FBI was required to: Carrie Johnson (21 Mar 2012), “FBI still struggling with Supreme Court’s GPS ruling,” NPR Morning Edition, http://www.npr.org/2012/03/21/149011887/fbi-still-struggling-with-supreme-courts-gps-ruling.
the repossession business: Shawn Musgrave (5 Mar 2014), “A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America, powered by the repo industry,” BetaBoston/Boston Globe, http://betaboston.com/news/2014/03/05/a-vast-hidden-surveillance-network-runs-across-america-powered-by-the-repo-industry. Shawn Musgrave (5 Mar 2014), “Massive license plate location database just like Instagram, Digital Recognition Network insists,” BetaBoston/Boston Globe, http://betaboston.com/news/2014/03/05/massive-license-plate-location-database-just-like-instagram-digital-recognition-network-insists.
2.5 billion records: Vigilant Video (23 Feb 2009), “Site specific preparation sheet for LEARN V.4.0 server installation,” https://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/texas/alprpra_portharthurPD_portarthurtx%20%287%29.pdf.
In addition to repossession businesses: Cyrus Farivar (27 Feb 2012), “Your car, tracked: The rapid rise of license plate readers,” Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/your-car-tracked-the-rapid-rise-of-license-plate-readers. Catherine Crump (18 Jul 2013), “You are being tracked: How license plate readers are being used to record Americans’ movements,” American Civil Liberties Union, https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/071613-aclu-alprreport-opt-v05.pdf.
states’ driver’s license databases: Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima (16 Jun 2013), “State photo-ID databases become troves for police,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/state-photo-id-databases-become-troves-for-police/2013/06/16/6f014bd4-ced5-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html.
single national database: Josh Hicks (18 Feb 2014), “Homeland Security wants to build national database using license plate scanners,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/02/18/homeland-security-wants-to-build-national-database-using-license-plate-scanners. Dan Froomkin (17 Mar 2014), “Reports of the death of a national license-plate tracking database have been greatly exaggerated,” Intercept, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/17/1756license-plate-tracking-database.
In the UK, a similar government-run system: James Bridle (18 Dec 2013), “How Britain exported next-generation surveillance,” Medium, https://medium.com/matter-archive/how-britain-exported-next-generation-surveillance-d15b5801b79e. Jennifer Lynch and Peter Bibring (6 May 2013), “Automated license plate readers threaten our privacy,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/alpr.
It enforces London’s: The police also get access to the data. Hélène Mulholland (2 Apr 2012), “Boris Johnson plans to give police access to congestion charge cameras,” Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/apr/02/boris-johnson-police-congestion-charge.
automatic face recognition: Dan Froomkin (17 Mar 2014), “Reports of the death of a national license-plate tracking database have been greatly exaggerated,” Intercept, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/17/1756license-plate-tracking-database.
the FBI has a database: US Federal Bureau of Investigation (15 Sep 2014), “FBI announces full operational capability of the next generation identification system,” http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-announces-full-operational-capability-of-the-next-generation-identification-system.
Dubai police are integrating: William Maclean (2 Oct 2014), “Dubai detectives to get Google Glass to fight crime,” Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/02/us-emirates-dubai-google-police-idUSKCN0HR0W320141002.
the FBI can demand that data: Glenn Greenwald (5 Jun 2013), “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily,” Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order.
tracking the movements of cars: Brandon Griggs (20 Aug 2013), “New Google Maps can help you avoid traffic,” CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/tech/mobile/google-waze-mobile-maps.
If you’re reading this book on a Kindle: Alexandra Alter (19 Jul 2012), “Your e-Book is reading you,” Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304.
It just happens: The same thing happens when you watch videos on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, or any other streaming video service.
these actions generate surveillance records: Jennifer 8. Lee (21 Mar 2002), “Welcome to the database lounge,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/technology/welcome-to-the-database-lounge.html. Katie R. Holloman and D. Evan Ponder (2007), “Clubs, bars, and the driver’s license scanning system,” in Privacy in a Transparent World, ed. Amy Albert, Ethica Publishing, http://www.ethicapublishing.com/7CH5.htm.
“How Privileged Are You?”: Buzzfeed (10 Apr 2014), “How privileged are you?” http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you.
Over two million people have taken that quiz: Caitlin Dewey (26 Jun 2014), “The scary, eye-opening truth of Internet tracking—on Buzzfeed quizzes, and everywhere else,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/06/26/the-scary-eye-opening-truth-of-internet-tracking-on-buzzfeed-quizzes-and-everywhere-else.
sites like WebMD collect data: Marco D. Heusch (28 Oct 2013), “Privacy threats when seeking online health information,” JAMA Internal Medicine, http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1710119.
160 billion pieces annually: Ron Nixon (3 Jul 2013), “U.S. Postal Service logging all mail for law enforcement,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html.
Drones are getting smaller: Ms. Smith (18 Jun 2012), “The future of drone surveillance: Cyborg insect drones,” Network World, http://www.networkworld.com/article/2222611/microsoft-subnet/the-future-of-drone-surveillance--swarms-of-cyborg-insect-drones.html.
Face recognition is the easiest: Ravi Subban and Dattatreya P. Mankame (2014), “Human face recognition biometric techniques: Analysis and review,” Recent Advances in Intelligent Informatics: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 235, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-01778-5_47.
face recognition algorithms started: Chaochao Lu and Xiaoou Tang (15 Apr 2014), “Surpassing human-level face verification performance on LFW with GaussianFace,” arXiv:1404.3840 [cs.CV], http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.3840.
iris scanners that work at a distance: Barry Fox (5 Feb 2007), “Invention: Covert iris scanner,” New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11110-invention-covert-iris-scanner.html.
gait recognition systems: Zhaoxiang Zhang, Maodi Hu, and Yunhong Wang (2011), “A survey of advances in biometric gait recognition,” Biometric Recognition, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7098, Springer-Verlag, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-25449-9_19.
contactless RFID chip cards: Katherine Albrecht (2008), “RFID tag: You’re it,” Scientific American (Sep 2008): 72–77, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-rfid-tags-could-be-used. University of Washington College of Engineering (22 Feb 2008), “University launches RFID people tracking experiment,” RFID Journal, http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?6924. Christopher Zara (8 Jan 2013), “Disney World’s RFID tracking bracelets are a slippery slope, warns privacy advocate,” International Business Times, http://www.ibtimes.com/disney-worlds-rfid-tracking-bracelets-are-slippery-slope-warns-privacy-advocate-1001790.
Many retail stores are surreptitiously tracking: Quentin Hardy (7 Mar 2013), “Technology turns to tracking people offline,” New York Times, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/technology-turns-to-tracking-people-offline.
which aisles they walk down: Stephanie Clifford and Quentin Hardy (15 Jul 2013), “Attention, shoppers: Store is tracking your cell,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html. Brian Fung (19 Oct 2013), “How stores use your phone’s WiFi to track your shopping habits,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpos
t.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19/how-stores-use-your-phones-wifi-to-track-your-shopping-habits. Latanya Sweeney (12 Feb 2014), “My phone at your service,” US Federal Trade Commission, http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/techftc/2014/02/my-phone-your-service.
People can be tracked at public events: Bram Bonne et al. (4–7 Jun 2013), “WiFiPi: Involuntary tracking of visitors at mass events,” 14th International Symposium and Workshops on World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, Madrid, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6583443.
The company quickly retracted the remarks: Jim Edwards (9 Jan 2014), “Ford exec retracts statements about tracking drivers with the GPS in their cars,” Business Insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-jim-farley-retracts-statements-tracking-drivers-gps-2014-1.
a lot of wiggle room for Ford: Curt Magleby (3 Feb 2014), Letter to the Honorable Al Franken, United States Senate, re: Collection of location information, http://www.franken.senate.gov/files/letter/140212FordResponse.pdf.
Government Accountability Office report: US Government Accountability Office (6 Dec 2013), “In-car location-based services: Companies are taking steps to protect privacy, but some risks may not be clear to consumers,” Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate, GAO-14-81, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-81.
Radar in the terahertz range: British Broadcasting Corporation (10 Mar 2008), “Camera ‘looks’ through clothing,” BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7287135.stm. Rocco Parascandola (23 Jan 2013), “NYPD Commissioner says department will begin testing a new high-tech device that scans for concealed weapons,” New York Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-readies-scan-and-frisk-article-1.1245663. Carter M. Armstrong (17 Aug 2012), “The truth about terahertz,” IEEE Spectrum, http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/the-truth-about-terahertz.
Cameras can “listen” to phone conversations: Larry Hardesty (4 Aug 2014), “Extracting audio from visual information,” MIT News, http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from-vibrations-0804. Abe Davis et al. (10–14 Aug 2014), “The visual microphone: Passive recovery of sound from video,” 41st International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH 2014), Vancouver, British Columbia, http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/papers/VisualMic_SIGGRAPH2014.pdf.
turn your cell phone’s microphone on remotely: Erik Kain (30 Dec 2013), “The NSA reportedly has total access to the Apple iPhone,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/the-nsa-reportedly-has-total-access-to-your-iphone.
body odor recognition systems: Shaun Waterman (9 Mar 2009), “DHS wants to use human body odor as biometric identifier, clue to deception,” UPI, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2009/03/09/DHS-wants-to-use-human-body-odor-as-biometric-identifier-clue-to-deception/UPI-20121236627329.
identifying people by their typing style: Pranav Dixit (19 Aug 2014), “Banks now know who you are from how you type,” Gizmodo, http://gizmodo.com/your-phone-can-now-identify-you-based-on-how-you-type-1623733346.
identifying people by their writing style: It’s called stylometry. Sadia Afroz et al. (18–21 May 2014), “Doppelgänger finder: Taking stylometry to the underground,” IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, Oakland, California, http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~mccoy/papers/oakland2014-underground.pdf.
tens of millions of voiceprints: Raphael Satter (13 Oct 2014), “Voiceprints being harvested by the millions,” Associated Press, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/millions-of-voiceprints-quietly-being-harvested/2014/10/13/b34e291a-52af-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html. Raphael Satter (13 Oct 2014), “Banks harvest callers’ voiceprints to fight fraud,” Associated Press, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/banks-harvest-callers-voiceprints-to-fight-fraud/2014/10/13/715c6e56-52ad-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html.
Store clerks will know your name: Nicola Clark (17 Mar 2014), “Airlines use digital technology to get even more personal,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/business/airlines-use-digital-technology-to-get-even-more-personal.html.
Billboards will know who you are: Andrew Hough (10 Mar 2010), “‘Minority Report’ digital billboard ‘watches consumers shop,’” Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7411249/Minority-Report-digital-billboard-watches-consumers-shop.html.
Grocery store shelves will know: Clint Boulton (11 Oct 2013), “Snackmaker modernizes the impulse buy with sensors, analytics,” Wall Street Journal Blogs, http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/10/11/snackmaker-modernizes-the-impulse-buy-with-sensors-analytics.
Your car will know who is in it: This excellent science fiction short story explores some of these ideas. Ken Liu (Dec 2012), “The perfect match,” Lightspeed Magazine, http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-perfect-match.
Facebook tracks me: Bryan Acohido (15 Nov 2011), “Facebook tracking is under scrutiny,” USA Today, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-11-15/facebook-privacy-tracking-data/51225112/1.
It can probably make good guesses: Cotton Delo (22 Feb 2013), “Facebook to partner with Acxiom, Epsilon to match store purchases with user profiles,” Advertising Age, http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-partner-acxiom-epsilon-match-store-purchases-user-profiles/239967.
I try not to use Google search: I use DuckDuckGo, which does not collect personal information about its users. See https://duckduckgo.com.
I use various blockers: Jonathan Mayer (17 Feb 2012), “Safari trackers,” Web Policy, http://webpolicy.org/2012/02/17/safari-trackers.
Google has about a third: Benjamin Mako Hill (11 May 2014), “Google has most of my email because it has all of yours,” Copyrighteous, http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours.
police forces have installed surveillance cameras: Mun Wong (4 May 2011), “Top 5 cities with the largest surveillance camera networks,” VinTech Journal, http://www.vintechnology.com/journal/uncategorized/top-5-cities-with-the-largest-surveillance-camera-networks. David Barrett (10 Jul 2013), “One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey,” Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html. Thales Group (11 Apr 2014), “Mexico City, the world’s most ambitious urban security programme,” https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/worldwide/security/case-study/mexico-city-worlds-most-ambitious-urban-security-programme.
That data is almost certainly digital: Seagate Technology LLC (2012), “Video surveillance storage: How much is enough?” http://m.seagate.com/files/staticfiles/docs/pdf/whitepaper/video-surv-storage-tp571-3-1202-us.pdf.
Jeremy Bentham conceived of his “panopticon”: Jeremy Bentham (1791), The Panopticon, or the Inspection-House, T. Payne, http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm.
idea has been used as a metaphor: Oscar H. Gandy Jr. (1993), The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information, Westview Press, http://books.google.com/books?id=wreFAAAAMAAJ.
on the Internet and off: Tom Brignall III (2002), “The new panopticon: The Internet viewed as a structure of social control,” Tennessee Tech University, http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan003570.pdf.
All of us are being watched: Ellen Nakashima (16 Jan 2007), “Enjoying technology’s conveniences but not escaping its watchful eyes,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011501304.html.
3: ANALYZING OUR DATA
Target was right: Charles Duhigg (16 Feb 2012), “How companies learn your secrets,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html.
amassing and saving all kinds of data: Gregory Piatetsky (8 Dec 2013), “3 stages of Big Data,” KD Nuggets, http://www.kdnuggets.com/2013/12/3-stages-big-data.html.
Barack Obama mined data extensively: Michael Scherer (7 Nov 2012), “Inside the secret world of the data crunchers who helped Obama win,” Tim
e, http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win.
allowed academics to mine their data: Here are two examples. Lars Backstrom et al. (5 Jan 2012), “Four degrees of separation,” arXiv:1111.4570 [cs.SI], http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4570. Russell B. Clayton (Jul 2014), “The third wheel: The impact of Twitter use on relationship infidelity and divorce,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 17, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/sg/local/cyber/twitter-infidelity.pdf.
Facebook can predict: The experiment correctly discriminates between homosexual and heterosexual men in 88% of cases, African Americans and Caucasian Americans in 95% of cases, and Democrats and Republicans in 85% of cases. Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, and Thore Graepel (11 Mar 2013), “Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Early Edition, http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/03/06/1218772110.
The company knows you’re engaged: Sara M. Watson (14 Mar 2012), “I didn’t tell Facebook I’m engaged, so why is it asking about my fiancé?” Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/i-didnt-tell-facebook-im-engaged-so-why-is-it-asking-about-my-fianc/254479.
gay before you come out: Katie Heaney (19 Mar 2013), “Facebook knew I was gay before my family did,” BuzzFeed, http://www.buzzfeed.com/katieheaney/facebook-knew-i-was-gay-before-my-family-did.
may reveal that to other people: Geoffrey A. Fowler (13 Oct 2012), “When the most personal secrets get outed on Facebook,” Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444165804578008740578200224.
it could get you killed: For a while in 2014, there was a flaw in the gay hookup app Grindr that would reveal the location of gay men anywhere in the world, including countries like Uganda, Russia, and Iran. John Aravosis (26 Aug 2014), “Popular gay dating app Grindr faces creepy security breach allegations,” America Blog, http://americablog.com/2014/08/grindr-users-unwittingly-giving-away-exact-location.html.
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