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Switzerland Becomes Latest European Country to Contest Google Over Street View

Bart Salisbury — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:05:13 -0600

Advances in technology can be amazing. At the same time they can be threatening. Especially when they crash into existing cultural predispositions, as Google is finding out in Switzerland. Apparently, the Swiss (and a few other countries in Europe) are fond of their privacy. And, in their opinion, Google’s Street View poses a direct threat to that privacy.

The Swiss penchant for privacy is old news--who doesn’t know about the strict anonymity of Swiss banking laws? It’s not surprising, then, that the country’s federal data protection commissioner, Hanspeter Thuer, announced it would take Google to court unless it did a better job protecting the privacy of those it captured with its Street View cameras. In particular, Thuer wants better blurring of faces and license plates, and a lower camera view so that things not normally viewable from the street, such as walled gardens or private streets, would not be shown.

Google’s Matthais Meyer respond by saying “We believe that Google Street View is absolutely legal, also in Switzerland.” The company, he said, would “vigorously contest” the case.

This is not Google’s first run-in over privacy concerns. Japan has already made Google agree to reshoot images from a lower camera angle; Germany has demanded erasure of raw footage of faces, house numbers, and license plates of individuals who don’t want to appear in Street View; Greece has so far said no to Google’s requests to photograph its streets; and villagers in Buckinghamshire in England formed a human chain around a Google van to block it from photographing its streets.

Street View is an amazing technology. I used it to successfully track down locations for photographs I took last year in Tokyo--even on small, out-of-the-way side-streets. But is the loss of individual privacy too high a price to pay for my convenience?

Image Credit: peoplearestrange/Flickr

Google Releases Dashboard to Show You How Much Data You Have Stored In the Cloud

Ryan Whitwam — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:53:51 -0600

We all know Google has a lot of information about us. Now there’s a way to have all that data laid out before you in terrifying detail. Google Dashboard is the search giant’s new site aimed at increasing user control over personal information.

The Dashboard is available in your account settings page (or just go here), and kept behind an additional sign-in page. Once logged in, you’ll see all the Google services you use along with a summary of its use. There is currently support of more than 20 Google services including Gmail, Latitude, Google Voice, Google Docs, Gtalk, YouTube and Picasa.

Google offers quick access to the settings for each service if you’re not happy with the information being stored. So, feel better?

Google's video overview:

Google's All-Seeing Eye Gets Bigger with New Satellite

Paul Lilly — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:00:38 -0500

Google caused a ruckus in privacy circles last year when the search giant struck a deal with satellite imagery company GeoEye to use high-res images from its GeoEye-1 satellite for Google Earth and Maps products, and the search giant is back in space again.

In a blog post, Google let it be known that DigitalGlobe launched its next-generation satellite named WorldView-2, and like GeoEye-1, Google plans to get images from it.

"To keep bringing you new, high-quality imagery in Google Earth & Google Maps, we work directly with several commercial satellite imaging providers," Google wrote. "Last week, our partner DigitalGlobe successfully launched their next generation satellite, WorldView-2, aboard Boeing Delta II 7920 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The successful launch of WV2 is another important step forward in making more high resolution, accurate, current imagery available."

Privacy advocates should note that the government regulates just how closely Google is allowed to peer, but just in case, here's how you can construct your own Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie.

Image Credit: horsesmouth.typepad.com

Not Sure How You Feel Today? Ask the Facebook National Happiness Index

Jason Barry — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:37:09 -0500

Adam Kramer has been working on a project at Facebook aggregating 100 million users’ status updates into a database and parsing it for positive and negative words. When you map this data over a timeline spanning a couple years, what do you have? The Facebook United States Gross National Happiness Index.

They have taken precautions so no one’s privacy is in trouble, but they tally a score each day based upon the status updates’ positive and negative emotion words. Some of the conclusions are obvious and expected: people are much happier (9.7% happier) on Friday than Monday—the saddest day of the week. Further, according to the study, two of the saddest days of the year were the days when Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson died.

The other fairly common spikes fell around major U.S. holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the fourth of July.

You can check out the index yourself over on the Facebook site. How accurate do you think this type of “polling” can be, and do you think its findings are credible?

Twitter Erroneously Bans/Unbans Security Researcher’s Account

Jason Barry — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:04:34 -0500

Twitter made an embarrassing mistake this week by suspending security researcher Mikko Hyppönen’s account for allegedly sending direct messages containing phishing URLs. Hyppönen realized Twitter had unexpectedly banned his account without any warning yesterday. He received a message from them last night with a customer-service-disaster of an explanation:

“I've unsuspended your acct.
You were suspended for using the malware URL rnyspeceDOTcom in DMs.
Be careful!
We scan evrythng for malware.”

It’s all downhill from there. Hyppönen posted the tweet they are referring to months ago trying to deter users from visiting a particular phishing site. He took precautions to make sure it was not linkable and even included the warning “don’t go there” in the tweet. Not only is the post benign but its intent is actually altruistic.

Modded Wireless Network Can See Through Walls, but Can’t Save the World Just Yet

Jason Barry — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:20:24 -0500

The folks over at the University of Utah are working on using wireless networking equipment to see through walls. Yep, they are trying to turn your wifi network into an investigative x-ray machine.

Well, it is slightly more complicated than that. They set up a 34-node wireless network and used principals similar to sonar to aggregate the movement of objects behind physical objects. You can practically hear the excitement from all the spy-happy teenagers. Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari’s intentions were much more altruistic.

“We envision a building imaging scenario similar to the following. Emergency responders, military forces, or police arrive at a scene where entry into a building is potentially dangerous. They deploy radio sensors around (and potentially on top of) the building area, either by throwing or launching them, or dropping them while moving around the building. The nodes immediately form a network and self-localize, perhaps using information about the size and shape of the building from a database (eg Google maps) and some known-location coordinates (eg using GPS). Then, nodes begin to transmit, making signal strength measurements on links which cross the building or area of interest. The received signal strength measurements of each link are transmitted back to a base station and used to estimate the positions of moving people and objects within the building.”

Obviously, privacy is a concern. But let’s face it, you’ve got nothing to hide so long as you aren’t a terrorist, hostage wrangler, or scantily clad getting out of the shower.

Facebook Responds to Privacy Concerns, Says They are Better than Gmail

Jason Barry — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:52:40 -0500

The folks over at The Register got a response from Facebook about all the flak they’ve been catching about their Mailbox API. Facebook says that their new API is less intrusive than Gmail’s scanning efforts.

Gmail is known to sift through an email and provide targeted ads depending on what it finds. Facebook claims they will white list approved applications and the user will still need to explicitly grant the application access to their information. Also according to Facebook, the fact that they don’t stand to make money (via ads) means their effort is less litigious than Gmail’s.

They offered that the potential applications of the API might outweigh the risks for some users. One likely use will be to expose your Facebook inbox through POP, making it accessible on devices in a similar way as email applications.

It is still debatable whether it is advantageous to give developers access to potentially sensitive data within Facebook. Which do you think is worse: Facebook’s mailbox API or Gmail’s email scanning?

Security Concerns Rise Over Facebook Mailbox API

Jason Barry — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:23:13 -0500

Facebook has plans to make available an inbox and notification API and security experts everywhere aren’t pleased. The API will expose users’ mailbox messages and notifications to applications developed around the framework.

Graham Cluley, a Sophos senior technology consultant said "the idea of Facebook applications being given free rein to mine users' inboxes and sent folders sends a shiver down my spine” in an interview with The Register. The API is clearly a point of contention for many security analysts who feel that Facebook may be revealing too much to developers.

Ultimately, it is going to come down to how Facebook handles the permissions of these applications. If they skirt the privacy concerns and bury the details in fine print about users’ rights, there will certainly be trouble. However, the liability falls onto the user to make sure their privacy isn’t invaded by their approved applications.

How do you feel about Facebook apps being able to dig into your messages?