Data and Goliath (39 page)

states’ driver’s license databases:
Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima (16 Jun 2013), “State photo-ID databases become
troves for police,”
Washington Post
, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/state-photo-id-databases-become-troves-for-police/2013/06/16/6f014bd4-ced5-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html.

single national database:
Josh Hicks (18 Feb 2014), “Homeland Security wants to build national database using
license plate scanners,”
Washington Post
, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/02/18/homeland-security-wants-to-build-national-database-using-license-plate-scanners.
Dan Froomkin (17 Mar 2014), “Reports of the death of a national license-plate tracking
database have been greatly exaggerated,”
Intercept
, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/17/1756license-plate-tracking-database.

In the UK, a similar government-run system:
James Bridle (18 Dec 2013), “How Britain exported next-generation surveillance,”
Medium
, https://medium.com/matter-archive/how-britain-exported-next-generation-surveillance-d15b5801b79e.
Jennifer Lynch and Peter Bibring (6 May 2013), “Automated license plate readers threaten
our privacy,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/alpr.

It enforces London’s:
The police also get access to the data. Hélène Mulholland (2 Apr 2012),
“Boris Johnson plans to give police access to congestion charge cameras,”
Guardian
, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/apr/02/boris-johnson-police-congestion-charge.

automatic face recognition:
Dan Froomkin (17 Mar 2014), “Reports of the death of a national license-plate tracking
database have been greatly exaggerated,”
Intercept
, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/17/1756license-plate-tracking-database.

the FBI has a database:
US Federal Bureau of Investigation (15 Sep 2014), “FBI announces full operational
capability of the next generation identification system,” http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-announces-full-operational-capability-of-the-next-generation-identification-system.

Dubai police are integrating:
William Maclean (2 Oct 2014), “Dubai detectives to get Google Glass to fight crime,”
Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/02/us-emirates-dubai-google-police-idUSKCN0HR0W320141002.

the FBI can demand that data:
Glenn Greenwald (5 Jun 2013), “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon
customers daily,”
Guardian
, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order.

tracking the movements of cars:
Brandon Griggs (20 Aug 2013), “New Google Maps can help you avoid traffic,” CNN,
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/tech/mobile/google-waze-mobile-maps.

If you’re reading this book on a Kindle:
Alexandra Alter (19 Jul 2012), “Your e-Book is reading you,”
Wall Street Journal
, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1
000
1424052702304870304577490950051438304.

It just happens:
The same thing happens when you watch videos on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, or any other
streaming video service.

these actions generate surveillance records:
Jennifer 8. Lee (21 Mar 2002), “Welcome to the database lounge,”
New York Times
, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/technology/welcome-to-the-database-lounge.html.
Katie R. Holloman and D. Evan Ponder (2007), “Clubs, bars, and the driver’s license
scanning system,” in
Privacy in a Transparent World
, ed. Amy Albert, Ethica Publishing, http://www.ethicapublishing.com/7CH5.htm.

“How Privileged Are You?”:
Buzzfeed (10 Apr 2014), “How privileged are you?” http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-privileged-are-you.

Over two million people have taken that quiz:
Caitlin Dewey (26 Jun 2014), “The scary, eye-opening truth of Internet tracking—on
Buzzfeed quizzes, and everywhere else,”
Washington Post
, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/06/26/the-scary-eye-opening-truth-of-internet-tracking-on-buzzfeed-quizzes-and-everywhere-else.

sites like WebMD collect data:
Marco D. Heusch (28 Oct 2013), “Privacy threats when seeking online health information,”
JAMA Internal Medicine
, http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1710119.

160 billion pieces annually:
Ron Nixon (3 Jul 2013), “U.S. Postal Service logging all mail for law enforcement,”
New York Times
, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html.

Drones are getting smaller:
Ms. Smith (18 Jun 2012), “The future of drone surveillance: Cyborg insect drones,”
Network World
, http://www.networkworld.com/article/2222611/microsoft-subnet/the-future-of-drone-surveillance--swarms-of-cyborg-insect-drones.html.

Face recognition is the easiest:
Ravi Subban and Dattatreya P. Mankame (2014), “Human face recognition biometric techniques:
Analysis and review,”
Recent Advances in Intelligent Informatics: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing
235, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-01778-5_47.

face recognition algorithms started:
Chaochao Lu and Xiaoou Tang (15 Apr 2014), “Surpassing human-level face verification
performance on LFW with GaussianFace,” arXiv:1404.3840 [cs.CV], http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.3840.

iris scanners that work at a distance:
Barry Fox (5 Feb 2007), “Invention: Covert iris scanner,”
New Scientist
, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11110-invention-covert-iris-scanner.html.

gait recognition systems:
Zhaoxiang Zhang, Maodi Hu, and Yunhong Wang (2011), “A survey of advances in biometric
gait recognition,”
Biometric Recognition
, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7098, Springer-Verlag, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-25449-9_19.

contactless RFID chip cards:
Katherine Albrecht (2008), “RFID tag: You’re it,”
Scientific American
(Sep 2008): 72–77, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-rfid-tags-could-be-used.
University of Washington College of Engineering (22 Feb 2008), “University launches
RFID people tracking experiment,”
RFID Journal
, http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?6924. Christopher Zara (8 Jan 2013), “Disney
World’s RFID tracking bracelets are a slippery slope, warns privacy advocate,”
International Business Times
, http://www.ibtimes.com/disney-worlds-rfid-tracking-bracelets-are-slippery-slope-warns-privacy-advocate-1001790.

Many retail stores are surreptitiously tracking:
Quentin Hardy (7 Mar 2013), “Technology turns to tracking people offline,”
New York Times
, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/technology-turns-to-tracking-people-offline.

which aisles they walk down:
Stephanie Clifford and Quentin Hardy (15 Jul 2013), “Attention, shoppers: Store is
tracking your cell,”
New York Times
, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html.
Brian Fung (19 Oct 2013), “How stores use your phone’s WiFi to track your shopping
habits,”
Washington Post
, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19/how-stores-use-your-phones-wifi-to-track-your-shopping-habits.
Latanya Sweeney (12 Feb 2014), “My phone at your service,” US Federal Trade Commission,
http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/techftc/2014/02/my-phone-your-service.

People can be tracked at public events:
Bram Bonne et al. (4–7 Jun 2013), “WiFiPi: Involuntary tracking of visitors at mass
events,” 14th International Symposium and Workshops on World of Wireless, Mobile and
Multimedia Networks, Madrid, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6583443.

The company quickly retracted the remarks:
Jim Edwards (9 Jan 2014), “Ford exec retracts statements about tracking drivers with
the GPS in their cars,”
Business I
nsider
, http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-jim-farley-retracts-statements-tracking-drivers-gps-2014-1.

a lot of wiggle room for Ford:
Curt Magleby (3 Feb 2014), Letter to the Honorable Al Franken, United States Senate,
re: Collection of location information, http://www.franken.senate.gov/files/letter/140212FordResponse.pdf.

Government Accountability Office report:
US Government Accountability Office (6 Dec 2013), “In-car location-based services:
Companies are taking steps to protect privacy, but some risks may not be clear to
consumers,”
Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, Committee
on the Judiciary, US Senate, GAO-14-81, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-81.

Radar in the terahertz range:
British Broadcasting Corporation (10 Mar 2008), “Camera ‘looks’ through clothing,”
BBC News
, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7287135.stm. Rocco Parascandola (23 Jan 2013),
“NYPD Commissioner says department will begin testing a new high-tech device that
scans for concealed weapons,”
New York Daily News
, http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-readies-scan-and-frisk-article-1.1245663.
Carter M. Armstrong (17 Aug 2012), “The truth about terahertz,”
IEEE Spectrum
, http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/the-truth-about-terahertz.

Cameras can “listen” to phone conversations:
Larry Hardesty (4 Aug 2014), “Extracting audio from visual information,”
MIT News
, http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from-vibrations-0804. Abe
Davis et al. (10–14 Aug 2014), “The visual microphone: Passive recovery of sound from
video,” 41st International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
(SIGGRAPH 2014), Vancouver, British Columbia, http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/papers/VisualMic_SIGGRAPH2014.pdf.

turn your cell phone’s microphone on remotely:
Erik Kain (30 Dec 2013), “The NSA reportedly has total access to the Apple iPhone,”
Forbes
, http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/the-nsa-reportedly-has-total-access-to-your-iphone.

body odor recognition systems:
Shaun Waterman (9 Mar 2009), “DHS wants to use human body odor as biometric identifier,
clue to deception,” UPI, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2009/03/09/DHS-wants-to-use-human-body-odor-as-biometric-identifier-clue-to-deception/UPI-20121236627329.

identifying people by their typing style:
Pranav Dixit (19 Aug 2014), “Banks now know who you are from how you type,”
Gizmodo
, http://gizmodo.com/your-phone-can-now-identify-you-based-on-how-you-type-1623733346.

identifying people by their writing style:
It’s called stylometry. Sadia Afroz et al. (18–21 May 2014), “Doppelgänger finder:
Taking stylometry to the underground,” IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, Oakland,
California, http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~mccoy/papers/oakland2014-underground.pdf.

tens of millions of voiceprints:
Raphael Satter (13 Oct 2014), “Voiceprints being harvested by the millions,” Associated
Press, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/millions-of-voiceprints-quietly-being-harvested/2014/10/13/b34e291a-52af-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html.
Raphael Satter (13 Oct 2014), “Banks harvest callers’ voiceprints to fight fraud,”
Associated Press, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/banks-harvest-callers-voiceprints-to-fight-fraud/2014/10/13/715c6e56-52ad-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html.

Store clerks will know your name:
Nicola Clark (17 Mar 2014), “Airlines use digital technology to get even more personal,”
New York Times
, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/business/airlines-use-digital-technology-to-get-even-more-personal.html.

Billboards will know who you are:
Andrew Hough (10 Mar 2010), “‘Minority Report’ digital billboard ‘watches consumers
shop,’”
Telegraph
, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7411249/Minority-Report-digital-billboard-watches-consumers-shop.html.

Grocery store shelves will know:
Clint Boulton (11 Oct 2013), “Snackmaker
modernizes the impulse buy with sensors, analytics,”
Wall Street Journal Blogs
, http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/10/11/snackmaker-modernizes-the-impulse-buy-with-sensors-analytics.

Your car will know who is in it:
This excellent science fiction short story explores some of these ideas. Ken Liu
(Dec 2012), “The perfect match,”
Lightspeed Magazine
, http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-perfect-match.

Facebook tracks me:
Bryan Acohido (15 Nov 2011), “Facebook tracking is under scrutiny,”
USA Today
, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-11-15/facebook-privacy-tracking-data/51225112/1.

It can probably make good guesses:
Cotton Delo (22 Feb 2013), “Facebook to partner with Acxiom, Epsilon to match store
purchases with user profiles,”
Advertising
Age
, http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-partner-acxiom-epsilon-match-store-purchases-user-profiles/239967.

I try not to use Google search:
I use DuckDuckGo, which does not collect personal information about its users. See
https://duckduckgo.com.

I use various blockers:
Jonathan Mayer (17 Feb 2012), “Safari trackers,”
Web Policy
, http://webpolicy.org/2012/02/17/safari-trackers.

Google has about a third:
Benjamin Mako Hill (11 May 2014), “Google has most of my email because it has all
of yours,”
Copyrighteous
, http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours.