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Don't Expect Privacy on the Net

By TChris, Section Civil Liberties
Posted on Fri Feb 03, 2006 at 07:34:27 PM EST
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by TChris

This NYTimes article reminds us that internet use isn't as private as it might feel.

[Even though] companies that provide Internet service and run Web sites ... promise to protect the privacy of their users, they routinely hand over the most intimate information in response to legal demands from criminal investigators and lawyers fighting civil cases. ...

When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, "the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information," said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department's computer crime and intellectual property section.

Read the article to learn what information you leave behind when you surf the net, and how easy it is for others to find it.

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    Don't Expect Privacy on the Net | 8 comments (8 topical)
    Re: Don't Expect Privacy on the Net (none / 0) (#1)
    by squeaky on Fri Feb 03, 2006 at 08:47:40 PM EST
    Here is more regarding search engines.
    Given the Department of Justice's recent subpoena to Google, it's likely the police or even lawyers in civil cases--divorce attorneys, employers in severance disputes--eventually will demand that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and other search engines cough up users' search histories.
    Google retains all of your internet search history as do the other engines indefinitely.
    Q: Has anyone ever sent search engines a subpoena or other kind of legal request for someone's search terms?
    A: We don't know. Google and Yahoo refused to answer the question, though there is no law prohibiting them from doing so.
    link via robot wisdom From the NYT article we do know that one search engine was supoenaed and it led to an arrest:
    The break in the St. Louis murders came in 2002, when a reporter received an anonymous letter with a map generated by Microsoft's MSN service -- marked with the location where a body could be found. The F.B.I. subpoenaed Microsoft for records of anyone who had searched for maps of that area in the days before the letter was sent.


    Re: Don't Expect Privacy on the Net (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Feb 03, 2006 at 09:19:16 PM EST
    "Information wants to be free."

    Re: Don't Expect Privacy on the Net (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 03:33:51 AM EST
    "Privacy is dead, deal with it."

    Re: Don't Expect Privacy on the Net (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 10:59:19 AM EST
    Use Tor. I've just started running a server to contribute bandwidth to the project, pushing 1.2TB a month.

    Re: Don't Expect Privacy on the Net (none / 0) (#5)
    by squeaky on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 11:32:38 AM EST
    Brian Puccio-Tor looks pretty interesting. Thanks for the link. From the site, which is hosted by EFF.
    Using Tor protects you against a common form of Internet surveillance known as "traffic analysis." Traffic analysis can be used to infer who is talking to whom over a public network. Knowing the source and destination of your Internet traffic allows others to track your behavior and interests.


    Re: Don't Expect Privacy on the Net (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 01:21:10 PM EST
    The folk wisdom at this point suggests that the authorities can evesdrop at will, without any warrant or asking anyone, like those Black Chamber geeks on TV shows like 24 that can just hack into the internets at will and find out anything they want about anyone in real time. How many times have you heard people say "e-mail is insecure", whatever that means. But the article suggests quite the opposite. Just like any kind of telephone tap or search warrant, it seems that there must be probable cause of a crime having been committed, like fraud or the example being used of who googled for a map used on a note about where a body was buried. And the fact that your computer has a unique IP address which is traceable if someone needs to make the effort in a criminal case to subpeona your ISP is also no big revelation, even if you use a fake e-mail addy. In short, it seems the news here is that surveillance might be MORE difficult and RARER than is commonly supposed at this point.

    Re: Don't Expect Privacy on the Net (none / 0) (#7)
    by squeaky on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 02:18:12 PM EST
    jackl- What a surprise. Never disagreed with you as far as I can remember but I think you are very, very wrong on this one. The people pointing out privacy issues are not 'old wives' or 'folk' they are techies and privacy experts who can see how vulnerable privacy is on the internet.

    Re: Don't Expect Privacy on the Net (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Feb 05, 2006 at 09:15:45 AM EST
    Jackl: Email is insecure, which is why I use the GPG implementation of the OpenGPG standard. In addition to encrypting my emails, I can also digitally sign emails so the recepient can easily verify it was me and not a Joe Job.

    Don't Expect Privacy on the Net | 8 comments (8 topical)