New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
-I disclosed a major security failure at comcast yesterday. It was surprisingly effectively handled and fixed, but in the process I tweeted their CISO after not being able to find any contact for her or even their security team (their security team told me they're going try to fix process this now). She blocked my twitter account the next day, but followed/unfollowed me sometime much later in the day. I can't help shake a weird feeling from that on so many levels. https://imgur.com/ghT0t8o
-Suin' the mayor of Chicago next week for his phone records after struggling to go through FOIA for about a year and a half. In the process, they were willing to disclose phone numbers of non-government phones to me with the last four digits redacted. They won't give me government owned phone numbers dialed for "privacy concerns" (HAH). FOIA specifically mentions that their privacy shouldn't be considered for redaction/non-disclosure. Lots of other things and I'd like to write something up on it after it's all done, but I can't help shake a visceral paranoia when I walk outside or do internets at the moment.
I'm not going to let that paranoia turn into meekness, though, and if anything, it's made me much more open about my concerns and has even thrown me deeper into these rabbit holes. I've had lawyers, friends and family ask me I'm afraid that something bad will happen, and the answer is mostly "yes, but it's just a fear for the unknown and not for my life, etc". Being open about it seems to reduce that fear.