6 ms·

EFF Guide to Street Level Surveillance

166 points by aestetix 11y ago

themodelplumber 11y ago
This is such a great opportunity. I hope they can expand the content to include information like 1) where should I look for it and 2) what do I do when I encounter it. This could help bring the general concerns out of that's-so-tinfoil territory and make the content more shareable with the general public.
- cronjobber 11y ago
  To make your analogy more precise, the article is in that's-so-mind-control-rays territory. Your proposed addition would be, "wear a tinfoil hat!"
  - idle_processor 11y ago
    Not necessarily. The "tinfoil hat" approach is a personal-scope solution. Part of the "what do I do when I encounter it" course of action could involve a societal-scope solution. E.g., getting involved with privacy advocacy groups or pressuring relevant lawmakers to roll overreach back. (This is, admittedly, far more work and far less likely to succeed.)
flashman 11y ago
I would like to see them cover Bluetooth and 802.11-based tracking. Most people I've talked to are unaware that their wifi device periodically sends out probe requests containing its unique MAC address (some more frequently than others, in my testing), which can be used to correlate your location and build a profile. It's not even difficult, I set up a Raspberry Pi to do it and graphed the arrival and departure times of individual workers in my office. There are businesses putting tracking across a constellation of retail partners, then selling the partners information about what other stores their customers visited. And yes, I'm aware that iOS 8 is supposed to randomize your MAC address to guard against this (cynically I'd say it helps them push iBeacons) but as of September 2014, it wasn't really working as you'd expect: http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac-randomization http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac-randomization
- liotier 11y ago
  I recommend the Wi-Fi Privacy Police, a.k.a Pry-Fi : https://github.com/BramBonne/privacypolice https://github.com/BramBonne/privacypolice
- cconcepts 11y ago
  Do you have any info on the raspberry pi graphing arrival/departure times?
  - flashman 11y ago
    We mostly followed http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/3817/ http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/3817/ which relies on https://github.com/IMAmuseum/visitorflow https://github.com/IMAmuseum/visitorflow. I don't remember a great deal about it as it was a prototype that never got turned into anything else.
    - cconcepts 11y ago
      Wow, great information, thanks very much.
- mike-cardwell 11y ago
  Did your employees know you were tracking them in this manner? Seems pretty creepy to me...
  - bumbledraven 11y ago
    OP didn't say they were his employees.
    - mike-cardwell 11y ago
      Colleagues then. Makes no difference. I wonder if his employer minded him tracking them?
      - 11y ago
njharman 11y ago
by Street Level I hoped they meant "tails", direct (camera, video, shotgun mike), that kind of thing.
zmanian 11y ago
There are an emerging set of strategies at the local level for mitigating street level surveillance. It consists of watching your city council agenda for consent to purchase new surveillance technology via Department of Homeland Security grant. Use this occasion to push for a privacy policy that governs the new equipment as a condition of purchase. Restore the Fourth SF Bay Area, Oakland Privacy et al are seeing a pattern emerge where the purchase is either delayed or the privacy policy is adopted. It's often possible to sign up for email alerts of the agenda for city council meetings.
garbagepatches 11y ago
Don't forget about satellite monitoring/manipulation of magnetism. The terrorist attack from "constant inductance" is huge(needs to be stopped). Directed/manipulated energy weaponry triggered by ONE(1) simply information saturation event... These are HUGE, and almost no one is talking about them in the public, maybe in fear of being struck down by vaporizers. Then there's the attack from, and with "stolen genderless no form factor options", THESE ARE OUR GENDERLESS NO FORM FACTOR OPTIONS THAT TERRORISTS ARE USING AGAINST US & THE POPULOUS(of the entire whatever we're doing)... REAL ISSUES. NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE...

166 points by aestetix 11y ago

This is such a great opportunity. I hope they can expand the content to include information like 1) where should I look for it and 2) what do I do when I encounter it. This could help bring the general concerns out of that's-so-tinfoil territory and make the content more shareable with the general public.

cronjobber 11y ago
To make your analogy more precise, the article is in that's-so-mind-control-rays territory. Your proposed addition would be, "wear a tinfoil hat!"
- idle_processor 11y ago
  Not necessarily. The "tinfoil hat" approach is a personal-scope solution. Part of the "what do I do when I encounter it" course of action could involve a societal-scope solution. E.g., getting involved with privacy advocacy groups or pressuring relevant lawmakers to roll overreach back. (This is, admittedly, far more work and far less likely to succeed.)

flashman 11y ago

I would like to see them cover Bluetooth and 802.11-based tracking. Most people I've talked to are unaware that their wifi device periodically sends out probe requests containing its unique MAC address (some more frequently than others, in my testing), which can be used to correlate your location and build a profile. It's not even difficult, I set up a Raspberry Pi to do it and graphed the arrival and departure times of individual workers in my office. There are businesses putting tracking across a constellation of retail partners, then selling the partners information about what other stores their customers visited. And yes, I'm aware that iOS 8 is supposed to randomize your MAC address to guard against this (cynically I'd say it helps them push iBeacons) but as of September 2014, it wasn't really working as you'd expect: http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac-randomization http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac-randomization

liotier 11y ago
I recommend the Wi-Fi Privacy Police, a.k.a Pry-Fi : https://github.com/BramBonne/privacypolice https://github.com/BramBonne/privacypolice
cconcepts 11y ago
Do you have any info on the raspberry pi graphing arrival/departure times?
- flashman 11y ago
  We mostly followed http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/3817/ http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/3817/ which relies on https://github.com/IMAmuseum/visitorflow https://github.com/IMAmuseum/visitorflow. I don't remember a great deal about it as it was a prototype that never got turned into anything else.
  - cconcepts 11y ago
    Wow, great information, thanks very much.
mike-cardwell 11y ago
Did your employees know you were tracking them in this manner? Seems pretty creepy to me...
- bumbledraven 11y ago
  OP didn't say they were his employees.
  - mike-cardwell 11y ago
    Colleagues then. Makes no difference. I wonder if his employer minded him tracking them?
    - 11y ago

njharman 11y ago

by Street Level I hoped they meant "tails", direct (camera, video, shotgun mike), that kind of thing.

zmanian 11y ago

There are an emerging set of strategies at the local level for mitigating street level surveillance. It consists of watching your city council agenda for consent to purchase new surveillance technology via Department of Homeland Security grant. Use this occasion to push for a privacy policy that governs the new equipment as a condition of purchase. Restore the Fourth SF Bay Area, Oakland Privacy et al are seeing a pattern emerge where the purchase is either delayed or the privacy policy is adopted. It's often possible to sign up for email alerts of the agenda for city council meetings.

garbagepatches 11y ago

Don't forget about satellite monitoring/manipulation of magnetism. The terrorist attack from "constant inductance" is huge(needs to be stopped). Directed/manipulated energy weaponry triggered by ONE(1) simply information saturation event... These are HUGE, and almost no one is talking about them in the public, maybe in fear of being struck down by vaporizers. Then there's the attack from, and with "stolen genderless no form factor options", THESE ARE OUR GENDERLESS NO FORM FACTOR OPTIONS THAT TERRORISTS ARE USING AGAINST US & THE POPULOUS(of the entire whatever we're doing)... REAL ISSUES. NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE...