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Tag: privacy

Cuff notes on internet anonymity

Ted Ted
February 23, 2016
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A couple of years after Snowden there is already a noticeable stratification into three distinct groups in terms of access to real anonymity online:

1] Most people access the net through a layer of zero anonymity or pseudo anonymity at best, and their destination online is either not anonymous or actively trying to pry away private data from them;

2] A small percentage access the net through a layer of high anonymity [i.e. VPN, TOR] and their destination may be somewhat anonymous [i.e. members only forums, or TOR sites];

3] An even smaller percentage access a completely different and highly anonymous network [i.e. I2P] through an anonymous layer, and their destination is equally highly anonymized.

Groups 2 and 3 are mostly not going to be affected by any government efforts to regulate or remove anonymity, but ironically it is only those two groups who have the will and know-how to defend anonymity.

The war on the net

Ted Ted
May 28, 2014
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Brilliant piece by Eben Moglen in today’s Guardian on Snowden, the state of online privacy, and the near future.

We must remember that privacy is about our social environment, not about isolated transactions we individually make with others. When we decide to give away our personal information, we are also undermining the privacy of other people. Privacy is therefore always a relation among many people, rather than a transaction between two.

Thinking the value of social data

Ted Ted
May 25, 2013
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I have been thinking a lot lately about the underlying dynamics of big data, and how most discussions around online privacy and surveillance are functions of absent or simplistic taxonomies for social data. This is a lecture I gave last week to a 100-level convergent media class, where I tried to synthesize these ideas in a more or less coherent package illustrating the dynamics. I start with a list of Pompeii graffiti, which look surprisingly similar to tweets, illustrating two features of social data: we generate a lot of it on the go, and it tends to outlast the context for which it was generated. I then move through artifacts such as Raytheon’s RIOT software, the numbers on big data and and the way they bring forward the notion of flow management, the FinFisher spy software, and the Camover anti-surveillance game. I end with Bruce Schneier’s proposal for a working social data taxonomy.