Tag: Privacy
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EFF Researchers Decode Hidden Codes in Printer Output
Researchers at the EFF have apparently confirmed that certain color printers put hidden marks in the pages they print, and they have decoded the marks for at least one printer model. The marks from Xerox DocuColor printers are encoded in an array of very small yellow dots that appear all over the page. The dots…
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Secure Flight: Shifting Goals, Vague Plan
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) released Friday a previously confidential report by the Secure Flight Working Group (SFWG), an independent expert committee on which I served. The committee’s charter was to study the privacy implications of the Secure Flight program. The final report is critical of TSA’s management of Secure Flight. (Besides me, the committee…
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Privacy, Price Discrimination, and Identification
Recently it was reported that Disney World is fingerprinting its customers. This raised obvious privacy concerns. People wondered why Disney would need that information, and what they were going to do with it. As Eric Rescorla noted, the answer is almost surely price discrimination. Disney sells multi-day tickets at a discount. They don’t want people…
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What is Spyware?
Recently the Anti-Spyware Coalition released a document defining spyware and related terms. This is an impressive-sounding group, convened by CDT and including companies like HP, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Here is their central definition: Spyware and Other Potentially Unwanted Technologies Technologies implemented in ways that impair users’ control over: Material changes that affect their user experience,…
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Michigan Debuts Counterproductive Do-Not-Spam List for Kids
The state of Michigan has a new registry of kids’ email addresses in the state. Parents can put their kids’ addresses on the list. It’s illegal to send to addresses on the list any email solicitations for products that kids aren’t allowed to buy (alcohol, guns, gambling, vehicles, etc.). The site has been accepting registrations…
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Content Filtering and Security
Buggy security software can make you less secure. Indeed, a growing number of intruders are exploiting bugs in security software to gain access to systems. Smart system administrators have known for a long time to be careful about deploying new “security” products. A company called Audible Magic is trying to sell “content filtering” systems to…
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U.S. Considering Wireless Passport Protection
The U.S. government is “taking a very serious look” at improving privacy protection for the new wireless-readable passports, according to an official quoted in a great article by Kim Zetter at Wired News. Many people, including me, have worried about the privacy implications of having passports that are readable at a distance. The previously proposed…
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Berkeley to victims of personal data theft: "Our bad"
Last week I and 98,000 other lucky individuals received the following letter: University of California, Berkeley Graduate Division Berkeley, California 94720-5900 Dear John Alexander Halderman: I am writing to advise you that a computer in the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley was stolen by an as-yet unidentified individual on March 11, 2005. The computer contained…
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Why Use Remotely-Readable Passports?
Yesterday at CFP, I saw an interesting panel on the proposed radio-enabled passports. Frank Moss, a State Department employee and accomplished career diplomat, is the U.S. government’s point man on this issue. He had the guts to show up at CFP and face a mostly hostile audience. He clearly believes that he and the government…
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Network Monitoring: Harder Than It Looks
Proposals like the Cal-INDUCE bill often assume that it’s reasonably easy to monitor network traffic to block certain kinds of data from being transmitted. In fact, there are many simple countermeasures that users can (and do, if pressed) use to avoid monitoring. As a simple example, here’s an interesting (and well known) technical trick. Suppose…