Loss of Privacy

In Farmington Hills, Michigan intelligent lights will soon be keeping a watchful eye over its citizens. But is it really for entertainment and safety or a gross invasion of privacy?

“In each lighting fixture or each lighting pole, there is processor very much like an iPhone. And it takes inputs and outputs and talks back and forth. And the poles actually talk to each other,” said Ron Harwood.

When you step come into view of the street light, there is a camera that spots you, and the person on the other side sees you by white specs on a black screen. The camera senses that somebody is there, and if wants, it can even take your picture.

The system is also capable of recording conversations making critics cry invasion of privacy.

“This is not a system with spook technology. It’s much more transparent. It can just talk to you and say, don’t fall over Niagara Falls,” said Harwood.

It may be able to just make a stupid joke about Niagara Falls, but the fact that it can spot you, track you, and record your conversations is, indeed, spook technology. It’s worrisome that people are simply accepting a program such as this as the normal course of events. If no one in Farmington Hills fights against it, it will start showing up elsewhere in the United States.

From Librarian in Black:

A call to action for librarians about the disturbing side effects to library users of the Amazon Kindle format eBook lending in Overdrive, including the threat to intellectual freedom, lost user privacy, and targeted ads pushed at our library users.

Transcript.

While libraries know who currently has a book checked out, most, if not all, delete the history of the book being checked out. The part of the PATRIOT Act that could force them to keep this information was removed, mainly due to the ALA fighting against it and refusing to cooperate.

Libraries and Amazon.com have two very different missions in life. We’ve seen libraries fight to keep your privacy over and over while Amazon.com monetizes every bit of information about you for their own profit. If you didn’t realize that, you haven’t been paying attention.

Last week, Verizon Wireless tweaked its TOS on its home internet service so that, by default, they could share your physical location with advertisers. Now, they have changed their privacy policy so that, by default, it will collect your web browsing history, location of your phone, and app usage for use in third-party marketing purposes.

If you stay opted in, you’ll eventually start seeing more personalized ads while surfing on your mobile devices, or even when using Verizon FiOS Internet, DSL, or other dial-up services, said Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.

The revisions all have to do with a new targeted advertising service that Verizon is offering other companies. The Verizon Online relevant ads program is two-fold. First, it produces business and marketing reports, and second, Verizon aims to sell more targeted ad space.

While you can opt out of their services, for now, there are some other things you can do to protect yourself. You can install VPN services or SSL. If you encrypt everything from end to end, it will be much more difficult to be tracked. If you have an android phone, you could use something like DroidWall to prevent malware, often from your phone company, from getting on your phone.

These companies are not your friend. They are out to make the most amount of money possible for their shareholders. If that means selling your personal information to make a few more dollars, then they will. Although, by law, they have to notify you of it, it is still your responsibility to make sure you are not tracked or used for someone else’s financial gain.

If you have the option to use another cell phone company, you can now cancel your Verizon contract without penalties. They have just made material changes to the contract. You have 60 days to do this, after that, you had better start learning about VPNs, proxies, and SSL.

In today’s every connected world, it is of the utmost importance that everyone remain vigilant when safeguarding their privacy and identity. If this does not happen, then invasions of privacy and identify theft are more likely to occur. This happened to me recently at work. If I were a less honest person, I could have destroyed a coworker’s life merely because she did not think of the implications of leaving a printed email in the copy room.

You can read the rest of my article over at The Daily Censored.