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Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

86 points by trendspotter 13y ago

instaheat 13y ago
"Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar." Top 1% of the super paranoid indeed. While I understand the reach of the government and the lengths they'll go to gain information - this article is absolutely ridiculous to me. I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do? Give me a fucking break.
- angersock 13y ago
  Bully for you that you don't perceive an issue here. The fact is beyond dispute that the social services in widest use actively turn your friends into informants on you. If that doesn't bother you, fine--but don't mock the people for whom that is an uncomfortable reality.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    Bit off topic, but I actually just disabled all my social media, and you know what? I don't miss a single soul and I feel really good again, more energetic and enthusiastic even. I just realized I really only do have about 5 people I should keep in contact with. Everyone else was a relationship that was kept up just from virtue of existing, relationships that would never make it into real life. I feel free. For the first time I took a walk in the park yesterday, rolled a joint, went for a nice breakfast and coffee at a local diner, read the newspaper, and just sat in the park. It was amazing not feeling pressure to make everyone immediately aware of how fucking awesome of a morning I've had. It was actually unreal. I just sat there looking at a bird and I almost just broke down and cried of happiness. I felt zero pressure doing anything. It felt as though I was obligated to post everything cool I did, so when doing those things, I'd do them differently just to fit the specific paradigm that I post in just to one up others. A feeling has left me that I hadn't identified before that I mistook as depression. I was growing more apathetic, sad, and cynical due to social media because it felt like every little thing I did was in competition in some form or another to others online, and when I failed, I just felt more isolated and lonely. I'm able to do things consistently without the need to constantly check my phone and compare that specific frame of my life against others. Facebook on the toilet, while cleaning, running, on the bus, at work, on the commute home, too much. The weeks following deleting my social media I got so much shit done so fast with no distractions. Absolutely amazing. I think I'll write a blog post about this. I bought a tablet, loaded my favourite books on it, and have filled in all my pointless social media time with reading. I'm actually discovering the city alone for the first time ever and it's wonderful because I don't care what anyone else thinks of what I'm doing, I'm doing it for me. I'm going to grow my beard, cut my hair, buying some jeans, buying some chucks, and then I'm going to relax in a field somewhere and just spend time not caring.
    - moens 13y ago
      Beautiful, +1
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      Social media creates a ton of new needs that it then proceeds to only partially, and unpredictably, fill. You're just realizing again that you don't really give a shit what your mom had for breakfast, unless you're talking about it with her to pass the time over dinner:) There's absolutely nothing that anybody has to say to me that can't wait a day (except "the site's down!")
      - rfnslyr 13y ago
        I'm going to get a t-shirt saying "Don't talk to me unless the site is down" haha. Yeah, trying to fill that void with social media is like trying to put out fire with napalm.
    - pearjuice 13y ago
      Problem is that even though you visually deleted all that social stuff, the data still exists. There is no escape.
      - rfnslyr 13y ago
        You're able to "delete" your profile now, so that you have to create a new one and re-add everything if you want to go back. You have the option of deleting after two weeks of deactivation. Whether it is truly deleted on their servers is up for debate.
    - computer 13y ago
      The irony of course being that Hackernews too is social media, and you still just "bragged" about the experience you had!
      - rfnslyr 13y ago
        Not at all. It's "social media" in that there's a comments page that you can interact with others yes but not much more than that. It's just a link aggregation and I don't know any of you even remotely intimately.
  - instaheat 13y ago
    I do perceive an issue here. I just refuse to let - yet another - uncomfortable reality dictate the way I live. I understand what is going on out there. I'm just not going to be a martyr. Advertisers, go ahead and try to sell me something based on what you think I like. It won't work on me. It's a hail mary play. I guess what I'm really trying to say is I'm not in position to change anything so I suppose I can be thankful for the likes of Edward Snowden and companies that fight back far reaching government requests (Like AirBnb did recently) but I'm going to live my life and live it fully, challenging authority every step of the way hinging on the fact that I believe in the Bill of Rights.
- m3rc 13y ago
  I think it was more proving just how far you would have to go to really be untraceable, and that it's an essentially impossible goal for a normal person.
- Zikes 13y ago
  I'm not sure exactly what needs to happen before you'd take the issue seriously, but enough already has happened for many of us to be very concerned.
- Amadou 13y ago
  I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do? Give me a fucking break. The problem is the reverse here. The "system" (i.e. our society in general) has been co-opted. It is profoundly wrong that a normal life in the modern world requires so much disclosure to unrelated 3rd parties. It's like the argument - if you don't want to be recorded, cataloged and tracked by innumerable license plate scanners on the road by the police, DEA, etc and private data-brokers like TLO [1] then you shouldn't drive. It's completely ass-backwards, the price of driving shouldn't be a permanent record of all your movements in innumerable databases that are anonymous to you. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broker-offers-new-service-showing-where-they-have-spotted-your-car/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broke...
- Sagat 13y ago
  That's the point they are trying to make. No normal person can hope to lead a normal life whilst escaping tracking.
- Nursie 13y ago
  The article had examples of what they do now. It's not a stretch that the rest can happen soon. Things should not have been allowed to get here.
theboss 13y ago
A horrible article. Offline? The lady has a tech-startup in SanFrancisco. Untracked? Still possible to track her. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. If you want to buy a house, you're going to need credit, if you want credit then you're going to be tracked. That's just the way it works in developed nations. It is one thing to be mindful of security. Protecting your data, understanding the limits of cryptography, not giving away important information via social media or to people who don't need it, is all important things to know. In a digital world you leave behind a digital footprint. Having one isn't the problem. Controlling it is. edit: Being untraceable is impossible and a thing of the movies. The moment you are born and issued a birth certificate, your digital footprint has started. The thing to remember is that isn't a bad thing...
- pessimizer 13y ago
  A horrible comment. These are people who are minimizing their profiles, not magical fairy creatures. Of course if you buy a house under your own name, you will be easy to find - but with a little creativity, you may be able to get around that. Just because these people are guarded about their activities and their images does not mean that they are handing out tips about how to run for Congress anonymously, so there's really no need to argue against that straw man. >The moment you are born and issued a birth certificate, your digital footprint has started. Not everywhere, and not until very recently.
  - theboss 13y ago
    These people? I am one of them. I understand the in's and out's of just about the best you can do when it comes to living off the map. The article says they are living off the map, which they certainly aren't. Like I said, minimizing your footprint is one thing, and that is good, but saying these people are "Offline" is absurd.
    - autotravis 13y ago
      > The article says they are living off the map, which they certainly aren't. No, it doesn't. '“It’s basically impossible for you and I to decide, as of tomorrow, I’m going to remain off the radar and to survive for a month or 12 months,” says Gunter Ollmann, the CTO of security firm IOActive'
lelandbatey 13y ago
Basically, if you can be observed by a person, then you can definitely be "tracked" by a computer. The thing is, I've never been that upset about this. Technology has only made something that was possible into something that's now feasible, namely observing the public actions of many people to determine what they're doing. I've always known, even as a kid, that if we scattered many small detecting devices (cameras, microphones, RFID tags) throughout the world, something that is not illegal or bad in and of itself, that we'd pretty much all be track-able. Did no one think that putting RFID chips all over the place might make a rough point cloud out of nearly everything in the world? Or that simply by interacting with any computerized system it's possible it can be tracking literally ever bit of your interaction with it? Or that it's possible to make cameras so ubiquitous as to make most of the world monitor-able? Seriously, did the world not see this coming? I know one of the first things I thought of when I saw lots of security cameras somewhere like the airport as a kid was "I bet you could design something to track all the people in this airport using those cameras. That would be sooo cool."
- moens 13y ago
  Yeah, most people did not. I know, I have been saying this for years... ever since I studied ipv6 in the olden days (the 90's). All but one or two people I ever discussed the "trackability of everything" with was like, "What the hell are you tripping on?" The point is that everyone is a target. For a mugger, an ex lover, a political opponent, a boss, an employee... everyone is a target. That should (IMO) make everyone at least a little wary.
- mentat 13y ago
  It's the exponential reduction in the resources required to accomplish visibility in public actions which is "new". Sure, you could pay someone to follow another person around in public. Now you don't have to, everyone's followed already. The availability of ALPR data to whoever wants to know the last location of a car was one of the more interesting things in the DEFCON presentations around this.
Dirlewanger 13y ago
Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t." Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like that because insurance companies have calculated precisely how likely one alcoholic drink will cause them problems down the road in terms of them administering costs related to alcoholism or something. Very scary stuff.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  How terrifying will it be when the government is the sole provider of said insurance with IRS enforcement of its rules? It will be like the NYC BigGulp ban on a ridiculous scale.
- diminoten 13y ago
  Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%? I guess I'm still having a hard time squaring personal responsibility with this idea of complete anonymity. It's not that we shouldn't be able to hide anything, but like the article said, it's just not possible (or even reasonable to expect) to hide everything. Existing in society leaves a footprint, especially in cases like license plates - they're designed to aid in tracking, what's the surprise that they're being used to do exactly that?
  - joosters 13y ago
    Perhaps you're buying alcohol for a party. Or all that fatty food you purchased on your credit card was because you get shopping for a friend. But the anonymous algorithms won't know this, and you will pay for their assumptions. How is that fair? It's little relief to me if these systems are only mostly correct.
    - diminoten 13y ago
      You're focusing on the specific example, rather than the general idea that your purchase history indicates your riskiness, and an insurance company who has that data available to them will adjust your policy based on your behavior. And why shouldn't they? It's the same concept as you indicating whether or not you smoke, how much you drive to/from work daily, how many driving tickets you have, etc. Questions you willfully answer today. We are already accepting of their interest. The only significant difference here is you wouldn't as easily be able to lie, and people who do lead more conservative lives pay less, again a tried and true concept in the car insurance industry. Maybe soon we'll see health insurance companies offering individual breaks to people who grant the company access to their purchase history.
junto 13y ago
One interviewee had a credit card in a fake name. How legal is that exactly?
- roasty 13y ago
  A lot of people get a credit card, and then just get add a fake name to that account. Which is not really a great method of anonymity. I'm 99% sure it is illegal to get a credit card by supplying false information.
- toufka 13y ago
  It is illegal to defraud and impersonate. There's nothing illegal about using multiple names (again, so long as there is no intent to defraud or impersonate).
  - rsync 13y ago
    I'd be very careful there ... the notion of "structured transactions"[1] is about as wide-reaching as a RICO indictment, and can be used for just about anything. Even a sniff of a notion that you did that to avoid any kind of tax[2] categorizes it as a "structuring" which "may be punished by a fine or up to five years in prison, or both." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring [2] Regardless of whether that's true or not ...
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- harshreality 13y ago
  I don't see why it would be a problem. People use different names on credit cards all the time. They get married, or divorced (after taking their spouse's name), without changing names on their credit cards, use their middle name as their first name, use nicknames, etc. I doubt banks care as long as you use your legitimate SSN and pay your bills. On financial accounts where you have assets, I wouldn't want to use an unofficial name. If there's a dispute they could claim that you're not the owner, and you risk losing the assets.
sliverstorm 13y ago
Moral of the story: to really disappear, you're going to need to go live in a forest somewhere or move to the high plains of Tibet. Potentially useful information, if there's mobsters after you. The RFID tags in tires is a perfect illustration of why it's going to be practically impossible to live in the modern world and cover all your tracks. I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires (which, BTW, is a nifty idea), and there are doubtless hundreds of other tracks I leave. Who could possibly cover them all? It would be like trying to make a sieve water-tight, except you don't even know where half the holes are! Now, if we're talking about the NSA and not mobsters, and you are less concerned with being un-findable than you are with hiding your activities- there are different games you can play, and I'd bet you could be more successful. Behave in an ordinary fashion 99.9% of the time. Just look at the intelligence operations sixty years ago. Spies didn't hide in holes so no-one could find them, they blended in.
- Amadou 13y ago
  I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires That's the first I've heard of it myself, although it seems inevitable since one of the biggest selling points of RFID tags is for inventory management. We are likely to see RFID tags everywhere we currently see barcodes. http://www.securityinfowatch.com/press_release/10492011/why-walmart-is-adopting-rfid http://www.securityinfowatch.com/press_release/10492011/why-... But... to get back to the RFID in tires thing there is more to it than just that. Current vehicle safety codes require in-cabin monitoring of tire pressure. One way to do it is for the car to pay attention to changes in wheel rotation speeds (lower pressure means smaller effective radius). Another is to put a pressure guage in each wheel that talks to the car's computer wirelessly and gives more exact numbers so is more common. So even without RFID in the tires, most cars still transmit a unique ID number everywhere they go. http://news.rutgers.edu/news-releases/2010/08/wireless-tire-pressu-20100811 http://news.rutgers.edu/news-releases/2010/08/wireless-tire-...
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Reading about direct TPMS, it's a shame that the sensors have to be battery powered. I was excited for a minute, thinking maybe they manage to power the device with radio waves, the same way a passive RFID chip replies using power harvested from the query.
NovemberWest 13y ago
I worked for a big company where security was a big thing. I had to have an ID badge to enter the building. My boss once admitted to requesting the logs to determine if people on the team were really showing up on time to work. So I was aware the information could be used in let's say a predatory fashion for things not immediately obvious. However, I once had an ugly run in with another employee I did not know while in the parking lot. I went to security to look at film and try to ID them. We were not able to ID the employee. We checked film from the stairwell I exited through and caught a glimpse of the person, but you only had to swipe your ID to get in, not to leave. So, no, there was no timed ID badge record to match the picture against. I was surprised by the outcome. Given the ID badges and security cameras, etc, I had expected a Star Trek style set up. No, not remotely. I am well aware info can be used against people. That mostly scares me in cases of hostile intent. And where you have hostile intent, it almost does not matter what info they have. They can spin it as something bad anyway. At this point, I think being innocent is mostly not a defense either. I hope things change. Currently, there is a lot of assumption of guilt and, to me, that is the real problem.
- starky 13y ago
  The big issue with using access control and security cameras for tracking people is that they are some of the worst possible ways to track someone. As you discovered, it really comes down to a bunch of tedious scrubbing through video trying to find the few seconds of interesting video. Access control makes it somewhat easier, but then you have issues when people just follow another person in instead of using their fob. Tracking people via cellphones and other similar methods is far easier and effective right now. You could make a lot of money in security if you were able to come up with a reliable way of tracking people via surveillance cameras, particularly in mapping persons movements and identifying when they aren't behaving as expected. Unfortunately this is exactly where it gets too easy to invade people's privacy. It is just a matter of time before we are able to do this, and we really need to have some way of limiting the invasion of privacy while still allowing for these systems to be used in positive ways.
  - NovemberWest 13y ago
pearjuice 13y ago
I find it very odd how they do not include "proprietary software" in that list. Because that is where true freedom ends. Anything offline can actually be online. And you wouldn't know. Because it are proprietary closed circuit systems which you do not know the intent of.
DougWebb 13y ago
Ironic: I use Ghostery to block website trackers, and it identified thirteen of them on that article.
- Steko 13y ago
  Alanis level irony: millions of people use Ghostery and most aren't aware it tracks them and sells their data.
  - Amadou 13y ago
    Alanis level irony: millions of people use Ghostery and most aren't aware it tracks them and sells their data. You have to actively turn the reporting on, it is not the default. It isn't a hidden option either, it is the very first one on the configuration page.
    - Steko 13y ago
      Off by default yes but blocking trackers is also off by default and as soon as you hit the settings they promt you to opt in. And if you're opted out you can be sure that every few weeks to a month Ghostery will update and try to get you to mess with it's "redesigned control panel". This is less annoying than YouTube's constantly trying to trick you to sign up for G+, but it's still annoying behavior that 90%+ of addons avoid. And they downplay the sales angle [1] and fail to mention that they sent every url you visit back to their servers in the clear [2]. That's fine if it doesn't bother you but it strikes me as shady and disingenuous on Ghostery's part. Anyone who feels likewise should check out Disconnect [3] which is open source and breaks fewer sites. [1] Although not as egregiously as in the past. Here is how they originally pitched GhostRank: Ghostery provides reports to Evidon about advertisers and data collectors, which Evidon then provides to regulatory agencies like the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Direct Marketing Association, parts of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA)[2]. These agencies then use those reports to monitor how Online Behavioral Advertisers operate and, when needed, refer them to the Federal Trade Commission. [2] http://wtf.cyprio.net/ghostrank-logs-every-visited-url-in-clear http://wtf.cyprio.net/ghostrank-logs-every-visited-url-in-cl... [3] https://disconnect.me/ https://disconnect.me/
Sagat 13y ago
Trying to remove tracks is precisely the wrong thing to do. You have to keep a trackable presence of some sort or you will look suspicious and receive extra scrutiny.
keithpeter 13y ago
OA might have unpacked 'being tracked' a little. Is it a time line of spatial locations? Or just what I bought for lunch today (therefore one coordinate at a specific time)? Or a super set of entries in multiple databases?
digitalengineer 13y ago
> Facebook and Twitter already run photos posted on their sites through a Microsoft-developed system called PhotoDNA in order to flag those who match known child pornography images... "Every time you upload a photograph to Facebook or put one on Twitter for that matter you are now ratting out anybody in that frame to any police agency in the world that’s looking for them," This was news to me. Jezus, everyone on every photo?
- HPLovecraft 13y ago
  http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-photodna-child-abuse http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-ph...
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    How do we get from "hash of the image" to "unique face identification of everyone in the image"?

86 points by trendspotter 13y ago

"Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar." Top 1% of the super paranoid indeed. While I understand the reach of the government and the lengths they'll go to gain information - this article is absolutely ridiculous to me. I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do? Give me a fucking break.

angersock 13y ago
Bully for you that you don't perceive an issue here. The fact is beyond dispute that the social services in widest use actively turn your friends into informants on you. If that doesn't bother you, fine--but don't mock the people for whom that is an uncomfortable reality.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  Bit off topic, but I actually just disabled all my social media, and you know what? I don't miss a single soul and I feel really good again, more energetic and enthusiastic even. I just realized I really only do have about 5 people I should keep in contact with. Everyone else was a relationship that was kept up just from virtue of existing, relationships that would never make it into real life. I feel free. For the first time I took a walk in the park yesterday, rolled a joint, went for a nice breakfast and coffee at a local diner, read the newspaper, and just sat in the park. It was amazing not feeling pressure to make everyone immediately aware of how fucking awesome of a morning I've had. It was actually unreal. I just sat there looking at a bird and I almost just broke down and cried of happiness. I felt zero pressure doing anything. It felt as though I was obligated to post everything cool I did, so when doing those things, I'd do them differently just to fit the specific paradigm that I post in just to one up others. A feeling has left me that I hadn't identified before that I mistook as depression. I was growing more apathetic, sad, and cynical due to social media because it felt like every little thing I did was in competition in some form or another to others online, and when I failed, I just felt more isolated and lonely. I'm able to do things consistently without the need to constantly check my phone and compare that specific frame of my life against others. Facebook on the toilet, while cleaning, running, on the bus, at work, on the commute home, too much. The weeks following deleting my social media I got so much shit done so fast with no distractions. Absolutely amazing. I think I'll write a blog post about this. I bought a tablet, loaded my favourite books on it, and have filled in all my pointless social media time with reading. I'm actually discovering the city alone for the first time ever and it's wonderful because I don't care what anyone else thinks of what I'm doing, I'm doing it for me. I'm going to grow my beard, cut my hair, buying some jeans, buying some chucks, and then I'm going to relax in a field somewhere and just spend time not caring.
  - moens 13y ago
    Beautiful, +1
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Social media creates a ton of new needs that it then proceeds to only partially, and unpredictably, fill. You're just realizing again that you don't really give a shit what your mom had for breakfast, unless you're talking about it with her to pass the time over dinner:) There's absolutely nothing that anybody has to say to me that can't wait a day (except "the site's down!")
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      I'm going to get a t-shirt saying "Don't talk to me unless the site is down" haha. Yeah, trying to fill that void with social media is like trying to put out fire with napalm.
  - pearjuice 13y ago
    Problem is that even though you visually deleted all that social stuff, the data still exists. There is no escape.
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      You're able to "delete" your profile now, so that you have to create a new one and re-add everything if you want to go back. You have the option of deleting after two weeks of deactivation. Whether it is truly deleted on their servers is up for debate.
  - computer 13y ago
    The irony of course being that Hackernews too is social media, and you still just "bragged" about the experience you had!
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      Not at all. It's "social media" in that there's a comments page that you can interact with others yes but not much more than that. It's just a link aggregation and I don't know any of you even remotely intimately.
- instaheat 13y ago
  I do perceive an issue here. I just refuse to let - yet another - uncomfortable reality dictate the way I live. I understand what is going on out there. I'm just not going to be a martyr. Advertisers, go ahead and try to sell me something based on what you think I like. It won't work on me. It's a hail mary play. I guess what I'm really trying to say is I'm not in position to change anything so I suppose I can be thankful for the likes of Edward Snowden and companies that fight back far reaching government requests (Like AirBnb did recently) but I'm going to live my life and live it fully, challenging authority every step of the way hinging on the fact that I believe in the Bill of Rights.
m3rc 13y ago
I think it was more proving just how far you would have to go to really be untraceable, and that it's an essentially impossible goal for a normal person.
Zikes 13y ago
I'm not sure exactly what needs to happen before you'd take the issue seriously, but enough already has happened for many of us to be very concerned.
Amadou 13y ago
I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do? Give me a fucking break. The problem is the reverse here. The "system" (i.e. our society in general) has been co-opted. It is profoundly wrong that a normal life in the modern world requires so much disclosure to unrelated 3rd parties. It's like the argument - if you don't want to be recorded, cataloged and tracked by innumerable license plate scanners on the road by the police, DEA, etc and private data-brokers like TLO [1] then you shouldn't drive. It's completely ass-backwards, the price of driving shouldn't be a permanent record of all your movements in innumerable databases that are anonymous to you. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broker-offers-new-service-showing-where-they-have-spotted-your-car/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broke...
Sagat 13y ago
That's the point they are trying to make. No normal person can hope to lead a normal life whilst escaping tracking.
Nursie 13y ago
The article had examples of what they do now. It's not a stretch that the rest can happen soon. Things should not have been allowed to get here.

theboss 13y ago

A horrible article. Offline? The lady has a tech-startup in SanFrancisco. Untracked? Still possible to track her. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. If you want to buy a house, you're going to need credit, if you want credit then you're going to be tracked. That's just the way it works in developed nations. It is one thing to be mindful of security. Protecting your data, understanding the limits of cryptography, not giving away important information via social media or to people who don't need it, is all important things to know. In a digital world you leave behind a digital footprint. Having one isn't the problem. Controlling it is. edit: Being untraceable is impossible and a thing of the movies. The moment you are born and issued a birth certificate, your digital footprint has started. The thing to remember is that isn't a bad thing...

pessimizer 13y ago
A horrible comment. These are people who are minimizing their profiles, not magical fairy creatures. Of course if you buy a house under your own name, you will be easy to find - but with a little creativity, you may be able to get around that. Just because these people are guarded about their activities and their images does not mean that they are handing out tips about how to run for Congress anonymously, so there's really no need to argue against that straw man. >The moment you are born and issued a birth certificate, your digital footprint has started. Not everywhere, and not until very recently.
- theboss 13y ago
  These people? I am one of them. I understand the in's and out's of just about the best you can do when it comes to living off the map. The article says they are living off the map, which they certainly aren't. Like I said, minimizing your footprint is one thing, and that is good, but saying these people are "Offline" is absurd.
  - autotravis 13y ago
    > The article says they are living off the map, which they certainly aren't. No, it doesn't. '“It’s basically impossible for you and I to decide, as of tomorrow, I’m going to remain off the radar and to survive for a month or 12 months,” says Gunter Ollmann, the CTO of security firm IOActive'

lelandbatey 13y ago

Basically, if you can be observed by a person, then you can definitely be "tracked" by a computer. The thing is, I've never been that upset about this. Technology has only made something that was possible into something that's now feasible, namely observing the public actions of many people to determine what they're doing. I've always known, even as a kid, that if we scattered many small detecting devices (cameras, microphones, RFID tags) throughout the world, something that is not illegal or bad in and of itself, that we'd pretty much all be track-able. Did no one think that putting RFID chips all over the place might make a rough point cloud out of nearly everything in the world? Or that simply by interacting with any computerized system it's possible it can be tracking literally ever bit of your interaction with it? Or that it's possible to make cameras so ubiquitous as to make most of the world monitor-able? Seriously, did the world not see this coming? I know one of the first things I thought of when I saw lots of security cameras somewhere like the airport as a kid was "I bet you could design something to track all the people in this airport using those cameras. That would be sooo cool."

moens 13y ago
Yeah, most people did not. I know, I have been saying this for years... ever since I studied ipv6 in the olden days (the 90's). All but one or two people I ever discussed the "trackability of everything" with was like, "What the hell are you tripping on?" The point is that everyone is a target. For a mugger, an ex lover, a political opponent, a boss, an employee... everyone is a target. That should (IMO) make everyone at least a little wary.
mentat 13y ago
It's the exponential reduction in the resources required to accomplish visibility in public actions which is "new". Sure, you could pay someone to follow another person around in public. Now you don't have to, everyone's followed already. The availability of ALPR data to whoever wants to know the last location of a car was one of the more interesting things in the DEFCON presentations around this.

Dirlewanger 13y ago

Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t." Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like that because insurance companies have calculated precisely how likely one alcoholic drink will cause them problems down the road in terms of them administering costs related to alcoholism or something. Very scary stuff.

noonespecial 13y ago
How terrifying will it be when the government is the sole provider of said insurance with IRS enforcement of its rules? It will be like the NYC BigGulp ban on a ridiculous scale.
diminoten 13y ago
Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%? I guess I'm still having a hard time squaring personal responsibility with this idea of complete anonymity. It's not that we shouldn't be able to hide anything, but like the article said, it's just not possible (or even reasonable to expect) to hide everything. Existing in society leaves a footprint, especially in cases like license plates - they're designed to aid in tracking, what's the surprise that they're being used to do exactly that?
- joosters 13y ago
  Perhaps you're buying alcohol for a party. Or all that fatty food you purchased on your credit card was because you get shopping for a friend. But the anonymous algorithms won't know this, and you will pay for their assumptions. How is that fair? It's little relief to me if these systems are only mostly correct.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    You're focusing on the specific example, rather than the general idea that your purchase history indicates your riskiness, and an insurance company who has that data available to them will adjust your policy based on your behavior. And why shouldn't they? It's the same concept as you indicating whether or not you smoke, how much you drive to/from work daily, how many driving tickets you have, etc. Questions you willfully answer today. We are already accepting of their interest. The only significant difference here is you wouldn't as easily be able to lie, and people who do lead more conservative lives pay less, again a tried and true concept in the car insurance industry. Maybe soon we'll see health insurance companies offering individual breaks to people who grant the company access to their purchase history.

junto 13y ago

One interviewee had a credit card in a fake name. How legal is that exactly?

roasty 13y ago
A lot of people get a credit card, and then just get add a fake name to that account. Which is not really a great method of anonymity. I'm 99% sure it is illegal to get a credit card by supplying false information.
toufka 13y ago
It is illegal to defraud and impersonate. There's nothing illegal about using multiple names (again, so long as there is no intent to defraud or impersonate).
- rsync 13y ago
  I'd be very careful there ... the notion of "structured transactions"[1] is about as wide-reaching as a RICO indictment, and can be used for just about anything. Even a sniff of a notion that you did that to avoid any kind of tax[2] categorizes it as a "structuring" which "may be punished by a fine or up to five years in prison, or both." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring [2] Regardless of whether that's true or not ...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
harshreality 13y ago
I don't see why it would be a problem. People use different names on credit cards all the time. They get married, or divorced (after taking their spouse's name), without changing names on their credit cards, use their middle name as their first name, use nicknames, etc. I doubt banks care as long as you use your legitimate SSN and pay your bills. On financial accounts where you have assets, I wouldn't want to use an unofficial name. If there's a dispute they could claim that you're not the owner, and you risk losing the assets.

sliverstorm 13y ago

Moral of the story: to really disappear, you're going to need to go live in a forest somewhere or move to the high plains of Tibet. Potentially useful information, if there's mobsters after you. The RFID tags in tires is a perfect illustration of why it's going to be practically impossible to live in the modern world and cover all your tracks. I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires (which, BTW, is a nifty idea), and there are doubtless hundreds of other tracks I leave. Who could possibly cover them all? It would be like trying to make a sieve water-tight, except you don't even know where half the holes are! Now, if we're talking about the NSA and not mobsters, and you are less concerned with being un-findable than you are with hiding your activities- there are different games you can play, and I'd bet you could be more successful. Behave in an ordinary fashion 99.9% of the time. Just look at the intelligence operations sixty years ago. Spies didn't hide in holes so no-one could find them, they blended in.

Amadou 13y ago
I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires That's the first I've heard of it myself, although it seems inevitable since one of the biggest selling points of RFID tags is for inventory management. We are likely to see RFID tags everywhere we currently see barcodes. http://www.securityinfowatch.com/press_release/10492011/why-walmart-is-adopting-rfid http://www.securityinfowatch.com/press_release/10492011/why-... But... to get back to the RFID in tires thing there is more to it than just that. Current vehicle safety codes require in-cabin monitoring of tire pressure. One way to do it is for the car to pay attention to changes in wheel rotation speeds (lower pressure means smaller effective radius). Another is to put a pressure guage in each wheel that talks to the car's computer wirelessly and gives more exact numbers so is more common. So even without RFID in the tires, most cars still transmit a unique ID number everywhere they go. http://news.rutgers.edu/news-releases/2010/08/wireless-tire-pressu-20100811 http://news.rutgers.edu/news-releases/2010/08/wireless-tire-...
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Reading about direct TPMS, it's a shame that the sensors have to be battery powered. I was excited for a minute, thinking maybe they manage to power the device with radio waves, the same way a passive RFID chip replies using power harvested from the query.

NovemberWest 13y ago

I worked for a big company where security was a big thing. I had to have an ID badge to enter the building. My boss once admitted to requesting the logs to determine if people on the team were really showing up on time to work. So I was aware the information could be used in let's say a predatory fashion for things not immediately obvious. However, I once had an ugly run in with another employee I did not know while in the parking lot. I went to security to look at film and try to ID them. We were not able to ID the employee. We checked film from the stairwell I exited through and caught a glimpse of the person, but you only had to swipe your ID to get in, not to leave. So, no, there was no timed ID badge record to match the picture against. I was surprised by the outcome. Given the ID badges and security cameras, etc, I had expected a Star Trek style set up. No, not remotely. I am well aware info can be used against people. That mostly scares me in cases of hostile intent. And where you have hostile intent, it almost does not matter what info they have. They can spin it as something bad anyway. At this point, I think being innocent is mostly not a defense either. I hope things change. Currently, there is a lot of assumption of guilt and, to me, that is the real problem.

starky 13y ago
The big issue with using access control and security cameras for tracking people is that they are some of the worst possible ways to track someone. As you discovered, it really comes down to a bunch of tedious scrubbing through video trying to find the few seconds of interesting video. Access control makes it somewhat easier, but then you have issues when people just follow another person in instead of using their fob. Tracking people via cellphones and other similar methods is far easier and effective right now. You could make a lot of money in security if you were able to come up with a reliable way of tracking people via surveillance cameras, particularly in mapping persons movements and identifying when they aren't behaving as expected. Unfortunately this is exactly where it gets too easy to invade people's privacy. It is just a matter of time before we are able to do this, and we really need to have some way of limiting the invasion of privacy while still allowing for these systems to be used in positive ways.
- NovemberWest 13y ago

pearjuice 13y ago

I find it very odd how they do not include "proprietary software" in that list. Because that is where true freedom ends. Anything offline can actually be online. And you wouldn't know. Because it are proprietary closed circuit systems which you do not know the intent of.

DougWebb 13y ago

Ironic: I use Ghostery to block website trackers, and it identified thirteen of them on that article.

Steko 13y ago
Alanis level irony: millions of people use Ghostery and most aren't aware it tracks them and sells their data.
- Amadou 13y ago
  Alanis level irony: millions of people use Ghostery and most aren't aware it tracks them and sells their data. You have to actively turn the reporting on, it is not the default. It isn't a hidden option either, it is the very first one on the configuration page.
  - Steko 13y ago
    Off by default yes but blocking trackers is also off by default and as soon as you hit the settings they promt you to opt in. And if you're opted out you can be sure that every few weeks to a month Ghostery will update and try to get you to mess with it's "redesigned control panel". This is less annoying than YouTube's constantly trying to trick you to sign up for G+, but it's still annoying behavior that 90%+ of addons avoid. And they downplay the sales angle [1] and fail to mention that they sent every url you visit back to their servers in the clear [2]. That's fine if it doesn't bother you but it strikes me as shady and disingenuous on Ghostery's part. Anyone who feels likewise should check out Disconnect [3] which is open source and breaks fewer sites. [1] Although not as egregiously as in the past. Here is how they originally pitched GhostRank: Ghostery provides reports to Evidon about advertisers and data collectors, which Evidon then provides to regulatory agencies like the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Direct Marketing Association, parts of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA)[2]. These agencies then use those reports to monitor how Online Behavioral Advertisers operate and, when needed, refer them to the Federal Trade Commission. [2] http://wtf.cyprio.net/ghostrank-logs-every-visited-url-in-clear http://wtf.cyprio.net/ghostrank-logs-every-visited-url-in-cl... [3] https://disconnect.me/ https://disconnect.me/

Sagat 13y ago

Trying to remove tracks is precisely the wrong thing to do. You have to keep a trackable presence of some sort or you will look suspicious and receive extra scrutiny.

keithpeter 13y ago

OA might have unpacked 'being tracked' a little. Is it a time line of spatial locations? Or just what I bought for lunch today (therefore one coordinate at a specific time)? Or a super set of entries in multiple databases?

digitalengineer 13y ago

> Facebook and Twitter already run photos posted on their sites through a Microsoft-developed system called PhotoDNA in order to flag those who match known child pornography images... "Every time you upload a photograph to Facebook or put one on Twitter for that matter you are now ratting out anybody in that frame to any police agency in the world that’s looking for them," This was news to me. Jezus, everyone on every photo?

HPLovecraft 13y ago
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-photodna-child-abuse http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-ph...
- tedunangst 13y ago
  How do we get from "hash of the image" to "unique face identification of everyone in the image"?