Top Ten ways they Track Us. Everyone should read this

reply to post by zaiger


so because you say its flawed logic that makes it so?

wow i guess ive been proven wrong.

reply to post by Melen


the only problem i have with your post is the part about the cameras.

you may have experience with cameras but you apparently know very little about light.

its not just "shining a light" on the camera. a laser even as small as 5mW does permanent damage to a camera, it doesnt matter how expensive it is, its simply conflicting technology.

the only countermeasure is to filter the light before it enters the lens, but the filter has to be the exact wavelength that the beam is. so to counter this you simply use a different colored laser. you cannot filter the entire light spectrum and expect to record anything.

and another thing, you can shine it from 10 miles away, good luck catching a guy doing that.

the LED thing would show up as a glowing very bright license plate. a 1 watt or more LED would be so bright they probably wouldn't even be able to read the car next to you's plate either. if its wavelength is anywhere in the infrared spectrum it will only be noticeable to the camera.


disclaimer: never shine a laser at public property, only ruin your own stuff.

Originally posted by kevinunknown
I found this on the internet makes for some rather shocking reading. Dont know how much of it a believe such as the last one about DNA storage in the UK but all the same makes for some really interesting reading. Feel free to add your thaughts. everyone should read this.

1. GPS -- Global positioning chips are now appearing in everything from U.S. passports, cell phones, to cars. More common uses include tracking employees, and for all forms of private investigation. Apple recently announced they are collecting the precise location of iPhone users via GPS for public viewing in addition to spying on users in other ways.

Wrong. The usual balderdash trying to conflate RFID and GPS. Passports do not have a GPS system. At all. Cell phones are always locatable in some way, even without GPS, because that's the way the system works. In order to hand off your phone to the next cell, you HAVE to know the location of the phone to some degree. It does speed things up to have a GPS in, and now it's a requirement for mobile 911. However. The existence of a GPS receiver does NOT signal the satellite with your position in some way - it's all receiver side based. The receiver calculates a position based on little signal flight time delays from a number of satellites. The satellites don't know squat about the receiver. Thus in your example, even if a passport had a 'gps chip' in it, it would mean diddly. Same as for the car. And the only way they'd work for "private investigation" would be to stick a data logger on your car or whatnot.

2. Internet -- Internet browsers are recording your every move forming detailed cookies on your activities. The NSA has been exposed as having cookies on their site that don't expire until 2035.


A lot of places put eternal cookies on your browser. That doesn't allow them to magically track your location, or where you surf. If you go back to NSA, they can query the cookie and know when the last time you visited was. If you leave the cookie on there. I set my browser to delete them at the end of the session, personally.

Major search engines know where you surfed last summer, and online purchases are databased, supposedly for advertising and customer service uses. IP addresses are collected and even made public.

Well, that's true. You can always go through a proxy if that bothers you, or arrange with your ISP to get a rotating IP address instead of a fixed one.

It has now been fully admitted that social networks provide NO privacy to users, while technologies for real-time social network monitoring are already being used.

Meh. Did you think stuff you posted in public would be private? Yes, the various data miners I know about personally (the Army ones) generally start off with Facebook et al as "seed" stock. Keep putting your personal data on there, the guys at Able Providence thank you.

The Cyber security Act attempts to legalize the collection and exploitation of your personal information. Apple's iPhone also has browsing data recorded and stored. All of this despite the overwhelming opposition to cybersurveillance by citizens.

Again, it's a browser. It stores history. And like most file systems, especially the flash rom based file systems, it doesn't eradicate all traces of deleted files, so it's there for a while. That's not a gubmint edict, it's the way browsers and file systems work.

3. RFID -- Forget your credit cards which are meticulously tracked, or the membership cards for things so insignificant as movie rentals which require your SSN. Everyone has Costco, CVS, grocery-chain cards, and a wallet or purse full of many more.

Well, it's part of life that you have to know someone's credit card purchases, and know where they live, if you're issuing credit cards. The affinity cards like the kroger plus cards, the entire PURPOSE of them is to correlate you and your purchases for the purpose of selling that data. They tell you that in the fine print. If you don't want that, use cash and don't use the affinity cards.

RFID "proximity cards" take tracking to a new level in uses ranging from loyalty cards, student ID, physical access, and computer network access. Latest developments include an RFID powder developed by Hitachi, for which the multitude of uses are endless -- perhaps including tracking hard currency so we can't even keep cash undetected.

But perhaps if the writers of Unfounded Paranoia magazine had a technical background, they'd have skipped this one. Their latest development? Well, Hitachi's advertising staff may have called it "dust", but it's mighty grainy dust if so. For that, you get a fixed serial number, with no collision avoidance algorithm. For the unwashed, that means that you can't read one if more than one are nearby, which sort of lets out the cash thing. But wait, there's more. The Hitachi parts are e-field chips. You can't just toss some "rfid dust" onto something and voila! it's bugged. You have to couple it to an antenna, or it doesn't work at all. And at the frequency it operates at, that's going to be something like a stick of chewing gum. The journos at the paranoia mags always leave that part out, though, eh? Doesn't sell the sizzle.

(continued after dinner...)

reply to post by LurkerMan

so because you say its flawed logic that makes it so?

No it is flawed logic that is what makes it so...

its flawed because its flawed?

i supposed Hitler was evil because he was evil?

Top Eleven ways: You forgot your `friends` with photographic memories. They remember EVERYTHING! For all you know, these so-called `friends` are agents trying to pry into your private life and learning all they could. Get it? Wake up.

[edit on 2010-7-14 by pikypiky]

4. Traffic cameras -- License plate recognition has been used to remotely automate duties of the traffic police...

This is why the police shouldn't have nice things.

5. Computer cameras and microphones -- The fact that laptops -- contributed by taxpayers -- spied on public school children (at home) is outrageous. Years ago Google began officially to use computer "audio fingerprinting" for advertising uses. They have admitted to working with the NSA, the premier surveillance network in the world. Private communications companies already have been exposed routing communications to the NSA. Now, keyword tools -- typed and spoken -- link to the global security matrix.

The "audio fingerprinting" described is a way to identify music. It might endanger you embedding songs into Youtube but it doesn't seem to be applicable to much else. NSA already has a means of identifying you by the sound of your voice - if you think Google's contributing to that, you're about (let's see...) 15 years late. They got it from the NRL. Along with the speech conversion algorithm.

6. Public sound surveillance

Well, that one's been coming for a while. Within about five years you can expect that they can do a T-wave scan of you from across the street looking for weapons as well.

7. Biometrics -- The most popular biometric authentication scheme employed for the last few years has been Iris Recognition.

Same time frame, the sensor fusion program will have completed development of low-res camera image fusion that will allow iris scans anywhere in a well-traveled volume, like a building.

8. DNA -- Digital DNA is now being used as well to combat hackers.

You've got to be kidding me - whoever wrote this article is an idiot. The phrase "digital DNA" hasn't got a thing to do with biological DNA - it's a catch phrase that describes things like your browser settings. To incorporate this into a DNA diatribe is stupid at best. Gives you a clue about the writer.

9. Microchips -- Microsoft's HealthVault and VeriMed partnership is to create RFID implantable microchips. Microchips for tracking our precious pets is becoming commonplace and serves to condition us to accept putting them in our children in the future. The FDA has already approved this technology for humans and is marketing it as a medical miracle, again for our safety.

RFID doesn't "track" anything, anymore than scribbling your phone number on your hand with a sharpie. Your pets aren't "tracked" by "microchip" in any way whatever. It's simply a serial number that you can read if you're in near-contact.

10. Facial recognition -- Anonymity in public is over.

I wish it worked that well. But at any rate, it's pretty easy to fool. Gait recognition and body parameter analysis - that's a bit harder to fool. Not totally perfect, though, you can dodge it with a little practice.

Originally posted by zaiger

There is no "GPS" in your passport it is an RFID chip and it can only be read from a max (with special equipment) of 33 feet away and only 4 inches with standard equipment.

Actually, there's no way in hell you will be able to read an e-passport at 33 feet. I think the record to date is something like 30 inches, and that took a very special one-off rig. I have heard but not seen confirmation that you can read secondary emissions from a defective card reader at something like 30 feet, but that's not a function of the card, it's a fault of the reader.

A neat but slightly skewed summary.
Not all of the tracking methods are in use, some are possibilities for the future. Plus there is an element of choice in some.

I certainly don't have any cards or anything else which is 'rfid' or gps enabled. My mobile is switched off mostly and just there for emergencies. I fail to understand this need to be constantly communicating with people!
As for cookies - nothing new. You can choose the extent to which you enable cookies. Plus there is plenty of software to block tracking.
Store cards simply track your buying habits for marketing purposes etc - but you can choose not to use them.
Card debit machines do record usage but I'm glad of that for my own records or if ever I lose my card or it gets stolen.
Frankly I'm more concerned with the tracking being fitted to vehicles. It can be useful if you have an expensive motor which gets stolen. but increasingly it is being fitted to company vehicles. My old employers knew exactly where staff were at any given time.

[edit on 14-7-2010 by starchild10]

Originally posted by tonypazzo
here's my take on big brother. i grew up with the mtv generation, watching "the real world" and generally having no shame. i've been conditioned to NOT CARE who watches me. The way i see it, i have nothing to hide. if they want to watch me to market to me, then go ahead, advertisements have never worked on me (have seen millions of car commercials in my life, yet at 30 still have never gotten my driver's license).
so i say, so what. if watching me and my mundane existance gets them off, then good for them

Keep with that perception and you might find yourself paying tickets for breaking the law in your OWN house. Laws are getting tighter everyday....for a reason.

reply to post by Bedlam


That is why i said with special equipment
blog.makezine.com...://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/000798.html

Originally posted by zaiger
reply to post by Bedlam

 

That is why i said with special equipment
blog.makezine.com...://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/000798.html

Actually, I believe that you'll find that Mahaffey was lying his ass off, if that's the link you wanted to post - I can't get your link to work, but there's some text at the end that does open a link to that bs Mahaffey story from 2005.

Look at that rig - you'll see two Yagi antennae. That's for e-field tags.

E-passports are h-field tags, they use magnetic fields instead of electric fields, they don't work the same way. A Yagi can't be used either to power or to interrogate one.

I dimly recall he got called out on that, did a lot of shucking and jiving and then dropped his claim.

reply to post by Bedlam


Does not matter really the point was a standard RFID chip in a passport will only be read from inches away and cannot be used via GPS to track anyone that lives outside of paranoid la la land.

I know for a fact that credit card purchases can track you and track you fast. My wife disappeared over 15 years ago. As I was discussing the situation with the police they told me that if she used her credit card, they'd know what and where within 15 minutes. My guess is that time is probably faster now that several generations of technology have passed.

Originally posted by zaiger
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Does not matter really the point was a standard RFID chip in a passport will only be read from inches away and cannot be used via GPS to track anyone that lives outside of paranoid la la land.

True, and the whole "GPS" thing is endlessly baffling to me as a paranoia theme, when used in conjunction with the ever intimidating 'microchip' (guys - that's a trade name like 'Kleenex' - not a technical term).

As far as I've been able to tell, it falls into two groups. One group thinks that GPS locations are somehow determined by the GPS satellites instead of the GPS receiver, and by simply having an active "GPS chip", the satellite magically knows where you are, which is just wrong. The other group thinks that "microchips" somehow transmit 24/7 to your favorite paranoid focus, whether it's a cell tower, a GWEN station, or a spy satellite, despite having no batteries, and thus can send location info from the "GPS chip" to the MIBs or whoever. That's also as wrong as it gets.

The first group at least has a decent reason, it seems that about 80% of popular journalists think that (100% for British publications) and put it in every story they write, which proves that the BBC and the Daily Fail don't have technical proofreaders, if anything.

The second seem confused by the term "radio" in RFID, and think that the term RFID thus 'proves' that all RFID parts are radio transmitters, when in fact that's rarely true, and the times it IS true aren't uses that a consumer would ever run into. And again journalists are totally confused by it and think all RFID is the same, so they try to conflate something like an airplane's radar transponder with a passive h-field tag. Again proving there's a definite lack of technical proofreading in print and online journalism.

Originally posted by schuyler
I know for a fact that credit card purchases can track you and track you fast.

Well, credit card purchases depend on knowing what was bought, and where, for how much, and by whom. You'd sort of have to expect that since the very essence of credit card purchasing depends on keeping fast, accurate records of use, that it involves keeping fast, accurate records of use. It's a tautology. Sort of like being surprised that cell phone locations are known by the cell tower network - that's how cell phones work. It's a requirement for the thing to function. Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that they do it.

What might be reasonable to be surprised by, would be that any purchase you make at a certain type of store that starts with "SuperWalmart" in its name is not only recorded at the register, there's a camera in the ceiling for each register. They record each purchaser's image, correlated with your list of purchases, and if you pay with an ATM card, check or credit card, they have your name associated with it. That gets burned onto DVDs and shipped off to Arkansas.

We've gotten data from the system locally a couple of times when someone mysterious was charging crap to the office - that store's king of security is an old Navy E8. We asked if he could help us identify the guy, and he took us in back where the magic happens, printed off a receipt and a few stills for the cops.

It's not the fact that they record the purchase that is the issue. Of course they do that.

It is that the cops can gain near instananeous access to your use of a card to track your whereabouts that is the issue. We're talking about tracking people here, not recording purchases per se. And THAT is not a tautology.