Learn To Be Invisible

A Mason Lang Production

[beben-eleben]

For future reference.

[mollimassacre-deactivated201408]

Thank you.

[fuckyeahifightlikeagirl]

For those who would ever need it. -C

[rapeculturerealities]

reblogging here because i can see this being relevant to anyone who’s ever tried to get out of an abusive relationship

[directorlazard-deactivated20171]

Reblogging because that last comment made me reread the whole thing in a new light and realize this could be vital information. So, putting it out there for everyone, and hoping no one ever really needs it.

[yimmyayo]

[learntobeinvisible]

According to Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney with the EFF, the FBI plans to have as many as 52 million photos in its database by 2015. The system is designed to be capable of conducting tens of thousands of searches every day. Those 52 million images will include a planned 4.3 million faces photographed for non-criminal purposes and another million drawn from ill-defined sources. Searches will be run against all records in the database, no matter how they were obtained. "This is a problem because we do not know what rules govern these categories, where the data comes from, how the images are gathered, who has access to them, and whose privacy is impacted," warns EFF's Lynch. Whatever the source of the images, there's no guarantee they'll be correctly matched to suspects. Last year, the Electronic Privacy Information Center extracted a separate set of documents from the FBI revealing that federal specifications on the Next Generation Identification system facial recognition software allow for tagging "an incorrect candidate a maximum of 20 percent of the time."

[toxzen]

Camouflage from face detection.

[prostheticknowledge]

Conversnitch

Project by Brian House and Kyle McDonald is a Raspberry-Pi-powered lightbulb attachment that can listen into nearby conversations (which are then posted onto Twitter) - video embedded below:

Conversnitch is a small device that automatically tweets overheard conversations, bridging the gap between (presumed) private physical space and public space online.

Information moves between spaces that might be physical or virtual, free or proprietary, illegal or playful, spoken or transcribed.

The Conversnitch Twitter feed can be found here

[iamdanw]

As you can see from the screengrab below, this week the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department is using LEEDIR to gather photos and videos from eyewitnesses of a chaotic street party in Isla Vista that led to over 100 arrests. Sheriff’s investigators hope the images they receive will allow them to ID more suspects. According to today’s announcement, agencies might typically retain uploaded content for a month or two, then delete it. But there’s no requirement to delete it, nor is there a guarantee of true anonymity for uploaders, though you do not have to provide your name.

LA Sheriffs launch crowdsourced crowd control: LEEDIR, a surveillance app that uses your photos and videos (via iamdanw)

[nprfreshair]

Today investigative reporter Julia Angwin speaks to Fresh Air about her extreme efforts to erase her digital footprint. Part of that work involved developing a better understanding of what kind of data is out there and where it comes from. Here she explains data brokers:

"Data brokers began by compiling very simple information from the Yellow Pages, the White Pages and government directories. The property records in your state are publicly on file somewhere, the data brokers will go buy it and put it in their dossier. At the same time, your address is usually on-file [in] many places with magazines or newspapers you subscribe to. … Also the post office sells access to its change of address list.

What’s happening now in the digital era is that they’re adding to their files with all sorts of digital information, so they can find out about you, what you’re doing online, what you’re buying online. … So now these records that they have are getting much more precise. They’re no longer just being used to send you junk mail that you can throw away. Now they’re being used online as well to help places figure out who you are as soon as you arrive at their website. They can make an instant assessment by matching your online stuff to some of the online data…

I found out there are a lot of data brokers out there. It took me almost a month to compile a list, because there’s no real list of who are they all, and I was able to identify about 200 or so of them. Of those, very few were willing to let me see my data. It was about a dozen that would let me see my data: some of the bigger brokers, LexisNexis, Axium, and some very small outfits.

… What was shocking about it was that it ranged from incredibly precise — every single address I’d ever lived at including the number on my dorm room in college, which I couldn’t even remember … to very imprecise, inaccurate things … that were not at all true — that I was a single mother … with no college education living in a place I didn’t live.”

Angwin’s book is called Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance

graffiti by Banksy 

[iamdanw]

The document indicates the passenger tracking operation was a trial run of a powerful new software program CSEC was developing with help from its U.S. counterpart, the National Security Agency. In the document, CSEC called the new technologies “game-changing,” and said they could be used for tracking “any target that makes occasional forays into other cities/regions.” Sources tell CBC News the technologies tested on Canadians in 2012 have since become fully operational. CSEC claims “no Canadian or foreign travellers’ movements were ‘tracked,’” although it does not explain why it put the word “tracked” in quotation marks.

CSEC used airport Wi-Fi to track Canadian travellers: Edward Snowden documents (via iamdanw)

[youranonnews]

How the cops watch your tweets in real-time

Arstechnica’s Nate Anderson breaks down NSA programs like BlueJay – which provides real-time, geo-fenced access to every single public tweet so that local police can keep tabs on #gunfire, #meth, and #protest (yes, those are real examples) in their communities

Read the full story here.

[learntobeinvisible]

As Internet privacy/security professionals and amateur enthusiasts, we are often asked to give advice about best practices in this field. Sometimes this takes the form of one-on-one advice to our friends, sometimes it’s training a room full of people, and sometimes you may be asked to write a blog post or a brief guide or an entire curriculum. This talk will survey the current Internet privacy guide landscape and discuss the perils and pitfalls of creating this type of resource, using the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self Defense project as a case study.

[learntobeinvisible]

DNA Spoofing: DIY Counter Surveillance

[brucesterling]

[ninjabikeslut-deactivated201605]

"Facial-recognition technology is quickly becoming a mainstay of commercial and government surveillance systems. While it can provide benefits in automation and security, it is also a threat to privacy. Sophisticated algorithms can already extract information about your gender, age and even mood from a single image, and then link those physical attributes to commercial or government databases." -Face to Anti-Face

[dawn-of-the-crucifier]

The most cyberpunk post on this website, possibly ever. 

[ida-backwards-intherain]

For future reference.

[prostheticknowledge]

DIY Phone Signal Blocking Pouch

Instructions from the KILLYOURPHONE.COM workshops to create a simple tech privacy-focused pouch for your signal sending device:

The pouch has a very simple design. Of course you are invited make something more fashionable but this version is very easy to make and it works. Make it any size you want! (Tablet etc) To make it fit most common current smart phones I usually make the pouch 10 x 20 cm. IMPORTANT: What ever you do make sure you fold the material on all sides to make sure the radio waves can’t get through!!

Tutorial for a 10 x 20 cm pouch:

Cut 12 cm stripes from your roll [HF+LF Shielding] blocking fleece.

Make pieces of 50 x 12 cm, each for one pouch. (i.e. from a 1 m roll stripe you’ll get 2 pieces.)

Fold your 50 x 12 cm piece in length to 25 x 12 cm

Fold again the long sides, each 1 cm and pin them with needles.

Sew two straight seams on the left and right side.

Fold the opening at least 2 times! Find a paper clip or clamp to close the pouch.

Done!

The project also has a FAQ for doubters … you can check the project’s website with more valuable information here

[brucesterling]

*But… but WHY would I want to stick my beloved cellphone into a radiation-proof homemade Faraday sack?

*Because it’s constantly ratting you out to data-miners whether you touch it or not, that’s why:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/16/5316178/nsas-dishfire-program-said-to-capture-nearly-200m-texts-a-day

Nearly 200 million text messages a day are being collected from people around the globe by the National Security Agency as part of a secret program called “Dishfire.” That’s according to a new report from The Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News service, aided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. As part of the program, so-called “untargeted” texts are collected then analyzed by a separate service called “Prefer,” which is capable of pulling together detailed reports for the agency. News of the program comes from an internal NSA presentation dated June 2011, which refers to SMS text messages as “a goldmine to exploit.”

"A GOLDMINE TO EXPLOIT"

Some of the information captured by the program includes names, phone numbers, and images, though other seemingly basic alerts offer a closer look at someone’s habits. Three such examples are texts from banks and other services about financial transactions, detailed meeting information from calendar invites, as well as messages from wireless phone carriers that are sent when borders are crossed. The program also kept track of missed calls, passwords, and information about SIM cards….

[egrizzzzzzzzzzzz]

[compactcarl-deactivated20140309]

im not even an artist and these prices are hurting my feelings 

[sandpuppeteer]

This is what I have to dig through every time I look for new jobs to apply for.

For non-artists, let’s give you a little perspective.

For me, an illustration takes a bare minimum of 6 hours. Mind you, that’s JUST the drawing part. Not the research, or the communications, or gathering information. Just drawing.

That’s if it’s a simple illustration.

My art deco or more detailed stuff can take 20+ hours each.

Even simple, cartoony things still take at least 3 hours.

Let’s go with the second one. 2 illustrations for $25. Figuring 6 hours each. 12 hours total, for JUST the drawings. That’s approximately $2.08/hour. 

Asking these prices is an insult. But what’s even more hurtful is there are people out there that will take these jobs. Which only encourages rates like this to be acceptable. And there are people who will try to say these are just what you have to do to get started.

I believed that. So my first coloring gigs were just $10/page. The day someone offered me $25/page for just flatting work, I realized just how wrong I’d been. I’m still not making the rates I’d like, but now I refuse anything below $25/page. Because there is value in my time.

In any standardized industry, even ones that pay piece rate over hourly, these numbers are criminal.

Do your fellow artists a favor. Never accept jobs like these. There are others that pay legitimate rates. Or at least closer to legitimate.

[nachttour-deactivated20181204]

I make more than some of those jobs slinging lattes. *_*

Coming out of baby school, just community college mind you, my instructors told me ‘don’t take a job for under 15/hr’.  That is not with large degrees. I now have said large degrees and these prices make me want to vomit in my mouth a little. If I can be paid halfway decently to make coffee, then I would assume that you would want to pay your artist MORE THAN A THIRD OF MINIMUM WAGE to create your product. 

Otherwise how do you expect that 1) people with the skills you seek will be stupid enough to take your job, and 2) how do you expect your artist to care about the finished product when what you are paying them does not even amount to a full tank of gas on a mid-sized vehicle. 

[futuristech-info]

Get your mask ready - Facial recognition app could allow strangers to recognize you

[whatthezeitgeistwants]

Interesting NYT piece (with video) on the recently revealed group of activists, now in their 60s, who broke into a Pennsylvania FBI field office in 1971, stole all the documents they could find, and fed them to the media—revealing the extent of the FBI’s surveillance and infiltration of political dissidents, and leading to the revelations about COINTELPRO that followed.  These folks did not seek foreign asylum—they just didn’t get caught, and now can talk freely because the statute of limitations has passed.