One of the advantages of using encrypted email, is that your message won’t trip some piece of mindless data mining software. Remember, a few years ago, when the FBI was running around investigating an Elementary School Teacher because profiling software picked her as a potential terrorist?
Well, using encryption may not be enough.
An article in PC Pro discusses plans in the UK to do profiling based on who you communicate with:
As with the original scheme, the actual content of the phone calls and messages won’t be recorded, just the dates, duration and location/IP address of messages sent.
From this information, they’ll pick the next set of Elementary School Teachers that need to be investigated for possible links to terrorists. It makes me wonder; how many of us are only a few degrees of separation away from someone under suspicion?
Sadly, encryption alone isn’t going to help you here. You’ll need encryption and anonymity.
Posted: April 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Privacy | Tags: data mining, school teacher, surveillance, wiretap | No Comments »
Recent news about the NSA’s wiretapping program doesn’t come as much of a surprise. We knew they were doing wiretaps. What was surprising was the scale: they wanted to monitor everyone and everything. It’s hard to imagine that they will obtain useful information from such a broad-based approach.
Consider on-line advertising. There are a number of very large companies doing ad placement on the web. These companies have loads of personal information about us, extensive data mining tools, and years of experience trying to predict our interests and behavior.
And the result? Most of these ads are so ineffective that they are only worth around $0.00001 each.
Additionally, unlike the terrorists, most of us are not trying to hide our interests/behavior. So you would expect the results for the NSA to be even worse.
Now this comparison may not be fair (I’d love your feedback on this) but it makes me wonder how the NSA is going to get much value from this program. A lead on a potential terrorist that’s only worth $0.00001?
Posted: January 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Privacy | Tags: data mining, NSA, on-line advertising, wiretaps | 2 Comments »
Like many nerds, I was amused by The Google’s motto: “don’t be evil”. It had a nice David vs Goliath image, and made a point about Microsoft’s evil empire.
But David has grown up. Between The Google’s user knowledge, and their extensive data mining abilities, they are capable of doing terrible things.
“Don’t be evil” sets the bar way too low.
Posted: January 22nd, 2009 | Filed under: Coding, Privacy | Tags: data mining, google, profiling | No Comments »