Entries Tagged "privacy"

Page 133 of 144

A 24/7 Wireless Tracking Network

It’s at MIT:

MIT’s newly upgraded wireless network—extended this month to cover the entire school—doesn’t merely get you online in study halls, stairwells or any other spot on the 9.4 million square foot campus. It also provides information on exactly how many people are logged on at any given location at any given time.

It even reveals a user’s identity if the individual has opted to make that data public.

MIT researchers did this by developing electronic maps that track across campus, day and night, the devices people use to connect to the network, whether they’re laptops, wireless PDAs or even Wi-Fi equipped cell phones.

WiFi is certainly a good technology for this sort of massive surveillance. It’s an open and well-standardized technology that allows anyone to go into the surveillance business. Bluetooth is a similar technology: open and easy to use. Cell phone technologies, on the other hand, are closed and proprietary. RFID might be the preferred surveillance technology of the future, depending on how open and standardized it becomes.

Whatever the technology, privacy is a serious concern:

While every device connected to the campus network via Wi-Fi is visible on the constantly refreshed electronic maps, the identity of the users is confidential unless they volunteer to make it public.

Those students, faculty and staff who opt in are essentially agreeing to let others track them.

“This raises some serious privacy issues,” Ratti said. “But where better than to work these concerns out but on a research campus?”

Rich Pell, a 21-year-old electrical engineering senior from Spartanburg, S.C., was less than enthusiastic about the new system’s potential for people monitoring. He predicted not many fellow students would opt into that.

“I wouldn’t want all my friends and professors tracking me all the time. I like my privacy,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone who would think that’s a good idea. Everyone wants to be out of contact now and then.”

Posted on November 4, 2005 at 12:44 PM • View Comments

The Security of RFID Passports

My fifth column for Wired:

The State Department has done a great job addressing specific security and privacy concerns, but its lack of technical skills is hurting it. The collision-avoidance ID is just one example of where, apparently, the State Department didn’t have enough of the expertise it needed to do this right.

Of course it can fix the problem, but the real issue is how many other problems like this are lurking in the details of its design? We don’t know, and I doubt the State Department knows either. The only way to vet its design, and to convince us that RFID is necessary, would be to open it up to public scrutiny.

The State Department’s plan to issue RFID passports by October 2006 is both precipitous and risky. It made a mistake designing this behind closed doors. There needs to be some pretty serious quality assurance and testing before deploying this system, and this includes careful security evaluations by independent security experts. Right now the State Department has no intention of doing that; it’s already committed to a scheme before knowing if it even works or if it protects privacy.

My previous entries on RFID passports are here, here, and here.

Posted on November 3, 2005 at 8:30 AM • View Comments

Eavesdropping Through a Wall

From The New Scientist:

With half a century’s experience of listening to feeble radio signals from space, NASA is helping US security services squeeze super-weak bugging data from Earth-bound buildings.

It is easy to defeat ordinary audio eavesdropping, just by sound-proofing a room. And simply drawing the curtains can defeat newer systems, which shine a laser beam onto a glass window and decode any modulation of the reflected beam caused by sound vibrations in the room.

So the new “through-the-wall audio surveillance system” uses a powerful beam of very high frequency radio waves instead of light. Radio can penetrate walls – if they didn’t, portable radios wouldn’t work inside a house.

The system uses a horn antenna to radiate a beam of microwave energy –between 30 and 100 gigahertz – through a building wall. If people are speaking inside the room, any flimsy surface, such as clothing, will be vibrating. This modulates the radio beam reflected from the surface.

Although the radio reflection that passes back through the wall is extremely faint, the kind of electronic extraction and signal cleaning tricks used by NASA to decode signals in space can be used to extract speech.

Here’s the patent, and here’s a Slashdot thread on the topic.

Wow. (If it works, that is.)

Posted on October 26, 2005 at 3:12 PM • View Comments

FBI Abuses of the USA Patriot Act

Since the Patriot Act was passed, administration officials have repeatedly assured the public and Congress that there have not been improper uses of that law. As recently as April 27, 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified that “there has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse.”

However:

Documents obtained by EPIC from the FBI describe thirteen cases of possible misconduct in intelligence investigations. The case numbering suggests that there were at least 153 investigations of misconduct at the FBI in 2003 alone.

These documents reveal that the Intelligence Oversight Board has investigated many instances of alleged abuse, and perhaps most critically, may not have disclosed these facts to the Congressional oversight committees charged with evaluating the Patriot Act.

According to The Washington Post

In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years—including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department “from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person.”

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper “unconsented physical search,” according to the documents.

Although heavily censored, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the world of domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records are also emerging as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to conduct secret searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups.

EPIC received these documents under FOIA, and has written to the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge hearings on the matter, and has recommended that the Attorney General be required to report to Congress when the Intelligence Oversight Board receives allegations of unlawful intelligence investigations.

This week marks the four-year anniversary of the enactment of the Patriot Act. Does anyone feel safer because of it?

EDITED TO ADD: There’s a New York Times article on the topic.

Posted on October 25, 2005 at 7:09 AM • View Comments

Supermarket Loyalty Program Used to Pinpoint Location

This is an interesting (six-month-old) story about a supermarket loyalty program.

Person 1 loses a valuable watch in a supermarket. Person 2 finds it and, instead of returning it as required by law, keeps it. Two years later, he brings it in for repair. The repairman checks the serial number against a lost/stolen database. Person 2 doesn’t admit he found the watch, but instead claims that he bought it in some sort of used watch store. The police check the loyalty-program records from the supermarket and find that Person 2 was in the supermarket within hours of when Person 1 said he lost the watch.

EDITED TO ADD: Earlier confusion about video surveillance fixed, and two comments pointing out the error deleted. Thank you.

Posted on October 24, 2005 at 1:30 PM • View Comments

Private Webcams and the Police

Our surveillance society marches on:

Commercial burglaries have risen in Corona in the past few years. At the same time, security-camera technology has improved, allowing business owners to use Web sites to view their shops or offices from home or while on a trip.

Now the Corona Chamber of Commerce and the Police Department are encouraging businesses with such systems to provide police dispatchers a password so they can see what’s going on during an emergency.

How soon before there’s a law requiring these webcams to be built with a police backdoor?

Posted on October 20, 2005 at 3:25 PM • View Comments

RFID and Privacy

Boston Globe editorial on RFID and privacy:

It’s one of the cutest of those cute IBM Corp. TV commercials, the ones that feature the ever-present help desk. This time, the desk appears smack in the middle of a highway, blocking the path of a big rig.

”Why are you blocking the road?” the driver asks. ”Because you’re going the wrong way,” replies the cheerful Help Desk lady. ”Your cargo told me so.” It seems the cartons inside the truck contained IBM technology that alerted the company when the driver made a wrong turn.

It’s clever, all right—and creepy. Because the technology needn’t be applied only to cases of beer. The trackers could be attached to every can of beer in the case, and allow marketers to track the boozing habits of the purchasers. Or if the cargo is clothing, those little trackers could have been stitched inside every last sweater. Then some high-tech busybody could keep those wearing them under surveillance.

If this sounds paranoid, take it up with IBM. The company filed a patent application in 2001 which contemplates using this wireless snooping technology to track people as they roam through ”shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, rest rooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc.” An IBM spokeswoman insisted the company isn’t really prepared to go this far. Patent applications are routinely written to include every possible use of a technology, even some the company doesn’t intend to pursue. Still, it’s clear somebody at IBM has a pretty creepy imagination.

There’s a Slashdot thread on the topic.

Posted on October 14, 2005 at 7:11 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.