What is Traitorware? | Hacker News Reader

What is Traitorware?

eff.org

255 pointsgasull43 comments

I love the coining of this word - let's claim the language high ground on this. Do mainstream people even know/care about this yet?

I don't think most people know about this sort of thing. Most non-techies I've talked to are actually quite surprised about the printer thing: the idea that a printer would secretly print a pattern of light yellow dots on your paper that wasn't in your source file is very surprising to everyone I've mentioned it to. It's the sort of thing that's weird enough that some people think I must be telling them a conspiracy theory.

Yea, it's true. Companies aren't really acting in our best interests - probably the legals driving this one. It should also be mentioned that your car probably has a black box that records what you're doing - already used in many court cases.

I've heard of trucks being equipped with black boxes to ensure that employees aren't slacking off on the job, but that's the 1st I've heard about cars. Wouldn't surprise me though.

As far as I know the black box in your car just holds onto the data immediately before a crash. That said, the police can pretty much timestamp your every movement using EZ Pass.

Well I can confirm that all vehicles manufactured in Europe after 2002 do have something comparable to a "black box", recording all sorts of engine parameters which can subsequently be downloaded for analysis.

I'm talking in addition to the OBD systems. This one can also record telemetry (steering angle, wheel slip, etc.).

I used to worry that all this data could be used to track us, but then I realized how inefficient the government is.

Yeah, now your privacy will only get invaded if the government actively decides to cast their eye your way. The downside is that being chosen for a look is enough to convince your fellow citizens that invading your privacy is a special case that doesn't erode their rights, plus if the government is interested in tracking you, it might be dangerous not to let them.

And of course the "inefficiency" of government only helps until they reach a certain level of technological sophistication, which doesn't leave us much time even if you assume they're ten years behind the private sector.

Mainstream people will only be getting this

>>is meant to help locate and disable the phone if it is lost of stolen.

And are never shown this

>>your iphone may record your voice, take a picture of your location,record your heartbeat and send that information to the mothership

Most people don't care about things like this at all. Look at how many of them happily use Facebook. If Apple put in a warning screen that said, "Angry Birds is requesting the following information: your location, your contact list, and your phone number. Is that ok?", then I would bet at least 90% of the users would just click "sure, no problem".

We are losing this battle because very few people care about privacy any more.

> very few people care about privacy any more.

... and that makes selling the whole "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" thing a lot easier.

We are losing this battle because very few people care about privacy any more.

Rephrase: "We have lost this battle because privacy disappeared a long time ago." This isn't a new concern: I remember Usenet discussions over ten years ago about the loss of privacy due to the amount of personal data stored in large corporate databases and how easy it was for that data to be stored and transferred. It's increased exponentially since then. Look, 2 months ago I wanted to send a friend a snail-mail letter but I couldn't remember her whole address. A quick hop to Google Street View and I just "drove" down her street from my computer 120 miles away until I recognized her house and got the address off the sign.

Seriously guys, find another battle to fight: this one was lost a long time ago. Database Nation http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926530/ was written a decade ago!

Oh, and Merry Christmas :-)

I've done the exact same thing to get someone's address I had forgotten.

What's wrong with driving down a street via Google Street View? Your house is already publicly visible as strangers physically drive past them everyday. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Google reducing the cost of doing that, and if that's what you hope to hide behind, isn't that the kind of security-via-obscurity we all decry here?

Trying to stop people from seeing your front lawn via the Internet is comparable to DRM, both in principle and effectiveness. Merry Christmas.

Just to be clear, iPhone apps have to ask before they are allowed to use location information.

Even though most consumers don't care about things like this there are those of us who do care, and we can eventually make a difference. This is one of the reasons why I support the EFF.

Question is "what is Traitorware? (eff.org)"

Answer is "something written by turncoat mercenary Geeks".

It's a little overgeneral. There are ways your software can betray you besides spying on you.

Or maybe the term is meant to include that stuff too, despite the explicit definition.

Then you'll love Cory Doctorow's term for those that work on such hardward and software: Vichy-Nerds.

Seriously, hackers, maybe some on this site, write this software and design this hardware, to do these things. Maybe a better question is why do we as a profession do so?

Here's EFF's list of printers: http://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-di...

I made a (small) bit of cash after the Sony DRM rootkit fiasco broke by selling T-shirts that read, in camouflage-pattern Army-stencil lettering:

$sys$

INVISIBILITY COURTESY SORY CORP

Hmm, but there's something negative implied about the original intent in the word though, like you were doing something wrong.

How about "snitchsoft", nah, same problem.

Really it's "trackware" because regardless of how you use the device/product, you are being tracked. Even your PDF documents have serial numbers by default.

Ha - I thought most people would think "trackware" were related to running, but I Googled the term and got all spyware related links - interesting...

Try "trackwear". Now you're on the trolley.

Haha - yea I guess "wear" would be a jersey, but wouldn't a pedometer be "ware" - not sure...

Although I agree that there is a privacy problem with some of these things. The fact that geotagged photographs is lumped in with this is nonsense. This is not "acting behind your back to betray privacy", this is good archival practice. It is also a desirable marketed feature of such cameras.

If you take a photo of the stone under which your 90-year-old mother keeps her spare key in her front garden. Then publish it on the web, that's your own fault; not the fault of the camera.

So my question: which of you guys is going to start the comprehensive "traitorware awareness" database, and then intermediate it to the rest of us via facebook, twitter, or your own platform, so that we can be secure in our persons, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizure.

Where the traitors are rocks, be a river that flows around them.

My first thought was this scenario:

Company A with software X.

Employees from Company A defect to Company B and "recreate" software X. Hence Traitorware!

Have to start clicking before thinking.

But getting on track with topic, we could also consider cookies a somewhat primitive form of Traitorware...

Cookies are often used for good. Based on the examples in the article, "traitorware" as herein termed is a specific implementation of a technology that betrays its user, and not the component parts that make up that software. So, a cookie may be part of traitorware (say, an ad network that tracks your movements across every page it can (Facebook)), but cookies themselves are not traitorware.

Facebook tracks your movement across every page with a Facebook asset? Does Google do something like this as well?

Word is that Facebook assigns a unique ID to anyone that visits a page with a Like button on it and reports back, whether you're logged in to Facebook or not, or even whether you're a member of Facebook or not.

Many ad networks try that to varying degrees, Google may own or run some, I don't know.

Cookies are being exploited more and more for just personalization by other sites using Facebook cookies or the like - not sure if this is quasi-legal or just a full loophole.

Did I say something wrong? I'd really like to know.

I'm not impressed with the article. This part in particular seems lacking in perspective:

> Traitorware is not some science-fiction vision of the future. It is the present. Indeed, the Sony rootkit dates back to 2005.

We're firmly in science-fiction territory and most everyone who would pay attention to this article knows it.

This reminds me of when the EFF pleaded with its audience not to buy an iPad. What good is a boycott by sympathetic developers going to do? Keep them from making web apps work well on the iPad, and giving developers tasked with building a business app that works well on an iPad a choice to keep using an open platform?

We're firmly in science-fiction territory and most everyone who would pay attention to this article knows it.

What's your justification for saying this? The author of the article laid out a series of examples supporting the contrary point.

Bullshit. My camera's serial number in the file is what enables me to get paid. When I want anonymity I'll use EXIFtool and wipe the metadata because I feel like it. EFF are annoyingly patronizing sometimes, and this is one of them.

The EXIF metadata is a problem for people who would like anonymity and don't know how to use EXIFtool. The EFF is concerned with them, not outliers like you.

Whoops! I thought I was reading Hacker News. Silly me.

The EFF's target audience extends beyond the reach of HN. This article was certainly not written for the exclusive benefit of HN users, who are generally already wary of this sort of thing.

EFF works to set legal precedents and secure the rights and privileges of computer users throughout the United States, not just those who read industry periodicals or aggregators.

So you say it's Hacker News here... Okay, have you ever heard of steganography? And are you sure your camera isn't covertly embedding something into image data (not metadata), like printers do with yellow dots?

And there are a lot of different watermarking algorithms, some of which are capable of surviving basic image operations, like resizing or color balance adjustment.

Could you provide reference links for what you're talking about? It seems like very interesting reading.

As all detector arrays, digital sensors have a fingerprint/signature/profile [however you look at it] that can affect noise/(d)efficiency/colour etc.

This used to be all too apparent, even Kodak digital cameras had a correction-filter file calibrated for each camera to adjust white balance etc. that came with the camera.

There's a known legit (non-covert) use of digital watermarking in Epson PhotoPC 3000Z and the Kodak DC-290: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking#Secure_dig...

I don't know about covert embedding, but as it's possible, I won't be surprised if it really exists.

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