“The news of a possible foreign stingray near the White House is of particular concern giving reports that the President isn’t even using a secure phone to protect his calls,” Wyden said in response.
“The cavalier attitude toward our national security appears to be coming from the top down.”
…if you have committed a crime. Those DNA services are sharing your data to 3rd parties, including law enforcement.
Used by various US agencies for years now, Stingrays allow their operators to snoop on cell phone calls and messages. They aren’t legal, so it is interesting that Homeland Security is admitting they exist – seemingly because “bad actors” are now using them as well.
So basically, if any corporation or government might have a strong desire to intercept your calls, don’t use your phone.
Via Wired:
The DHS statement came in the form of a response to senator Ron Wyden, who had inquired about rogue cell-site simulators in a November letter. DHS acting undersecretary Christopher Krebs wrote, “Use of IMSI catchers by malicious actors to track and monitor cellular users is unlawful and threatens the security of communications, resulting in safety, economic, and privacy risks. … Overall, [DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate] believes the malicious use of IMSI catchers is a real and growing risk.” The agency added that NPPD “has observed anomalous activity in the Nation Capital Region that appears to be consistent with IMSI catchers. NPPD has not validated or attributed such activity to specific entities or devices.”
I’m yet to work out if Bill Gates is a good guy or not. I’m sure he believes he only does good (these days), but self-judgement isn’t something everyone has. He has invested in a global live satellite video project that could be just two years away. They do not disclose the resolution of the video, so I’m guessing there will be consumer level, commercial level, and governments-we-like level.
The proposed purposes for EarthNow sound great…
Catching illegal fishing in the act, watching hurricanes and typhoons as they evolve, detecting forest fires the moment they start, watching volcanoes the instant they start to erupt, assisting the media in telling stories from around the world, tracking large whales as they migrate, helping “smart cities” become more efficient, providing on-demand data about crop health, and observing conflict zones around the world.
…but the negative aspects are extraordinary. War comes to mind. Tracking individuals. Spotting when groups of people meet somewhere. Tracking planes, including stealth craft and Air Force One. And war. And war.
EarthNow is a new company looking to provide satellite imagery and live video in virtually real-time. Its unsettling pitch describes a network of satellites that can see any corner of the globe and provide live video with a latency of about a second. And a look at the startup’s top investors gives a lot of confidence that this thing is happening.
On Wednesday, EarthNow announced that it will emerge from the Intellectual Ventures ISF Incubator to become a full-scale commercial business. Its first round of investors is comprised of a small group of complimentary powerhouses: AirBus, the SoftBank Group, Bill Gates, and satellite-industry vet Greg Wyler. Gizmodo
If there is a war that includes Russia, and these satellites are used, expect them to be shot down. And then EarthNow can try and sue Russia. It isn’t an act of war if you take out private property in space.
The article at Fortune is titled Banks Are Using Biometrics to Detect Scammers.
And it has already begun…
A sensor in the branch, located in a port city on the East Coast, had detected unusual heartbeats and body heat patterns from new customers who had come to open an account.
Something was wrong. These “customers” had entered the country days before as human cargo on a ship from Europe. Now a criminal gang was using them to orchestrate financial fraud.
Imagine if retailers start using this – a quickening pulse might indicate a desire to purchase. A car dealer would love this intel.
Would a cloaker be able to thwart such systems? I guess it would be obvious if you were masking your vitals, which would be even more suspicious unless it was widely adopted.
Many smartphone apps record your travels vias GPS. Even if the data is stripped of any personal information (like your login or phone number), there is usually enough to learn a whole lot about you, even your name and address.
Once your name has been discovered, combined with your suburb or town, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles can be found. This means there is a good chance that combing through your Facebook posts will discover your birthday…
In 2013, researchers at MIT and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium published a paper reporting on 15 months of study of human mobility data for over 1.5 million individuals. What they found is that only four spatio-temporal points are required to “uniquely identify 95% of the individuals.”
This Russian scientist isn’t the first to have this idea – using shapes and lines on your face to confuse facial recognition technology. But it my opinion these look quite good as well. However the reality is that few people care about privacy enough to put in the effort. Unless they are criminals…
Some future citizens will crave privacy in a world saturated with surveillance. Here’s a way for them to conduct their lives privately outside of their homes:
Ground floor – shopping centre – full of surveillance.
First floor – offices – no surveillance – all wireless transmissions blocked
Basement – secret meeting spaces, bars and clubs – no surveillance – all wireless transmissions blocked
If the building is of sufficient size, all that those who are tracking you know is that you entered an elevator and either went up or down.
In the first full month after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, warrantless searches of electronic devices by U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which had already dramatically expanded during the Obama administration — exploded beyond anything on record. According to numbers obtained by NBC, border agents searched 5,000 devices in February, more than in all of 2015, and on pace to more than double the number of searches in 2016.
The article at The Outline looks at the legal and privacy angles. For the innocent, it is an invasion of privacy and on shaky legal ground (except for how in the no-mans land of borders the authorities can do anything they want…)
The solution for anyone with secrets or operating in a grey area is simple – don’t have anything on devices that travel with you. And don’t use those devices to log in to anywhere that you’d rather they didn’t know about.
Tip: Maintain multiple social media profiles, and only use your real name or photos on the safe one.
The concept is quite simple – the screen on your smartphone retains the heat from your fingertips for a short while. If you unlock your phone and then it can be scanned by thermal imaging equipment (within 30 seconds), your PIN can be revealed. See this 30 second video:
I feel the real risk would be from thermal imaging already in place (say beneath a table), that can capture the PIN entry in real time. The scenario in the video is kinda unlikely.
To protect yourself, have a phone that shows updates on your home screen without unlocking it.
Story : The Atlantic
