Tag Archives: Privacy

The government and others are fond of telling us that we must give up some privacy to ensure our security. Paul Downey reminds us of a truth worth remembering. "Anyone who makes you choose between privacy and security wants you … Continue reading →

The Stasi is a good point. The Stasi is what happens when a state tries to achieve total watchfullness. — Nic Ferrier (@nicferrier) January 18, 2015

I’ve written a couple of times about the New York City Taxi Commission’s metadata and how easily it can be abused even though it was anonymized by removing the personally identifiable information. The anonymization notwithstanding, data analysts were able to … Continue reading →

Remember that NYC Taxi Commission data set that was used to identify strip club patrons and the comings and going of celebrities? Another data analyst has shown how it can be used to identify Muslim cab drivers. There’s nothing wrong … Continue reading →

Nic Ferrier has a few words of his own on government snooping. This time from a British point of view. We appear to be sleep walking into a world where MI5 can constantly watch us. If you don't think this … Continue reading →

An internal CIA board has found that its officers had done nothing wrong by breaking into the computers of senate staffers who were investigating claims of CIA torture. If you’re surprised by this you haven’t been paying attention. The government … Continue reading →

Remember how I told you not to trust government promises about data collection? That, according to the iron law of data collection, the data will always be used for other purposes even if the government promises otherwise? Not that you … Continue reading →