How to blur your house on Google Street View (And Why You Should)

Partially Blurred Google Street View Photo

Here’s what you do:

1. Go to Google Maps and enter your home address

2. Enter into Street View mode by dragging the small yellow human-shaped icon, found in the bottom-right corner of the screen, onto the map in front of your house

3. With your house in view, click “Report a problem” in the bottom-right corner of the screen

4. Center the red box on your home, and select “My home” in the “Request blurring” field

Google's San Francisco office.

5. Write in the provided field why you want the image blurred (for example, you may be concerned about safety issues)

6. Enter in your email address, and click “Submit”

After you hit “submit,” you should receive an email from Google noting that it’s “reviewing the image you reported and will email you when your request is resolved.” The company may follow up, via email, and ask you to be more specific about the area you want blurred. If so, you will need to do the entire process again — clearly detailing the specific area of the picture you want blurred.

That’s it!

Source: How to blur your house on Google Street View (and why you should)

AI Database Has Amassed 3 Billion Photos, and Requires Your Government ID to “Opt Out”

Facial Recognition
Clearview AI–which is used by law enforcement agencies such as the FBI–has continued to create a storm of controversy. GETTY

The Clearview AI nightmare has already been well-documented. Now, it’s emerged that if you want to be deleted from its 3 billion image database, you have to prove who you are first …

A quick look at the company’s privacy policy is enough to send shivers down the spine of even the most laid back person. Explaining how you need to email privacy-requests@clearview.ai to request your images be removed, it reads: “Please submit name, a headshot and a photo of a government-issued ID to facilitate the processing of your request.”

Full story: Clearview AI’s Database Has Amassed 3 Billion Photos. This Is How If You Want Yours Deleted, You Have To Opt Out

Researchers Find Google Play Store Apps Were Actually Government Malware

‘Security researchers have found a new kind of government malware that was hiding in plain sight within apps on Android’s Play Store. And they appear to have uncovered a case of lawful intercept gone wrong.

The spyware apps were discovered and studied in a joint investigation by researchers from Security Without Borders, a non-profit that often investigates threats against dissidents and human rights defenders, and Motherboard. The researchers published a detailed, technical report of their findings on Friday…

“This, from the point of view of legal surveillance, is insane,” the agent told Motherboard. “Opening up security holes and leaving them available to anyone is crazy and senseless, even before being illegal”…’

Continued: Researchers Find Google Play Store Apps Were Actually Government Malware

Jeff Bezos Protests the Invasion of His Privacy, as Amazon Builds a Sprawling Surveillance State for Everyone Else

One of the world’s greatest privacy invaders just had his privacy invaded

Amazon, the company that has made Bezos the planet’s richest human being, is a critical partner for the U.S. Government in building an ever-more invasive, militarized and sprawling surveillance state. Indeed, one of the largest components of Amazon’s business, and thus one of the most important sources of Bezos’ vast wealth and power, is working with the Pentagon and the NSA to empower the U.S. Government with more potent and more sophisticated weapons, including surveillance weapons.

In December, 2017, Amazon boasted that it had perfected new face-recognition software for crowds, which it called Rekognition. It explained that the product is intended, in large part, for use by governments and police forces around the world. The ACLU quickly warned that the product is “dangerous” and that Amazon “is actively helping governments deploy it.”

“Powered by artificial intelligence,” wrote the ACLU, “Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image. It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces.” The group warned: “Amazon’s Rekognition raises profound civil liberties and civil rights concerns.” In a separate advisory, the ACLU said of this face-recognition software that Amazon’s “marketing materials read like a user manual for the type of authoritarian surveillance you can currently see in China…”

Continue reading: Jeff Bezos Protests the Invasion of His Privacy, as Amazon Builds a Sprawling Surveillance State for Everyone Else

Surveillance Cameras Can Identify Anyone by “Talking to Their Cellphones”

Surveillance cameras will soon be able to identify everyone by “talking” to their cell phones thanks to research by a university with ties to the federal surveillance state.

“This system basically allows surveillance cameras to talk to the public through their individual phones,” Purdue University doctoral student Siyuan Cao said.

As the video illustrates, soon nowhere will be safe from Big Brother’s prying eyes.

Purdue University’s SIMBA Labs has developed a camera-to-human surveillance program called PHADE otherwise known as Private Human Addressing … To call PHADE a privacy nightmare really does not do it justice…

Continue reading: Surveillance Cameras Can Identify Anyone by “Talking to Their Cellphones”

Tim Cook: Personal data collection is being “weaponized against us with military efficiency”

Apple CEO Tim Cook: Personal data collection is being 'weaponized against us with military efficiency'

“We shouldn’t sugarcoat the consequences. This is surveillance. And these stockpiles of personal data serve only to enrich the companies that collect them”, Cook said. “This should make us very uncomfortable. It should unsettle us.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook blasted Silicon Valley tech companies and their abuse of user privacy in a keynote address at a privacy conference in Brussels Wednesday, saying personal information is being “weaponized against us with military efficiency.”

  • Apple and its CEO have long touted personal privacy, distancing themselves from recent, growing scandals among tech companies — but the comments from Cook are some of the strongest to date.
  • CEO Tim Cook said the business of selling ads against personal data has become a “data industrial complex” and stopped just short of naming tech giants like Facebook and Google in his criticisms.

Source: Tim Cook: Personal data collection is being ‘weaponized against us with military efficiency’

TSA Announces Plans To Subject Domestic Travelers To Biometric Screening

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As promised/threatened, the DHS is moving forward with expanded use of biometric scanning at airports, including facial recognition and fingerprint matches. What was touted as a way to combat international terrorism and illegal immigration will now include those on the home front, as the tech spreads to include US citizens on domestic flights. But the TSA doesn’t see this as an unwanted incursion into the lives of innocent citizens. Instead, it pitches it as a useful tool to speed up security screening at TSA checkpoints.

The TSA expects paying customers to foot the bill for the expansion — the same citizens it’s been selling civil liberties back to for years. From the TSA’s “roadmap” for expanded biometric screening:

Yes, the paying members of the TSA’s Pre✓ program will be the first to “enhance” their “travel experience” by feeding their faces into a database the TSA controls, using tech prone to erroneous conclusions. Other travelers won’t be able to opt out of biometric screening, however. They’ll just be subject to the non-enhanced travel experience where TSA and CBP officers ask a long series of invasive questions and infer suspicious behavior on the part of travelers who bypass the biometric kiosks.

It’s true that traveling in the US has always been a “papers, please” experience. But prior to the 9/11 attacks, this simply meant presenting a ticket before boarding. Now, it’s everything about everybody, no matter how useless this information is 99.9% of the time. Rather than move towards smarter screening methods, the TSA has decided to subject everyone to the same level of screening with the same arbitrary rules stemming from airborne attacks the TSA failed to prevent.

The TSA pitches this as a paperless airport, but it’s really just another way for the government to compile a massive database of identifying info and of citizens’ movements. The DHS likes to talk about its 96% accuracy target, but has released no information about actual accuracy in test runs, so concerns about false positives/negatives aren’t going away anytime soon.

The government has responded in the worst way to terrorist attacks in the US. It has made freedom of movement a hassle — one that diminishes Constitutional protections and turns every traveler into a potential suspect.

Source: TSA Announces Plans To Subject Domestic Travelers To Biometric Screening

“Five Eyes” Wants Access to Every Electronic Device

According to an article in the National Post the Five Eyes intelligence network is demanding tech companies provide a back-door into all electronic devices.

“Canada joined its intelligence allies recently in demanding that technology companies co-operate with law enforcement agencies in allowing access to encrypted communications.”

Five Yyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.

Although similar requests for co-operation have been made in the past, that “is the most aggressive call we’ve seen,” said Tamir Israel, a lawyer at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.

The big change, according to Israel, is that governments are now saying “fix it for us or we will fix it for you.” That’s led to concerns among privacy experts that the government will try to legislate a requirement for tech companies to build backdoors for law enforcement.

Letting multi-national intelligence agencies have access to every electronic device can and will be abused.

Giving law enforcement access to electronic devices is a bad idea

That sign telling you how fast you’re driving may be spying on you

Road sign records a photograph of your license plate.
Road sign records a photograph of your license plate.

The next time you drive past one of those road signs with a digital readout showing how fast you’re going, don’t simply assume it’s there to remind you not to speed. It may actually be capturing your license plate data.

According to recently released US federal contracting data, the Drug Enforcement Administration will be expanding the footprint of its nationwide surveillance network with the purchase of “multiple” trailer-mounted speed displays “to be retrofitted as mobile LPR [License Plate Reader] platforms.” The DEA is buying them from RU2 Systems Inc., a private Mesa, Arizona company. How much it’s spending on the signs has been redacted…

Continued: That sign telling you how fast you’re driving may be spying on you

Man sues over Google’s “Location History” fiasco, case could affect millions

If “Location History” was off, Google said it didn’t keep data—but that’s not true.

Google is facing new scrutiny in the wake of revelations that it stores users’ location data even when “Location History” is turned off.

Last Friday, Google quietly edited its description of the practice on its own website—while continuing said practice—to clarify that “some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps…”

Story: Man sues over Google’s “Location History” fiasco, case could affect millions

Google tracks users who turn off location

The study found that users had to turn off another setting in order to disable location being recorded
The study found that users had to turn off another setting in order to disable location being recorded

A study from Associated Press suggests that users are still tracked even if they turn off location history.

Google records users’ locations even when they have asked it not to, a report from the Associated Press has suggested.

The issue could affect up to two billion Android and Apple devices which use Google for maps or search.

The study, verified by researchers at Princeton University, has angered US law-makers…

The study found that users’ whereabouts are recorded even when location history has been disabled.

For example:

  • Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you open the Maps app
  • Automatic weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where a user is
  • Searches that have nothing to do with location pinpoint precise longitude and latitude of users

Technology firms are under fire for not being clear about privacy settings and how to use them. In June, a report from the Norwegian Consumer Council found evidence that privacy-friendly options are hidden away or obscured.

Continue reading: Google tracks users who turn off location

TSA surveilling travelers’ behavior through secretive program

© Getty Images
© Getty Images

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has begun collecting information on travelers through a program that monitors citizens not on a terror watch list or suspected of a crime, The Boston Globe reported.

The Globe reported Saturday that the program, titled “Quiet Skies,” aims to eliminate threats posed by “unknown or partially known terrorists.”

Undercover air marshals reportedly document passengers’ behavior, including whether they use technology when traveling, whether they change clothes at the airport, how closely they stand to the boarding area and other patterns…

Continued: TSA surveilling travelers’ behavior through secretive program: report | TheHill