# the "threat thread",Big Brother,surveillance...,



## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 10, 2015)

I thought it was high time we discussed some aspects of the "Internet of all things"
I was inspired by the Wi-Fi Kettle thread,amongst other things.

Plus,an item in the Dutch news about dashboard cameras ,and a major provider *storing AND*
_selling *data on Tv viewing preferences*_

First of all,i'd like to point out i'm a caveman with regard to computers and the internet.
I use both,but don't ask me about programming,proxy servers....,SQL

However,i've downloaded some computer science theses,and tried to make sense of
them

the amount of jargon(techspeak) is ,of course,incredible,but after a while,at least _*bits*_ of it start making sense

I could be just me,but i felt that what emerged was something that was hardly surprising at all:
advances in Big data modelling,storage and retrieval technology,and advances in the mathematics of cryptology,advances in social engineering ,plus changing views on privacy add up to a somewhat scary mix.

In Holland there have been several succesful hacks,particularly of governments sites.

Our government admits to being sort of slow on the uptake with regard to cybercrime

I hate to admit it,but i'm a bit of a pessimist on this one:sooner or later,user data are going to be abused by governments and corporations.
Sooner or later, putting together medical data,social geographic data, app use,household appliance use,internet use,social media and telecom use,financial and economic data,etc
will be a piece of cake..

i'd appreciate getting your views on this...


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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 10, 2015)

Google is the biggest issue by far.
Watch TV via Broadcast, not Internet, then your usage is anonymous.

There is a thread on IoT (Internet of Things). It's evil and stupid. Just don't buy any such device. Almost all IT and Security experts regard it as stupid. Use a knob for central heating, not an Internet App.


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## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 10, 2015)

I watch broadcast TV.
BTW ,thanks for the pointer on the other thread,the one about IOT

In the news yesterday:A bycyle repair app


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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 10, 2015)

I saw a lot of bikes when I was in Amsterdam.


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## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 11, 2015)

*Fingerprinting.*  A device fingerprint (or machine fingerprint) is a summary of the software and hardware settings collected from a computer or other device. Each device has a different clock setting, fonts, software and other characteristics that make it unique. When you go online, your device broadcasts these details, which can can be collected and pieced together to form a unique "fingerprint" for that particular device. That fingerprint can then be assigned an identifying number, and used for similar purposes as a cookie. 

Fingerprinting could eventually replace the cookie as the primary means of tracking. Tracking companies are embracing fingerprinting because it is tougher to block than cookies. Cookies are subject to deletion and expiration, and are rendered useless if a user decides to switch to a new browser.  Some browsers block third-party cookies by default and certain browser add-ons enable blocking or removal of cookies.

Unlike cookies and flash cookies, fingerprints leave no evidence on a user's computer.  Therefore, it is impossible for you to know when you are being tracked by fingerprinting.
*Householding. *A company called BlueCava takes device fingerprinting (see previous section) one step further.  BlueCava is able to identify and track users online across multiple devices, a practice BlueCava refers to as “householding.” They can associate multiple devices to the same person or household, by attaching an IP address to a BlueCava identifier and by recognizing and collecting information about the various computers, smart phones, and tablets that people use to connect the internet.  Thus, your behavior on one device can be associated with other devices from both your home and office.  This information can be very valuable for marketing purposes.

BlueCava's technology enables them to recognize computers and devices  by collecting information about your screen type, IP address, browser version, time zone, fonts installed, browser plug-ins and various other properties of your screen and browser. This information is put into a “snapshot” and is sent to their servers to create a unique ID for every browser and to “match” the snapshot to the snapshots they receive from their marketing partners.  When they use snapshots to create a unique ID, they are also able to group related screens into “households” based on common characteristics among the snapshots, such as IP addresses.
BlueCava allows you to opt-out. However, the opt-out will only apply to the particular device that you are using and not other devices.  So it's important to opt-out from each computer, smartphone and other device that you use to go online


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## Dave (Jun 11, 2015)

If you are concerned about being tracked, take a look at some of the maps made by Transport for London (TfL) from Oyster card users. It is pretty easier to see where people live and work, but also secondary hubs such as their girlfriend or mother's house, the park they exercise in, the restaurant they eat in, the pub they drink in. The information is supposedly anonymous, of course.


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## Vertigo (Jun 11, 2015)

I think pretty much everyone born before say the '80s (I'm 1957) will find the loss of privacy scary. Young kids today just take it for granted. In my view, for better or worse, that Pandora's Box is well and truly opened and attempting to close it is no more than an exercise in futility. I personally don't like it - I hate it - but I also see it as inevitable. In the future, unless you go off and live like a hermit, there will be no such thing as data privacy.

I don't like it and a lot of people (mostly older ones) won't like it either but, as I say, any opportunity to control this has long since passed, even if there ever actually was an opportunity. The nature of the development of computers and communications probably makes the present state of things inevitable. And it will only get worse. However, again, it is only people from my sort of generation who will consider it to be worse; other people (mostly younger ones) will love the way things are going.

There are a whole host of things that are becoming part of our everyday life that totally depend on all that data being available and much of it we are blissfully oblivious to. I find that most people who hate their loss of privacy (myself included) quietly ignore all the benefits that they actually gain from it.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 11, 2015)

Vertigo said:


> whole host of things that are becoming part of our everyday life that totally depend on all that data being available


Nothing depends on it. Most of it is Illegal in most of Europe.
There will be a reckoning.

It's almost all used by advertising related companies.


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## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 11, 2015)

What worries me is the welding of new technologies with increasing skills in the largescale manipulation of people.
People will be viewed as strings of data,long flowcharts,part of a demographic.
To a marketeer,you're a wallet,with unfortunately,a personality attached

“Today's most important marketing tools are just as likely to include interactive Web
sites, blogs, YouTube, social networking sites, podcasts and more..... (Zaleon, 2009, p. 1).
Social TV will “prompt TV networks to connect their content to Twitter, Facebook,
MySpace and various widgets that will be packaged with a new breed of TV sets”
(Steinberg, 2009, p. 1).


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## Vertigo (Jun 11, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Nothing depends on it. Most of it is Illegal in most of Europe.
> There will be a reckoning.
> 
> It's almost all used by advertising related companies.


Sadly I think you are wrong; there will not be a reckoning. I honestly believe the situation will only get worse (from our perspective). And I'm thinking about perfectly legal data. So for example those average speed cameras grab your number plate, from that they can access your MOT, Tax and insurance data. So now these automatic cameras can track you (probably, though might be someone else whose borrowed your car - which is more scary really) as you travel around the country. They were blocked from using these cameras in permanent installations (M25) in England on exactly these grounds (I believe) but they now have them permanently installed on some roads in Scotland. That's just one example of 'legal' use of such data. There are many more and then of course there are the illegal ones...

I honestly think it is far too late for any reckoning on this. All of our data has already long since gone viral. You are not going to be able to get it back.

And I think @hardsciencefanagain  is right this sort of data gathering will be built in to future device such as TV's by default whether it is 'needed' or not.


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## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 11, 2015)

Vertigo,
by the looks of it you share my somewhat pessimistic(""the cat is out of the bag"")vision
Over here there is an ongoing discusssion about the Electronic Patient File.
its introduction has been halted because of privacy related issues.
There had been cases already of pretty confidential medical data/files in the hands of the wrong people.
Cybercrime?

no,in some cases just sheer ignorance.
(people just phoned:"is it true such and such has had repeated cases of pneumonia?"
Answer:"Yeah,you want me to send the patient file?

so much for confidentiality....

Privatized disability prevention companies were the culprits.
NO WAY are these companies part of the triangle health-insurer/patient/hospital

People need to know about the data they handle......
who is privileged to know what?


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## willwallace (Jun 11, 2015)

How many people already willingly share all kinds of personal data through facebook, google +, linkedin, twitter, myspace, etc?  It's different when it's financial data, but a lot of people seem pretty comfortable divulging aspects of their personal life for anyone to access on the web.  I think Vertigo has it right, it's the older generation who see this as an invasion of privacy, generally the people who have grown up with the internet do seem to accept it more easily.

Although, I have to say my own son-20 years old-isn't so involved with social media.  He has a facebook account that he set up in high school, but I don't think he's updated it more than a couple times since he graduated.  He uses Skype, with a select group of friends, and that's about it.  He has a twitter account just to follow a few people-Patrick Stewart for one-but I don't think he's made more than a handful of tweets himself.  So not everyone is so immersed in the brave new world.  His biggest online use is playing games like League of Legends, and reading posts on Reddit.

For the rest of us I think it's up to each person to decide how much online presence you want to have.  There are ways to surf anonymously, using Tor for example.  If you really don't want anyone knowing what you're doing online, there are steps to take to eliminate or at least reduce what others can know about you, but a lot of people won't take the time to do that.


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## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 11, 2015)

I'd change "willingly" to "stupidly"


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## Vertigo (Jun 11, 2015)

Yes, sadly, I do have your pessimistic view of the future @hardsciencefanagain. And as for "who is privileged to know what?" I suspect that will become a moot question as the 'brave new world' develops; I'm convinced that eventually we will have a situation where anyone can access pretty much everything about anyone. And I don't think it's all that far off.


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## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 11, 2015)

I hight Ben,BTW

the thing is Vertigo: a lot of options in gathering data (Entity Resolution,e.g.)are as yet expensive.
It's just a question of economics.
The minute cheap algorithms become available..
bingo


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## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 12, 2015)

an example of things that can happen in this day and age: Dutch 21 year old Chantal tries to sue Facebook for having distributed a sex video.They had removed it after about an hour after being online
No-one seems to know the how or why....

http://nos.nl/op3/artikel/2040726-rechtszaak-tegen-facebook-om-seksfilmpje.html

Facebook claims ,as the data are two weeks old,they can't find anything,because the data are destroyed.....


Interesting

Am I being a hardened skeptic because,frankly,I don't believe Facebook?


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## Vertigo (Jun 12, 2015)

Yeah right! I don't think much of their backup regime if the oldest backup of their data is less than 2 weeks old. This is an IT company for goodness sake. If they haven't got backups going back at least a month then they don't deserve to be in business.

However I have to say in this day and age anyone who takes videos of themselves doing 'naughty' things, or allows others to do so and _trusts_ them to never release them, is just plain stupid/naïve/suicidal!


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## mosaix (Jun 12, 2015)

If there is a reckoning, and I hope that there is, it will be because someone, or an organisation, in authority falls foul of the issues involved. Not because the likes of you me getting indignant over the whole thing.

I'd wager that right now the Pentagon, the NSA and GCHQ are designing (maybe even using) a secure, alternative communications network to the internet. Once government departments get hacked by foreign powers then people wake up and do something about it. Of course, the likes of you and me will be left with wide-open hackable systems that let any Tom, Dick and Harry (including the Pentagon, the NSA and GCHQ) do as they please.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 12, 2015)

mosaix said:


> Tom, Dick and Harry


no: Eve, Chuck, Craig etc
Assuming we are Bob and Alice


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## hardsciencefanagain (Jun 12, 2015)

The girl's life is totally ruined,her lawyer says.
My point is:with the internet,one moment of sheer stupidity will haunt,you


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## Dave (Jun 12, 2015)

hardsciencefanagain said:


> The girl's life is totally ruined,her lawyer says.
> My point is:with the internet,one moment of sheer stupidity will haunt,you


To be fair, you could ruin your life in an instant before the invention the Internet - committing petty crime, drink/driving


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