Tag Archives: Privacy

It’s no secret that we here at Irreal are adamantly opposed to surveillance. That includes the casual monitoring of our communications by the government but especially the hoovering up of our every actions by the malevolent adtech industry. It’s a … Continue reading →

If you’re a fan of cop shows and the like, you undoubtedly know that the police can ask your mobile carrier for a record of your location information. Mostly, they’re supposed to get a warrant but often the phone companies … Continue reading →

Five years ago, I wrote a series of posts [1, 2, 3, 4] on the U.S. Government’s actions against Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim, a Malaysian architect who had just completed her PhD at Stanford. You can read the details in the … Continue reading →

Microsoft has been caught again spying on their users. Microsoft, of course, claims it’s all a big misunderstanding. They explain, Facebook like, that if you don’t want to share your data you have to adjust this obscure setting involving diagnostic … Continue reading →

In what could be considered a corollary to The Iron Law of Data Collection1, the UK’s GCHQ (their version of the American NSA) has informed Parliament that their use of bulk device hacking—originally promised to be used sparingly only in … Continue reading →

Every Irreal reader knows, I’m sure, about the proposed encryption—anti-encryption is more accurate—law that the Australian Government is trying to push through Parliament. When it was first proposed, I thought that it was another case of politicians being ignorant of … Continue reading →

I don’t get it. I. Just. Don’t. Get. It. A recent study commissioned by the Dutch Government found that Microsoft was collecting individual user data from the enterprise version of Office 365 including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook without any … Continue reading →

One of the tiresome and annoying things that the uninformed say about privacy issues is, “I have nothing to hide.” The idea, of course, is that, “I’m not a criminal or a terrorist so (1) no one will bother surveilling … Continue reading →