Archive for the ‘Privacy’ Category
2009
“U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration needs to answer several questions about the privacy implications of a new version of a computer intrusion detection system that can reportedly read e-mail, a privacy and civil rights advocacy group said. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), in a report released Tuesday, called on the Obama administration to release information about the legal authority for the so-called Einstein intrusion detection system, a version of which has been rolled out at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.>br/>
The CDT report also asks the Obama administration to release information about the role of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in the development and operation of Einstein 3, a new version of the software reportedly being developed. The second version of Einstein is deployed at the DHS and is being rolled out to other U.S. agencies. While Einstein 2 is able to detect malicious code during predefined code signatures, Einstein 3 will also be able to read e-mail and other Internet traffic, according to recent press reports.
‘This raises serious privacy concerns,’ the CDT report says. ‘While its predecessor merely detected and reported malicious code, Einstein 3 is to have the capability of intercepting threatening Internet traffic before it reaches a government system, raising additional concerns. According to press accounts, Einstein 3 will operate inside the networks of the telecoms …’”
source: cio.com
“Don’t think for a second that cleaning out your browser cookies, hoisting that firewall, and installing identity theft software makes a dent in protecting your privacy in the new digital world.
Every time we activate our cell phone, swipe a credit card, or use EZ-Pass to sail through toll booths, we leave a record of our whereabouts and clues to our behavior for others to tap that never even existed 20 years ago. All that Web browsing you do on your Android or iPhone device, all the weather updates you may get via that connected GPS unit—these things not only tell someone somewhere what data matters to you but also reveal where you accessed it. As the Web moves off the desktop and into every niche of the physical world, with it goes all of the privacy concerns that still aren’t resolved online. Clean out those Firefox cookies if you like, but Web privacy is only the beginning. At the same time the privacy front evolves, experts in the field are also rethinking the ramifications of these mountains of data. In the future, they warn, governments and corporations may be able to violate your privacy without even having to identify who you are.
‘It has grown by orders of magnitude since the birth of the Internet and our use of cell phones,’ says Stephen Baker, BusinessWeek journalist and author of a new book on digital data gatherers, ‘The Numerati.’ From email replacing letters to downloading music from iTunes instead of purchasing CDs, our habits, tastes, and movements now are recorded in ways that can be connected…”
source: computerpoweruser.com