A little essay about “How to protect your personal data – and humanity – from the government” is worth your read. If You’re Not Paranoid, You’re Crazy. It tells about the clash between today’s digital practices and one writer’s quaint old-millennium views about computer surveillance.
Come on. Give it up for Google.
So we all like mac’and’cheese but this much? (College bro arrested after mac-and-cheese rant) Okay, in fairness bacon was involved.
Looking forward to learning what internships open up for one Luke Gatti of Bayville, NY, in the coming year. In the mean time we have another in the long list of teachable examples of how the Internet is forever.
The technology was developed and deployed under the justification that it was needed to protect national security and hunt terrorists. These intrusions on privacy are now being allowed for far more pedestrian needs. The linked article reports on how very routine and daily uses of surveillance technologies, with many of the examples arising just up the road from us in Baltimore.
SD Times alerts us to a genetic testing site that provides an API you can use for access control.” Gender-based barriers? Race-based DOS? Computers bring us that dystopian future.
But don’t expect to have it remain your little secret if you did so on the internet.
A prominent ‘cheaters’ web site is the latest to have been hacked.
“When a Company Is Put Up for Sale, in Many Cases, Your Personal Data Is, Too” says the headline at the linked article (and never mind their singular/plural mixup…)
Data agreements are usually entered into implicitly and in the best of times, but really, contracts should govern expectations for what are the worst of times. A company’s dissolution, and thus the liquidation of its assets, means your data might go on the auction block too. And those who get your data might not be so caring about it as the earlier owner.
Government documentation of police misconduct need not be disclosed to the public, says Maryland’s Court of Appeals, in a ruling that the state’s Public Information Act. The linked article describes the case, wherein an officer made disparaging comments about a person after he thought her answering machine had concluded recording his business message. Because of this ruling, the target of that inappropriate police behavior will not know what consequences – if any – befell the officer following her complaint.
Where is science taking cybersecurity? Dan Geer, a long-time technologist in the field, takes his shot at capturing where the field is going — and tells a lot about where we are now along the way.
… many of them state of Maryland employees who had to divulge personal data as a condition of getting affordable health insurance.
The banner news is that CareFirst, a large health insurer, suffered a data spill in June affecting over a million participants. The company claims that no SSNs were lost, nor insurance claims, but some who monitor these things are careful to note how the statement was parsed; the company did not speak to the administrative records of their participants, which now contain an immense amount of highly personal information.
In question is the integrity of data which are associated with wellness programs which are now increasingly mandated by employers – not least of which is the state Maryland. This year employees (many of them at University of Maryland on our campus) have been required to participate in these wellness programs, which entail disclosing personal medical information to people who are not your doctor, who later will determine what remedial ‘wellness’ activities you must engage in order to only pay normal health insurance rates. Those who do not disclose will pay penalty rates, which soon will skyrocket to thousands of dollars. It is a coercive and punitive system, which also indirectly transfers more costs to the participants in the long run. (Only the state will save – not the employees.)
Which brings us back to CareFirst. This insurer is one of the banner programs offered to us as employees, and it is known to be the most invasive in its questioning. “Are you happy at work?” “Do you like your boss?” “Do you feel you satisfy your partner?” “Do you keep guns in the home?” “Do you take recreational drugs?” “How much alcohol do you drink in a week?”
These questions sure seem pretty invasive. And their answers, from potentially thousands of Maryland employees who disclosed them under threat of state cost penalties, are now out on the internet and ready to be disclosed to the world.
Though rebuffed before, DHS is coming back again for access to ALPRS databases — automated license plate reader system databases.
Their previous attempts to create a national database which tracks where everyone has been recorded as traveling were panned by privacy advocates. This time DHS declares this won’t be a problem, and so propose the standard dodge we’re surprised they did not use before – private tracking. Many things which are proscribed to Big Brother are perfectly legal if tracked and compiled commercially, never mind that government regulations are specifically crafted to enable select businesses to compile and immense amount of private data. Having enabled compilation of such data, the feds say “look, we didn’t compile anything”, and then simply purchase access to those databases. That is now what they propose for the license plate scanning tools, which don’t fall under any particular regulatory structure to limit how said data might be used at all.