Download (PDF, 268.61KB)

If you think such policies are fine and don’t have anything to hide, then I would like to know your logins to all your online accounts, forums, and bank details, as well as your Social Security Number, and credit card information. I would also like a record of all your online purchases, you know, for “advertising” purposes. Oh you don’t want me to know that? Then maybe you do have something to hide and fliers like these are meant as scaremongering instead.

They have a point. It’s also why I’m not staying logged in to any google account because of the privacy policy changes and why my mail accounts won’t be with google either (not that they are now anyway).

Cybercrime expert Mikko Hypponen talks us through three types of online attack on our privacy and data — and only two are considered crimes. “Do we blindly trust any future government? Because any right we give away, we give away for good.”

Filmed on November 2011.

The measure, H.B. 2288, says “Internet destination history information” and “subscriber’s information” such as name and address must be saved for two years.

Democrat Jill Tokuda, the Hawaii Senate’s majority whip, who introduced a companion bill, S.B. 2530, in the Senate, told CNET that her legislation was intended to address concerns raised by Rep. Kymberly Pine, the first Republican elected to her Oahu district since statehood and the House minority floor leader.

“I was asked to introduce the Senate companions on these Internet security related bills by Representative Kymberly Marcos Pine after her own personal experience in this area,” Tokuda said. “I would defer to her on the origins of these bills as she has done the research and outreach, and been the main champion of this effort.”

Pine, who did not immediately respond to queries, has been targeted by a disgruntled Web designer, Eric Ryan, who launched KymPineIsACrook.com and claims she owes him money, according to an article last summer in the Hawaii Reporter. Her e-mail account was also reportedly hacked around the same time. The article said Pine would advocate for “tougher cyber laws at the Hawaii State Capitol” as a result.

“We must do everything we can to protect the people of Hawaii from these attacks and give prosecutors the tools to ensure justice is served for victims,” Pine said at the time.

The problem here is that this a personal, knee-jerk response to a specific situation that can be taken care of already with the appropriate laws already on the books. What Kym Pine doesn’t realize is that this bill will have unintended consequences for her. If this bill were to become a law, she would be subjected to it as well. You can guarantee that people will start requesting information about her. It will not make her life any easier and people like Eric Ryan will use it to harass her further.

This bill has no privacy protections, no encryption protocols, and doesn’t limit anyone from selling the data collected. It does, however, remove the restriction of law that the police must obtain a court order before obtaining the information. Law enforcement merely needs to request the data.

Politicians need to start learning the law that is already out there and using it to prosecute people if they think the law is being broken. These types of laws do nothing other than erode the privacy that Americans already have and take for granted. Stomping on the fourth and fourteenth amendments should not be an option.

EDIT: Due to pressure, the Hawaiian legislature has decided to table the bill.

What it comes down to is that google is a giant marketing company based on ads. They feed you ads so their product remains free for you. This time, there is no opt-out. Basically, if you don’t like their new policies, you will have to move your information elsewhere. The new policies will take effect March 1, 2012.

Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.

“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well.

Although the defendant in the case intends to appeal, there are conflicting decisions already on the books.

In March 2010, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that Thomas Kirschner, facing charges of receiving child pornography, would not have to give up his password. That’s “protecting his invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination,” the court ruled (PDF).

A year earlier, a Vermont federal judge concluded that Sebastien Boucher, who a border guard claims had child porn on his Alienware laptop, did not have a Fifth Amendment right to keep the files encrypted. Boucher eventually complied and was convicted.

The debate as to whether or not decrypting a computer by a defendant is a violation of the fifth amendment will continue as more cases like these come to trial. On the one side the argument is that decryption is similar to handing over the keys to a storage or safe deposit box while, on the other, privacy advocates state that giving up any information to decrypt a computer is the equivalent of testifying against oneself.

Also of note is that, in this particular case, the prosecution has to prove that she has the means to decrypt the laptop. If she is unable to do so, there is little else the prosecution can do.

As it stands right now, there is case law for both sides and it does not appear as if the debate is going to be settled any time soon. At some point, this issue will reach the Supreme Court because there are far too many conflicting points on both sides, in numerous cases, for the issue to be clear.

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.com, talks about his opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act. Ohanian, speaking on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness With Margaret Brennan,” said he would like to see innovative solutions to piracy as opposed to government intervention. (Source: Bloomberg)

Discussions at reddit and Hacker News.

Lamar Smith still thinks that Reddit SOPA Protestors are not legitimate or large in number.

When asked about online opposition to the bill from places such as Reddit, Smith was quite dismissive.

“It’s a vocal minority, he said. “Because they’re strident doesn’t mean they’re either legitimate or large in number.

Remember folks, reddit, google, facebook, and amazon, are just a vocal minority.

Facebook has introduced its timeline feature in which old posts would be available under their new, and downgraded, privacy settings. Users need to clean up their histories themselves as Facebook has enabled this option for everyone.

If you logged onto Facebook yesterday, perhaps you caught a link at the top of the News Feed that read: “About Ads: Ever wonder how Facebook makes money? Get the details.” The answers provided some context on the news that starting in January, Facebook will start integrating a type of ad, called “sponsored stories,” that display your friends faces next to content they have “liked” in larger-sized ads your News Feed mix. “Facebook makes its money from showing you ads,” the company told consumers yesterday and with the ramp up to its spring 2012 IPO, the social network is getting serious about that endeavor.

In what seemed like an unrelated move, in September, Facebook announced a brand new type of profile called Timeline, where your whole personal history is laid out by month-by-month, all the way back to your birth. At the time, Facebook described it to consumers as a chance to: “Share and highlight your most memorable posts, photos and life events on your timeline. This is where you can tell your story from beginning, to middle, to now.” By the end of this year all 800 million plus Facebook profiles will have been converted to this new interface.

Timeline is centered around making Facebook money.

Disguising ads as your friends’ updates is being offered up as an antidote to the dismal click-through rates for traditional web advertising. Sponsored stories in your feed and sidebar ads based on your friends’ likes will become ubiquitous. Indeed in marketing materials, Facebook says these new premium ads are 90 percent accurate, compared to the industry average of 35 percent. “When people hear about you [the brand] from friends, they listen.”

sponsored stories are different from ads in that a user’s name or profile might appear alongside the ad,  ”If you’ve liked that business’s page, the story about you liking the page (including your name or profile photo) may be paired with the ad your friends see.”

Facebook is currently being sued in California over the issue of ads that people have liked. It depends on the users how much they will tolerate from Facebook’s new sponsored stories in their Timeline.

In Australia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found that it is perfectly legal for anyone to take photos from facebook and use them in their news stories as the photos are not private.

“The ACMA made it clear that while it considers the use of privacy settings an important consideration when assessing material obtained from social networking sites, the actual settings are not determinative,” the regulator noted.

Instead, the regulator will determine matters taken before it on a case-by-case basis.

The ACMA’s CyberSmart web site advises that “even if your profile is private, you can’t control what your friends do with the information you post”.

“Don’t post photos or information that you wouldn’t want anyone else to see,” it states.

Here, the ACMA is advising people that you shouldn’t really trust anything on Facebook because 1) it’s not going to be private anyway and 2) if you don’t want your information shared, don’t share it. A person may assume that, since they have tagged a photo as private, if they share it with just one other person, their control of that photograph is now out of their hands. Anyone who sees the photograph can copy it and move it to a more public area on their Facebook page or send them to a third party. Although the sharing of the photograph violates copyright, the question of any damage done is still up for debate.

It is understandable that the general public’s idea of privacy and Facebook’s are diametrically opposed. The public only wants certain people to see their information. Facebook desires to monetize everything about a person, thus the less private it is the better for the company. The general consensus on Facebook, or any other social networking site, is that nothing on Facebook is private. It doesn’t matter if you’ve marked something as private. Consider that it isn’t private and the information will be leaked one way or another.

Always remember, if you are not paying for the service, you are not the customer, you are the product. On free social networking sites, such as Facebook, your information is worth money to Facebook and they will use it to make a profit.

Our engineering team at ZionEyez is currently developing Eyez™, the latest innovation in personal video recording technology. Eyez™ embeds a 720p HD video camera within a pair of eyeglasses designed to record live video data and take pictures. The recorded data can be stored on the 8GB of flash memory within the Eyez™ glasses, transferred via Wifi/Bluetooth or Micro USB to a computer, or wirelessly transferred to most iPhone or Android devices. After a one-time download of the “Eyez™” smartphone and tablet app, users can wirelessly broadcast the video in real time to their preferred social networking website.

Several networking sites, including Qik and LiveStream, will broadcast to users profiles’ and save the videos to cloud storage. If users prefer not to broadcast the video to the internet or to their mobile, the data will automatically save to the built-in flash memory, allowing for an easy upload later via Micro USB or Bluetooth. While employing cutting-edge technological advances, Eyez™ glasses are also practical for daily use. Users can choose from high quality removable lenses in both clear and shaded tones. In addition, the shape of Eyez™ glasses is extremely popular, so most optical stores can easily fit the appropriate prescription lenses. Imagine yourself recording exactly what your “Eyez™” see, whether it be worldly travels or a college lecture, no memorable event will be lost. No other product in existence can deliver you such a first person video recording experience.

While the privacy implications should be obvious, these glasses would also be useful when recording police officers or other law enforcement officials. It can be sent directly to the cloud so that there wouldn’t be a chance of anyone deleting the information you recorded.