U.S. Intelligence Has Amassed 'Sensitive and Intimate' Data on 'Nearly Everyone' | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Intelligence Has Amassed 'Sensitive and Intimate' Data on 'Nearly Everyone'

gizmodo.com

65 pointsLinuxBender39 comments

Does anyone know of any guides or place with guides for analog privacy (not digital like PrivacyTools.io or the replacement site that popped-up when PrivacyTools.io sold out)?

Stuff like: this is how to register your house/car/cellphone etc in a trust, how to avoid giving out your SSN for utilities, how to avoid the medical industry from sharing your data, etc?

Is there a better way to ask or describe what I'm talking about?

Yeah, the gold standard for that (AFAIK) is Michael Bazzell's "Extreme Privacy" book.

Oh this looks interesting, thanks for the recommendation.

Practically speaking, what can we do to avoid this?

I don't have Google accounts, I browse with a handful of privacy extensions to block ads and trackers, I use custom DNS, my iPhone is mostly a brick, my old car is also a brick, I don't have any smart home devices, I'm mindful about what I sign-up for, I make a point to cancel accounts I'm not using, I don't have an Amazon account, I don't shop with my phone in store to avoid the Bluetooth beacons, etc.

But I still use a credit card, I pay bills, I have Comcast service, I buy things online, I use GPS, I still have a handful of subscriptions, and who knows what happens to personal information when applying for jobs—I'm sure it changes hands over and over via the ATS company.

For those of us who care about maintaining a sense of privacy—what are some things people can do to meaningfully minimize their footprint? Or am I not thinking about this the right way?

It feels like a losing battle. Maybe that's the point: a "sense" of privacy is as far as one can get.

Cash is king for privacy. Pay with cash as often as possible. Walk or bicycle. Write paper letters, mail them with cash-purchased stamps. Looks tuff up at the library. Use an analog film camera, physical maps and a compass to navigate.

If you need to type, get an old mechanical typewriter, and lots of paper for when you mistype and have to redo the entire page...

Or, learn encryption and prefer open/free software solutions as much as possible.

Almost nobody lives like this. Anyone that does is giving up on modern society. It shouldn't be an exclusive or. You should be able to have privacy and be part of society

It's not a question of should or not. People just willingly give up privacy for convenience. For example merely using a phone (not to mention a smartphone with their location awareness capabilities, or a plain mobile phone with their multilateration, any one that works at all, even a landline if you use it at that very moment) is a breach of privacy. But you need it to function in a modern society. You can avoid such things by taking some extra steps but each of those steps takes progressively more effort and bites a huge chuck of the aforementioned convenience, not only for you but also for the other side of your social interaction.

The whole original topic is more about prevalent abuses of authority than privacy itself, though. And that's a different thing because protecting your privacy from authorized and/or dedicated actors is always quite difficult, if possible at all, even with a proper privacy "hygiene", and needs a totally different approach.

I know I'm in the minority, but still, I didn't give up my privacy for "convenience". I bought my first phone because my employer required a way to contact me. Not to mention all the ways pretty much every single job nowadays requires much more invasions of privacy than just a phone.

> Use an analog film camera

Where are you getting your colour negatives developed?

If you can buy some equipments and chemicals (eg JOBO labs and kits) with cash, then developing C41 (or negative) films is trivial and you can diy.

Should be “and learn encryption” not “or”

a non connected digital camera would seem more practical.

A great quote I heard recently: “Google has most of my email because they have all of yours.”

Even if you personally control where your data is stored, the people and businesses you interact with are likely to be trawled by the NSA.

There is no escape short of living in a hut in a forest, sans electricity.

Yeah, "we're not emailing each other any more".

> It feels like a losing battle.

i didn’t hear no bell.

The privacy war is already over and everybody knows the good guys lost.

If you google that line, that is the best you can do in a sense. It is a message encoded in a sea of absolute noise.

Fool the sky to cross the sea.

Until the laws that permit this are updated and the US gains a functional government willing to stop it, nothing.

While this report seems like a convenient thing to cite when someone calls me paranoid for putting a pebble in my shoe before going grocery shopping, its reccomendations are less than comforting.

>[The intelligence community] "should develop a multi-layered approach to catalog, to the extent feasible, the acquisition and use of CAI across its 18 elements."

The problem isn't that this data isn't organized well enough...

I'm not sure what these 18 elements are but found something involving HIPAA which uses the same phrase:

https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_08.asp

If I may -- what does putting a pebble in your shoe before going grocery shopping do? Is the intent to change the way you walk to defeat some sort of gait analysis based surveillance? (you'd imagine facial recognition was far more effective!).

It was a joke but yes gait recognition was what I was the reference I was shooting for.

Ah, thanks. Speaking of "shooting" I also wondered if it was a technique to help disguise a CCW carry (supposedly secret service agents are trained to spot the gait of someone carrying a concealed firearm).

No, pebbles in the shoe would just draw attention to you by people looking for someone with an unusual gait.

While I don't know if that detail about the U.S.S.S. is true (it probably is), there are "tells" if someone is consciously or subconsciously thinking about a firearm on their body.

I think it's to prevent loligagging and therefore reduce time and money spent on trivalties.

It forces you to get what you want efficiently and get out.

>"Through location tracking, your phone knows where you sleep every night. "

I'm sorry what?

Wait until they find out about the correlation between information on driver's licenses and where people sleep.

I would say maybe 50% of people in semi-serious relationships correlate with their driver's license, but closer to 100% correlate with their phone.

Not only sleep, but where they shit and how long too.

And almost certainly pictures of them in the act. Though no platforms will admit to surreptitiously capturing photos.

We have a baby cam that sees in infrared and my wife's iphone is legit snapping photos every few seconds clearly visible in there... I've read the official reasons why it does this... But it's eery to watch in real time. Absolutely looks like a duck and walks like a duck, but the official docs say it's a dog

There was a time in 2005 era when webcams were expensive. But somehow, every single laptop produced included a webcam. And it wasn't optional. I feel like manufacturers were facing pressure from government agencies around the world.

Pretty sure that's for face unlock. I don't know iPhones - is it possible to unlock your phone by bringing it up to your face without first hitting the power button?

I don't have an iPhone, so what is the official reason you read?

It could be IR sensor checking if your phone is near your face. But should be disabled when screen is off. Making a photo every several seconds would drain battery pretty fast.

It's while in use. It's always checking if you are looking at it...

Far worse, it's very easy to know when a person is going to be asleep even with no more data.

You can use location in part, yes, but health tracking can sort out your patterns very well and determine exactly what you are next likely to do without having any further data points (if you turned off and took off all devices). It's all trainable.

People usually keep their phone near them. Even when they sleep. So if you know where the phone is via tracking, then you know where the owner of the phone is. And ultimately where the owner of the phone sleeps.

So does the registered address of the person.

I didn’t change my address every time I moved during college.

My phone went with me though.

So what's next? Go live in the mountains?

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