NetHappenings: Privacy, Data, Your Rights

Want to mess with the surveillance state?
A new clothing line confuses automated license plate readers
https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614175/a-new-clothing-line-confuses-automated-license-plate-readers/

Join the Congressional Innovation Fellowship
TechCongress places computer scientists, engineers, and other technologists to serve as technology policy advisors to to Members of Congress through our one-year Congressional Innovation Fellowship. We bridge the divide of knowledge and experience between DC and Silicon Valley for better outcomes for both.

EU votes to create gigantic biometrics database
https://www.zdnet.com/article/eu-votes-to-create-gigantic-biometrics-database/

What Are Psychographics?
https://huffpost.com/us/entry/us_594be378e4b07cdb1933c05b

The vocabulary of BS. Where Wall Street is capitalism unvarnished, Silicon Valley is capitalism euphemized.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/26/how-to-speak-silicon-valley-decoding-tech-bros-from-microdosing-to-privacy

Hackers are stealing years of call records from hacked cell networks
https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/24/hackers-cell-networks-call-records-theft/

Cellphone location data from T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint was sold to bail bondsmen
https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/cell-phone-location-data-from-t-mobile-at-t-and-sprint-was-sold-to-bail-bondsmen

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint suspend selling of customer location data after prison officials were caught misusing it
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/19/verizon-will-suspend-sales-of-customer-location-data-after-a-prison-phone-company-was-caught-misusing-it/

How a trivial cell phone hack is ruining lives
https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/28/cell-phone-hack-is-ruining-lives-identity-theft/

Former Equifax executive sentenced to prison for insider trading prior to data breach
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/29/20056655/jun-ying-equifax-breach-jail-time-insider-trading-department-of-justice

Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents
Employees embedded with cybersecurity forces in Uganda and Zambia intercepted encrypted communications and used cell data to track opponents, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation
https://www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-technicians-helped-african-governments-spy-on-political-opponents-11565793017

Threat Groups Cards A THREAT ACTOR ENCYCLOPEDIA
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ds0ra0c8odwsv3m/Threat%20Group%20Cards.pdf

reCAPTCHA Usage Statistics
https://trends.builtwith.com/widgets/reCAPTCHA

Disrupting at the highest levels, its #CyberWar4Ever!
https://cybersquirrel1.com/

  • Privacy should not be not a one-off exercise by the legal division whenever a new law comes out. It needs to be a company-wide program with ongoing policies and clear accountability for each division.
  • If the service is free you are in fact the product being sold.
  • Not collecting the data in the first place is easier than protecting it.
  • Privacy: Once described by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as, “the right to be left alone,” privacy is now best described as the ability to control data we cannot stop generating, giving rise to inferences we can’t predict.
  • Dont reuse passwords. Ever.
  • One way to ensure your personal data remains private is never to give it*. Today, under #dataprivacy laws you can refuse to give that information.
  • Don’t use production data in pre-production environments.
  • Do not use Facebook, or WeChat
  • In addition to strong, unique passwords, use unique account usernames and sign-up email addresses.
  • Don’t reuse profile photos.
  • 99.98% of Americans would be correctly re-identified in any dataset using 15 demographic attributes.

The Illusion of Choice – Spread Awareness

Exclusive: For yrs ES&S, top voting machine maker in US, has been saying its vote tabulators and election-management systems are not connected to the internet. That appears not to be true. Researchers say they found what appear to be 35 online.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kxzk9/exclusive-critical-us-election-systems-have-been-left-exposed-online-despite-official-denials

A Researcher Found a Bunch of Voting Machine Passwords Online
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/a-researcher-found-a-bunch-of-north-carolina-voting-machine-passwords-online/