Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

Speaking of cops planting stuff on you

Honestly I think it's more terrifying than funny.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/109359/controversial-national-id-system

A Filipino perspective on why the national ID System is not done.

House Extends Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Safeguards: "...The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to extend the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program for six years with minimal changes, rejecting a push by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to impose significant privacy limits when it sweeps up Americans’ emails and other personal communications."

So, don't delete your encryption software just yet...

Why the President's FISA Fix Is Bad News For Privacy, Good News for Russian Agents: "...Thursday brought President Trump two things he sought: new restrictions on how and when the U.S. government can reveal the names of Americans who come to the attention of intelligence agencies, and a House vote to reauthorize the law that permits those agencies to eavesdrop on foreigners and virtually any American they speak to."

In addition to all that, turns out that there are some disquiting implications of the new law for corruption investigations.

The privacy concerns at the heart of the FISA renewal debate A PBS article that discusses some of the implications for privacy, and why we should care:

"... Right, so really their fundamental concern is that this information was collected without a warrant in a very specific context, a context related to foreign intelligence.

So, what they are concerned with is, that if that justification doesn’t follow through all the way to the end, that might allow law enforcement to look at otherwise protected communications for regular criminal prosecution purposes, and without ever getting that warrant, and that that is not appropriate or acceptable under the Fourth Amendment."

NVM.

edited 18th Jan '18 10:27:01 PM by Wariolander

Anyone who doesn't think Trump will abuse this new power to go after political opponents or critics is only kidding themselves.

Trump doesn’t personally get the powers, the FBI, CIA and NSA do.

Yes, just look at all the times in the past year when Trump colluded with the intelligence agencies to hunt down political opponents...

This is an extension of a program that was already in place. Plus, surveillance is the thing that has never been used by the president to crack down on the opposition, nor will Trump, but people want to discard it over a whim. The directors of the agencies wouldn't allow him to anyways.

The Obama admin did abuse surveillance powers for political purposes, as has probably every presidential administration. The FBI has a well documented history of using surveillance to supress dissent.

x3 This is true; however, let's not forget that Trump wants to "restore the FBI to greatness"; presumably that means firing the current top staff and replacing them with people loyal to himself. Same would hold true for the other three letter agencies if he had his way.

And in an article I should probablyjust did cross-post to the Privacy thread, Apple will be denying the use of iCloud to users who don't agree to have their data shared with the Chinese government, thanks to the new data center being built with a Communist-Party owned computing company. ^{Full article text} Last one from the NY Times

edited 24th Jan '18 2:33:48 AM by BlueNinja0

Here's the link as well. Apple has been trying to get into China for so long it was only a matter of time.

edited 24th Jan '18 2:45:44 AM by TerminusEst

Crossposting to Trolling, Free Speech and the Law and to US politics for relevance: potentially NSFW {Motherboard} We Are Truly Fucked: Everyone Is Making AI-Generated Fake Porn Now. So, a pervert on the internet created a face-swap technology to put faces of celebrities on porn videos and released it as an app. As the article shows below, it can be used for other kinds of video faceswaps (the example given is a guy who face-swapped Hitler for Argentine president Mauricio Macri). This obviously has worrisome implications for politics worldwide, imagine a pizzagate-style hoax in 2020, but with a fake video of the candidate supposedly making a deal on video.

edited 24th Jan '18 5:04:45 PM by IFwanderer

Surprised this hasn't been posted yet:

If Workers Slack Off, the Wristband Will Know. (And Amazon Has a Patent for It.)

This, combined with another article I read about a Madison, WI company which introduced optional chip implants to its workers (and staggeringly, many of them opted into it voluntarily!) really makes me think how bleak the future workplace is getting, especially since corporations employ a good chunk of the American workforce and are protected to get away with this sort of thing.

The next logical step will be a mandatory chip implant from the government that will be required if you want a job or to buy anything. And when that comes... we'll be in deep shit.

edited 2nd Feb '18 3:13:30 PM by speedyboris

Did their bosses/managers persuaded them to adhere to such a thing? ''Or else?'' ^note the 'else' being something like being fired

I don't believe so (for now).

Here's the article on that story, BTW.

edited 2nd Feb '18 3:22:04 PM by speedyboris

There’s some big plans for applying visas to America with linking to someone’s social media:

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-43601557

Yep, not coming to visit anytime soon.

Lucky for those who come from visa-exempt countries like Canada, Japan and Singapore, they don’t need to go through this.

edited 31st Mar '18 4:29:52 AM by Ominae

I've asked this before: If you don't have any social media accounts to begin with, would they still let you in? Or is that going to be deemed MORE suspicious?

It's like credit ratings.

Proposal is not clear on that one, but it also includes getting basic details from five years like whether your phone numbers changed or not for example.

The BBC link I posted has more info on that matter.

Not sure how they intend to enforce this. Seems like it would be pretty easy to get around.

edited 31st Mar '18 9:41:41 AM by DeMarquis

x4 I'm wondering what happens if you don't have a social media account either. Seems like Trump and his administration didn't consider that a possibility (Because EVERYONE has a social media account these days). I'm glad I don't have a Social Media account (well, my mom created a Facebook account for me a long time ago, but I've never actually used it, and I briefly had a Twitter account, but quickly deleted it).

For example, if you simply dont mention that you happen to have an avatar on TV Tropes, is anyone really going to invest the time and energy to check? And how would they do that?

[TPM]: Is Facebook in More Trouble Than People Think?

TLDR: Facebook appears to be rejiggering its algorithms that target advertising towards its users due to concerns about the privacy of user data being shared with advertisers. This is creating some volatility in the effectiveness of ads on the platform, and is causing some concern among advertisers that they may not be getting the same high value that they were used to. Since ads are Facebook's primary source of market value, declines in the perceived value of advertising on the platform, or even a failure to continually increase the value, could deal the company a crippling financial blow.

These actions are coming at least partly in anticipation of increasing regulatory scrutiny in various markets, never mind recent political revelations such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal. FB can't simply get away with arbitrarily marketing its users' data any more.

All of this raises some interesting questions. Is the utility of the Facebook platform (or, indeed, any similar social media engine) worth the inherent surrender of privacy that it represents, and will consumers abandon these platforms out of fear that Facebook is manipulating their brains (or allowing them to be manipulated) by sneaky psychological tactics developed using their own profiles? Is this the feared dystopian future of targeted marketing via social media, or will some happy medium be found?

edited 6th Apr '18 7:04:56 AM by Fighteer