[clug] Personal paranoia

[George at Clug]

     Brian,

I appreciate your posting.  I apologise if people were troubled by
it. 

I may have been the person who started the "personal internet
security" thread, if not, at times I certainly have contributed to it.

My concern is that for some time the Internet has been a fun place we
can share information and ideas with a wider group of people than our
own small communities, it has been great thing for people who live
isolated by geography or by physical limitations,but now things are
changing. 

Where once we could be relative anonymous, now there are groups who
will be able to identify us and know more about ourselves than even we
do, and to make matter worse, they may get the wrong idea about us,
they may gather a false understanding, and then use this to judge us.
Has anyone every had issues with a credit company deciding you are a
risk because you once forgot to pay a bill, or the worse case
scenario, someone abused your identity? Fortuately this has never
happened to me personally, but it does happened to people form time to
time.

My concern is about what will people do with technology.  It is not
just hiding from a terrorist group or a rogue government. How about a
wife and children are relocated and given a new home away from a
violent father, a criminal person trying to start a new life, someone
trying to get a way from a stalker.  There was once a time some of
this was possible, now it will be increasingly difficult.

I am not even sure that I want a shop window to recognise me, look up
my purchases and start displaying items that I previously bought for
people who are with me to see my purchasing habits (I buy way too much
cheap-brand chocolate).

I realise that if I use Microsoft Windows, if I use Google search
engine, then my personal privacy will be decreased.  I do not use
Facebook because it was a given that using such applications decreases
your privacy. I was able to control that by choosing not to use
Facebook.

Soon I will have to stop using Microsoft Windows, so will Linux
provide me the privacy I once enjoyed.

You may all laugh at this, but the first time it really hit me was
when I was was trailing Windows 8.1 and it grabbed all my photos and
started to display them on my unattended computer (a screen saver like
action I think), but I did not want all my photos displayed to every
one to see, and I had not asked it. The OS thought it knew better. And
I believe Windows 10 will take this all a step further.

So here I am just asking where will all this face recognition, cloud
storage of private and personal information, massive live databases of
our data going to go. Up to know the community and technical
limitations has placed safeguards on the government, but now they want
to remove the safeguards,  and the big corporations, criminal
element, terrorist groups do not care about safeguards.

Can Linux be operating system that can provide people with an
alternative means of communications with a reasonable level of privacy
?

I guess it is too late but the community in general needs to open
there eyes and see what is happening. Whether they can stop this or
not, who knows.


http://www.businessinsider.com.au/advertisers-using-facial-recognition-technology-2013-5?op=1#carnegie-mellons-science-lab-created-a-toy-drone-outfitted-with-facial-recognition-software-so-advanced-that-it-can-identify-a-face-from-a-far-distance-the-labs-research-is-expected-to-take-surveillance-to-a-whole-other-level-1
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/04/21/facial-recognition-coming-soon-to-a-shopping-mall-near-you/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444897304578044322254166986

http://techland.time.com/2011/12/12/face-recognition-technology-comes-to-malls-and-nightclubs/

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-walmart-write-rules-facial-recognition/245707/

Facebook, Walmart, and other companies planning to use
facial-recognition scans for security or tailored sales pitches will
help write rules for how images and online profiles can be used.

The U.S. Department of Commerce will start meeting with industry and
privacy advocates in February to draft a voluntary code of conduct for
using facial recognition products, according to a public notice. The
draft will ready by June.





At Monday, 23-03-2015 on 00:20 Bryan Kilgallin wrote:


{In a new online threat to American military personnel, the Islamic 
State has called on its members and sympathizers in the United States
to 
kill 100 service members whose names, photos and purported addresses
it 
posted on a website.

The group said that the personnel had participated in efforts to
defeat 
it in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere.

Defense Department and F.B.I. officials said that they were aware of
the 
website and were investigating the posting.

It does not appear that the information had been hacked from
government 
servers. One Defense Department official, who was not authorized to 
speak publicly, said that most of the information could be found in 
public records, residential address search sites and social media.

The officials said the list appears to be drawn from personnel who
have 
appeared in news articles about airstrikes on the militant group.}

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/world/middleeast/isis-urges-sympathizers-to-kill-us-service-members-it-identifies-on-website.html

-- 
www.netspeed.com.au/bryan/

-- 
linux mailing list
linux at lists.samba.org
https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux