e-ignite

The results of this year’s Privacy International report are in and it doesn’t make comfortable reading! Many countries including the USA, China, Russia and the UK have been described as “Endemic Surveillance Societies” - a sobering thought when you consider that China (widely criticised for its web censorship and monitoring of citizens) is in the same category as the US and UK!

The report can be found here on the Privacy International website and I’d recommend you take a look and see how your own country got on.

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It’s official: You have no right to the expectation of privacy when your computer is in for repair.

A recent Slashdot article told the story of a man from Pennsylvania who had his computer in for repair (a repair to the DVD burner of his PC). When the computer was in for the repair, technicians found illegal pornography on his hard disk, and he was reported to and arrested by the police. When it went to court, he successfully argued that the technicians had no right to be accessing data on his hard drive, but this decision was later overturned by a prosecution appeal.

In no conceivable way do I support his actions relating to the illegal material found on his computer, and I believe that people who make and access this material deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The fact the the material in question was found on the computer, however, highlighted the issue: do you or can you trust computer technicians with your data when your computer is in for repair?

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A recent ruling in a Federal Appeals Court in the United States has extended the rights of privacy to email. In short, the judge ruled that law enforcement agencies need warrants in order to gain access to a suspect’s emails.

The full story can be read at Wired.com, but I’ve summarised the main points in the quotes below:

“A federal appeals court on Monday issued a landmark decision that holds that e-mail has similar constitutional privacy protections as telephone communications, meaning that federal investigators who search and seize emails without obtaining probable cause warrants will now have to do so.”

“The case boiled down to a Fourth Amendment argument, in which Warshak contended that the government overstepped its constitutional reach when it demanded e-mail records from his internet service providers. Under the 1986 federal Stored Communications Act (SCA), the government has regularly obtained e-mail from third parties without getting warrants and without letting targets of an investigation know (ergo, no opportunity to contest).”

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The recent release of “iTunes Plus” has been over-shadowed by many users complaining about the fact that personal details have been embedded in the purchased track tags. Personally, I hardly find this surprising and I’d go so far to say that some users are citing “privacy concerns” as a reason to break the law, breach copyright and illegally share songs.

A bit of history: the Hymn Project is one of the oldest methods for users to remove the copy protection from songs legally purchased through iTunes (prior to version 7). This has been heralded as a “consumer champion” since it allows users to play their purchased songs on whatever equipment they like. Legalities aside, it is widely used and liked by many users. One of the key points in the Hymn Project, however, is that it removes the copy protection, but retains all the purchaser’s details on the track tags. The removal of the purchaser’s details was possible according to the Hymn site, but they saw no justification to do so.  The makers of Hymn rightly state that they do not condone piracy, they are simply exercising their rights to use their legally purchased content how they see fit without being guilty of piracy.

Now, with iTunes Plus offering DRM free downloads, several sites feature complaints that this “hidden user information” is a major breach of privacy. I don’t think so.

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The BBC reports that Google searches are now to become slightly more anonymous.  Put quite simply, Google have now clarified the length of time that they will keep traceable data such as IP addresses and Cookie details with each individual search term.  As I’ve previously reported, Google currently keep a detailed record of every single search term made with their search engine and log the IP address of the searcher along with other data that is held in a cookie on the user’s system.  Google could then call up all search terms entered by referencing either an IP address or cookie information.

Google have now announced that they will only retain this data for between 18 and 24 months before discarding it and making the historical data anonymous.  According to a Google spokesperson:

“By anonymising our server logs after 18 to 24 months, we think we’re striking the right balance between two goals: continuing to improve Google’s services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices”

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A recent Slashdot article has highlighted new official figures released by the UK government, claiming that between 2005 and 2006, 439,000 telephones and email addresses were monitored by UK agencies. Furthermore, it seems that the Interception of Communications Commissioner is looking for new laws to be passed that allows them to monitor the communications of various Members of Parliament (the country’s political decision-makers). Monitoring MP’s communications was outlawed in the 1960s.

You can read the full article on Slashdot and make up your own mind. However, the gaining momentum of the anti-privacy movement is becoming alarming.

Well, it seems that the issue of privacy is becoming more important. Perhaps to set herself as far from the Bush administration as possible, Hillary Clinton has announced that she intends to introduce a “Privacy Bill of Rights” to protect the privacy of American citizens in light of the many surveillance issues introduced during the Bush presidency. I’m not going to take a stance on the forthcoming election and push my political opinion on you all - not being from the USA kind of disqualifies me from doing so anyway! However, this is something that I thought was extremely interesting in terms of global privacy issues. It is a fact that recent “counter-terrorism measures” and other surveillance practices have been steadily eroding the privacy of the general public, and personally, I was worried that once lost, we would never regain our right to privacy in today’s digital world. A recent article I wrote discussed the effects of these new “security” measures and how they have actually taken away our right to privacy. I find it extremely interesting (possibly even heart-warming) that I’m not the only one thinking like this.

Hillary Clinton’s new “Privacy Bill of Rights” is covered in detail in this Wired News article, but it brings up the issue of “opt-in” as opposed to “opt-out” when it comes to privacy: Why should your details be given to just anyone unless you specifically object? In my opinion, your details should be kept in strict privacy until you give permission for them to be given to specific parties.

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A recent article on The Register reported that msn messenger (the network itself rather than the program) bans you from sending certain phrases to your contacts. One of which is “scroogle.org” - this is odd considering that Scroogle is a tool that alters Google searches and has nothing to do with Microsoft whatsoever. As El Reg also stated, it may just be that the term “Scroogle” is something particularly unsavoury and it’s just that nobody knows it’s true meaning. However, this story got me (and hopefully you) thinking.

Every time you perform a Google search, your IP address is logged and a uniquely identifiable cookie is placed on your system. This means that there will always be a record somewhere of all the searches you’ve ever made. Google say that they won’t hand out this information to anyone unless requested to by a law enforcement agency. But this begs the question… if Google don’t use the data, why do they keep it?

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An incredible news story was recently published by the Telegraph that shows details of just how much information about you is given to the US authorities if you fly from Europe to America.? A recent Freedom of Information request showed that when you book your flights to the USA electronically (using a Credit Card, giving an email address etc), the US authorities have the right to examine past purchases on your credit card, and even to gain access to your past emails. The news article goes into detail about the previous fight between the EU and US over illegal passenger data transfer, but shows that the US has demanded access to far more data than they did originally.? What is most worrying is the fact the the European Union seems to have simply rolled over and given the US whatever they wanted!

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Star Tribune reports on a new lawsuit that’s making its way to court in the US that challenges the government’s right to read your email.? Under current law, the US authorities require a search warrant to read your postal mail, however they don’t need one if your email is stored on someone else’s computer.? Bear in mind that “Someone Else” could be Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail etc etc etc.? This lawsuit is being closely watched by several privacy groups who argue that email should be protected in the same way that snail mail is - a stance that I wholeheartedly agree with.? Email is increasing in use day by day, and with online shopping and banking becoming more and more commonplace, private data and personal details are being sent by email at an increasing rate.? There is therefore absolutely no reason for email not to be protected in law.

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