinions on this matter, but, hopefully, the laws will be overturned as unconstitutional.

iSec Partners recently tested Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Apple’s Safari privacy and security.  In particular, researcher Kate McKinley tested each browsers handling of cookies.

In their published paper [pdf], Ms. McKinley discovered several problems.

Ms. McKinley found particular problems with Safari and concluded that none of the four major browsers extends its privacy protections to Adobe’s immensely popular Flash plug-in, which is used to display Web animations and video.

Apple’s Safari fared the worst of the browsers in Ms. McKinley’s tests. When used in “private browsing mode” on a Macintosh running OS X, Safari was “quirky,” Ms. McKinley wrote, accessing some of the cookies previously stored on her computer, but not others. When used on a machine running Windows XP, Safari’s private browsing mode was not private at all -– it accessed previously set cookies and did not delete any new ones.

Sites such as MySpace, Hulu.com, CrateandBarrel.com and Amazon.com all use Flash cookies to record some kind of information about their users.

Ms. McKinley found that this information cannot be deleted by average users in the browser privacy settings, should they wish to do so. “Flash elevates the interest of developers over the interest of the end user,” she said.

You can delete flash cookies, however, the document [PC]  [MAC] that explains it is difficult for the average user to understand, if they even know of it at all.  A user could also try CCleaner, which works effectively at erasing flash cookies, while Flashblock (for Firefox) prevents any flash from loading.

And remember, always clear your private data when closing your browser.

Firefox
You can tell Firefox which bits to clear automatically each time you close your browser.  Go to Tools > Options and then click on the Privacy Tab.  Look at the settings listed under Private Data.  You can then choose Always clear my private data when I close Firefox or Ask me before clearing private data.

Opera
Use this tutorial.

Google Chrome
You can use Chrome in incognito mode or Load Chrome and choose “Clear Browsing History” from the Tools menu. This will clear all your private data.

Internet Explorer
Click the Tools button in the Internet Explorer toolbar. Select Delete Browsing History… from the menu. Click Delete All…. (As an alternative, you can choose to delete Temporary Internet Files (the browser cache), Cookies, Form Data or Passwords selectively using their respective buttons.). Click Yes. Close all Internet Explorer windows.

Safari
Click on “Reset Safari” and a window will pop up.  Then click on the items you wish to remove and click reset/ok.