Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the co-founder of Facebook rival Diaspora, has died.
The 22-year-old was one of four New York-based students who launched Diaspora as a “privacy-aware, user-controlled” social network.
It was set up in response to criticism that Facebook was not handling the privacy of its users well. More…
In what has been dubbed Operation Virtual Shield, thousands of public and privately owned security cameras have been put in place in Chicago and linked together, creating a capsule of surveillance over the entire city, more extensive than anywhere else in the United States. Chicago holds the record for number of surveillance cameras, estimated at up to 10,000. The network is said to have cost $60 million. Officials say it is worth the price, but privacy concerns are at a peak.
This brings back memories of the Red Squad in Chicago back during the cold war….
The arm of Chicago’s law enforcement known alternately as the Industrial Unit, the Intelligence Division, the Radical Squad, or the Red Squad, had its roots in the Gilded Age, when class conflict encouraged employers to ally themselves with Chicago’s police against the city’s increasingly politicized workforce. Following the Haymarket bombing, Captain Michael J. Schaack orchestrated a vicious campaign against anarchism, resulting in 260 arrests, bribed witnesses, attacks on immigrants and labor activists, and convoluted theories of revolutionary conspiracy. Continuing its use of both overt and covert tactics, such as surveillance, infiltration, and intimidation, Chicago’s Red Squad in the 1920s under Make Mills shifted its attention from anarchists to individuals and organizations who the Red Squad believed to be Communist. Casting a wide net, the squad by 1960 had collected information on approximately 117,000 Chicagoans, 141,000 out-of-towners, and 14,000 organizations. After the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Red Squad expanded its targets from radical organizations like the Communist and Socialist Workers Parties to minority and reform organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Lawyers Guild, and Operation PUSH.
After 11 years of litigation, a 1985 court decision ended the Chicago Police Department’s Subversive Activities Unit’s unlawful surveillance of political dissenters and their organizations. In the fall of 1974, the Red Squad destroyed 105,000 individual and 1,300 organizational files when it learned that the Alliance to End Repression was filing a lawsuit against the unit for violating the U.S. Constitution. The records that remain are housed at the Chicago Historical Society. The public requires special permission to access them until 2012.
Sam Biddle — This is a map of everywhere I’ve been for nearly the last year. Everywhere. I didn’t carry around a special tracking device. The FBI isn’t sending goons in unmarked vans to track me. All I did was use an iPhone. And if you have an iPhone, you’re being tracked right now, too, whether you like it or not.
It turns out that all our iPhones are keeping a record of everywhere you’ve been since June. This data is stored on your phone (or iPad) and computer, easily available to anyone who gets their hands on it. Updated: 5:50 PM EST
And now, we’re wondering whether the same goes for our other smartphones. The opt-in wording of phone location service agreements is pretty nebulous (as agreements tend to be). When starting up a fresh Android, you’re prompted to agree to the following: “Allow Google’s location service to collect anonymous data. Collection will occur even when no applications are running.” We asked Google what exactly this meant, and they refused to answer on the record whether this “anonymous” location data is logged persistently, a la iPhone (The UK security duos says they haven’t uncovered an file so far). But, importantly, unlike the iPhone, it appears to be totally opt-in for users. Microsoft told us the only locational data stored on your Windows Phone 7 device is your last known location, for use with the Find My Phone feature. We’ve also reached out to Apple and BlackBerry-maker RIM for similar clarifications on data collection, but haven’t gotten a response yet.
We know that AT&T and other cellphone providers can always store this data, for any cellphone. And law enforcement can get to it when they need to. But I don’t want this information bouncing around on my computer and in pocket, too, for no good reason, with no way to opt out. That’s just not right.
The privacy startle, apparently enabled by this summer’s iOS 4 release, was discovered by two security researchers, one of whom claims he was an Apple employee for five years. They’re equally puzzled and disturbed by the location collection: “By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements,” they explain. All it would take to crack the information out of your iOS device is an easy jailbreak. On your computer, the information can be opened as easily as JPEG using the mapping software that the security experts have made for download—Try it yourself.
For now, there is no fix. The only way to remove it from your computer is to wipe your back up files from your computer. But then you have no back ups to restore your phone in case you lose it. And every time you sync your computer, though, it’ll create a new file. And if you do lose your phone, all your tracking data goes with it, right into the hands of whoever found it. And if you upgrade your phone to the next iPhone, the location tracking history goes with it. For now, the best to keep your location data safe is to encrypt your backup files—but that still leaves the roaming device itself vulnerable.
Update 1, 12:48 PM EST: Security expert Kevin Mitnick says he’s “Quite shocked and disturbed” by the revelation, noting that the logged data could be of great interest to a variety of entities—prying spouses, private investigators, and, he reckons, the government. He speculates that the existence of the log itself “could have been at the request of the government,” as such data “can’t be used for advertisements. It seems to me more to be a governmental request.” He added, “I like to know what my device is doing.” And, that the phone’s logging of data was in this case like “carrying around a bug and a tracker at the same time.”
Update 2, 3:37 PM EST: Google has declined to comment on the record as to the exact nature of their locational data collection.
Update 3, 5:32 PM EST: Microsoft tells us the only locational data they’re storing on your Windows Phone 7 device is your last known location—a single data point that’s erased as soon as it stores a new one.
Update 4, 5:50 PM EST: IT security expert Jonathan James has poked around inside the iPhone location database file in question and discovered tables labeled “Harvest” and “HarvestCounts,” although their use is still unknown.
