Jan 9
Becoming Untraceable — 15.0_Qu3st10n_4u7h0r!ty.tar
*Note: This article was originally published by the author on December 22, 2019. This article is also available in Spanish here.
“Clearly we must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack, but we can and must do so in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society. We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, everyplace we go.” ~Bernie Sanders (2015)
If you’ve arrived late to the party, there’s a lot more where this came from. In this fifteenth installment, I delve deeper down into the digital privacy black hole, deeper than anyone’s ever dared to venture. There’s no turning back now, in fact. The forecast looks grim, but we must continue to fight for privacy lest we forfeit our basic rights as human beings after repeatedly having been sold out by corporate goons and government cronies time and again. I also highlight a few disturbing digital privacy stories that have been in the headlines recently.
I see the fight for privacy as a worthy and noble cause and I don’t know about you, but I really would prefer not to live out my life in a surveillance fishbowl.
Obligatory Privacy Rant
The constant surveillance and online activity monitoring are getting a bit out of control It has been for a while now. China is exporting its Orwellian concept of surveillance government to the rest of the world that is willing to buy into it. America is not far behind but it is still struggling to find its own identity in this confusing and troubled world divided by politics. Social ratings built around a state of constant surveillance? This is the very concept we’ve been dreading and will manufacture more outlaws and underground societies where people can feel free to live as they wish to live, away from the unending threat of surveillance cameras.
People are starting to wake up to the fact that nearly everything they do in life is being monitored in some fashion or another. These days you can’t get step outside of your front door without being recorded by some business establishment’s Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) or someone’s home security surveillance camera. We have traffic cameras for the Department of Transportation (DOT). We have police surveillance cameras and Stingray cell-phone interception technology. We have Internet Service Providers (ISP), websites we visit, and phone companies collecting and sharing or even selling our private user information to marketing firms for advertising purposes. Every person and organization has the inherent right to put up surveillance cameras and record anything and everyone, but what about each person’s right to privacy? Does one right not automatically violate the other’s right?
Hulu’s privacy policy at the time of this article’s publication reads, “…even if you have not consented to Hulu sharing Viewing Information together with your personal information, we may still share information collected from or about you as otherwise permitted in this Privacy Policy.”
I can only speak for myself, but I am sick and tired of every company, organization, and agency I interact with online telling me that my right to privacy is virtually non-existent and they are going to do whatever they feel like doing with my private information or usage data. Agree to these Terms of Service (ToS) and Privacy Policy or you can’t use our products and services. Ok, cool. When does it stop? When do I, as a human fucking being, get my turn to tell these entities to fuck off and that I will pay for my services but also exercise my right to absolute privacy beyond that which is absolutely necessary for the service provider to collect and monitor? The fact is, though, if a product or service is free, then we, the user, are the product. Meaning, your usage data is being collected, harvested, analyzed, and sold to data brokers.
The framers of The Constitution also wrote this thing called The Bill of Rights. Anyone working in government and/or corporate business should go back and read this document again. The Bill of Rights contains all of the Amendments to the Constitution and privacy is intricately woven into several aspects of more than one Amendment. There will always be those who will attempt to misinterpret these rights for whatever suits their purposes, but the Fourth Amendment clearly spells out the rights U.S. citizens have against unlawful search and seizures, a form of privacy protection. Furthermore, rights afforded by the Fourteenth Amendment have been upheld by the Supreme Court time and again:
“The issue of the right to privacy regained momentum in the 1960’s during Griswold v Connecticut where the Supreme Court said that the state law prohibiting the sale, distribution, possession and contraceptives to couples who were married was unconstitutional. There were different reasons for this based on the judge, whether it was the gray area of the law or the zone of privacy created by the Bill of Rights.
In 1969, the court ruled on Stanley v Georgia in a unanimous decision staying that an individual had the right to privacy to have and watch pornography, even if the pornography could potentially be the basis for any prosecution against the distributor or manufacturer. The opinion stated that the State could not tell a person who was in his own home what he movies he could watch or what books he could read.
More recently, the Supreme Court has acknowledged the right to privacy. For example, in the 1990 case Cruzan v Missouri Department of Health, the Court found that individuals had the right to make their own decisions about terminating medical treatments that were life-prolonging. Another case was Lawrence v Texas in 2003 where a sodomy law in Texas that prohibited homosexual sodomy was struck down by the Supreme Court.” — Excerpted from Constitution.laws.com, “Right to Privacy” (2019)
These types of basic rights should be universal but it is sad and pathetic that in the year 2020 (a week from now) this world we call home cannot get its collective act together enough to state unanimously that there are basic human rights that every person is afforded regardless of nationality, sex, or religion. The same goes for the environmental climate change issues at hand. We are as a species our own demise.
A Live Video Portal Into Your Kids’ Bedrooms?
Every time I turn on the news or open my Internet browser it seems that there is a news story about how some Internet of Things (IoT) device has been hacked and used to spy on kids. Parents, why are you buying this crap? STOP. No, really. This is bad stuff. Why the hell did you think it was a good idea to put a Webcam in your daughter’s bedroom in the first place? You don’t do that specifically for reasons such as what happened in this story linked above. As a digital privacy rights advocate this is just mindboggling to me and it's something I would never do. Any surveillance cameras I own in my house point outside, not inside the walls. You can’t parent your children from a fricking computer screen people! Remember back to how your parents raised you? I guarantee it wasn’t with a fricking audio-enabled Webcam.
Insert company “X” name, Web-enabled device will eventually be hacked. With Ring, this company has been getting a lot of negative press lately not only for its lack of prompt response to compromised account credentials found on the Dark Web but also for its partnership with law enforcement agencies with who Ring shares access to customer video camera feeds with.
1,500 Ring user account credentials may seem like a drop in the bucket, but where’s there is one there is usually more. Who knows how many account credentials the cybercriminals really have, it is certainly plausible that there could be far more. In any case, if you own a Ring camera and you have an active account it is best to change your password immediately and set up Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) now. In fact, go ahead and set up 2FA on every website that allows you to do so. Just get in the habit of doing that, it literally takes seconds longer to log on and is not such a pain that you can’t handle the hassle. The bigger hassle is having to try to recover your accounts after they’ve been compromised when they could’ve been protected by something as easy as enabling 2FA.
Even more disturbing as a parent, myself, is the fact that companies like Toys “R” Us (now bankrupt and out-of-business), which is trying to make a comeback, by the way, are marketing toys that specialize in customer surveillance. In cooperation with other retailers, Toys “R” Us is now selling “…embedded ceiling sensors, cameras, and other tech tasked with monitoring your every playful moment in the store” (Bode, 2019).
“Shhh!” Big Brother Is Listening To Your Phone Calls
We live in times where we should not make the mistake of thinking that we have Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights as American citizens against unlawful searches and seizures of our personal property and person. The authorities, whether local, State, or Federal, have shown time and again they will do whatever they deem appropriate, whether that is circumventing laws, or flat-out ignoring so-called citizens’ rights until they are caught red-handed and duly exposed by the media. They will pick judges in districts they know have been traditionally more supportive of their efforts over other courts to get search warrants based on false pretenses if they even bother to get a search warrant in the first place. Then, they will deny that they are doing anything wrong and they will continue doing it until they are forced to stop by court order.
Stingray Tracking Devices: Who’s Got Them?
Stingray technology is not new, but more and more we are finding out after the fact that law enforcement or government agencies use them quite frequently in the conduct of investigations. Stingrays or International Mobile Subscriber Identification (IMSI) catchers are a technology that is designed to simulate a cell phone tower and will catch the identifying characteristics of any cell phone that connects to it via the IMSI as well as record phone calls, text messages, and this technology is quite mobile so it has been attached to drones flying overhead in various cities around the country.
Put it this way, your cell phone doesn’t know the difference between the police’s Stingray fake cell phone tower and your cell phone service provider’s cell tower. If it’s within range of the Stingray, it will connect and your data will be routed through it regardless of whether you’re the one being investigated or not. If law enforcement discovers illegal activity that is unrelated to the target of their investigation, there have been cases in which that information was prosecuted or shared with another agency for further investigation. Sound fair to you? We could make the same tired argument here in this situation about not having anything to hide so who cares? But, just because you’re not doing anything illegal should give the authorities the right to snoop on your phone calls, Internet website activity, our comings and goings that are captured on CCTV and Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR).
It is disgusting that the very agencies that we as taxpayers, something we are forced to be, by the way, support with our taxes are using that tax money to turn around and buy spy technology that is used on the very citizens that are paying for this protection, these “emergency” services. Thankfully, we have some common sense privacy advocates working for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that are willing to defend our rights in court. Otherwise, I shudder to think just how bad this surveillance state would already have become. Speak up, people! Cast your votes in every election, local, state, and federal. Tell your Congressmen/women about your privacy concerns. Let them know that what is happening is not ok.
Google Won’t Ask For Your Permission
No matter what Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft tell you, Big Tech is not your friend when it comes to your personal privacy. There are so many documented cases in which every one of these companies has abused the trust of their customers/users. Listen, just because a company like Google acquires a health care provider company and gains access to millions of people’s electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI), does not give the company a right to use that information for tracking or marketing purposes in any way whatsoever. But why else would Google be interested in acquiring this type of company and data? If by now, you haven’t figured out that Big Tech is not your friend and all of these “free” services they offer are no-strings-attached, then I don’t know what cave you’ve been sleeping in but it’s time to wake up.
Google’s Plan to Crunch Health Data on Millions of Patients Draws Fire
Big Tech hasn’t figured out where the ethical line is between collecting user data and using it responsibly so what they’ve decided to do collectively to cover the asses is to hire law firms to help them craft protectionist privacy policies like Hulu’s that I excerpted from above. Basically, Big Tech is telling consumers of their services that they will use your data to make a profit or you cannot use their services at all. Some Tech companies will allow users to opt-out of certain types of data collection for a fee but why should users have to pay for their own privacy?
Federal Data Privacy Bill Takes Aim at Tech Giants
So, for now, all we’re left with is hoping that our elected officials will do the right thing and pass meaningful legislation that will afford greater privacy protection to citizens like the European Union (EU) has done. However, just like any other government enforcement agency, if the laws are not enforced then they are meaningless. Either you stick up for your rights or relinquish them altogether. We each speak for ourselves, but we can speak as a united voice. A united voice will have a greater impact. Think for yourself, question authority! Thank you for your readership.
***Trust No One. Verify Everything. Leave No Trace.***
Additional Privacy Resources
z3r0trust Privacy Newsletters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, #4–20, #5–20, #6–20, #32–20, #33–20, #8–20, #9–20, 16, 17, 45–20, 46–20, 47–20, 48–20, #1–21, #2–21, #3–21, #6–21
*Privacy-related articles also published by the author can be found here.
Other helpful privacy info: EFFector | Atlas of Surveillance | Privacy Tools | IAPP | ACLU | PogoWasRight.org | DataBreaches.net
