Google's Code Search Feature
You can use it to find usernames and passwords, confidential code, buffer overflows, and all sorts of other things. (Another news story here.)
EDITED TO ADD (10/10): More info.
Entries Tagged "privacy"
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Schneier Lecture "The Future of Privacy"
Last Wednesday I gave a lecture on “The Future of Privacy” at the University of Southern California. The audio is online.
Dying with your Passwords
Interesting story on the risks of dying without telling anyone your computer passwords.
Faulty Data and the Arar Case
Maher Arar is a Syrian-born Canadian citizen. On September 26, 2002, he tried to fly from Switzerland to Toronto. Changing planes in New York, he was detained by the U.S. authorities, and eventually shipped to Syria where he was tortured. He’s 100% innocent. (Background here.)
The Canadian government has completed its “Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar,” the results of which are public. From their press release:
On Maher Arar, the Commissioner comes to one important conclusion: “I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada.”
Certainly something that everyone who supports the U.S.’s right to detain and torture people without having to demonstrate their guilt should think about. But what’s more interesting to readers of this blog is the role that inaccurate data played in the deportation and ultimately torture of an innocent man.
Privacy International summarizes the report. These are among their bullet points:
- The RCMP provided the U.S. with an entire database of information relating to a terrorism investigation (three CDs of information), in a way that did not comply with RCMP policies that require screening for relevance, reliability, and personal information. In fact, this action was without precedent.
- The RCMP provided the U.S. with inaccurate information about Arar that portrayed him in an infairly negative fashion and overstated his importance to a RCMP investigation. They included some “erroneous notes.”
- While he was detained in the U.S., the RCMP provided information regarding him to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), “some of which portrayed him in an inaccurate and unfair way.” The RCMP provided inaccurate information to the U.S. authorities that tended to link Arar to other terrorist suspects; and told the U.S. authorities that Arar had previously refused to be interviewed, which was also incorrect; and the RCMP also said that soon after refusing the interview he suddenly left Canada for Tunisia. “The statement about the refusal to be interviewed had the potential to arouse suspicion, especially among law enforcement officers, that Mr. Arar had something to hide.” The RCMP’s information to the U.S. authorities also placed Arar in the vicinity of Washington DC on September 11, 2001 when he was instead in California.
Judicial oversight is a security mechanism. It prevents the police from incarcerating the wrong person. The point of habeas corpus is that the police need to present their evidence in front of a neutral third party, and not indefinitely detain or torture people just because they believe they’re guilty. We are all less secure if we water down these security measures.
Torpark
Torpark is a free anonymous web browser. It sounds good:
A group of computer hackers and human rights workers have launched a specially-crafted version of Firefox that claims to give users complete anonymity when they surf the Web.
Dubbed “Torpark” and based on a portable version of Firefox 1.5.0.7, the browser will run from a USB drive, so it leaves no installation tracks on the PC. It protects the user’s privacy by encrypting all in- and outbound data, and also anonymizes the connection by passing all data through the TOR network, which masks the true IP address of the machine.
From the website:
Torpark is a program which allows you to surf the internet anonymously. Download Torpark and put it on a USB Flash keychain. Plug it into any internet terminal whether at home, school, work, or in public. Torpark will launch a Tor circuit connection, which creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer indirectly to a Tor exit computer, allowing you to surf the internet anonymously.
More details here.
Germans Spying on British Trash
You can’t make this stuff up:
Electronic spy ‘bugs’ have been secretly planted in hundreds of thousands of household wheelie bins.
The gadgets – mostly installed by companies based in Germany – transmit information about the contents of the bins to a central database which then keeps records on the waste disposal habits of each individual address.
Already some 500,000 bins in council districts across England have been fitted with the bugs – with nearly all areas expected to follow suit within the next couple of years.
Until now, the majority of bins have been altered without the knowledge of their owners. In many cases, councils which ordered the installation of the devices did not even debate the proposals publicly.
The official reason for the bugs is to ‘improve efficiency’ and settle disputes between neighbours over wheelie-bin ownership. But experts say the technology is actually intended to enable councils to impose fines on householders who exceed limits on the amount of non-recyclable waste they put out. New powers for councils to do this are expected to be introduced by the Government shortly.
Facebook and Data Control
Earlier this month, the popular social networking site Facebook learned a hard lesson in privacy. It introduced a new feature called “News Feeds” that shows an aggregation of everything members do on the site: added and deleted friends, a change in relationship status, a new favorite song, a new interest, etc. Instead of a member’s friends having to go to his page to view any changes, these changes are all presented to them automatically.
The outrage was enormous. One group, Students Against Facebook News Feeds, amassed over 700,000 members. Members planned to protest at the company’s headquarters. Facebook’s founder was completely stunned, and the company scrambled to add some privacy options.
Welcome to the complicated and confusing world of privacy in the information age. Facebook didn’t think there would be any problem; all it did was take available data and aggregate it in a novel way for what it perceived was its customers’ benefit. Facebook members instinctively understood that making this information easier to display was an enormous difference, and that privacy is more about control than about secrecy.
But on the other hand, Facebook members are just fooling themselves if they think they can control information they give to third parties.
Privacy used to be about secrecy. Someone defending himself in court against the charge of revealing someone else’s personal information could use as a defense the fact that it was not secret. But clearly, privacy is more complicated than that. Just because you tell your insurance company something doesn’t mean you don’t feel violated when that information is sold to a data broker. Just because you tell your friend a secret doesn’t mean you’re happy when he tells others. Same with your employer, your bank, or any company you do business with.
But as the Facebook example illustrates, privacy is much more complex. It’s about who you choose to disclose information to, how, and for what purpose. And the key word there is “choose.” People are willing to share all sorts of information, as long as they are in control.
When Facebook unilaterally changed the rules about how personal information was revealed, it reminded people that they weren’t in control. Its eight million members put their personal information on the site based on a set of rules about how that information would be used. It’s no wonder those members—high school and college kids who traditionally don’t care much about their own privacy—felt violated when Facebook changed the rules.
Unfortunately, Facebook can change the rules whenever it wants. Its Privacy Policy is 2,800 words long, and ends with a notice that it can change at any time. How many members ever read that policy, let alone read it regularly and check for changes? Not that a Privacy Policy is the same as a contract. Legally, Facebook owns all data members upload to the site. It can sell the data to advertisers, marketers, and data brokers. (Note: there is no evidence that Facebook does any of this.) It can allow the police to search its databases upon request. It can add new features that change who can access what personal data, and how.
But public perception is important. The lesson here for Facebook and other companies—for Google and MySpace and AOL and everyone else who hosts our e-mails and webpages and chat sessions—is that people believe they own their data. Even though the user agreement might technically give companies the right to sell the data, change the access rules to that data, or otherwise own that data, we—the users—believe otherwise. And when we who are affected by those actions start expressing our views—watch out.
What Facebook should have done was add the feature as an option, and allow members to opt in if they wanted to. Then, members who wanted to share their information via News Feeds could do so, and everyone else wouldn’t have felt that they had no say in the matter. This is definitely a gray area, and it’s hard to know beforehand which changes need to be implemented slowly and which won’t matter. Facebook, and others, need to talk to its members openly about new features. Remember: members want control.
The lesson for Facebook members might be even more jarring: if they think they have control over their data, they’re only deluding themselves. They can rebel against Facebook for changing the rules, but the rules have changed, regardless of what the company does.
Whenever you put data on a computer, you lose some control over it. And when you put it on the internet, you lose a lot of control over it. News Feeds brought Facebook members face to face with the full implications of putting their personal information on Facebook. It had just been an accident of the user interface that it was difficult to aggregate the data from multiple friends into a single place. And even if Facebook eliminates News Feeds entirely, a third party could easily write a program that does the same thing. Facebook could try to block the program, but would lose that technical battle in the end.
We’re all still wrestling with the privacy implications of the Internet, but the balance has tipped in favor of more openness. Digital data is just too easy to move, copy, aggregate, and display. Companies like Facebook need to respect the social rules of their sites, to think carefully about their default settings—they have an enormous impact on the privacy mores of the online world—and to give users as much control over their personal information as they can.
But we all need to remember that much of that control is illusory.
This essay originally appeared on Wired.com.
More on the HP Board Spying Scandal
Two weeks ago I wrote about a spying scandal involving the HP board. There’s more:
A secret investigation of news leaks at Hewlett-Packard was more elaborate than previously reported, and almost from the start involved the illicit gathering of private phone records and direct surveillance of board members and journalists, according to people briefed on the company’s review of the operation.
Given this, I predict a real investigation into the incident:
Those briefed on the company’s review of the operation say detectives tried to plant software on at least one journalist’s computer that would enable messages to be traced, and also followed directors and possibly a journalist in an attempt to identify a leaker on the board.
I’m amazed there isn’t more outcry. Pretexting, planting Trojans…this is the sort of thing that would get a “hacker” immediately arrested. But if the chairman of the HP board does it, suddenly it’s a gray area.
EDITED TO ADD (9/20): More info.
Renew Your Passport Now!
If you have a passport, now is the time to renew it—even if it’s not set to expire anytime soon. If you don’t have a passport and think you might need one, now is the time to get it. In many countries, including the United States, passports will soon be equipped with RFID chips. And you don’t want one of these chips in your passport.
RFID stands for “radio-frequency identification.” Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries.
By itself, this is no problem. But RFID chips don’t have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.
At first the State Department belittled those risks, but in response to criticism from experts it has implemented some security features. Passports will come with a shielded cover, making it much harder to read the chip when the passport is closed. And there are now access-control and encryption mechanisms, making it much harder for an unauthorized reader to collect, understand and alter the data.
Although those measures help, they don’t go far enough. The shielding does no good when the passport is open. Travel abroad and you’ll notice how often you have to show your passport: at hotels, banks, Internet cafes. Anyone intent on harvesting passport data could set up a reader at one of those places. And although the State Department insists that the chip can be read only by a reader that is inches away, the chips have been read from many feet away.
The other security mechanisms are also vulnerable, and several security researchers have already discovered flaws. One found that he could identify individual chips via unique characteristics of the radio transmissions. Another successfully cloned a chip. The State Department called this a “meaningless stunt,” pointing out that the researcher could not read or change the data. But the researcher spent only two weeks trying; the security of your passport has to be strong enough to last 10 years.
This is perhaps the greatest risk. The security mechanisms on your passport chip have to last the lifetime of your passport. It is as ridiculous to think that passport security will remain secure for that long as it would be to think that you won’t see another security update for Microsoft Windows in that time. Improvements in antenna technology will certainly increase the distance at which they can be read and might even allow unauthorized readers to penetrate the shielding.
Whatever happens, if you have a passport with an RFID chip, you’re stuck. Although popping your passport in the microwave will disable the chip, the shielding will cause all kinds of sparking. And although the United States has said that a nonworking chip will not invalidate a passport, it is unclear if one with a deliberately damaged chip will be honored.
The Colorado passport office is already issuing RFID passports, and the State Department expects all U.S. passport offices to be doing so by the end of the year. Many other countries are in the process of changing over. So get a passport before it’s too late. With your new passport you can wait another 10 years for an RFID passport, when the technology will be more mature, when we will have a better understanding of the security risks and when there will be other technologies we can use to cut the risks. You don’t want to be a guinea pig on this one.
This op ed appeared on Saturday in the Washington Post.
I’ve written about RFID passports many times before (that last link is an op-ed from The International Herald-Tribune), although last year I—mistakenly—withdrew my objections based on the security measures the State Department was taking. I’ve since realized that they won’t be enough.
EDITED TO ADD (9/29): This op ed has appeared in about a dozen newspapers. The San Jose Mercury News published a rebuttal. Kind of lame, I think.
EDITED TO ADD (12/30): Here’s how to disable a RFID passport.
Laptop Seizures in Sudan
According to CNN:
Sudanese security forces have begun seizing laptop computers entering the country to check on the information stored on them as part of new security measures.
One state security source said the laptops are searched and returned in one day and that the procedure was introduced because pornographic films and photographs were entering Sudan.
U.N. officials, aid agency workers, businessmen and journalists who regularly visit Sudan worry the security of sensitive and confidential information such as medical, legal and financial records on their computers could be at risk.
Authorities have cracked down on organizations like Medecins Sans Frontieres, the International Rescue Committee who have published reports on huge numbers of rapes in the violent Darfur region.
(More commentary here.)
While the stated reason is pornography, anyone bringing a computer into the country should be concerned about personal information, writing that might be deemed political by the Sudanese authorities, confidential business information, and so on.
And this should be a concern regardless of the border you cross. Your privacy rights when trying to enter a country are minimal, and this kind of thing could happen anywhere. (I have heard anecdotal stories about Israel doing this, but don’t have confirmation.)
If you’re bringing a laptop across an international border, you should clean off all unnecessary files and encrypt the rest.
EDITED TO ADD (9/15): This is legal in the U.S.
EDITED TO ADD (9/30): More about the legality of this in the U.S.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.