Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.
Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill (PDF) requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.
H.B. 2288, which was introduced Friday, says the dossiers must include a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited. Democratic Rep. John Mizuno of Oahu is the lead sponsor; Mizuno also introduced H.B. 2287, a computer crime bill, at the same time last week...[Full Article]
An Android developer recently discovered a clandestine application called Carrier IQ built into most smartphones that doesn't just track your location; it secretly records your keystrokes, and there's nothing you can do about it. Is it time to put on a tinfoil hat? That depends on how you feel about privacy.
The reason for this invasive Android app seems reasonable enough at face value. Even though it's on most Android, BlackBerry and Nokia devices, most users would never know that Carrier IQ is running in the background, and that's sort of the point. Described on the company's website as software to gain "unprecedented insight into their customers' mobile experience," Carrier IQ is ostensibly supposed to help mobile carriers and device manufacturers gather data in order to improve their products. Tons of applications do this, and you're probably used to those boxes that pops up on your screen and ask if you want to help the company by sending your data back to them. If you're concerned about your privacy, you just tap no and go about your merry computing way. As security-conscious Android developer Trevor Eckhart realized, however, Carrier IQ does not give you this option, and unless you were code-savvy and looking for it, you'd never know it was there. And based on how aggressive the company has been in trying to keep Eckhart quiet about his discovery, it seems like Carrier IQ doesn't want you to know it's there either...[Full Article]
For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply "the Hacker." Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest.
Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it's not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities, an FBI official told The Wall Street Journal in response to inquiries.
A stingray's role in nabbing the alleged "Hacker"—Daniel David Rigmaiden—is shaping up as a possible test of the legal standards for using these devices in investigations. The FBI says it obtains appropriate court approval to use the device.
Stingrays are one of several new technologies used by law enforcement to track people's locations, often without a search warrant. These techniques are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but which was written before the digital age, is keeping pace with the times.
On Nov. 8, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether or not police need a warrant before secretly installing a GPS device on a suspect's car and tracking him for an extended period. In both the Senate and House, new bills would require a warrant before tracking a cellphone's location...[Full Article]
"Oh, say can you see...the land of the fee, and home of the slave?" Americans really better wake up before it's too late. Perhaps it already is.
Today Pete Kasperowicz of The Hill reported that the Obama administration, following a March Congressional Budget Office report, has "floated" the idea of taxing drivers per mile. Kasperowicz writes:
The plan is a part of the administration’s 'Transportation Opportunities Act,' an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.
...Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations. (my emphasis)
If this doesn't alert you to the direction of America, I don't know what will. The government wants to tax Americans for simply leaving their homes, and track their cars via mandatory GPS chips...[Full Article]
As Smartphone Scandal Grows, Tech Firms Run for Cover, Reap Windfall Profits
Recent revelations that Apple's iPhone and iPad, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating systems collect, store and transmit records of users' physical locations to central databases--secretly, and without consent--have ignited a firestorm over Americans' privacy rights in an age of hypersurveillance.
And with a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Florida by two iPhone users, The Register reports, Apple guru Steve Jobs was forced to respond to complaints after the firm's usual tactic--deafening silence--failed to assuage customer's anxieties.
The lawsuit alleges that "irreparable injury has resulted and continues to result from Apple's unauthorized tracking of millions of Americans," plaintiffs Vikram Ajjampur and William Devito averred. They are requesting their case be granted class-action status, a move likely to send shudders along the silicon spine of the secretive Cupertino high-tech powerhouse...[Full Article]
Forget the iPhone scandal, the FCC mandated that all wireless carriers be able to locate their users way back in October 2001
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones Prison Planet.com Monday, April 25, 2011
The controversy generated as a result of computer researchers discovering a hidden file that allows Apple to track the location of iPhone and iPad users has been treated as a shocking revelation by the media, and yet since October 2001, the FCC has mandated that all wireless carriers track the location of their users down to within 50 feet.
“Stunned iPhone and iPad owners have only just found out that all of their movements are tracked and stored in a hidden iOS file which gets synced to their PC every time they connect the phone,” reports Gadgets and Gizmos. “The name of the file is Consolidated.db and it uses the Apple devices’ GPS function to record your location and the time you were there.”
The secret file was found by computer experts and made public at the recent Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
The Wall Street Journal expanded on the revelations surrounding Apple on Friday by reporting that Google’s Android smart phones also, “Regularly transmit their locations back to…Google, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal—intensifying concerns over privacy and the widening trade in personal data.”
A bizarre initial reaction to the story from some quarters of the media and industry centered around the suggestion that the hidden file was “actually a bug which Apple should be looking to fix,” a theory dismissed almost instantly after it was confirmed other smart phone manufacturers were also tracking their users and that such efforts were “clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations.”
Indeed, as much as a year ago Apple admitted to the fact that it “intermittently” collects location data, including GPS coordinates, of many iPhone users and nearby Wi-Fi networks and transmits that data to itself every 12 hours, according to a letter the company sent to U.S. Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas),” reports the WSJ.
Google’s HTC Android phones collect location data every few minutes and transmit that information directly to Google several times an hour, including the unique phone identifier, meaning that Google can keep tabs on the movement of a known individual almost constantly. Since people now ubiquitously carry their cellphones everywhere they go, this is akin to having a tracking microchip implanted in your forehead.
However, far from being a recent phenomenon, as the media would have us believe, tracking of individuals via their cellphones has been going on for almost ten years at least.
Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the FCC mandated that by October 1, 2001 a quarter of all new cellphones be equipped with GPS functionality that would allow authorities to track the location of users. By the end of 2002, this became a mandatory requirement of all new cellphones.
As Geek.com reported back in October 2001, “Because cellphone calls to 911 (estimated at around 140,000 per year) do not give the 911 operator location information, the FCC mandated that wireless companies “be able to locate 67 percent of callers to 911 within 50 meters that elect the handset solution while those using network technology must be able to locate the caller within 100 meters.” Wireless companies must also have one-quarter of the new cellphones they offer equipped to provide that location information by the end of the year, and all new cellphones so equipped by the end of next year.”
As a PC World article written in August 2001, two months before the first phase of the new FCC rules were enacted, asked, “The FCC requires cell phone companies to track you, in order to find you when you call 911–but what about your privacy?”
“Cell phone tracking was propelled by the Federal Communications Commission, which adopted enhanced 911 rules to cover wireless services. For E911′s first phase, cellular carriers must be able to pinpoint, to the nearest cell tower, the location of someone calling 911. For Phase II, carriers must be able to pinpoint a 911 caller’s location to within 50 to 300 meters,” states the article.
Your cellphone has been tracking you in real time for the lion’s share of the last decade, so why has it taken the media nearly 10 years to notice? Because in 2001, when such measures could have been made illegal, there was no iPhone, there was no app store, and the smart phones being used were extremely crude compared to today’s models, which are no less than mini-laptops.
In 2001, cellphones did little else than make calls and send text messages – these services didn’t require GPS technology. People weren’t addicted to their cellphones like they are today, they didn’t use them to catalogue, record and process every aspect of their existence.
The likes of Apple have worked hard over the last decade to make hundreds of millions of people dependent on their gadgets, creating an army of addicts who couldn’t care less that their cellphone is transmitting their every move directly to Steve Jobs. In their eyes, the choice between sacrificing their privacy and sacrificing their precious “apps” is an easy one to make. Privacy can’t book a table at a restaurant in a few taps of a finger, nor can it tell you the weather forecast or where the nearest ATM is located.
If the debate had been allowed to run its course in 2001, when cellphone tracking was first being adopted, the outcome may have been different. But since cellphone companies have been tracking their users for the best part of a decade, in line with government mandates, the recent controversy is merely part of the acclimatization process to achieve calm subservience and acceptance of the fact that true privacy is dead, and as Henry Blodget explains, Apple’s omnipresent brainwashing campaign has helped keep the outrage to a minimum.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
In case you missed it, the iPhone (and iPad) apparently tracks its location and saves it to the phone, complete with handy little time stamps. So everywhere you go, it takes a record of it. A stalker’s dream, wouldn’t you say?
I don’t think anyone is too surprised that they can be tracked by a phone that contains location services. And if you have anything like Find My iPhone on your handset, you can pinpoint your phone’s location in real time.
But it’s the level of data retention that has raised some eyebrows, plus the danger posed by potential access to the file. And even if you switch off your location services, the phone will still keep track of you, because it uses data triangulated from mobile towers rather than the built-in GPS.
Apparently no other smartphone keeps the same creepy log of all your movements, so congratulations, Apple, you’ve scored another first. Though I doubt it’s one that will be making it into STeve’s next keynote, somehow.
If you’re interested to find out just what’s stored on your iPhone, have a look at the application here.
WASHINGTON: Apple has been accused of putting customers' privacy at risk after security researchers found that their iPhones were tracking users' locations and saving every details to a secret file.
The researchers found the device saves the latitude and longitude of users' locations, along with a time stamp, then copies the data to the owner's computer whenever the two are synchronised.
This means anyone who stole the phone or gained access to the computer it is paired with could build a detailed picture of the owner's movements.
"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody - a jealous spouse, a private detective - with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," the Daily Mail quoted Pete Warden , one of the researchers who discovered the file, as saying.
It has also emerged that Apple's iPad device also records location data...[Full Article]
Mandatory data retention 'raises serious privacy and free speech concerns'
WASHINGTON — The US Justice Department wants Internet service providers and cell phone companies to be required to hold on to records for longer to help with criminal prosecutions.
"Data retention is fundamental to the department's work in investigating and prosecuting almost every type of crime," US deputy assistant attorney general Jason Weinstein told a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday...
Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows.
The document, obtained by security researcher Christopher Soghoian, explains how so-called “Hotwatch” orders allow for real-time tracking of individuals in a criminal investigation via credit card companies, rental car agencies, calling cards, and even grocery store loyalty programs. The revelation sheds a little more light on the Justice Department’s increasing power and willingness to surveil Americans with little to no judicial or Congressional oversight...
In a bid to set parents' nerves at ease, a southwest suburban school district has become one of the first in the state to begin using GPS to track schoolchildren riding buses to and from school each day.
Palos Heights School District 128 had previously been using ZPass, a GPS technology provided by Seattle-based Zonar Systems, to track the buses. But now the district is outfitting students' backpacks with a luggage tag-sized unit that logs when the student steps on and off the bus...
[Webmaster - First in California...now in Illinois. They always make it for a "good reason". These children are being conditioned to be "good citizens" when they grow up. It will seem perfectly natural for them to take an implanted chip when the time comes in the future... And yes, that time WILL come...]
MercuryNews.com The Associated Press Posted: 08/18/2010 08:42:13 AM PDT
RICHMOND, Calif.—California officials are outfitting preschoolers in Contra Costa County with tracking devices they say will save staff time and money.
The system was introduced Tuesday. When at the school, students will wear a jersey that has a small radio frequency tag. The tag will send signals to sensors that help track children's whereabouts, attendance and even whether they've eaten or not.
School officials say it will free up teachers and administrators who previously had to note on paper files when a child was absent or had eaten.
Sung Kim of the county's employment and human services department said the system could save thousands of hours of staff time and pay for itself within a year.
It cost $50,000 and was paid by a federal grant.
[Webmaster - TRACK/TRACE/DATABASE... Next stop is the IMPLANTABLE microchip. They always target the most vulnerable members of society first...the children...the elderly...]
The largest U.S. websites are installing new and intrusive consumer-tracking technologies on the computers of people visiting their sites—in some cases, more than 100 tracking tools at a time—a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
The tracking files represent the leading edge of a lightly regulated, emerging industry of data-gatherers who are in effect establishing a new business model for the Internet: one based on intensive surveillance of people to sell data about, and predictions of, their interests and activities, in real time. The Journal's study shows the extent to which Web users are in effect exchanging personal data for the broad access to information and services that is a defining feature of the Internet.
The Journal's study shows the extent to which Web users are in effect exchanging personal data for the broad access to information and services that is a defining feature of the Internet.
In an effort to quantify the reach and sophistication of the tracking industry, the Journal examined the 50 most popular websites in the U.S. to measure the quantity and capabilities of the "cookies," "beacons" and other trackers installed on a visitor's computer by each site. Together, the 50 sites account for roughly 40% of U.S. page-views.
It's rarely a coincidence when you see Web ads for products that match your interests. WSJ's Christina Tsuei explains how advertisers use cookies to track your online habits.
The 50 sites installed a total of 3,180 tracking files on a test computer used to conduct the study. Only one site, the encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, installed none. Twelve sites, including IAC/InterActive Corp.'s Dictionary.com, Comcast Corp.'s Comcast.net and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com, installed more than 100 tracking tools apiece in the course of the Journal's test.
The Journal also surveyed its own site, WSJ.com, which doesn't rank among the top 50 by visitors. WSJ.com installed 60 tracking files, slightly below the 64 average for the top 50 sites.
Some two-thirds of the tracking tools installed—2,224—came from 131 companies that, for the most part, are in the business of following Internet users to create rich databases of consumer profiles that can be sold. The companies that placed the most such tools were Google Inc., Microsoft. and Quantcast Corp., all of which are in the business of targeting ads at people online...
Alexandria residents soon will have to pay for larger home recycling bins featuring built-in monitoring devices.
The City Council added a mandatory $9 charge to its residents' annual waste collection fee.
That cash -- roughly $180,000 collected from 19,000 residents-- will pay for new larger recycling carts equipped with computer microchips, which will allow the city to keep tabs on its bins and track resident participation in the city's recycling program...
WASHINGTON — Today's smartphones and PDAs could have a new use in the nation's airports: helping passengers avoid long lines at security checkpoints.
The Transportation Security Administration is looking at installing devices in airports that home in and detect personal electronic equipment. The aim is to track how long people are stuck in security lines.
Information about wait times could then be posted on websites and in airports across the country.
"This technology will produce valuable data that can be used in a variety of ways," TSA spokeswoman Lauren Gaches said, noting it could help prevent checkpoint snarls.
But civil-liberties experts worry that such a system enables the government to track people's whereabouts. "It's serious business when the government begins to get near people's personal-communication devices," said American Civil Liberties Union privacy expert Jay Stanley...
