Loss of Privacy

• Breast-pump mom 'humiliated' on American Airlines flight http://t.co/wUtqyU8eaS #travel #wontfly #
• RT @PrivacyDigest: Who is Stockpiling & Sharing Private Info About New York Students? http://t.co/0lqaGA11wv < inBloom previously Sh… #
• RT @cheshire_puss: US public schools in 9 states sharing every conceivable personal detail of their students with 3rdparties
  http://t.co/qw… #
• RT @TechFreedom: Cato's @JulianSanchez lays out 3 principles for a #CISPA alternative to help cybersecurity without hurting #privacy http:/… #
• The Loss of Privacy Daily is out! http://t.co/hipmJKMbVN ▸ Top stories today via @drones #
• Army Says No To More Tanks, But Congress Insists http://t.co/G0M8Ilqzkq #politics #
• RT @ggreenwald: The LA Times publishes a good Op-Ed on Barbara Boxer's attempts to codify Israeli discrimination against US citizens http:… #
• RT @msnbc: Civil rights groups in #NC are preparing to fight voter ID legislation: http://t.co/NDNWM5CmL2 via @upwithsteve #uppers #
• Alert: Skype account hijack technique may affect all users http://t.co/cyDgF8dzik #security #
• Finally saw Bad Teacher; was funny, but true what people will do to make sure their kids pass when money &/or job is on the line #education #
• RT @SimonSheikh: The money we pay our teachers is a sign of our society's respect for their profession #QandA #
• Republican Lawmakers Introduce Bill To Allow Business Owners To #Discriminate Against #Homosexuals http://t.co/DkyzxAXGGB #religion #LGBT #
• The Loss of Privacy Daily is out! http://t.co/hipmJKMbVN ▸ Top stories today via @JayCStanley @FTC #
• Why your password can’t have symbols—or be longer than 16 characters http://t.co/ovB55alG6n #security #
• RT @mcgoverntheory: The James McGovern Daily is out! http://t.co/QjyV1l3J0T ▸ Top stories today via @cote @lennyzeltser @LossofPrivacy #
• Iris #Biometrics for Patient Identification in Healthcare Spreading Across the Globe http://t.co/PTB7LSXdju #
• RT @PrivacyDigest: RT @nyclu: More #surveillance is not the answer – http://t.co/ZJl2jZn6ds #Privacy #
• RT @ACLU_Action: Surveillance Cameras Sought by Cities After Boston Bombs http://t.co/MPhu6jUXCO via @BloombergNews #
• The Loss of Privacy Daily is out! http://t.co/hipmJKMbVN ▸ Top stories today via @futureidentity @jmcest #
• RT @BoingBoing: Rumored Statue of Liberty face-recognition supplier harasses and threatens journalist http://t.co/TUgO3SZMuD #
• RT @EFF: Craigslist Owns What You Did Last Summer. Craigslist demanded ownership & court agreed. https://t.co/wmV5ogrH8D #copyright #
• The Loss of Privacy Daily is out! http://t.co/hipmJKMbVN #
• RT @IsCool: How To Protect Against Laptop Webcam Hacking | Electronic Frontier Foundation http://t.co/KaCjrZ03Dj #
• RT @7hird3y3: @LossofPrivacy Help –> India's CISPA —> @StopICMS Privacy Invasion Monitoring Started #StopICMS #
• RT @lauras: Creepy: Facebook just showed me my phone number, asked me to add it "for security", which of course makes that the last thing I… #
• The Loss of Privacy Daily is out! http://t.co/hipmJKMbVN ▸ Top stories today via @CraigMurrayOrg @GotPrivacy #
• RT @hrw: US: Maryland Abolishes Death Penalty http://t.co/n86rSkpYGI #
• RT @EFF: Here is the new face of #TPP and #ACTA in the US. Let's tell him to take #IPOut of trade agreements. https://t.co/WpSKrVjKZu #
• RT @EFF: An affront to free speech: award-winning blogger Eskinder Nega faces 18 years in prison. https://t.co/kSFf3twKRX #FreeEskinder #
• RT @IndexCensorship: Chinese propaganda paper's new headquarters looks a bit like, well, er… http://t.co/ZtW2ZVfVnM #pressfreedom #
• The Loss of Privacy Daily is out! http://t.co/hipmJKMbVN ▸ Top stories today via @ionacraig #
• Tor Books UK Says Ditching #DRM Showed No Increase In #Piracy http://t.co/0qLwDH9svB #
• What the f***?! Google Glass censors foul language http://t.co/COtQCxPnZz #
• Des Moines Public Schools to use #biometrics to keep track of teachers http://t.co/INSTP6Pljr #education #
• Chinese Hackers Infiltrate US Army Database, Compromise Safety Of Thousands Of Dams http://t.co/F8XpkDsr8v #security #
• Big Brother, I'd like you to meet Liberty. Liberty this is Big Brother. http://t.co/ntjXjNtoI8 #biometrics #
• Obama poised to name former cable, wireless lobbyist to chair FCC http://t.co/Ck5K9bnEw7 #
• The Loss of Privacy Daily is out! http://t.co/hipmJKMbVN #
• Fear of the youth vote, now in #Ohio http://t.co/1QzrGT58sX #votersuppression #
• Man arrested for rape begs for DNA test; sheriff would not give test because it was a waste of taxpayer money http://t.co/UsOq2R3j39 #
• RT @szelenagray: How #corrupt is your state? Find out at http://t.co/pTnxgzMSwh #rootstrikers #
• RT @PrivacyDigest: Bruce Schneier: Why Collecting More Data Doesn't Increase Safety – CNN http://t.co/9OUXNRhio3 /. http://t.co/0om0oiO4rd #
• RT @EFF: Here is the new face of #TPP and #ACTA in the US. http://t.co/4WuSqlzvf6 #
• RT @alexanderhanff: This is what #privacy advocates like myself have been screaming about for years http://t.co/ONaDeTnZTk #tia #surveillan… #

Source.

A few days after the Boston bombing, a woman was stopped for additional screening as the TSA suspected her of having bomb residue on her.

TSA agents told her she tested positive for explosives, and what caused it is a common, everyday item.

“They said, ‘You’re testing for nitrates,’” Linda said.

She said she’s still rattled by the incident, and did not want to use her last name. She was at the airport in Columbus, Ohio, when it happened.

Linda said she washed her hands at work that morning, then used the lotion on the counter and accidentally got too much, so she slathered it all the way up to her elbows, then went to the airport. Some soaps and hand lotions contain glycerin, which is an ingredient in explosives.

News9.com – Oklahoma City, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports |

TSA agents patted down Linda’s entire body in a private room and she was eventually cleared.

“I was probably in the little private room for 15 minutes, which was nerve-wracking,” Linda said.

TSA says it has to balance security with convenience, and public safety isn’t always convenient.

“You know, it’s for our own good. It didn’t bother me, it was just shocking,” Linda said.

Unfortunately, Linda has bought into the idea that all the security theater at the airports is “for our own good” while the TSA continues to tell us that, “As with any technology, occasional false positives are possible. However, this technology is a valuable tool and one of many layers of security designed to keep travelers safe.” It appears the government’s efforts to treat us all as suspicious while we happily oblige them is working. Linda, who knew that she had done nothing wrong, willingly allowed the TSA to search her, pat her down, and violate her privacy and she was glad they did it.

An NBC5 investigation at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport revealed that numerous employees at the airport as well as airline staff have been abusing their security badges, letting people into the airport without going through proper security procedures.

At DFW, thousands of employees have Secure Identification Display Area (SIDA) badges. But SIDA badges can only be used by employees that are on-duty and they’re not allowed to take anyone else through the door with them.

But that didn’t stop an off-duty Continental Airlines worker from using his badge to put his family in a van at a cargo facility and then drive them across the airport ramp to terminal E.

They were caught entering the terminal after a police officer “heard children laughing” on the airport ramp. 

A police report said the worker told officers he, his wife and two children were “cutting through the terminal to catch a flight home to Ohio.”

The worker no longer works at the airline.

Government officials and a top airline executive were among those caught.

Just three weeks ago, DFW police seized a badge belonging to the Fred Cleveland, a senior vice president and chief operating officer at American Eagle Airlines.

A report obtained by NBC 5 Investigates said officers caught Cleveland “escorting his wife through the employee portal to meet with his daughter who was flying in.”

Cleveland will undergo retraining and be able to get his badge back once his training is completed. It sure is nice to know that a regular worker breaking the rules will be fired, but an executive gets retraining. The list continues of people abusing the system.

During a personal trip, one off-duty American Airlines pilot told police “he was aware of the protocol,” “But he wanted to avoid the long lines at the checkpoints.”

In another case, an American Airlines flight attendant was caught sneaking a backpack through an employee entrance and giving it to her husband boarding a flight to Germany.

DFW police caught a TSA supervisor taking another worker through an employee door.

Officers seized a badge from a Federal Aviation Administration manager caught using it to board a flight for personal reasons.

And police even stopped an analyst who works for the DFW airport board, the agency that issues the security badges, as she escorted her husband through an employee door to board a flight.

Out of more than 140 confirmed security violations in two years – at least 106 were linked to badge holding employees and vendors.

The airport, however, is choosing to keep their heads in the sand as to the real danger of all these security breaches.

the airport is confident its security system catches the vast majority of violators and if any are sneaking through, “that number is very small.”

It’s your job to secure the airport. It doesn’t matter if one person slips through. Your job is to keep them all out unless they belong there. Dismissing it as people making silly mistakes shows that true security is not what the airport is trying to do.

View more videos at: http://nbcdfw.com.

The personal Genome Project was created in 2006 to try to answer the question of the nurture vs. nature debate. Latanya Sweeney and her colleagues at Harvard were able to take the participants’ anonymized data and identify them with a 97% accuracy rate. While the project never guaranteed participant privacy, they have been proactive since Sweeney revealed the results of her research.

This kind of vulnerability is well-known. “Our ability to learn their names is based on their demographics, not their DNA, thereby revisiting an old vulnerability that could be easily thwarted with minimal loss of research value,” say Sweeney and pals.

They point out that the way to solve this problem is to include birth dates and zip codes that are less precise, giving just a year of birth or the general area of residence, for example.

This isn’t so easy to change on the PGP website so the team have created a freely available editing tool that allows any participant to modify his or her details on the website in a way that reduces the chance of identification.

Although PGP had never guaranteed anyone’s privacy and the participants knew this, PGP still made the correct and responsible step of helping protect participant identity. Allowing these minor changes will enable the PGP to protect the privacy of its volunteers just a little bit more.