Surveillance

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Re: Surveillance

Postby elfismiles » Thu Nov 12, 2015 10:22 am

Not news to most of us ...

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Own a Vizio Smart TV? It’s Watching You
Vizio, one of the most popular brands on the market, is offering advertisers “highly specific viewing behavior data on a massive scale.”
by Julia Angwin / ProPublica, Nov. 9, 2015, 11:57 a.m.

TV makers are constantly crowing about the tricks their smart TVs can do. But one of the most popular brands has a feature that it’s not advertising: Vizio’s Smart TVs track your viewing habits and share it with advertisers, who can then find you on your phone and other devices.

The tracking — which Vizio calls “Smart Interactivity” — is turned on by default for the more than 10 million Smart TVs that the company has sold. Customers who want to escape it have to opt-out.

How Vizio Smart TVs Track You
•You watch TV
•Vizio tracks what you viewed
•Vizio collects your IP address
•Vizio works with data brokers to connect your IP address with your gender, age, income, and interests
•Vizio passes this “enhanced data” to advertisers who can track all devices that have connected to your home IP address


In a statement, Vizio said customers’ “non-personal identifiable information may be shared with select partners … to permit these companies to make, for example, better-informed decisions regarding content production, programming and advertising.”

Vizio’s actions appear to go beyond what others are doing in the emerging interactive television industry. Vizio rivals Samsung and LG Electronics only track users’ viewing habits if customers choose to turn the feature on. And unlike Vizio, they don’t appear to provide the information in a form that allows advertisers to reach users on other devices.

Vizio’s technology works by analyzing snippets of the shows you’re watching, whether on traditional television or streaming Internet services such as Netflix. Vizio determines the date, time, channel of programs — as well as whether you watched them live or recorded. The viewing patterns are then connected your IP address - the Internet address that can be used to identify every device in a home, from your TV to a phone.

IP addresses can increasingly be linked to individuals. Data broker Experian, for instance, offers a “data enrichment” service that provide “hundreds of attributes” such as age, profession and “wealth indicators” tied to a particular IP address.

Vizio recently updated its privacy policy to say it has begun providing data about customers’ viewing habits to companies that “may combine this information with other information about devices associated with that IP address.” The company does not promise to encrypt IP addresses before sharing them.

Cable TV companies and video rental companies are prohibited by law from selling information about the viewing habits of their customers. However, Vizio says that those laws - the Video Privacy Protection Act and cable subscriber protections - don’t apply to its business.

Vizio hopes its new tracking forays will provide a boost to the thin profit margins it earns in the competitive television manufacturing business. In an October filing for an initial public offering, Vizio touted its ability to provide “highly specific viewing behavior data on a massive scale with great accuracy.”

The company said in its filing that revenues from its viewing data business are not yet significant. But people familiar with the company said that Vizio has begun working to combine its viewing data with information about users that it gets from data broker Neustar.

Neustar declined to comment about the relationship, but said the company does not handle or distribute viewing information about Vizio users.

A spokeswoman for Tapad, a company that helps identify users across their many devices, said that its contracts prevent it from sharing the name of the companies it works with.

An Experian spokeswoman said, “We currently do not have a relationship with Vizio.”


http://www.propublica.org/article/own-a ... tching-you


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Googlization
Post by elfismiles » 13 Mar 2012 14:23
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34236

elfismiles » 22 Oct 2015 14:11 wrote:This has been increasingly happening to me ...

So last night I spoke of spray foam insulation to my wife within earshot of our phones. And this is what I see in my FuckBook news stream this morning...

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elfismiles » 01 Dec 2011 13:22 wrote:Of course, AJ has been ranting about this and TimeWarner and Google spying on folks (listening in) for a while now.

Saw this yesterday...


Security researcher: Android software ‘Carrier IQ’ records communications
By Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/30/s ... nications/




...so riddle me this ... GPS data mining / colocating for cross-platform advertising? ...

This day before turkeyday I was at a relative's house. They had just gotten new hardwood floors. We talked about it a lot. I was there less than 24 hours. Next morning I am leaving and begin the drive to other relatives house. I am listening to Pandora in the car on my phone and an advert I've never heard before comes on.

It was for the same kind of hardwood flooring! And NO I'd not searched for the info on my phone or otherwise. \<]
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Re: Surveillance

Postby coffin_dodger » Fri Nov 13, 2015 8:31 am

Watching Netflix's 'Fargo' (the 12 parter, very good) on the laptop last night - when suddenly, totally unprompted by any outside interaction - Hola launched itself, switched the connection to a US IP address and switched my UK Netflix connection to the US site.

It was the most stunning display of manipulation by an outside force of one of my interfaces ever encountered in my many tens of thousands of hours of connection to the internet.

I remember reading a while back that Hola is bad news. That it could, potentialy, take over your machine. Here's an article I just googled to refresh my memory:

One of the most popular Chrome extensions is selling its users' bandwidth, largely without their knowledge — and it can be used by hackers to maliciously attack websites.

Hola is a VPN — a "virtual private network." As streaming platforms like Netflix have risen in popularity, there has been a corresponding boom in VPNs, which help users circumvent the regional restrictions that forbid Americans from watching certain BBC shows, or British people from watching some shows on Comedy Central in the US.

One of the most popular of these is Hola. Unlike most VPNs, it's free to download as an easy-to-use browser plugin in the Google Chrome store. It currently has more than 6 million users. CNN Money said, "Hola is changing the way we use the internet" (we've also written about it warmly).

To avoid the need for fees, Hola uses a peer-to-peer system, routing users' traffic through other users' connections. A Brit trying to watch an American-only service, for example, might be routed through an American user's internet connection.

But it is also selling access to users' bandwidth for a profit, via the service Luminati, Hola discloses on a little-read FAQ page. Luminati lets users buy access to the Hola network for a fee, for instance if users need a secure way to route commercial traffic anonymously. This revenue keeps Hola free for users. But in the wrong hands this same function can transform its networked users into an unwitting botnet.

Frederick Brennan found that out when Hola was used to attack his website earlier this week.

Brennan, often known by the online moniker "Hotwheels," is the administrator of 8chan, a countercultural online messageboard. Earlier this week Brennan was targeted by thousands of "legitimate-looking" posts, "prompting a 100x spike over peak traffic," he wrote in a blogpost.

The attack originated with a user called "Bui" (who has attacked 8chan before), who later told Brennan he had used Hola's Luminati service to carry it out.

Hola's founder Ofer Vilenski confirmed to Business Insider that Bui had "got through our screening process." he also said that the attack had been ended and Bui banned from the network.

cont - http://uk.businessinsider.com/hola-used-for-botnet-on-chrome-2015-5


The above article neglects to mention (as so often happens) that Hola can be used by it's owners in exactly the same fashion as any hacker or exploiter of the system can.

I don't know exactly why Hola launched itself on my laptop last night. It may have been a disgruntled minion, sending a tip off the only way they could. Maybe it was a mistake at HQ, an algorythm gone perturbed. Or maybe it was just a 'glitch'.

Whatever it was, it got my attention..
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Re: Surveillance

Postby elfismiles » Fri Nov 13, 2015 4:01 pm

Weird - hadn't heard about Hola-Luminati

Meanwhile...

Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC
Privacy advocates warn feds about surreptitious cross-device tracking.
by Dan Goodin - Nov 13, 2015 12:00pm CST

Privacy advocates are warning federal authorities of a new threat that uses inaudible, high-frequency sounds to surreptitiously track a person's online behavior across a range of devices, including phones, TVs, tablets, and computers.

The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While the sound can't be heard by the human ear, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product.

Cross-device tracking raises important privacy concerns, the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote in recently filed comments to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has scheduled a workshop on Monday to discuss the technology. Often, people use as many as five connected devices throughout a given day—a phone, computer, tablet, wearable health device, and an RFID-enabled access fob. Until now, there hasn't been an easy way to track activity on one and tie it to another.

"As a person goes about her business, her activity on each device generates different data streams about her preferences and behavior that are siloed in these devices and services that mediate them," CDT officials wrote. "Cross-device tracking allows marketers to combine these streams by linking them to the same individual, enhancing the granularity of what they know about that person."

The officials said that companies with names including SilverPush, Drawbridge, and Flurry are working on ways to pair a given user to specific devices. Adobe is developing similar technologies. Without a doubt, the most concerning of the companies the CDT mentioned is San Francisco-based SilverPush.

CDT officials wrote:

Cross-device tracking can also be performed through the use of ultrasonic inaudible sound beacons. Compared to probabilistic tracking through browser fingerprinting, the use of audio beacons is a more accurate way to track users across devices. The industry leader of cross-device tracking using audio beacons is SilverPush. When a user encounters a SilverPush advertiser on the web, the advertiser drops a cookie on the computer while also playing an ultrasonic audio through the use of the speakers on the computer or device. The inaudible code is recognized and received on the other smart device by the software development kit installed on it. SilverPush also embeds audio beacon signals into TV commercials which are "picked up silently by an app installed on a [device] (unknown to the user)." The audio beacon enables companies like SilverPush to know which ads the user saw, how long the user watched the ad before changing the channel, which kind of smart devices the individual uses, along with other information that adds to the profile of each user that is linked across devices.

The user is unaware of the audio beacon, but if a smart device has an app on it that uses the SilverPush software development kit, the software on the app will be listening for the audio beacon and once the beacon is detected, devices are immediately recognized as being used by the same individual. SilverPush states that the company is not listening in the background to all of the noises occurring in proximity to the device. The only factor that hinders the receipt of an audio beacon by a device is distance and there is no way for the user to opt-out of this form of cross-device tracking. SilverPush’s company policy is to not "divulge the names of the apps the technology is embedded," meaning that users have no knowledge of which apps are using this technology and no way to opt-out of this practice. As of April of 2015, SilverPush’s software is used by 67 apps and the company monitors 18 million smartphones.


SilverPush's ultrasonic cross-device tracking was publicly reported as long ago as July 2014. More recently, the company received a new round of publicity when it obtained $1.25 million in venture capital. The CDT letter appears to be the first time the privacy-invading potential of the company's product has been discussed in detail. SilverPush officials didn't respond to e-mail seeking comment for this article.

Cross-device tracking already in use

The CDT letter went on to cite articles reporting that cross-device tracking has been put to use by more than a dozen marketing companies. The technology, which is typically not disclosed and can't be opted out of, makes it possible for marketers to assemble a shockingly detailed snapshot of the person being tracked.

"For example, a company could see that a user searched for sexually transmitted disease (STD) symptoms on her personal computer, looked up directions to a Planned Parenthood on her phone, visits a pharmacy, then returned to her apartment," the letter stated. "While previously the various components of this journey would be scattered among several services, cross-device tracking allows companies to infer that the user received treatment for an STD. The combination of information across devices not only creates serious privacy concerns, but also allows for companies to make incorrect and possibly harmful assumptions about individuals."

Use of ultrasonic sounds to track users has some resemblance to badBIOS, a piece of malware that a security researcher said used inaudible sounds to bridge air-gapped computers. No one has ever proven badBIOS exists, but the use of the high-frequency sounds to track users underscores the viability of the concept.

Now that SilverPush and others are using the technology, it's probably inevitable that it will remain in use in some form. But right now, there are no easy ways for average people to know if they're being tracked by it and to opt out if they object. Federal officials should strongly consider changing that.

Further Reading

Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps

Like a super strain of bacteria, the rootkit plaguing Dragos Ruiu is omnipotent.


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015 ... et-and-pc/
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Re: Surveillance

Postby coffin_dodger » Fri Nov 13, 2015 4:29 pm

^ This shit is gettin' beyond belief. Thanks, Elf.
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Re: Surveillance

Postby Joao » Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:03 pm

elfismiles » Fri Nov 13, 2015 1:01 pm wrote:
Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC

While our computers and phones are certainly spying on us constantly, I'm skeptical of this alleged "inaudible sound" tracking.

I've always understood that consumer-grade microphones and speakers generally don't function much beyond the range of human hearing--it would be an unnecessary expense to produce devices with such capability. The logistics of the putative software processes are also quite hazy.

No argument that electronic communication is thoroughly compromised (probably by design), but IMO this particular article reads rather like hype targeted at potential investors.

From the comments to the arstechnica article provided by elfis:

Madlyb wrote:Yeah...I am crying shenanigans over this. Not that they don't have this working in a lab environment, but getting it working on the real world is another matter.

First challenge is getting a frequency that humans can't hear, but can be reproduced by typical speakers in electronics today...very doubtful.

Then, if you can overcome that hurdle, you need a microphone that can pick up that frequency...this is even more doubtful as most microphones in electronic devices barely handle 500Hz - 10KHz which is well within the range of even older adults.

Then you have to deliver unique signatures for every single transmission to be able to deal with time shifting and possible retransmission. Major infrastructure change for a broadcaster and considering how many times I still see ads running at less than 1080, not something that could have anytime soon on TV.

And finally, you have to deal getting an app in place that can run all the time and access the microphone.

I am not saying this can't be done, but the hurdles are substantial...of course, the same was true of super cookies and canvas fingerprinting, so if there is enough money on the line, someone will work the problem.
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Re: Surveillance

Postby elfismiles » Tue Dec 08, 2015 4:05 pm

I don't think we have a Police Body Camera thread around here.

5 Things We Learned from APD's Body Camera AMA
By KUT Staff • Dec 4, 2015

ACLU of Washington via Texas Tribune

The Austin Police Department held an AMA (short for Ask Me Anything; it's a Q&A forum) on reddit Friday morning to take questions about officer body cameras. Technology Commander Ely Reyes fielded the questions submitted on the forum, many of which focused on who'd be able to access footage, and how. Redditors also wanted to know more about how the footage would be stored, and how the department planned to insure that officers turned cameras on and off at appropriate times.

APD Technology Commander Ely Reyes' 'proof' photo for Friday's reddit Q&A.

Credit Austin Police Department

Below are just a few of the answers Reyes gave during the two-hour Q&A.

1. Anyone will be able to request footage – Well, sort of. Footage will be subject to open records requests, but requestors must have exact details of the footage they’re requesting, along with the permission of anyone in the footage.

"Anyone can submit a public information request and will be required to provide 1) date & approx. time of recording, 2) specific location where recording occurred, 3) name of one or more persons known to be video subject. Law enforcement agencies cannot release videos made in private spaces or a recording of a misdemeanor not resulting in an arrest, without written authorization from the subject or from the person's authorized rep if deceased."

2. APD could consider using facial recognition in the future – Reyes couched his answer to user harlanyu’s question in the conditional and even included a Nathan Fillion gif for good measure.

"Interesting question, uh...that type of technology is not currently on our list of projects. However with the recent events occurring around our country, there may be the need for implementing these types of things in the future. Public safety is paramount and being able to identify and recognize potential threats in our community could be beneficial to us all."

3. Cameras will use 30-second, pre-event buffers – Reyes clarified that the pre-event buffer will use footage that’s cached 30-seconds prior to an officer hitting the record button in a response to user/moderator okayshure’s question and clarified in another response as well. Officers in patrol cars will have cameras that automatically turn on prior to exiting the car and other officers will have to manually activate the camera.

"Officers can turn the camera off at the conclusion of the incident or when all law enforcement action is completed… The end of the incident is when all prisoners have been transported and booked into jail or when all law enforcement action is concluded. An example would be waiting for a tow truck or a family member to pick someone up after a crash, etc. The camera will not be constantly recording however it will include a minimum 30-second pre-event buffer."

"The body camera will be required to turn on automatically when the officer opens the car door. For officers not in cars who need to take immediate action, they will be required to turn the camera on as soon as possible. The cameras will be equipped with a minimum 30-second pre-record feature."

4. APD has a “discipline matrix” – It’s not a thrash band, we checked. It’s a guideline for the department’s internal investigations. Reyes says it’ll be applicable to situations during which officers violate APD’s guidelines.

"We do have a discipline matrix that includes circumstances in which an officer turns off the camera when not permitted to do so. The discipline is fact specific based on the circumstances and could include indefinite suspension."

5. As many as 1,500 officers will have body cameras – In a response to SneakAtax’s query, Reyes said the department will outfit 500 officers a year using city money and will continue to seek grant dollars to supplement the program, after missing out on a Justice Department to supplement the program.

"We are phasing in the deployment with 500 cameras by the end of September 2016. Our plan is to equip 500 officers a year for the next 3 years. Every officer assigned to patrol, walking beat, parks and highway enforcement will be issued cameras first."

Police Chief Art Acevedo says the department plans to implement body-worn cameras starting in 2016. Downtown patrol officers will be the first to be equipped with the surveillance devices.

http://kut.org/post/5-things-we-learned ... camera-ama
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Re: Surveillance

Postby Grizzly » Tue Dec 08, 2015 9:32 pm

Google's chairman Eric Schmidt proposes a "Content ID" style system to automatically detect "hatred" in order to "de-escalate tensions on social media" and "remove videos before they spread".
https://archive.is/xewh0

Should this have it's own thread? Entitled, ALPHABET?
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: Surveillance

Postby elfismiles » Sun Dec 13, 2015 2:31 pm

Homeland Security deployed hi-tech spy plane which scoops up tens of thousands of phone calls at one time above San Bernardino for days after massacre
Single engine craft flew over the California city and was ordered to make repeated circles overhead
It was equipped with 'Dirtbox' technology which can scan tens of thousands of phones in one go to identify suspects
The Pilatus PC-12 plane that was used - was similar to the craft deployed by the military on missions over Africa
Map of the flight path for the plane shows numerous circles over the area around terrorist Syed Farook's home in Redlands
The question of whether or not there were more suspects in the San Bernardino massacre has never been fully resolved
For more on the California shootings visit www.dailymail.co.uk/california
By Daniel Bates For Dailymail.com
Published: 16:47 EST, 11 December 2015 | Updated: 17:19 EST, 12 December 2015
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... sacre.html

See also:

Active Shooter San Bernardino
by seemslikeadream » 02 Dec 2015
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39367

Quincy Mass. Mystery Plane ID'd?
by elfismiles » 13 May 2013
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36398

Stingray
search.php?keywords=stingray
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Re: Surveillance

Postby Elvis » Tue Dec 15, 2015 8:41 pm

Out of curiousity I Googled my cellular telephone number. One 'lookup' site gives the following info:

Phone Number (in this case, my number)
Latest Visitor IP (IP address of last visitor searching that particular number on that site)
Referrer (e.g. in this case Google)

see for example: http://phonesearch.xyz/directory-list-303-474-page-103.html (I changed the phone number in the example.)

Sooo...I Google that IP address from which a Google search on my phone number was made: 72.192.204.13 :

IP Details for 72.192.204.13

This simple internet tool is made to help you find information about IP addresses

IP General Information
IP Address: 72.192.204.13
Hostname: 72.192.204.13
ISP: Cox Communications

Geolocation Information
Continent: North America (NA)
Country: United States (US) US
City: Alexandria
Latitude: 38.7923 (38°47'32.28" N)
Longitude: -77.0699 (77°4'11.64" S)
Geo Location

http://geoiplookup.net/ip/72.192.204.13


And, they show a map for the coordinates (38°47'32.3"N 77°04'11.6"W). The locations seems to be right off Huntington Ave., between Blaine Drive and Fifer Drive.

So my questions are:

Does this mean that someone in Alexandria, VA recently Googled my cell phone number?

Does that Alexandria neighborhood ring any bells?

Does that block of IP addresses belong to any interesting parties?


I don't know anyone in Alexandria (that I know of).
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Surveillance

Postby Joao » Tue Dec 15, 2015 9:16 pm

Elvis » Tue Dec 15, 2015 4:41 pm wrote:Does this mean that someone in Alexandria, VA recently Googled my cell phone number?

Maybe but IMO it's more likely to be garbage data and false precision.

FWIW, searching for my own phone number yields nothing but BS and I've only found IP/geographical correlations accurate to within about a 50 mile radius. (Of course the pros surely have better data/tools than what's publicly available.)
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Re: Surveillance

Postby Grizzly » Fri Dec 18, 2015 12:36 am

The Intercept has obtained a secret, internal U.S. government catalog of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and intelligence agencies. The document also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States.
https://theintercept.com/2015/12/17/a-s ... cellphone/

I knew it... The chilling effect.
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: Surveillance

Postby elfismiles » Sat Dec 19, 2015 10:09 am

Helicopter flying over Bad Axe believed to be from Homeland Security
Friday, December 18, 2015 2:48 pm | Updated: 6:26 pm, Fri Dec 18, 2015.
Tribune Staff Reports

HURON COUNTY — If you’re in Bad Axe, you more than likely noticed a helicopter hovering over the city Friday. And, according to Huron County Sheriff Kelly J. Hanson, it belongs to the Department of Homeland Security.

“We had several inquiries about the helicopter and who it belonged to,” Hanson said on Friday.

Hanson said he called the Aviation Unit in Detroit to gather more information as to why the helicopter was in the area and what its purpose was.

“I wasn’t satisfied with their answer to say the least, but I was told (the helicopter) was taking photos,” he explained. “I made them well aware that people are concerned, especially with what’s going on in the media.”

The sheriff said he was never made aware, or given any notice, the helicopter would be in the area taking photos.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately provide a comment to the Tribune.

An aide of U.S. Rep. Candice Miller said the office hasn’t gotten any calls from constituents regarding the flyovers and was checking to find more information. Miller is vice chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security and chairs the Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security.

http://www.michigansthumb.com/news/arti ... 1c375.html
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Re: Surveillance

Postby elfismiles » Fri Jan 15, 2016 10:16 am

Surveillance economy
How Did the ‘Netflix Reality Check’ Gather Its Data?
By Brady Dale • 01/15/16 7:17am
Can anyone watch TV alone? (Photo: Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)

Microphones are the new surveillance cameras.

TV news was abuzz Thursday morning after Variety reported on a presentation by Alan Wurtzel, a president at NBCUniversal, who said that streaming shows weren’t cutting into broadcast television viewership to the degree that much of the press seems to believe. Mr. Wurtzel used numbers that estimated viewership using data gathered by mobile devices that listened to what people were watching and extrapolating viewership across the country.

Wait, what? It’s using the microphones on cell phones to listen? Who’s it listening in on?

The company behind the technology is called Symphony Advanced Media. The Observer spoke to its CEO Charles Buchwalter, about how it works, via phone. “Our entire focus is to add insights and perspectives on an entire new paradigm around how consumers are consuming media across platforms,” he told the Observer.

Cool, but is Symphony listening to viewers without their knowledge?

Short answer: pretty much no.

Symphony collects data with a similar strategy to Nielsen, by inviting users to opt-in to specific monitoring. Nielsen has the set meter and its paper diaries. Unlike Nielsen, Symphony uses a less direct strategy than a box on top of a TV to track what a viewer is watching, because not all the viewing is on TVs and not all the broadcasters want to be tracked.

For the privacy-conscious, Symphony’s app isn’t hidden inside other apps with permissions buried in user agreements no one reads.

Symphony asks those who opt in to load Symphony-branded apps onto their personal devices, apps that use microphones to listen to what’s going on in the background. With technology from Gracenote, the app can hear the show playing and identify it using its unique sound signature (the same way Shazam identifies a song playing over someone else’s speakers). Doing it that way allows the company to gather data on viewing of sites like Netflix and Hulu, whether the companies like it or not. (Netflix likes data)

It uses specific marketing to recruit “media insiders” into its system, who then download its app (there’s no way for consumers to get it without going through this process). In exchange, it pays consumers $5 in gift cards (and up) per month, depending on the number of devices he or she authorizes.

Potential insiders go through an online sign up process that asks them a bunch of questions about their media habits. So Symphony knows a bit more about them.

The company let the Observer go through the process. It doesn’t do much educating of its “media insiders” about just how much information they are turning over to the company, beyond giving them links to a terms of service and privacy policy.

One screen that screams out, “HEY WE ARE GONNA LISTEN TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING WITH THE MICROPHONE ON YOUR PHONE, ‘K, COOL?” would be dope, but no dice.

Still, at least they aren’t sneaking a microphone into your Bitmoji app, right? (which is effectively what a bunch of Chrome extensions recently did)

“We want everything we do to be passive,” Mr. Buchwalter said. The company has over 15,000 viewers now and expects to hit 20,000 media insiders this year. It would like to get that number up to about 50,000, eventually, he said, emphasizing that the company works to make sure that this sample represents the U.S. as a whole.

“We want to track individuals,” Mr. Buchwalter—a Nielsen alum—explained, because they want to compose a digital day in the life of Americans, all their cross platform activities, from websites to social to media viewing and reading. The problem with existing metrics companies, he argues, is they measure one media category at a time. That’s outdated.

Symphony has found that when ratings are scored over 35 days (rather than the industry standard of seven days after broadcast), it becomes clear that streaming is eating into broadcast viewing time, but not nearly as much as it might have seemed. It’s also clear that a lot of viewers watch broadcast TV on demand in much the say way they watch streaming TV. He said, “There’s a little bit of a sense that there’s more buzz to the transformative sense of streaming originals than there is reality.”

Here’s another reality: more and more electronic devices are able to listen to what we do all the time and glean insights. Mobile phones have to always be kind of listening so they can hear it when users give the activation command. Amazon Echo is listening, too, and it’s getting hard to tell just how much data gear gathers.

Like we’ve said: we are being watched.

Symphony may not be sneaking its surveillance model into innocuous looking apps with wildly different purposes, but that doesn’t mean some other company isn’t.


http://observer.com/2016/01/netflix-hul ... ced-media/
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Re: Surveillance

Postby identity » Sat Jan 30, 2016 9:59 pm

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-transit-agency-seeks-face-detecting-cameras-6781085.php

S.F. transit agency seeks face-detecting cameras to check streets
By Sean Sposito Updated 10:16 pm, Sunday, January 24, 2016


San Francisco’s public transit agency plans to purchase up to 150 cameras marketed for their ability to find and focus on human faces, although city officials insist the devices will monitor only traffic — not people.

The Municipal Transportation Agency is seeking a vendor that will sell cameras equipped with “face detection” technology, according to bidding documents posted online. Those cameras will scan streets from traffic-light poles, most of them on Van Ness Avenue and Franklin and Gough streets.

The planned purchase is meant to upgrade the major thoroughfares around the city’s Van Ness Avenue Bus Rapid Transit project, which will be done sometime in 2019, said Paul Rose, a spokesman for the transportation agency.

The Samsung Techwin security cameras that the agency is seeking can detect multiple faces at a time, notice changes in scenery and alert viewers when people cross a designated line, according to company marketing materials.

Those technical specifications could make the cameras a useful surveillance tool — making the devices a cause for concern among privacy activists who worry they could facilitate mass government snooping.

But spying isn’t the city’s intention in soliciting bids for the contract, Rose said.
“We were bidding for a specific Samsung camera, specifically for the resolution,” he said.

The term “face detection” appeared in the bid only because it’s common for the agency to list all the specifications of a product it hopes to obtain when it alerts companies that the city is in the market. The idea is to ensure the agency gets the exact equipment it wants, he said.

The cameras, which will be purchased as part of the city’s SF Go traffic improvement program, will be used to make real-time adjustments to traffic signals along city streets, Rose said.

Employees will be able to pull up video feeds to monitor specific intersections when the cameras are installed after hearing about reports of, say, an accident, Rose said.

The cameras “will allow us to have a visual of major corridors throughout the city and make adjustments based on congestion or major events or incidents, such as collisions, that we should route around,” Rose said.

The cameras will join roughly 30 others within the same program that already dot San Francisco streets, he said.
Although the cameras themselves are sophisticated enough to track specific individuals as they move through the city, the transportation agency lacks the software needed to perform such facial recognition, Rose said. And it has no intention of buying that technology, he added.

The cameras won’t even record, offering only a live view of the streets where they are deployed, Rose said.

Transportation agency employees will be the only ones allowed to monitor the feeds. That means that no outsiders, law enforcement included, will get access to them without special permission, Rose said.

Changes to those policies probably would require approval from the transportation agency’s directors and the Board of Supervisors, Rose said.

The potential for abuse still worries privacy advocates, who fear the cameras could easily be converted into a surveillance tool.
“These cameras would be trained on traffic, potentially picking up license plate data, which would allow for location tracking from law enforcement and others,” said Rebecca Jeschke, a digital rights analyst and media relations director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Just because the agency said it will not retain camera footage doesn’t mean that digital forensics experts couldn’t seek a judge’s permission to retrieve the data if they felt it was necessary, said Davi Ottenheimer, a security consultant who runs the San Francisco firm Flyingpenguin.

“Video that was not meant to be actively stored may still leave a residue or be found if not securely erased,” Ottenheimer said.

Surveillance camera programs have faced scrutiny in the Bay Area.
After a killing on a BART train this month, the agency was derided for posting replica cameras in some train cars instead of working ones. BART said Wednesday that it will replace its decoy cameras with real ones.

Researchers found that a San Francisco Police Department camera program launched in 2005 failed in its goal of curbing violent crime.

The bid for the Municipal Transportation Agency’s new cameras was made in November. The agency will pick a vendor by mid-February, Rose said. The cost of the program will be determined by the bids the agency receives.
We should never forget Galileo being put before the Inquisition.
It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.

Richard Smith, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal 1991-2004,
in a published letter to Nature
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Re: Surveillance

Postby Joao » Thu Feb 18, 2016 12:07 am

The New York Times wrote:N.S.A. Gets Less Web Data Than Believed, Report Suggests
By Charlie Savage, Feb. 16, 2016

WASHINGTON — A newly declassified report by the National Security Agency’s inspector general suggests that the government is receiving far less data from Americans’ international Internet communications than privacy advocates have long suspected.

The report indicates that when the N.S.A. conducts Internet surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act, companies that operate the Internet are probably turning over just emails to, from or about the N.S.A.’s foreign targets — not all the data crossing their switches, as the critics had presumed. The theory that the government is rooting through vast amounts of data for its targets’ messages has been at the heart of several lawsuits challenging such surveillance as violating the Fourth Amendment.

The report, obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, was classified when completed in 2015, and it still contains many redactions. But several uncensored sentences appear to indicate how the system works: They suggest that the government supplies its foreign targets’ “selectors” — like email addresses — to the network companies that operate the Internet, and they sift through the raw data for any messages containing them, turning over only those.

The distinction is important for evaluating crucial constitutional issues raised by how to apply Fourth Amendment privacy rights to new communications and surveillance technologies. Government secrecy about Internet wiretapping has prevented judges from adjudicating the issues in open court.

Still, Patrick Toomey, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is helping lead one of several lawsuits challenging the N.S.A.’s Internet surveillance, argued that even if the companies were sifting the data themselves, the constitutional issues were the same if the companies were doing something they would not otherwise do at the government’s direction.

“The equivalent would be if AT&T were compelled to put every phone call through a voice transcription and then give to the government” copies of only those calls that were linked to a suspect, Mr. Toomey said. “We would find that disturbing, not just because it could be abused, but because it involves the phone company listening to every phone call.”

The network companies that operate the Internet, like AT&T and Verizon, do not publicly discuss how the surveillance system works, and the government declined to comment about the newly disclosed report.

Congress commissioned the inspector general report after the leaks about surveillance by the former intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden. A central focus was the FISA Amendments Act program, which permits warrantless collection of communications on domestic soil so long as the target is a noncitizen abroad — even if the target is communicating with an American.

One part of the program is called Upstream. It involves the collection of emails and other Internet messages as they cross network switches. The report discusses how network providers are legally compelled to give the N.S.A. communications “related to tasked selectors.” A little later, after a redacted paragraph, it says, “The providers should deliver only communications meeting these criteria to N.S.A.”

And the report said that “for each source of collection, N.S.A. employs processes to determine whether” — the middle of the sentence is redacted, before it picks up with, “are sending communications only for selectors currently tasked and authorized for collection.”

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said there had been no official policy decision, as part of disclosing the inspector general report, to say more about how Upstream collection works than what the government had said previously.

Still, in previous reports and court documents about the Upstream system, the government has tended to use language that leaves it ambiguous whether the telecommunications companies or the government is filtering and scanning the raw Internet data.

(The inspector general report does not address how the N.S.A. collects foreign-to-foreign Internet messages passing through the American network. Such messages are not protected by domestic law, and the government does collect them in bulk, just as it could do if it intercepted them abroad, according to leaked documents and officials familiar with that system.)

The new report’s discussion of how the Upstream collection system works under the FISA Amendments Act dovetails with an article by The Times and ProPublica in August, which was largely based on “top-secret” documents provided by Mr. Snowden. But those documents remain classified. And in public, the government has been vague about the system’s details, including in its responses to lawsuits.

The cases are important because Internet technology works differently from the telephone technology for which wiretapping rules were developed and tested in court. A suspect’s phone call can be intercepted without touching any other people’s calls. But on the Internet, data from different messages are broken up and intermingled, so collecting a suspect’s email requires temporarily copying and sifting data from many people’s messages.

Privacy advocates want a court to address whether that violates the Fourth Amendment. So far, they have not succeeded.

In one such case, a group of AT&T customers represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued in 2014 that the government was getting a copy of all Internet data and rooting through it. But the Justice Department said litigating the allegation would reveal state secrets, and a judge dismissed the claim in February 2015, writing cryptically that secret documents showed that “the plaintiffs’ version of the significant operational details of the Upstream collection process is substantially inaccurate.”

The complaint in another such case, brought in 2015 by the A.C.L.U. on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, also said that the N.S.A. was systematically copying and reviewing international communications, although it also hedged that some aspects of that surveillance “may be conducted by the telecommunications providers on the government’s behalf.” A judge dismissed that case, too, and it is now on appeal.

Also some twitter back and forth on this between Cryptome and emptywheel, et al., here.
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