A bit creepy....

[Dimal]

Seems that Big Brother is well and truly established...
Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC | Ars Technica

Mal.

[Javaphile]

Creepy indeed. I've been following this massive invasion of privacy for some time now and the only thing I find surprising is how long they've managed to keep it under wraps and out of the public's perception. The tech has been around for quite a while with reports, unconfirmed of course, that various three letter agencies have been using it for tracking/locating purposes for a number of years now with simpler forms going back to before smart phones. As the hardware has advanced so has the software. Hence I've found it to be no surprise to see it expanding more and more into the commercial market as after-all said agencies are no doubt piggybacking on their software/tech. I fully expect a long drawn out 'discussion' of the issue before firm binding action of any kind is taken. Even then, at least in the US, people will have to jump through a bunch of hoops to (Purportedly!) stop such tracking with no guarantees that it has actually been completely disabled on their devices. Europe will probably be better off as they are more based on an Opt-in legal standard then the US's default Opt-out approach but even there it will most likely take a long time to see any meaningful curbs placed upon such activity.

The number of people who laugh when the Tin Hats say Big Brother is watching/listening is decreasing with every tick of the clock. Soon, only the true fools will be the ones laughing.


Java "Mumbling some four letter words under his breath" phile

[TampIt]

G'day Java "Mumbling some four letter words under his breath" phile

We can hear you anyway mate...

That is why I am still on a dumb phone and dumb car ('79 V8 Merc) - and I am a tech guy. Since late '90's the inbuilt car nav systems can give your location to all concerned... Retrospective speeding tickets when your car is serviced anyone?

TampIt

[Javaphile]

Following in the vein: Will Big Data lead to Big Brother? - BBC News Some quotes from the article:

In 1991, the Russian state was only able to wiretap 300 phone lines simultaneously in Moscow, which was nothing compared with what the Stasi had been able to do. But after initially feeling overwhelmed in the digital world, the Russian authorities have increasingly looked for ways of using technology to their advantage.

This has included pioneering techniques in voice sampling and recognition, in which Russia is a world leader, as well as biometric and photographic databases.

"I was told many times by officers in the security services that the idea to collect all fingerprints, iris scans and voice recognition from all Russian citizens is very popular within the security service," says Irina Borogan, Soldatov's co-author. One initiative described by the authors involves cameras placed at the exit of Moscow metro stations taking close-up photographs of everyone passing through.

Sound familiar? What major Western city doesn't have similar cameras installed, and not just at subway entrances but throughout the city. But wait, there's more...

These days people are also voluntarily posting huge amounts of data about themselves on the internet.

"Social media provides a very easy way to monitor these societies," says Taha Yasseri, an Iranian computer scientist at the Oxford Internet Institute. "The transparency and easy use of social media has made it a very good tool for social activists. But this makes it a very good opportunity for authoritarian states to monitor, and eventually even to predict behaviour."...

...In the past, a state would need to develop its own technology to carry out surveillance. But now much more of the technology has been commercialised.

People are voluntarily posting much of the information BigData and BigBrother want with BigData doing all the work so BigBrother no longer needs to. Care to guess who has the most likely worlds largest facial recognition database? Facebook. This of course assumes that they haven't already made it available to or been hacked by any of the three letter agencies.

Moves are now afoot to place the trade in surveillance technology on a similar footing to the trade in weapons. But on the assumption that export controls will never entirely stop it, some people are focusing on ways of training people to protect themselves.

"We see people making simple mistakes," explains Stephanie Hankey, co-founder of a Berlin-based group called Tactical Tech, which trains activists, journalists and civil society campaigners to become more security aware...

...She also advises people to be aware that even if the content of their conversations may be encrypted, the metadata about the conversation can reveal much about connections and patterns of activity, especially when different elements of the digital trail we leave behind are cross-referenced and cross-mapped - how we move around a city, pay taxes, cross borders and use our credit cards, as well how we communicate.

"If we piece all these things together, this tells everybody about my behaviour," says Hankey...

...But at London's IP Expo 2015, where all the talk is about the huge and mostly beneficial power of Big Data, veteran cyber security expert Mikko Hypponen, believes we are at the beginning of an enormous social change that carries with it real danger.

"We are the first generation that can be tracked from birth to our deathbeds, where we are, what we do, who we communicate with, what are our interests. It's easily trackable and saveable for decades. It feels like we're in a massive experiment done on mankind. Only much later will we realise what it means when all of our thoughts and movements not only can be tracked but are being tracked."

So will Big Data lead to Big Brother? Not necessarily - and in some countries we may have the chance to decide. But there are parts of the world where a dictatorship of data - of the type the Stasi could only dream of - may be taking shape.

Java "Welcome to the world of the Tin Hats" phile

[Rocky]

I don't use a smartphone, have a Facebook account, or a modern car.
Don't intend to change any of these in the forseeable future.
I don't worry about my own government having information about us but I'm not too keen on other governments having it.
CCTV is great, and the better it gets the more scumbags it will trap.
There was a clip on last night's news of some ferals beating up a guy on the street in Southport QLD.

[trimmings]

Cover your whole body with alfoil. Solved.

[noidle22]

I use a 2015 model smartphone, drive a car that can connect itself to a computer and have someone on the other side of the world write code to make it run differently and enjoy using social media of various forms.

I wonder if I will ever be important enough for "Big Data" to even be of a slight concern to me.........

[jbrewster]

I use a 2015 model smartphone, drive a car that can connect itself to a computer and have someone on the other side of the world write code to make it run differently and enjoy using social media of various forms.

A sidenote here, if you "drive a car that can connect itself to a computer and have someone on the other side of the world write code to make it run differently" you can also have somebody on the other side of the world write malicious code to make it do stuff you *REALLY* don't want it to. "Car Hacking" is becoming a bigger "thing" these days, mostly for the purposes of stealing them but I'm sure some "enterprising individual" will figure out something else that it could be abused for...

To give an idea of how quickly this "field" is coming along, some guys presented on hijacking the car over onboard diagnositcs (i.e. they had to be physically present inside the car to plug into the OBD port) last year at a large infosec conference (and they weren't likely the first to figure this out), this year they presented on how to do the same thing "wirelessly" from the other side of the world. The bugs they used to do this have now been patched but if the history of computer security has taught us nothing else, it's taught us that there will always be more bugs, and as systems become more complex the bugs will become more numerous.

[noidle22]

Yes I remember that story I think, pretty sure it was just a useless Jeep anyway. Dunno why you would want to steal a Jeep, it's just going to break down when you get it 100m down the road.

My car isn't that sophisticated with on-board navigation and things, basically just tuning and adjustments to the ECU.

I will admit, I can see the field of car hacking being a possible problem with everything becoming wireless.

[TampIt]

Yes I remember that story I think, pretty sure it was just a useless Jeep anyway. Dunno why you would want to steal a Jeep, it's just going to break down when you get it 100m down the road.

My car isn't that sophisticated with on-board navigation and things, basically just tuning and adjustments to the ECU.

I will admit, I can see the field of car hacking being a possible problem with everything becoming wireless.

G'day noidle22

Considering I am a tech guy who has everything hard wired (router wireless is not only disabled, the antenna is actually unplugged), uses a dumb phone (Nokia, 'bout 4 yo, with ALL wireless, packet switching, IrDA, bluetooth etc turned off) and has two dumb cars I thought I was pretty safe.

Until I got into a friend's Honda Civic Sport ('bout a 2006) recently as a driver to troubleshoot the suspension. It "helpfully" tried to download my Nokia's address book WITHOUT even ASKING FIRST. All attempts to stop it failed. It actually took my mobile phone "off air" for more than 6 hours after we got out of the car as the phone kept trying to send the next contact to the car and every individual contact then timed out after a few minutes. Even turning the Nokia off and on again did not stop it. IMO, both Honda and Nokia should have a good hard look at how that could even be possible. Nokia may have some weak excuse given Elop's deliberate sabotage of their business so his previous employer (Microsoft, if you didn't know) could buy the company out for a pittance and then re-employ him. How that is not fraud is beyond me. Honda has no excuse at all - that is a clear & deliberate invasion of privacy dressed up as "providing a service".

BTW, almost every function in that Honda is wide open with no remote security worth noting - ranging from the GPS to the engine / gear box / differential (4wd on demand) management to the combo burglar alarm / immobiliser / central locking systems. It would be trivial to remotely crash it or simply immobilise it and lock all the doors. It is not only Jeep's that have the kind of vulnerabilities that guys like me were pointing out in the mid '90's when most of these "brilliant ideas" were implemented as literally "wide open by default". If I bothered, I expect I could add a large number of other new vehicles to that list.

TampIt

[Vinitasse]

The 2006 Honda Civic Sport was a front driver and NOT 4wd on demand.

The 2006 Honda Civic did NOT have bluetooth so it would have been pretty difficult for it to connect to your phone and try to download all your contacts. The top of the range Accords and Odysseys got bluetooth in 2008 but the Civic didn't see it till 2009 and beyond... still front wheel drive though.

Other than the facts getting in the way of the story, it was amusing enough ;-)

[readeral]

My 2005 Civic has aftermarket Bluetooth. I think TampIts stories are taller than the Empire State Building and this just as likely a bunch of rubbish, but Bluetooth in a pre-2008 civic is certainly possible :P

[readeral]

A bit creepy....

Noidle, think of it like herd immunity. By the time car hacking becomes mainstream, virtually everyone's car will be hackable anyway, so the only people that will have to watch out are politicians and famous people.. :P Call me naive, but I'm not worried about wireless or internet connectivity.

[noidle22]

My 2005 Civic has aftermarket Bluetooth. I think TampIts stories are taller than the Empire State Building and this just as likely a bunch of rubbish, but Bluetooth in a pre-2008 civic is certainly possible :P

It probably was an aftermarket head unit in which case Honda has nothing to do with it.

I have a Honda postie bike, i hope it doesn't steal my identity or something, better keep an eye on it.....