Following my earlier report about compulsory home wi-fi hotspots, I came across three other articles while searching for more information. All are enlightening about the 'security state' and its encroachment on our privacy.
- Ars Technica discovers how much information can be gleaned about an NPR reporter just by intercepting his Internet data stream.
- Secret UK data interception policies have been revealed in a court case there. Basically, if their security services 'deem' that something is external to the UK (even if it isn't), they're going to ignore requirements for court orders and intercept it anyway. Ten will get you one the NSA is doing something similar here . . .
- Whilst not overtly involving the Chinese government, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn they were behind the malware embedded in every smartphone sold in Europe and the USA by a Chinese company. Buyer beware . . .
Basically, we have no Internet or electronic communications privacy worth speaking of any more. Unfortunately, those behind this probably expect us to simply shrug our shoulders, decide there's nothing we can do about it, and carry on regardless. I want us to get mad, and take steps to restore our privacy and punish those responsible for eroding it. Who's with me?
Peter
3 comments:
ME!
Here's a good plan to get you started -
Step 1: Set up self-hosting for your blog (using Wordpress, or another blogging platform)
Step 2: Get a (not self-signed) SSL certificate.
Step 3: Use the certificate to secure all traffic on your now self-hosted blog site.
This would prevent someone (or some organization) from determining which web pages people are going to on your site, which series of blog posts people find more interesting than others. They could find out if a person spends more time on your blogs about prison, or your blogs about gun rights/info, or your blogs about the Catholic Church, etc.
Whoever 'they' is, they wouldn't need to know about you or your site specifically, all they would need to do is collect all the open traffic they can, and search for key phrases like 'gun rights' and they could mine yours and many other sites traffic logs to develop a personality profile of a single IP address, which tends to belong to a single individual.
Bet you saw this coming ten years ago.
I know my computer geek/encryption/math-nerd friends did.
Just like gun control, it can never happen here!
And just like gun control until there's an AWB like event, they're not going to do anything.
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