Privacy lost...

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
16,328
“Theresa May’s response is predictable but disappointing,” says Paul Bernal at the University of East Anglia, UK. “If you stop ‘safe places’ for terrorists, you stop safe places for everyone, and we rely on those safe places for a great deal of our lives.”

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ated-calls-to-ban-encryption-still-wont-work/
Banning encryption is the equivalent of trying to ban the XOR function.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOR_cipher
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
16,328
This is something I didn't know:

Those dots are part of a DocuColor pattern, a grid of 15 by 8 yellow dots repeated over the edges of printed pages. It's a code packed with tracking information, and can be translated to tell you the time, date and serial number of the printer it came from.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nsa-leaker-reality-winner-secret-printer/
https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

The idiot used a government printer and computer system (she also emailed the news outlet from her work computer o_O) so you can bet there are more than just publicly known watermarks on the pages to identify the source.
 
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nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
16,328
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/19/mexico-cellphone-software-spying-journalists-activists
The Mexican government has deployed sophisticated software to spy on journalists, activists and anti-graft groups as they worked to highlight some of the country’s most notorious cases of crime, corruption and abuse of authority.

Targets received SMS messages with links which appeared legitimate but led to false sites and the installation of malware on their mobile phones, according to an investigation by the press freedom organisation Article 19 and Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
I saw that today and thought, "So what? The U.S. government is years ahead of them, maybe decades."

"Perhaps “yes” or “no” is a bit too much to spit out for the NSA."
https://www.rt.com/usa/government-cell-phone-olsen/

"U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices"
https://theintercept.com/2015/12/17...government-gear-for-spying-on-your-cellphone/

"It's not just the NSA"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/08/cellphone-data-spying-nsa-police/3902809/

Not bothering to post anything about the legality of cell phone spying because our government is not hampered by laws or court rulings. Those are just for us peons.
 

JoeJester

Joined Apr 26, 2005
4,390
Not bothering to post anything about the legality of cell phone spying because our government is not hampered by laws or court rulings. Those are just for us peons.
Between facebook and google, those two companies know more about us than any government agency.
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Between facebook and google, those two companies know more about us than any government agency.
They give it all to our government, so how can they know more than our government?
I don't Facebook or Google, but I go out in public where I am photographed from my face to my license plate.
Facebook and Google don't have those data points. Our government does.

Now our government wants, "Real ID" or something like that, so I have to pay one government office $10 to give me a copy of my birth certificate so I can hand it to another government office. If 1/3rd of Americans have to do that, it amounts to a billion dollar tax, sent straight to the department of public records.:mad:
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,765
OK. I read it. Why should it bother me? How can it affect me? What does a hacker do with 200 million names and addresses? That can be had from a large pile of phone books. What else was in there? Has anybody been affected besides the idiot who put all that on Amazon Cloud without password protection?
Good point... I guess that the real damage can only be estimated by the level of detail that said database contains... otherwise it's no better than a phone book...
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Good point... I guess that the real damage can only be estimated by the level of detail that said database contains... otherwise it's no better than a phone book...
Thanks for answering. My post was a knee-jerk reaction to alleged news that lacked any details relevant to anybody who wasn't already involved.:oops: Bad reporting wasn't your fault, but when you bring it here, I have to ask you how useful it is.
 

justtrying

Joined Mar 9, 2011
439
After the recent wannacry scare, at work all passwords been to be 12 characters in length, with some variation and changed every month... how do you think people go about remembering these? It is a failing game - hospitals held ransom for medical data... there are too many failing points and too much vulnerability.

Talk about privacy - last year, my tax return got sent to wrong address because they misread my handwriting (yes, I file my taxes on paper). I have been locked out of my online account because they use address to verify my identity and the address they have is wrong. They of course would not tell me where they actually send my tax info... To unlock the account, they send a code to your home address! Government security at your best. It took me several talks with different people to figure out the address situation. I am trying to find strength and patience to call them again as I have moved and they should have my new address now. I can try and request the bloody code again...

I think we are in the age of global scizophrenia...
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,765
Thanks for answering. My post was a knee-jerk reaction to alleged news that lacked any details relevant to anybody who wasn't already involved.:oops: Bad reporting wasn't your fault, but when you bring it here, I have to ask you how useful it is.
No worries, I never expect poetry when you answer one of my posts... besides, most people hate frigging poetry :D
 

JoeJester

Joined Apr 26, 2005
4,390
Databases like that contain names, addresses, voting history, party affiliation, etc. At least it was the last time I saw that type of database (1993). From there you can discriminate on who gets your mailings, who is likely to send you a donation, etc.

We all know there are not 200 Million Republicans in this country. There is probably around 200 million voters though.
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,765
Databases like that contain names, addresses, voting history, party affiliation, etc. At least it was the last time I saw that type of database (1993). From there you can discriminate on who gets your mailings, who is likely to send you a donation, etc.

We all know there are not 200 Million Republicans in this country. There is probably around 200 million voters though.
200M voters in a 350M people nation... that's a ratio of 57% of people aged 18 and above, assuming that they all vote... it sounds as though the U.S.'s population is getting old...

united-states-population-pyramid-2016.gif
Mexico ain't so well either, btw... The whole western world is suffering from this population inversion. Plus Japan and China, although for entirely different reasons.
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
it sounds as though the U.S.'s population is getting old...
My first instinct is that people live a lot more than 36 years, so there should be more people above 18 than below 18.
If life expectancy is 78.8 years
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf
That's 60.8 years to live after an American is 18, or 3.378 times as many years as 18 years.
Now, why wouldn't there be more people older than 18?
And yet, the National Vital Stastics Report (linked above) refers to the aging of America on the first page.

"The age-adjusted death rate, which accounts for the aging of the population, was 731.9 deaths per 100,000 U.S.standard population."

I guess they mean aging compared to previously. Because you know about the, "baby boom" after WW II, you know there was a big bump in population from 1942 to 1960,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers
and now, we're getting old, like 57 to 75, and we're dropping like flies.:( Until we drop dead, that baby boom is registering as a bump in the aged population. I would guess that in 20 years the, "aging of America" will not be a statistical reality.
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,765
My first instinct is that people live a lot more than 36 years, so there should be more people above 18 than below 18.
If life expectancy is 78.8 years
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf
That's 60.8 years to live after an American is 18, or 3.378 times as many years as 18 years.
Now, why wouldn't there be more people older than 18?
And yet, the National Vital Stastics Report (linked above) refers to the aging of America on the first page.

"The age-adjusted death rate, which accounts for the aging of the population, was 731.9 deaths per 100,000 U.S.standard population."

I guess they mean aging compared to previously. Because you know about the, "baby boom" after WW II, you know there was a big bump in population from 1942 to 1960,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers
and now, we're getting old, like 57 to 75, and we're dropping like flies.:( Until we drop dead, that baby boom is registering as a bump in the aged population. I would guess that in 20 years the, "aging of America" will not be a statistical reality.
Most sources I've read state that the bayby boom era ended in 1964, which is the year that I was born.

Funny fact: My parents lived in the U.S. for almost 10 years while my father studied pediatrics at Tulane University, and then did his practice in North Dakota and Louisiana. Two of my siblings where born in the U.S. during this period. But I was conceived in the U.S. and born here because my dad thought it was time to come back home... I guess that makes me "The last of the Baby Boomers" ... :D
 
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