Lives in a Shoe

Travel Safe Now, Y'Hear?

After pointlessly groping countless Americans, the TSA is keeping a secret watchlist of those who fight back.

Naturally, the TSA’s official definition of troublemaking goes well beyond punching its officers. According to a confidential memo, any behavior that is “offensive and without legal justification” can land a traveler on the list, as can any “challenges to the safe and effective completion of screening.” Anyone who has ever “loitered” near a checkpoint could also make the list. So could any woman who pushes a screener’s hands away from her breasts.

The memo would be more accurate if it stated that anyone who fails to unquestioningly submit to all the TSA’s demands would be found guilty of insubordination. As an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, Hugh Handeyside, told the Washington Post, the policy gives the agency wide latitude to “blacklist people arbitrarily and essentially punish them for asserting their rights.” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey) expressed similar worry. “I am concerned about the civil-liberty implications of such a list,” she said.

The watchlist would seem less perilous if the TSA were not one of most incompetent agencies on Earth.

Travel Safe Now, Y'Hear?

It's As If Some Bureaucrat Were Sitting Around Thinking of Ways to Make Life Worst for Everyone

How government wrecked the gas can.

Soap doesn’t work. Toilets don’t flush. Clothes washers don’t clean. Light bulbs don’t illuminate. Refrigerators break too soon. Paint discolors. Lawnmowers have to be hacked. It’s all caused by idiotic government regulations that are wrecking our lives one consumer product at a time, all in ways we hardly notice.

Americans -- You are already thinking of hacks...(hint: think water containers...)

 

 

Equal and Opposite Reaction, Maybe?

Amazon will be opening has opened a store in Seattle with software that recognizes your face and keeps track of your purchases so they are charged to your account and you do not need to tarry at the checkout counter.  Okay. Maybe.

Then I learned about Adam Harvey who is developing has developed a camouflage fabric intended to confuse the software so it cannot distinguish you from Millard Fillmore.   It involves printing patterns of pixels on to clothing or textiles that look, to computers, like they could be faces, with eyes, noses, mouths and ears. Okay.

Then somehow I have learned that young Adam, as HyperFace, is involved with something called NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism ("a transmedia exploration of black women and the roles they play in technology, society and culture") which we are told "will explore an Afrocentric countersurveillance aesthetic."

The page is noted to be fleeting so I have copied all of it, what little there is, below the jump.  But here's the deal, maybe: HyperFace reduces the confidence score of the true face (figure) by redirecting more attention to the nearby false face regions (ground). O-kay.

Disclaimer at bottom of page:  "Will not make you invisible."

Why do we care?  

As far as sophistication goes, Facebook’s systems are apparently approaching the point where they don’t even have to see your face to recognize your face, and Microsoft has been showing off technology that can decipher emotions from the facial expressions of people who attend political rallies, recognize their genders and guesstimate their ages.

Researchers have also demonstrated that algorithms can be trained to identify people by matching previously observed patterns around their heads and bodies, even when their faces are blurred or obscured.

It’s that area around the face that Harvey’s HyperFace is designed to obfuscate, by throwing high-confidence-level faces all around your true face so machines will gravitate toward the fake faces.

Every Move You Make

They'll be watching you.

A hidden feature buried deep in the architecture of both Apple and Android phones is secretly keeping a record of every place you visit. Although the data is easy to delete, the feature must be turned off manually via your phone’s settings, and many users do not even know the feature exists...

 

Won't Be Used to Identify Jews, Says Government

Kind of creepy. From the Kuwaiti Times.

KUWAIT: The DNA testing law that will go into effect this year is aimed at creating an integrated security database and does not include genealogical implications or affects personal freedoms and privacy. Senior officials told Kuwait Times that the law, the first of its kind in the world, will only be used for criminal security purposes. When the law (no. 78/2015) is applied, it will be binding on all citizens, expatriates and visitors too. A Kuwaiti security delegation had earlier visited Washington to study DNA testing systems there.

Fight the Power

Apple engineers quietly discuss refusing to create the FBI's back door.

Related: US Government Has Apparently Demanded, And Obtained, Tech Companies' Source Code In The Past

 

Windows 10

SO THE TECH COMPANIES ARE JUST AN ARM OF THE GOVERNMENT NOW:

Windows 10 covertly sends your disk-encryption keys to Microsoft. And under the “third party doctrine,” the government can get them from Microsoft without a warrant. But wait, there’s more:
Windows 10 has many unprecedented anti-user features: a remote killswitch that lets it disable your hardware; keylogging and browser-history logging that, by default, sends it all to Microsoft, and a deceptive “privacy mode” that continues to exfiltrate your data, even when you turn it on.

Article here:  Boing Boing.

I don’t trust these guys.

-- Glenn Reynolds

I've Been Telling You...

...and now the Atlantic is onboard.

Article is humorous, yes.  Maybe.  But it's like reading about lice. You don't realize you are starting to itch but you do.

If you're not paranoid, you're crazy

Or you're just not paying attention.

Are you aware of the NSA site in Utah?  If you're not, you should be.  Wired has referred to it as, "in effect, the NSA's cloud".

As far as I know Rand Paul is the only candidate mentioning this.

 

 

The Cameras Are Already There

Using cameras already in place.

How Boston Police Used Facial Recognition Technology to Spy on Thousands of Music Festival Attendees

[A]mong the capabilities was one that seems particularly egregious and questionably necessary: “Face Capture of every person who approaches the door.”