privacy - Tag Archive

Commercial Drones and Privacy

8 Replies Jonny Hankins

A couple of years ago I wrote an article on the Bassetti Foundation website about the use of drones and other robot devices in warfare. Times have moved on however, and now drones are much smaller and cheaper, so you do not need a multi-billion dollar budget to buy one.

a quadcopter drone

A commercial quadcopter drone

To give you an idea, $600 US will buy you this quadcopter. Perfect for the beginner, plate already mounted for the camera and can also carry a small payload.

If you want something that resembles an aeroplane why not take a look at  the CropCam (before it takes a look at you). $6999 I grant you but a fine machine. Hand launched it is guided by its GPS navigation system, automatically lands and takes pictures, flies at 60 Km an hour and can be fitted with a video. You set up the GPS and the autopilot does the rest.

As the name suggests, this vehicle is aimed at the commercial market, look at your crops, find your animals and catch your daughter in a haystack with the boy next door.

The haystack incident might sound like a joke but it is really a serious problem. There are no regulations about where you fly your new machine in the USA. The market for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) is in massive expansion as farmers, security companies, private detectives, news organizations, traffic and transport management companies and many others see the potential in such snooping power. The machines can be fitted with face recognition software, thermal imaging and license plate readers, and many see this as problematic.

A couple of months ago the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) launched a code of conduct for the industry, in the light of a new law in the USA that allows anyone to operate one of these systems (see the Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act of 2012).

Privacy groups are up in arms however, claiming that the mass use of this type of technology will lead to massive infringements upon personal liberty, and they take no comfort from the code of conduct. Voluntary as it is, the code is extremely general, has no enforcement mandate, contains no discussion at all about the myriad potential privacy and safety issues raised by unrestricted drone use over U.S. airspace, and there is nothing about the intended audience or user.

One US Senator however is trying to take action. Sen. Rand Paul has introduced a bill that aims at protecting Americans against unwanted drone surveillance. Read about it here.

The present regulations state that 400 feet above your house you enter neutral territory, a bit like international waters off the coast, so anyone has the right to fly their drone 401 feet over your house. These machines are small so you probably wouldn’t notice it, but as we know cameras are good nowadays. At a few hundred dollars for a vehicle they are becoming available to almost anyone, and certainly any business or organization.

Do you think this could become a problem? Is it yet another invasion of privacy or a justified use of technology? I am all ears.

What are the risks of getting infected by malicious software?

11 Replies Alan

Have you ever thought of what is going to happen when you are infected by a computer malware? About a decade ago, computer virus aims were to replicate themselves and destroying key operating system functions. If you got a computer malware infection at that time, most probably your operating system will be corrupted by the malware and you will need to format your hard disk to solve your problem.

Today, malicious software behaves a little different. We have more than 10 types of computer security threats such as virus, trojan, worms, spyware and many more. Each type of malware has their own speciality and here are top 3 risks of getting infected by a computer malware.

1. Having your login credentials stolen

It is very popular today that a keylogger/keystroke logging is used to log a victim’s login credentials. Once the keylogger has a set of your username and password, they can login into the account and do almost everything unless your account is protected by a two factor authentication.

2. Losing hard disk space

Hard disk space today can be very cheap but we should not waste it on storing malicious software. Malware such as worms will replicate in your operating system and take up your hard disk space. You will not feel the burden at the beginning but as the process gets longer, you will start to feel the pain of having insufficient disk space.

3. Spending money on unnecessary stuff

There is also a type of malware where they scare you off by telling you that your computer has hundreds of infections which you actually don’t have. Upon scaring you, they urge you to purchase a bogus antivirus which claims that can clean all the mentioned infections. All in all, you end up actually paying for nothing.

4. Being part of a minion for DDoS attack

Have you ever thought of how DDoS can bring thousands to millions of traffic to a server? It is actually all the computers which are infected with some sort of trojan that explains how the attacker can have such massive amount of traffic. By getting a malware infection, you are at risk of becoming part of this big project which you do not want to be.

5. Losing your privacy

Another form of malware which is known as spyware is built to spy your daily activities. By knowing your daily activities, the attacker will be able to understand you better before attacking you. For instance, if you regularly surf to adult sites, the attacker will probably start off with some fake adult material to lure you into their trap.

Looking at someones internet usageBack to you now, are you able to take all the risks mentioned? If you are not, be sure you have a good habit when it comes to internet and computer security and always remember that having an antivirus and firewall is not sufficient for a good security.

Tagging students in schools

10 Replies Jonny Hankins

This week a school district in San Antonio in Texas USA approved a program for tagging students while they are in school. The students will have to wear a small card at all times while in the school so that their positions can be constantly monitored by the authorities.

The RFID tags will be provided free of charge but if they lose or destroy it the student will have to pay $15 for a new one.

A student with a RFID tag

The latest fashion, an RFID tag

The schools that are implementing the project on a trial basis state that they want to “harness the power of the technology to make schools safer, know where our students are all the time in school, and increase revenues,”

‘Increase revenues’ is the part that catches my eye the most here, why might the project increase revenue? The answer is in attendance, the schools receive state funding based upon attendance and how many special needs children take the school buses, in this case based upon the related Medicare payments.

The schools hope to make about $1.7 million a year, and with the cost of setting up the scheme about half a million and about $135 thousand a year to run they are ‘quids in’ as we say in Manchester.

Rather unsurprisingly some of the parents of the children that attend the 2 pilot schools have expressed some reservations. Privacy issues due to the invasive nature of the idea have been raised, and some argue that kidnapping and related horrors could even be made easier if someone managed to gain access to the system and the real time information that it produced.

This news reminds me of an article that I wrote a few years ago on the Bassetti Foundation website regarding spying technology and later its proposed uses in schools in Italy. Here is a mention on a blog related to the matter in question. As this article suggests, the problem of mobile phone use in schools and particularly for cheating in tests and exams is apparently rife, so one school bought a military jammer that blocks the signal making the phone system non operational.

This event also caused a few raised eyebrows (to say the least) with people claiming the right to contact their children in emergency situations. Problems of overspill and local disturbances were also raised but the school argued that the system was necessary in order to uphold the school rules and quality and reliability of its exam process. The law has now changed so the system is no longer in use but the will and means was there.

Coaxing and encouragement while at school and the notion of doing the right thing seem to be out of the door then!

As a note I was a teacher in an Italian secondary school for 11 years myself, and I don’t think this approach will work. Kids are smart.