Category Archives: Privacy

UK: waltzing into 1984

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1984 - Big BrotherIt’s good to know that history repeats itself.

The UK is now the prime example.

From the UKDailyMail.com:

Put CCTV in EVERY home: Householders should help us trap burglars, says Scotland Yard chief

by Chris Greenwood

 

  • Families should install their own cameras to help catch burglars, he said
  • The Met chief said Britain needed more cameras to help fight crime

 

But privacy campaigners condemned the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s suggestion.

‘The proposals on increasing the amount of privately owned CCTV cameras are quite frankly Orwellian and risk turning members of the public into an extension of the police,’ said Renate Samson of Big Brother Watch.

‘Private CCTV is completely unregulated. Recommending greater use of CCTV to gather more images of people’s faces – often innocent people’s faces – undermines the security of each and every one of us.’

She pointed out that a House of Commons committee had on Saturday released a report on the problems with facial recognition.

“Orwellian?”

Now there’s a foreign pot calling the kettle “1984.”

BZ

 

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Beware of persons wearing Google Glass

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Google Glass GlassholesAnother reason they are called Glassholes.

From Wired.com:

Google Glass Snoopers Can Steal Your Passcode With a Glance

by Andy Greenberg

The odds are you can’t make out the PIN of that guy with the sun glaring obliquely off his iPad’s screen across the coffee shop. But if he’s wearing Google Glass or a smartwatch, he probably can see yours.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell found they could use video from wearables like Google Glass and the Samsung smartwatch to surreptitiously pick up four-digit PIN codes typed onto an iPad from almost 10 feet away—and from nearly 150 feet with a high-def camcorder. Their software, which used a custom-coded video recognition algorithm that tracks the shadows from finger taps, could spot the codes even when the video didn’t capture any images on the target devices’ displays.

“I think of this as a kind of alert about Google Glass, smartwatches, all these devices,” says Xinwen Fu, a computer science professor at UMass Lowell who plans to present the findings with his students at the Black Hat security conference in August. “If someone can take a video of you typing on the screen, you lose everything.”

Read the rest of the article carefully; there is good information regarding situational awareness of your surroundings.

Be aware of your passcodes, as you enter them into your phone or your tablet or your iPad or your ATM or any device requiring such a code.  It’s not just people watching; it’s people with devices able to divulge your keystrokes, the placement of your eyes, your fingers, accomplished with apps designed for just such a thing.

BZ

 

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