Your Digital Fingerprint Makes You Easy to Track; Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune from Judicial Review

EFF Plans Appeal of Jewel v. NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Case

Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review

January 21, 2010

EFF - A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails.

"We're deeply disappointed in the judge's ruling," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America's system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that."

In the ruling, issued late Thursday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a "particularized injury" but instead a "generalized grievance" because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.

"The alarming upshot of the court's decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week -- just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans' phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process -- the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer."

Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA. That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit that's currently under appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

For the judge's full order:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/jewel/jeweldismissal12110.pdf

For more on warrantless wiretapping and NSA spying:
http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

EFF Reveals How Your Digital Fingerprint Makes You Easy to Track

Think that turning off cookies and turning on private browsing makes you invisible on the web? Think again.

January 28, 2010

Web Monkey - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new web app dubbed Panopticlick that reveals just how scarily easy it is to identify you out of millions of web users.

The problem is your digital fingerprint. Whenever you visit a site, your browser and any plug-ins you have installed can leak data. Some of it isn’t very personal, like your user agent string. Some of it is more personally revealing, like which fonts you have installed. But the what if you put it all together? Would the results make you identifiable?

As the EFF says, “this information can create a kind of fingerprint — a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer.”

The EFF’s test suite highlights what most of us probably already suspect — we’re readily identifiable on the web. We ran the test on a Mac using Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, all of which leaked enough data to make us identifiable according the EFF’s privacy explanations.

The purpose of Panopticlick is to show you how much you have in common with other browsers. The more your configuration mirrors everyone else’s, the harder it would be to identify you. The irony is, the nerdier you are — using a unique OS, a less common browser, customizing your browser with plug-ins and other power-user habits — the more identifiable you are.

For example, say you’re running Firefox on Ubuntu with the Gnash plug-in instead of Flash — way to stick it to the man — but you’re also showing up with a unique configuration of browser, OS, installed fonts, plug-ins and more which can be combined to identify you via a unique online fingerprint.

So what can you do to make yourself less identifiable? Well, by disabling cookies, the Flash plug-in, the Java plug-in and most of our extensions we were able to blend in better. Actually, the fact that we didn’t have Java or Flash turned on made us more identifiable in those categories, but it also denied the test access to our installed fonts and other bits of data, so overall, less identifiable.

Obviously that approach has a downside — without Flash there’s not much in the way of online video, a lack of cookies will cause issues with logins, and without Java, you won’t be able to crash your browser or cause it to get hung up for hours.

In short, the disabling method isn’t much fun. Strange though it may seem, the best way to lose the unique online fingerprint is to blend in with the herd. As the EFF points out, mobile browsers are hardest to identify since there are few customization options and, for the most part, one version of Mobile Safari looks just like another.

By the same token, if you want to blend in, stick with stock system fonts, run Windows XP, use Firefox with no add-ons and turn off cookies. You’ll be much harder to identify.

We should point out that, no matter how well you blend in the fingerprint test, you are of course still identifiable by your ISP. Advertisers and websites generally can’t access the information your ISP has on you, but of course governments — with the cooperation of your ISP — always can. So don’t think just because you’ve eliminated your fingerprints no one knows who you are.

How to Erase Your Digital Footprint

January 29, 2011

eHow Contributor - Everything that you do on your computer leaves a trail to follow.

Go to a website. Send an email. Make a purchase with your credit card. All of this data is stored on your computer. It's considered your Digital Footprint. Did you delete it? Clear out your web history? Empty your recycle bin? THE DATA IS STILL ON YOUR COMPUTER! Deleting it, clearing your web history or emptying your recycle bin DOES NOT get rid of it. Traces of your data are maintained on your hard drive. These traces are called metadata. Metadata can be pieced together to recreate your history, your habits and even your personality. Hackers and other bad people can easily get this information from your computer. Learn how to protect yourself and your information.

1. To sanitize the data on your hard drive, you must understand that your hard drive and all of the data will be completely scrubbed and deleted. If there is data on your hard drive that you do not want deleted, then you need to save it elsewhere temporarily. You can do this on a backup hard drive, external hard drive or a memory stick.

2. Move your applications and other data that you wish to save. Remember, whatever is left on your main hard drive will be scrubbed and deleted.

3. For this step, you will need to find the proper software to sanitize your hard drive. I have included a great program in my "resources" section below. It's called the Remo Drive Wipe. Take a look at it. This is all you need to keep your Digital Footprint in check.

4. Once you install and sanitize your hard drive, then you can reinstall the applications that you previously saved elsewhere. You should plan to clean your hard drive on a regular basis. If you are frequently on your computer, then I would recommend it to be done monthly.

How to Erase Your Digital Footprint (Details)