Tag: surveillance

Latest Read: An Ugly Truth

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date November 17, 2021

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang. Sheera is a prize-winning technology reporter based in San Francisco. Cecilia covers technology and regulation.

This story of Facebook’s corruption and lack of a moral compass cannot not be any more clearer than this book. In addition, this is a story of greed, control, egos of company leaders. At first glance you may think this is simply not possible.

In contrast, the authors are tapping into current and former employees. All paint a rather horrific picture of Facebooks’ single focus: profits.

Above all, documents and interviews reveal how company wide lack of action weakened American democracy. Furthermore, ignoring the genocide of Rohingya peoples across Myanmar paints a rather shocking picture of Facebook as a company.

A key point certainly overlooked is how Facebook ‘arrived’ at the beginning of the internet’s gilded age. Therefore, no rules applied, just profits whatever the cost. Profit is certainly the only focus for Mark Zuckerberg. On the other hand, attempting to derail his profit focus results with aggressive and sometimes illegal tactics.

Chapter 7: Company over Country

An acknowledgment by Facebook’s security team that Russian spies hacked user accounts of GOP politicians certainly was not a surprise. Yet, the Russians hacked accounts of children from those GOP candidates. This also was certainly very shocking. Accordingly, all this activity was culminating in an internal report to company leadership:

Hence, Facebook did nothing. No notice to American intelligence services. Ultimately Facebook engineers held a rather unique eye on all user interactions.

Tags An Ugly Truth, Cecilia Kang, facebook, privacy, Sheera Frenkel, surveillance

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Latest Read: Data and Goliath

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date November 12, 2021

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier. He is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AccessNow, and the Tor Project.

Bruce is moreover, writing a book about surveillance. He is addressing the who and why, how it works, and the business models. This is certainly a complicated issue. Most importantly, your privacy is very important.

Above all, we live in a surveillance state today. Bruce is sharing enormous amounts of resources revealing how vast amounts our personal data are harvested. In addition, Facebook is the greatest abuser, with Google’s Gmail not far behind.

One of the important lessons is that much of this has become voluntary. We want free services (email, cloud storage) or cheap hardware mobile phones and big, smart TVs, so we actually permit corporate surveillance within our living rooms.

In addition, this reminds me of lessons from The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. Companies promise cheaper services and convenience to justify their surveillance technology, while local, state and federal governments make a promise of protection and physical security.

Apps are tracking us all day long

We certainly all understand by now that cellular carriers track everywhere you travel. Facebook records your location each time you open their app on your phone. In addition, Google Maps and their Waze traffic app records your GPS data, and even your credit card purchases.

Tags Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath, facebook, privacy, surveillance

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Latest Read: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 19, 2020

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff rocked Silicon Valley and beyond. Shoshana is Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and a former Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

Shoshana has delivered a critically important book not to be missed. This is a “once in a decade book” that digs deep into digital surveillance by Google and Facebook.

So, before you ask about recent US Senate votes to continue warrantless access to your internet search and browser history, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are harvesting just about all of your personal data.

So, the term ‘surveillance capitalism’ is new for many who only recently see this term added to our societal lexicon. The ability for Google and Facebook to simply take your data, mash it up, and sell it (without your knowledge) may indeed surprise many. But the depth of their reach Shoshana reveals may shock you.

You may not yet realize how Google and Facebook have already tuned their artificial intelligence platforms to data mining you even deeper than you may realize. Actually, think you with nothing to hide? Think again.

Google and Facebook lead in data harvesting

There is a common understanding that ‘free’ is just that. A ‘free’ email account and ‘free’ social media platforms? Nothing short of a lie. And the misdirection that ‘you become the product’ is no longer accurate. Shoshana refocuses this misdirection to convey Google and Facebook have so much of your private data, they now simply harvest your daily input toward their behavioral capitalism.

For Google this data mining includes all products and services including the acquired Nest thermostat. This is not new by the way. The LA Times reported back in May 2008 a plan by Charter to track customer web habits. These messages remind me of 2009’s The Future of the Internet by Jonathan Zittrain.

How Google Maps harvested your personal data

Today the question is not how, but rather how much you use and rely upon Google Maps. When Google’s StreetView cars drove past your house (and mine) taking photographs — their cars had surveillance tools that downloaded your home’s WiFi payload data.

Wait, what? Oh yes, they did.
As a result, Attorneys General from 38 states sued Google. 12 other countries, mainly from Europe also sued.

So, just how sensitive was the data collected by Maps? Technical experts in Canada, France, and the Netherlands discovered that StreetView’s data harvesting included:

names
telephone numbers
credit card information
passwords (Yes Google harvested your passwords)
e-mails (full text)
chat transcripts
dating site data
pornography site data
browsing behavior
medical data
location data

In addition, Shoshana reveals how Google, forced to concede that it had intercepted and stored “payload data” the personal information grabbed from unencrypted Wi-Fi transmissions. In some instances your entire email message, URLs and passwords were harvested.

John Hanke, Vice President for Google Maps previously directed Keyhole, a CIA-satellite mapping company. After Google purchased Keyhole, Hanke directed the upgrade of Google Earth. The full 25 page legal filing for your reading pleasure: In the Matter of Google, Inc.: Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture, File No.: EB-10-IH-4055, NAL/Acct. No.: 201232080020, FRNs: 0010119691, 0014720239, Federal Communications Commission, April 13, 2012, 12–13.

Tags data harvesting, facebook, Google, Shoshana Zuboff, surveillance, Surveillance Capitalism