Tag Archives: privacy

Unknown devices…..

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Unknown devices keep showing up under network adapters in my device manager. I keep disabling them and they keep showing up.

They have no signature, no device ID or function, no location or vendor information. They just have the word root and then a number.

Then there’s the comment link on which I accidentally clicked that took me to an empty website. Was someone tying to download something or find my IP address?

My computer got very buggy and slow yesterday. Then my security software keeps turning off.

Worse, there are the unknown devices of my fellow man.

Someone sent me an email at which to contact them. The handle was something like city-slicker@usa.com (not the actual handle, of course).

Now do high-profile people usually have emails with such handles,  and, even if they do, do they give it out to strangers on the web?  Do they insist on contacting you and then insist that you respond only on personal email and private cell numbers?

And then do they comment on this blog using a fake handle?

One with a link on which I accidentally click that takes me to an empty website set up a long while ago?

Methinks I smell a set-up.  Especially when the high-profile one claims to have intelligence contacts/experience.

I could be wrong, of course. In which case, my profound apologies.

But that is why I do not respond except in ways I choose.

And that is why I like to keep it strictly about politics, except for people who have actually intersected with me.

Even then, I tend to be wary.

Anything a stranger needs to tell me can be posted at this blog.

If it’s confidential and has some public importance, disguise the information and post pseudonymously.

If it’s private information, please find a personal friend in whom to confide.

It does you, the reader, and me, the blogger,  no good to confuse web-reality with real-reality.

Google: Cyberbullying for profit

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An anonymous Australian web-site reveals how Google has a financial incentive to cyber-bully people by elevating smear-and-extort sites like The Ripoff Report.

(I will not link to it, but here is Wikipedia’s entry on the Ripoff Report):

[Side-note: One of my attackers on the web seems to have been affiliated with this site,  which essentially runs an extortion racket by smearing people via hired proxies and then asking for money from the victims to remove the smears.]

UPDATE September 20th 2013: Victory

A large number of major companies have removed their advertisements from Ripoff Report.

This webpage contains an overview of the project.

The updated full report can be downloaded from this url:

https://www.adrive.com/public/9u3aau/Cyberbullying for Profit September 2013.zip

A list of examples URLs from Ripoff Report containing offensive material about children, public figures and individuals is contained in an attachment to the report but an also be found here:

This video explains how Google priorities links from Ripoff Report in its search results.

This video shows that Google considers Ripoff Report has unacceptable  business practices. So why does it advertise on its webpages? The answer is…..advertising revenue for  Google (see above).

Overview

The website Ripoff Report and other websites that emulate the business model of ‘cyberbullying for profit’  publish false and offensive information about minors, teenager, adults and businesses and these are often accompanied by photographs and identifying details.   Ripoff Report also publishes extremely racist and homophobic material, offensive material about religious groups, public figures and ‘celebrities’. While the material about public figures appears to be given a low Google page rank, the names of children, teenagers, ordinary people and small business owners ‘reported’ on these websites is contained in snippets displayed at or near the top of the Google search results (SERPs). These snippets contain names and location details couched in terms such as ‘ripoff’, ‘fraud, ‘pedophile’, ‘scam’, ‘whore’, ‘slut, ‘prostitute’, ‘skank’, ‘murderer’, ‘bitch’ ‘faggot’ ‘liar’ ‘drug abuser’, ‘cunt’, ‘stalker’, ‘HIV’ and/or ‘AIDS’ and other accusatory and derogatory terms.  

Ripoff Report earns revenue from two sources – advertising and payments from victims to the website to ‘rehabilitate’ their reputation in the Google search results or remove the false material. Despite the fact that the claims are false, if a person cannot pay their life is ruined because, as stated by Google, their search engine is often ‘the first place people look for information that’s published’ about a person.

Even if the allegations can be proven to be false Ripoff Report will not remove the material unless they are paid a substantial ‘corporate advocacy’, or ‘arbitration’ fee. In response to removal requests, Google provides a number of excuses and victims must find an ‘ex-gratia’ payment in order to ensure the material is removed from the Google index and ameliorate the danger towards their children and/0r save their livelihoods and businesses. Furthermore, Ripoff Report publishes registered trade names and copyrighted photographs without permission. It claims a copyright over the webpages. This business model is enabled by both a high Google page rank  and advertising revenue. The companies and business that advertise on Ripoff Report supply this revenue and support the endangerment and cyberbullying of children, teenagers and adults and the destruction of careers and livelihoods. This project arose out of my own experience with the publication of false and defamatory material on these websites.

Despite the fact that it takes only a couple of minutes to remove links from the Google index, after four years of notifications, pleading with the website and Google, and litigation against Google it has not been removed. ……I sued Google for defamation in February 2011 with the hope that it would simply remove the links and I could then move on with my life. My hope was misplaced. …….

…Despite the fact that Google refuse most removal requests, they have quietly removed links for other victims of Ripoff Report.

[Lila: I have seen Google actively suppress information that exposes the financial mafia,which is to the left, politically.]

“For obvious reasons I cannot and will not publish the names of these people because they likely paid a substantial amount to either the websites or Google to save their families and livelihoods.

However, Google can and does remove websites and links without much effort.

For example, since December 2011 Google has removed almost 90,000 links from its index at the request of Ripoff Report. Many of those links contained registered trademarks and copyrighted photographs but it appears that Ripoff Report is  not questioned about these DMCA issues by Google. My blog, was also removed from the Google index soon after it went online.  If this appears difficult to believe consider that the removal occurred  after I drew attention to the blog by applying for AdSense advertising as an experiment.

In fact, I clearly stated on my blog that I was suing Google. Apparently’ freedom of speech’ only applies unless one says something negative about Google.

My blog was magically re-indexed in the Google index within hours of my public complaint in a blog conversation in which Matt Cutts was participating. The documents showing the removal and reinstatement of my blog in the Google SERPs can be downloaded from this link.“

[Lila : Here is a previous blog post of mine, from 2009, where I reference Ripoff  Report and its owner, in the context of describing the nexus of organized crime and short-sellers.]

Google’s “Hummingbird”: IP Theft & Mind-Control

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Google’s new search algorithm Hummingbird adds to the company’s sinister reputation among privacy advocates.

Google’s creepy Google Glass didn’t help it either.

Now comes Hummingbird, the biggest algorithm change in the search engine in twelve years.

“Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words,” Sullivan reports. “It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that ‘place’ means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that ‘iPhone 5s’ is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.”

(“Hummingbird is Google’s biggest algorithm change in 12 years,” WebProNews,  Sept. 28, 2013)

Simply put, Hummingbird is about Google trying to find the holistic meaning behind the individual words of a search-string (the query or series of words you input into the search function),  or, in the case of websites, the overall intent behind the key-words most used.

Bottom-line: Google is trying to figure out what’s going on in your mind when you type out certain words.

That is terribly similar to an area of research dear to the defense and spy agencies – predictive software and technology.

For instance,  DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is very interested in developing the cognitive footprints of users for identification purposes.

The goal is to bypass the need for passwords, which tend to be cumbersome for users and vulnerable to password-cracking, phishing, social-engineering, memory failures, and hardware theft.

“Software biometric modalities” are to be used to develop what it terms Active Authentication.

Anyone can see how useful the new Hummingbird algorithm would be to DARPA.

Indeed, given Google’s prior collaboration with the CIA in the monitoring of social media, it wouldn’t be surprising if Hummingbird has also come out of a joint project with the government.

The defense agencies come up with the technology to figure out what random “bad guys” are up to. Google monetizes it and returns the favor by data-sharing with the government.

The consumer might have his every need…indeed wish…met, but web-users are now going to find that Google’s “free lunch:” is not only not free, it’s not remotely cheap.

And web users are the ones footing the bill.

Here’s how.

“Google Hummingbird: Where no search has gone before,” Jeremy Hull, iProspect, Wired, October 15, 2013

“Google has updated its search algorithm many times over the past few years, but previous updates were focused on making Google better at gathering information — for example, indexing websites more often and identifying spammy content. Hummingbird is focused on the user. It’s about Google getting better at understanding what searchers really want and providing them with better answers.”

That’s Google’s stated objective, of course. But how about websites?

When you search Google for answers to questions, what website owners want is for you to go to their site to get the information.

This is not only because they might hope to sell you something and thereby earn a living.

It’s also because they hope that by giving you good information not available in the mainstream media,  they might attract you to their site and persuade you on other issues.

By offering free information, web writers hope you will find them reliable, credible, or interesting and become committed readers. That’s why millions of writers and websites, spend inordinate amounts of energy and time finding answers and giving them away to others for free.

Of course, ethics and decency demand that readers who benefit from that information cite the place they found it and give the author credit.

Not Hummingbird.

It harvests information from the net and puts it on Information cards that pop up in answer to searches.

Now, if the information is immediately given to the reader by Google, why will they visit the websites from which Google might have culled the answer?

They won’t.  That means that Google is not only stealing the private data of its users through Gmail, Google Earth, and a bunch of other programs, it’s also stealing from the websites it’s supposed to be helping.

But “Hummingbird” is not just unfriendly to websites offering information to the public, it acts to control what information is presented to you and how.

Hummingbird’s graphic is an easy way for Google to give you what Google (and very likely, the government) want you to know, rather than what you might learn if you delved into your search results yourself.

The new graphic could even give you downright misleading or inaccurate information. Just think about Snopes, the ostensibly myth-busting site that somehow manages to bust myths only in left-liberal ways.

So, Hummingbird is not only using your personal information for Google’s own commercial (and the government’s surveillance) purposes, it’s using information from blogs/websites, without their permission, for its own operations.

That’s two counts of IP theft.

Then, the whole business of trying to determine exactly what you’re thinking when you type certain things into the search function sounds awfully like mind-reading to me. In order to do that kind of mind-reading, all sorts of personal information from your web usage (even more than Google has been collecting so far) has to be collated and compared. Mapped, if you will.

That’s two counts of privacy invasion.

Finally, by manipulating access to the knowledge available on the Internet, under the guise of consumer satisfaction, by giving you pre-packaged answers before it gives you your search results, Google is actually  trying to control your thinking.

That’s one count of mind-control.

Is it any surprise that the new algorithm shares its name with DARPA’s nano flying robot/drone Hummingbird, which beats its wings like a bird?.

DARPA’s Hummingbird is a spy drone:

“The drone, built by AeroVironment with funding from DARPA, is able to fly forwards, backwards, and sideways, as well as rotate clockwise and counterclockwise. Not only does the ‘bot resemble its avian inspiration in size (it’s only slightly larger than a hummingbird, with a 6.5-inch wingspan and a weight of 19 grams), it also looks impressively like a hummingbird in flight.

But that’s not vanity — it’s key to the drone’s use as a spy device, as it can perch near its subject without alerting it.”

Google’s Hummingbird seems no less innocuous and no less insidious.

It’s more evil-doing from the Franken-SearchEngine that routinely spies for the NSA and CIA and systematically  commits Intellectual Property theft.

Read more at Entrepreneur .com

Anti-Spy Wear: Modest Swim-Suits Fight the Pornocracy

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In an age of universal surveillance and blackmail, involuntary porn, state-mandated voyeurism, mass rape and sodomy of prisoners,  Google-Glass, and citizen-spying, modest swim-wear might be the most astute political statement a woman can make.

It protects her privacy and dignity from snoopers and pornographers, looking for cheap shots, as well as from state operatives and contractors, fattening their files for blackmailing purposes.

I’ve made the connection between surveillance and blackmail many times on this blog and even back in 2004, in essays on virtual crime (used later in Language of Empire).

Alfred McCoy’s recent piece on the subject (cited above) substantiates the accuracy of my analysis.

The making and circulation of pornographic images are powerful tools of the state-corporate complex.

The key role of such images in blackmailing operations that universalize the power of the state is precisely the reason I am less than admiring of theorists who praise the public virtues of blackmail unthinkingly, people like Murray Rothbard and Walter Block.

Check out the Christian blog,  Big-is-Beautiful, for attractive, modern swimwear that is modest….

..that lets a woman be a lady and leaves her physical dignity and privacy intact.

(Here is a list of modest swim-wear made for Jewish ladies; this one is for Muslims).

Ten Ways To Fight The Police State

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Image: technologyjones.com

There are ways to fight the police-state, on your own, without joining any group or party and giving up your independence.  Protecting your privacy on the Internet is one of them.

Just don’t forget that a lot of privacy sites are really government projects. The idea is to steer you to privacy software put out by the government’s buddies. It’s the oldest trick in the book.

But given that, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself. Here are ten of them.

1. Get your name and address off of mailing lists, subscriber lists, forms, directories, and data centers. You may need to keep doing that every year, as long as you have a credit card with your home address on it.

2.  Use Google only if you need to. Otherwise, use private/anonymous search engines. There are a few. I won’t name them, because when people start selecting one or other engine, then the powers-that-be start paying more attention and screw things up for them.

3. Use a virtual private network, but use it with caution. There’s a Catch-22 here. The free ones probably make money by selling your information… or worse. The ones that aren’t free need you to sign up on the net with an account and a credit card. Which means another vulnerability.  Passwords can be hacked and licenses can be stolen. Plus, VPN’s with servers and HQ’s in America, Britain, Europe and many other places, cannot protect your privacy if you get caught up with the police or lawyers, even tangentially.  Your ISP and VPN provider will be forced to comply with subpoenas and laws that demand data-sharing.

Completely anonymous off-shore VPN’s on the other hand can arouse government suspicion, even if you’re as innocent as a baa lamb.

Also, what if someone hijacks your VPN to commit crimes? How would you prove it wasn’t you, if someone wanted  to incriminate you?

I  asked the  FBI this recently, and they tell me that they can figure it out. But do you really want to be in a position where only the FBI can clear your name? And what if it’s the FBI that wants to get you in trouble? I mean, it’s not unheard of.

4. Limit what you do on the Internet. If you can’t stop using the net altogether (which is really the best option), try to curtail what you do. Limit what you buy on the net. Stop sending sensitive emails, even encrypted ones, over the net.  If you have to sell on the Internet to make a living, stay on top of computer crime by following a good security forum. Wilders is one.

5. Share computers or use public computers.  Lots of times, the easiest way to be private is to use a  computer used by other people you can trust, so long as you don’t input sensitive information. That way what you do is mixed up with what lots of other people are doing and it’s harder to track.

6. Don’t tell anyone your privacy tricks. I used to suggest things on this blog before, like using Scroogle or Ixquick. I don’t any more. The more people start using one trick, the more the government…or the criminals on the net…starts focusing on that trick. I’m not about to research things so people can track and harass me using my own research against me.

Who would do such a scummy thing?  Short answer – scum.

On the net, the scum rises to the top.

7. Don’t put your ideas out on the net, unless you’re prepared for everyone to take them without credit. While many people try to be ethical, a substantial number think that the ease of digital crime is a justification for it.

Keep your thoughts to yourself for other reasons, as well.  Any opinion you voice publicly is going to be held against you.

Write what your conscience demands. Just be sure you can live with how people will use it, misuse it, and abuse it.

8.  Avoid social media, unless you have to connect with someone for a reason. I deleted my Facebook account, my Digg account, Technorati, and a bunch of other things I don’t want to mention. I keep my blog up for several reasons, but from the viewpoint of privacy, it’s a terrible thing. I sometimes wish I had never begun it.

9. Keep a low profile. Even if you do have to write/blog, try to keep it under the radar. Blogging about politics is always going to get attention. You can’t avoid that. But you can always avoid  confrontations. You can always make an effort to give both sides their due,  You can filter comments, avoid posting on forums/sites you don’t know personally, and side-step flame-wars with all the cretins and sociopaths out there.

The net is a highway.  You’re driving next to strangers. Honking your horn or waving a hand at them is OK. Getting into their cars and driving off to dinner with them is another.

10. Watch your IP (Internet Protocol). Your IP address is being harvested by someone all the time. Cookies collect it, forums and boards record it, email providers and search engines track it.  You can disguise it or change it, but determined people can always get hold of  an IP.

That means they can figure out where you are, physically. Which is pretty unnerving. I’ve had a few nasty experiences when enemies got hold of my IP.

So change your IP as much as you need to; change your computer and  ISP provider every year, or even every six months. It’s not so hard to change a computer if you buy it refurbished or second-hand. A good Dell laptop can be had for about $120.  You can always sell the old one and get back some of your money.

On the other hand, you might want to arrange for a few traps for any would-be spies. In that case, your approach might be a bit different…..Be creative.

As for ISP’s, there are always deals, if you look for them.  Quote a price and ask your ISP if they will match it.  In this economy, companies are willing to lower their rates to attract customers.

The Traitorware Among Us

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Eva Galperin at EFF:

“Your digital camera may embed metadata into photographs with the camera’s serial number or your location. Your printer may be incorporating a secret code on every page it prints which could be used to identify the printer and potentially the person who used it. If Apple puts a particularly creepy patent it has recently applied for into use, you can look forward to a day when your iPhone may record your voice, take a picture of your location, record your heartbeat, and send that information back to the mothership.

This is traitorware: devices that act behind your back to betray your privacy.

Perhaps the most notable example of traitorware was the Sony rootkit. In 2005 Sony BMG produced CD’s which clandestinely installed a rootkit onto PC’s that provided administrative-level access to the users’ computer. The copy-protected music CD’s would surreptitiously install its DRM technology onto PC’s. Ostensibly, Sony was trying prevent consumers from making multiple copies of their CD’s, but the software also rendered the CD incompatible with many CD-ROM players in PC’s, CD players in cars, and DVD players. Additionally, the software left a back door open on all infected PC’s which would give Sony, or any hacker familiar with the rootkit, control over the PC. And if a consumer should have the temerity to find the rootkit and try to remove the offending drivers, the software would execute code designed to disable the CD drive and trash the PC.

Traitorware is sometimes included in products with less obviously malicious intent. Printer dots were added to certain color laser printers as a forensics tool for law enforcement, where it could help authenticate documents or identify forgeries. Apple’s scary-sounding patent for the iPhone is meant to help locate and disable the phone if it is lost of stolen. Don’t let these good intentions fool you—software that hides itself from you while it gives your personal data away to a third party is dangerous and dishonest. As the Sony BMG rootkit demonstrates, it may even leave your device wide open to attacks from third parties.

Traitorware is not some science-fiction vision of the future. It is the present. Indeed, the Sony rootkit dates back to 2005. Apple’s patent application indicates that we are likely to see more traitorware on the horizon. When that happens, EFF will be there to fight it. We believe that your software and devices should not be a tool for gathering your personal data without your explicit consent.”

South Asia Increasingly Under Biometric Surveillance

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Wired.com has a piece on the collection of biometric data on hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan.

According to NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan commander Lt. Gen. William Caldwell (as reported to Wired’s Danger Room) the idea is to screen applicants for Army positions to keep out people with ties to the Taliban or criminal histories. But with biometric files are being compiled on Afghans at the rate of 20-25 per week, the process is likely to include a large number of ordinary citizens, especially as there’s now a  plan in the works that aims to have biometric ID’s for some 1.65 million Afghans by May 2011 through the “population registration division” of the Afghan Ministry of the Interior. Apparently, Caldwell is taking a leaf out of the book of General Petraeus, who used biometric monitoring to keep on top of the Iraqi resistance. It’s also modeled on monitoring during the siege of Fallujah, when the only way to get in and out of the place was with an ID card that needed an iris scan.

Right now, there are apparently two biometric projects in the country, one run by the Afghans accounting for about a quarter of a million files and the other by the Americans, which has nearly half a million, but  so far, there’s not been much integration between the two. The Afghan involvement is a change from the past, when Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has shut down  biometric monitoring at checkpoints by NATO as a violation of Afghan sovereignty.

Meanwhile,  neighboring India has already launched the first biometrically verified universal ID on a national scale. While not compulsory, it will be needed to access certain social and financial services, and is intended for the entire population of 1.2 billion. Biometric IDs were first used in India in 2002 to check corruption involved in accessing services and rations meant for the poor.

Earlier this year (July 2010), Afghanistan and Pakistan concluded a trade agreement that included the exchange of biometric data as part of the deal.

UK Mind-Reading Surveillance System Monitors Anti-Social Behavior

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Along the lines of Google Suggest, which replaces your own thoughts with intrusive suggestions, the cheery little police state in Britain is exploring some anticipatory thought control of its own:

“The technology, called Sigard, monitors movements and speech to detect signs of threatening behaviour.

Its designers claim the system can anticipate anti-social behaviour and violence by analysing the information picked up its sensors. Continue reading →

Echelon: The Global Spy System

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An article by Nicky Hager at Cryptome.org from Covert Action Quarterly (1998) about Echelon. Hager’s book on the subject, “Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role In the International Spy Network,” is dated 1996, so I’m a little confused by the dating of the article. Echelon is/was a global espionage and interception system coordinated by the US/UK with the aid of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In NZ, writes Hager, it was implemented without the assent of the public and most public officials.

Here’s a timeline for the development of the system. Per Cryptome, the earliest public report on Echelon is in 1972.

The first reporter to write on it is British intelligence reporter, Duncan Campbell: “They’ve Got It Taped,” New Statesman, August 12, 1988 (republished at Cryptome.org). Campbell testified before Congress on the subject in 1999 and prepared a report for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that was refused by EPIC’s director Marc Rotenberg, on the grounds that much of the information hadn’t been substantiated (see this correspondence between Rotenberg and Young). After that, there was debate between Campbell and Bamford over what the main focus of the espionage was. I will expand on that and link it later…

“IN THE LATE 1980’S, IN A DECISION IT PROBABLY REGRETS, THE U.S. PROMPTED NEW ZEALAND TO JOIN A NEW AND HIGHLY SECRET GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM. HAGER’S INVESTIGATION INTO IT AND HIS DISCOVERY OF THE ECHELON DICTIONARY HAS REVEALED ONE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST, MOST CLOSELY HELD INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS. THE SYSTEM ALLOWS SPY AGENCIES TO MONITOR MOST OF THE WORLD’S TELEPHONE, E-MAIL, AND TELEX COMMUNICATIONS. Continue reading →

The Ties That Bind: Behind Obama – UBS, Harken, BCCI….

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I see that Lew Rockwell has a podcast today with Russ Baker, the founder of the site, WhoWhatWhy.com, from which this piece is published.

Interesting background here on UBS, the Swiss bank (and leading kleptocrat) involved in the biggest off-shore scandal in recent history (hat-tip to The Daily Bell commenter who posted it):

“It is worth pointing out that one of three Senate co-sponsors of the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act of 2007, introduced even before the UBS situation was known, was none other than a then-senator named…Barack Obama. The House sponsor was Rahm Emanuel—who would go on to be President Obama’s Chief of Staff. Another, weaker bill was proffered by Sen. Max Baucus of the Finance Committee—parts of which did just quietly become law as part of an employment stimulus bill signed by Obama in March, 2010, with the goal of capturing lost tax income as a way of financing job creation. Continue reading →