Tag Archives: Privacy

In a nice followup to yesterday’s post about differential privacy, John Cook, the proprietor of the Data Privacy Twitter feed, has a nice post that uses Bayes’ Theorem to implement a simple differential privacy scheme. The problem is to gather … Continue reading →

One of the tough problems in ethical data gathering is how to collect statistics while respecting the privacy of those the data is being gathered from. It’s widely known that most forms of data anonymization are not robust and that … Continue reading →

Most people think of Google as an advertising company—and that is how they make their money—but I think it’s more accurate to describe them as a surveillance company. The surveillance is in service of the advertising, of course, but if … Continue reading →

Speaking of John Cook’s Data Privacy twitter account, as I did yesterday, here’s an interesting item: Selling 911 location data is illegal but US carriers reportedly did it anywayhttps://t.co/cAtPd5n5Mj — Data Privacy (@data_tip) February 14, 2019 It turns out that … Continue reading →

I’ve long been a fan of John Cook’s TeX Tips and often learn something new from them. Cook has a number of such Twitter accounts covering various aspects of Mathematics and other technical areas. I was, therefore, happy to see … Continue reading →

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 →