Tag Archives: privacy

There’s Surveillance

Posted on by
Reply

…and there’s surveillance.

The FBI is looking at ways to scan Facebook (and Twitter, et al.) postings with a view to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.

In late 2016, following an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union into social-media monitoring done by outside developers on behalf of law enforcement, Facebook and Twitter cracked down on those services and explicitly banned the use of their data for surveillance purposes….
Facebook’s ban allowed law-enforcement agencies to look at public profiles manually but not use software designed for large-scale collection and analysis of user data.

Because

the restrictions reflect a growing understanding that even information posted to a public social network can be misused when gathered in large quantities and paired with outside data sources.

But Facebook’s objections (and they’re not the only Big Tech objectors) are just a bit precious and not a little bit hypocritical. Facebook does exactly that sort of surveillance—with software, mind you—explicitly with a view to selling those connections to advertisers, and others.

The only difference is claimed purpose.

If such surveillance is a bad thing—and it most assuredly is—Facebook, et al., need to cut it out, too.

Lies of Progressive-Democrats

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s another.  Recall Congressman Joaquin Castro’s (D, TX, and brother of Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Julian Castro) doxing of donors to a Trump campaign organization.

[T]he Texas congressman’s original tweet included a list of San Antonio residents who had donated large amounts to the Trump campaign, along with the names of their employers. …
“Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump,” Castro tweeted, along with the Twitter handles of several owners of local businesses who apparently donated to Trump. …
The list—titled “WHO’S FUNDING TRUMP?”—had 44 names of donors and their employers.

Now Castro is claiming the list was no problem at all.

[He] is not backing down from his tweet outing Trump donors in San Antonio, insisting they weren’t “targeted or harassed” and that it wasn’t a “call to action.”

And that’s Castro’s straight-up lie.  The exposure itself was a targeting move, and a call to action—a call to harass those 44 folks who’s only wrong-doing was their effrontery of disagreeing with Castro.  Castro knows this, and in his own words to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D, CA), Castro is too cowardly or agreeable to Party to admit his misbehavior and to correct it.

I’ll add a couple more words: Castro’s behavior is typically dishonest.

Castro’s claim that the data he published were already publicly available? A cynically offered sophistry. He didn’t need to broaden the availability.  He chose to do so, though, for his carefully developed and executed purposes.

Warrant-Proof Encryption

Posted on by
Reply

Attorney General William Barr, in front of the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University, said that

“warrant-proof” encryption was “enabling dangerous criminals to cloak their communications and activities behind an essentially impenetrable digital shield.”

Of course.  And the FBI, in the aftermath of a mass-shooting in California a while back, (in)famously said that it needed Apple to crack the lock on one of the murderer’s smartphone so they could read it, insisting they were helpless without Apple’s cracking (and they demanded then, too, that Apple install encryption backdoors on its commercial cell phones).  Then the FBI hired a third party, which cracked the encryption forthwith.

And before that, crime investigations were hindered by lack of fingerprints because the crooks wore gloves.  Until DNA technology and testing opened other avenues of identification.  With search warrants required before that DNA could be sought out from individuals so that crime scene deposits could be matched.

And before that wired messaging, done privately, hindered crime investigations until wire tapping technology opened that for investigation.   With search warrants required before wire tapping could be done.

It’s always an arms race between the bad guys and the good guys.  And the good guys always win in the end, because they’re always able to get the better technology.

This time, The Wall Street Journal says, is different, though, via its subheadline at the link:

[Barr] offers no clear path forward

Of course, there is a clear path forward: get a warrant.  Do old-fashioned detective work.

And: hold onto that communications device. There’s no such thing as unbreakable (and so warrant-proof) encryption, there’s only encryption that can’t be broken today.

The PRC and Facial Recognition

Posted on by
Reply

The People’s Republic of China is moving “beyond” the use of smart phones for making on-the-spot retail payments, starting to supplant that with facial recognition—with personal images tied to personal financial accounts.

Ant Financial Services Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd, rivals that operate, respectively, Alipay and WeChat Pay, China’s two largest mobile-payments networks, are competing for dominance in the next stage of China’s cashless society. Each is racing to install its own branded facial-recognition screens at retail points-of-sale all over the country, marketing the screens as a way to speed up sales and improve efficiency.

Marketing the screens as a way to speed up sales and improve efficiency.  A way to speed up and broaden PRC government knowledge of what its citizens are doing, where they are going, what they’re spending their money on, where they have their money, also.  In fine, a way to extend the PRC’s ability to control, not just the population over which it reigns, or subgroups of it, but down to the individual level.  George Orwell knew about this, and about the debilitation it inflicts on liberty, even on moral and on morale.

This is not an advance over smart phone payments.  Not at all.

Abortion “Rights”

Posted on by
1

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants to further erode Federalism in our nation’s structure and have the central government pass on certain kinds of State laws before those laws can be…permitted…to take effect.  Harris’ position and proposal is well summarized in the sub-headline of the article at the link:

The Democratic presidential hopeful wants the Justice Department to review state laws restricting abortion before they would take effect

Since a core principle of our nation, acknowledged in our Declaration of Independence, centers on our Creator-endowed right to life, and it is the duty of any government, especially including ours, to protect the lives of those in its care—or even simply within its jurisdiction—I offer an alternative requirement, albeit one that parallels Harris’ attack on our federal structure.

The Justice Department should review state laws permitting abortion, particularly with a view to assessing their impact on life, before they would take effect

This would enable the central government to protect the baby’s life from being aborted in any but the most extreme circumstance.

It should be clear, after all, that abortion has absolutely nothing to do with women’s right to control their own bodies and everything to do with the baby’s—who in any abortion procedure has no one to speak for him—right simply to maintain his body.  Abortion has absolutely nothing to do with women’s “rights” generally and everything to do with the baby’s right to life.

Except in the minds of Progressive-Democrats.