With Amazon’s Ring cams showing up in doorways across America, leaked FBI documents indicate law enforcement finds both benefits and risks in the ubiquitous motion-sensing, networked cameras on private property. When cops stage a raid or a search operation, the homeowner can see them coming and monitor everything that happens while they’re on the property. Yes, Big Brother is watching you, but you’re watching Big Brother too.
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Bill Whittle Network · FBI Weighs Ring Cam Risk: Big Brother’s Watching You, You’re Watching Big Brother Too
28 replies on “FBI Weighs Ring Cam Risk: Big Brother’s Watching You, You’re Watching Big Brother Too”
Bill, “Back in the Day!” nobody thought of anything like this. his level of Snooping. But over the years everyone (even poorly raised men” are becoming very nosey people. As if their own life is soooo damned dull that they have this burning need to see how others live and if they are happier, and if they are – then WHY?
These people have all become that very nosey and highly irritating Mrs. Kravitz !!
Hmm, Bill, the various distinctions you make seem to me to have an awful lot of potential overlap and, hence, possible conflict. Consequently, I disagree with you under the good old KISS principle. In my view, what happens on PUBLIC property can be filmed at anytime by anybody, including the police. What happens on my PRIVATE property is another matter. While that should largely remain private, I agree with you that if I am standing at my front window naked and Scott walks by and takes a picture of a rabbit that also captures me in the frame, well, I hope he enjoys the view!
I think the police concern that criminals might have a system of cameras for watching outside their location is completely naive. There have been such systems around for a long time, the remote access not as long, and the cost has only recently come down.
That question is really moot however, since the cheap systems are here, and the law enforcement agencies can either have their free total surveillance or open access to criminals. I would think that using the criminal’s own surveilance to show a legal and acceptable entry would bolster their legal argument, while criminals posting someone on watch has been done for centuries, does not depend on cheap cameras, would help them not and prevent them just as well.
Why is the comment that I spent quite a bit of time composing and writing, that contains no obscenities at all, that has nothing that this website should consider unreasonable, hostile, unkind, unfriendly, snarky, snide or controversial enough to merit moderation, is stamped “Awaiting for approval” and why is it that when I see that on something I post it NEVER gets approved?
I’m not asking a general question of the general subscriber-ship here. I’m asking whoever is in charge of that moderation software why they block my comments and either don’t bother to read them to see they’re not unwholesome and allow them to post or just plain let keyword software run this website without letting us know what is and is not forbidden.. I’ve asked that before in a more private way and got no answer.
I was going to post this earlier, then thought better of it and cut/pasted it to my clipboard, then read some of the comments in here and posted it anyway. Be warned, like most of my posts it’s very long and covers several points …
I have security/surveillance cameras which means I have some skin in this game.
I operate a video server running Blue Iris software with 24 cameras on my property, which is a rural acreage. I can access all that on a phone app or a web browser anywhere in the world that I can get an internet connection and none of it is “in the cloud”. I would never even consider something like Ring cameras for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of which is the subscription costs for operating that many cameras. I also gladly acknowledge that Ring cameras and such are a good fit for others, just not for me.
I have no concerns about Amazon or some other provider abusing my videos because they can’t get to them but … Even if they could I would not be a source of worry for me. I know how that stuff works and I’d love to catch Amazon abusing my privacy. Because in about three years when the lawsuit is settled my financial security would be significantly enhanced.
If I had to choose between something like Ring cameras and no cameras; which would increase my exposure to physical crime committed by physical human beings on my physical property with physical tools and weapons having physical results and also increase the chance of miscreants escaping justice for their evil deeds — I’d own Ring cameras in a heartbeat.
I have a Google gMail account assigned to me by the National Weather Service because I’m a SkyWarn advanced spotter and a SkyWarn Net Control Operator (this is on ham radio). I use another webmail service for most of my email correspondence. I only have one “cloud account” that I use to backup my electronic literary library offsite. None of that worries me either.
If you’re going to use the internet at all, you’re connecting constantly to Google and to a lesser but still significant degree to Amazon. Google has a whole gamut of internet services that are used ubiquitously and Amazon runs a close second to that. If you’re concerned about absolute iron-clad control of your privacy — That ship sailed long ago. Many decades ago when I took a security course for IT the instructor said the only way to be absolutely secure with IT is to never, ever plug in anything that can access a network. This also applies to absolute privacy. If you use the internet you do not have absolute control of your privacy so don’t fool yourself.
Google doesn’t want to read your email, it’s very unlikely you are that important if you’re reading this. Google wants to see where you go and what you do there so they can sell you something, or so their advertisers have a better chance of a ROI for the money they spend on advertising. What invasion of your privacy exists, exists primarily to get the money you would spend on something anyway channeled to someone who has what you would spend that money on. This is capitalism, some of it’s a little amok but it’s free enterprise nonetheless.
Many people try to control their privacy by not using some Google or Amazon accounts and services. This is naive and futile. Doing this does not guard your privacy, it merely dis-avails you of useful internet functionality. There are at least four Google scripts running on this web page on BillWhittle.com right this moment as I type this. What’s even worse, there are two connections to DoubleClick originating from this page. The page won’t work right without them. Don’t hold that against Bill, Scott and Steve because they’re not doing any skulduggery or anything nefarious. This is just the way the internet works. You might as well enjoy some of the benefits of the compromise of your privacy because the result is the same either way, with the disadvantage now accruing to you because you are fooling yourself and that’s never a good idea.
Many people also confuse the issue of privacy with personal control. If you use a network, any network at all for any reason at all, that is not configured, controlled and secured (or often not secured or badly secured) by you personally then you do not have control. I know this is a blow for control freaks out there who insist that not having a gMail account or some such gives them some kind of control. It does not. Hiding behind a palm tree in a Cat 4 Hurricane makes you feel safe right up until a flying Volvo takes you and your palm tree out. You’re using things that do not belong to you, you do not operate those things, you have no control over those things. You consent to whatever the owner/operators want to do by using them.
Your choice is to use them or not, there is no slick little trick like not using gMail, a Google search engine or not having an Amazon account that gives you more control. (Remember, we’re talking about privacy and control here, not whether using those services enhances the bottom line of the owners.) This is a mistake that even very knowledgeable users make and it’s because their use in the computer world is not related to the nature of network intractability, configuration, infrastructure and security. My brother-in-law is a retired software engineer from the design team at General Motors, my sister is a retired Data Base Administrator for a major defense contractor (this is actually a very, very high-powered position in the IT world) and neither of them know beans about keeping their personal information and their own network and equipment reasonably secure, let alone private.
The U.S. Government sends top secret information over the internet via SIPRnet (SIPRnet is said to be “air-gapped” but it’s a virtual air-gap not a physical one as SIPR is routed to satellites and over commercial trans-oceanic cables. If if you managed to intercept that traffic it’s so heavily encrypted that even a State actor with all the resources of a government would take years if ever to break it, then only on that one message that one time. It’s far easier to socially engineer an end user than it is to intercept modern secure communications. That wasn’t always the case, look up Operation Ivy Bells), If I wanted to I could come up with a scheme to communicate via the internet with security and control comparable to SIPRnet on DISN and JWICS. I can’t be bothered because again, I know how this stuff works and even if I did that my internet connection would be largely useless to me. I’m not a software engineer, I’m a semi-retired IT contractor specializing in network infrastructure and IT security. What Google, Microsoft and Amazon et. al. get from me IS a technical invasion of my privacy but mostly harmless even so.
For certain things I use a VPN, have a proxy set up on one of the servers sitting under the desk I’m seated at right now, etc. I don’t use any of that very much either, though I do use it enough to justify maintaining it. With the click of an icon on my browser toolbar I can VPN into this page and the connection Scott Ott sees to the page would have a completely different IP from my real IP. That would also stop the Google scripts running on this page from knowing who and where I am … Again, I can’t be bothered. I don’t think you really need to be bothered either.
All of that said, it’s good to be aware of the fact that what you do on the internet is never, ever completely private and bear that fact in mind accordingly. A lot of people have gone to jail because they thought they were sufficiently anonymized and untraceable. I’ve helped put a few of them there.
You can take every precaution possible and still be a victim of internet crime because there’s a lot of stuff out there that you have zero control over. If you think otherwise ask me about internet crimes like title fraud where people lose their homes through no fault of their own. Even if you tossed your computers and tablets, smashed your drives and smart phone and burned the SIMM, you can still be a victim for reasons completely beyond your control. You won’t have the internet and all it’s amazing conveniences and the accumulated knowledge of the ages but you can still end up penniless and on the street … and while you’re on the street eating out of trash cans you will still have no reason to blame Big Data.
What concerns me much, much more than Big Data violating my privacy is that someone out there will get a bee in his/her bonnet about me and decide to do something physical about it IRL. That does happen and it seldom makes the news. It’s really not newsworthy if someone poisons my dog because they didn’t like what I said on an internet forum, but my dog still dies horribly. That’s why I don’t use my real name anywhere on the internet. That’s why I have security cameras and of course they also serve for mundane, non-internet related criminals. I could have as easily made up a name and other than people with access to my payment record none of you in here would know the difference. Again, I can’t be bothered because that would be lying. I’m not lying, I’m just not making it easy for morally bereft people to find me.
(Side note: I’m a ham operator and I never, ever publish my call-sign on an internet forum. That call-sign is easily accessed with the name and address of my ham radio gear and me. That would make things ridiculously easy for someone who thinks they’re going to “teach me a lesson” to look up and find me.)
This name thing is a habit I’ve cultivated for decades. Even so, it’s not bullet proof. Scott Ott knows my real name because he can see the name on the credit card I used to pay my account. If I wanted to I could have used a business card with the name of my company on it and that’s a lot harder to track, mostly because the DBA that created that name is decades old, expired and in another state but again, I can’t be bothered to do that. I’m not worried about Scott Ott the same way and for the same reasons I’m not overly concerned about Google and Amazon. The only real, practical difference is one of scale.
But I don’t harbor any delusions that if someone really wants to find me they will do so and then … I’ll have video of them committing whatever they do and they’ll face justice for their crime. If they’re smart they’ll do it in the middle of the night and what they do will not wake me up because then they’re going to have more than video capture to worry about. If they’re stupid enough to try that they’re not smart enough to avoid those consequences either, and I’m ready for that too.
As far as police go, I have every respect for and fully support legitimate law enforcement operations. But cops are people too and some of them will do things they should not when they think no one is looking. I have no cause to think that law enforcement would take any interest in me but if they do for some unfathomable reason, the cameras will keep them honest while they do whatever it is that they think they need to do. If they shut my camera system down to execute an operation here it would be ridiculously easy for my lawyer to make the case that they were up to no good and then cast more than reasonable doubt on what was done after the camera system went down …
I have every confidence that every member of the jury at some point in their lives will have heard the phrase “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about” and my lawyer will follow that with “So let’s take a look at what you might have wanted to hide, shall we?”
Bill – I hate to break it to you, but when you see the neighbors peering out their windows as you walk by they are not looking at you. They are looking at the lovely lady walking with you 😉 Sorry to burst your bubble!
When I got my latest security system, it came with a video doorbell. I purposely did not install it as it connects directly to the security company and I would have no control over it.
When we achieve the surveillance network like that which is in the U.K. it will be long past time to permanently wear a Guy Fawkes mask and nondescript attire.
Is there a PO Box where we can send Bill small offerings? Donations, gifts? Brown M&Ms?
Wow, these comments took a turn, no? Anyway, I have 5 Rings covering my home and lot. Love them. I don’t use the doorbell kind, but the big spotlight cams. That makes it pretty obvious to anyone that I’ve got the cameras up. But, I aim them in ways where I’m not capturing / triggering all the people who walk by, cars that drive by, kids on bikes, etc. Field of view is only on my property, the cars in my driveway, who walks up to my front door, who shouldn’t be walking into my side yard or back yard.
My neighbor’s kid got into a go-cart accident with a car right in front of my house. (He was going the wrong way on the left hand shoulder and clipped an oncoming car, dumb…) The Highway Patrol officer noticed that I had Ring cams and came up to the door and politely asked if I would check to see if the incident was recorded. He left his card, asked me to contact him only if I had found something worthwhile, and went back to his investigation back on the street.
I did check, and because my cameras don’t capture what’s happening on the street, I did call anyway and let the him know that I had nothing to offer. I guess the point is that it was a situation where the LEO didn’t try to coerce me to download and give him a USB drive full of videos which he could comb through, but that he politely asked if I would consider looking to see if any part of the incident was captured which might help determine who was at fault. He left it in my hands, it was my choice to help or not. I appreciated that.
I would not buy a Ring doorbell, a similar door camera device or an Amazon Echo type device. I do not entrust my privacy to Amazon or similar companies. I realize that it is difficult to do much of anything on the internet and be private, but I try to limit my exposure.
On flushing drugs: they really need some sort of sewer drain catch screen or whatever. That would avoid the need for pre-dawn and no-knock raids, and sometimes a potential hostage situation. These raids too often lead to problems for the police that wiser practices would help avoid. But then if you are a drug dealer you might want to watch out for any Acme Plumbing trucks parked on your street digging holes near your drain line.
Bill’s comments about what level of privacy we can expect behind curtained windows, etc. reminded me that the police also now have thermal cameras that can locate people within the house (nominally for hostage rescue or criminal capture purposes). Not sure how you fully protect against that level of invasive searching – wear an air conditioned hazmat suit?.
Karl just mentioned this aspect, and I like his criteria of the use of “artificial aids” needing a warrant (but does that include wearing glasses or hearing aids? 🙂 ) The warrant aspect introduces a (supposedly) neutral 3rd party to assess the validity of rights infringements, but we have seen even that can be abused. Still, liberty is not total license, so we consent to some of this type of privacy invasion because we know it helps maintain a safer and more civil society.
On terms of agreement, as 17 pages of small print legalese that few are tempted to read or even understand in full: I just had the idea that such agreements should be able to reference a given, standardized and legislatively established, law and legal language describing and limiting each party’s rights. Then the agreement is a short paragraph referencing what is the longer, but standard, description. No special little “sliders” or sneak phrases, etc. Not perfect but maybe better? Thoughts?
A book discussing some of this “they watch us so we should watch them” is David Brin’s The Transparant Society: Will Technolgoy Force Us to Choose Between Priacy and Freedom? , published in 1999. He is thinking partly in terms of citizens videotaping the police on the street, but perhaps also just how public should operations at the DMV or the police station or the county commissioners offices be? He also asserts that no encryption method will end up not being compromised or overcome eventually.
Bill, get yourself a beanie hat with a flashing red light for when you walk in your neighborhood at night (like they use on bicycles). Then we can see how hard you are exercising by how bright the light is.
Just my two cents on the “using artificial aids” thing. It’s a fairly simple matter to just use the definition applied by law in my home state for jacklighting (shooting deer at night). Thus “artificial aids” becomes “anything capable of projecting a beam or of rendering portions of the electromagnetic spectrum which are not normally visible to the human eye as visible. Excluding corrective lenses and devices used for magnfication of visible light, such as binoculars and telescopes”.
As a side note, that law only applies in my home state to the illegal taking of game animals not exempt, like raccoons hunted at night over dogs. You can use a light when the dogs tree a ‘coon. Game wardens back “home” have been using NVDs (Night Vision Devices or “Starlight” scopes) for decades to interdict the illegal spearing of game fish during spawning season and jacklighters shooting deer at night by vehicle headlight or spotlight.
I found out about this when I was much younger. A friend and I had spotted a deer decoy, a fake deer set up by the game warden to try to catch jacklighters who stopped and threw a beam on it. That’s all you had to do, you didn’t have to actually shoot the decoy, and you got a ticket and probably got your guns confiscated, if not your vehicle too because it was used in the commission of a crime. They’re pretty serious about this stuff.
So we drove down the road, parked in an out-of-the way spot and circled back behind the deer decoy, figuring it was dark as anything and we wouldn’t be seen. We put the word “HI” spelled out on the side of the decoy in reflective thumb tacks, the kind used to mark the way to your deer stand so you can find it before sunrise on the mornings of deer season. We thought we were really cute.
The game warden was watching us in his Starlight scope and he was not even a little bit amused.
He caught us just as we finished and asked if we’d like a ticket for defacing government property. Silly question, of course we didn’t like that idea at all. So he said “Then get back there and take those reflectors off my decoy and get your young skinny (expletive) out of HERE!
Which we did post haste and now we knew that they used NVDs like the military had to catch people doing things in the dark. Thereby henceforth avoiding being cute with deer decoys ever again.
I’m reminded of a discussion about thermal imaging used by the police to determine what was going on inside a house. I can’t find it right now, so I don’t recall what the court decided.
I was pondering various approaches to deciding what should determine when a reasonable expectation of privacy ensues. One standard would be, if any kind of artificial aid is required to see something (binoculars, night vision, sound amplification, satellite view, etc), there’s an expectation of privacy, and you need probable cause and a warrant to see it.
If amplification and enhancement are allowed, it’shard to describe a legal system that doesn’t amount to “all bets are off”.
I protect my personal privacy. I don’t have a Google or Amazon account but I do have a Microsoft account. I don’t use any of their so called “clouds”. I use the Microsoft account to make use of Quick Assist for friends and customers and only login to the account to do so. I do have a server who’s operation I control and use it for private and public file transfer as well as a general access web page. If I place a file on my personal version of the cloud, it is encrypted and password protected. I have and use a deadbolt on my front and back door. All my windows are locked down with shades drawn. I have nothing of significant value except the almost gigabyte of software I have written over the past 50 years. It is protected by copyright and multiple patents.
Is it impossible for me to be hacked or my property to be broken into? No, but it would be very costly to do so and likely not worth the bother. Short of having nothing of value and not doing anything productive, it is the best I can do. Is it good enough? So far it has been.
If you really want to not do anything productive, then you should probably stop commenting here. 🙂
A gigabyte of SW? is that like 16 lines of code in Windows 10?
It sounds like you got into computing at the foundation, i.e., even below the ground floor, but perhaps right after the Jacquard loom? It is a shame when people with your level of human capital are either “put out to pasture” or end up saying enough is enough, and thus no longer continue making the kind of contributions they might otherwise make. Consider Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or Al Sharpton on the negative side, still trying to be relevant, vs. someone like Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams (and maybe just maybe even Anthony Faucci?) continuing to make useful contributions well beyond the usual retirement age(s). There are valid arguments for stepping aside to make room for new blood, etc., but pursuing a new endeavor using old skills still seems to have a place. But my company incentivized us to retire at age 60 so I took advantage of that (they dropped providing pensions for their newer employees).
In your case it occurred to me that perhaps there is a SW project to develop a high quality, difficult to hack, on line voting system that could still use your expertise. Or to assess the quality, rigor, and reliability of various government databases in this area? Or maybe you have been thinking of something else, or still do somethings at a reduced level of stress???
Not having a Google or Amazon account really doesn’t do much for “protecting your privacy”. It does hinder your productivity and if that’s OK with you it’s OK with me.
Using the internet, at all, anywhere, any time, for any purpose, invades your privacy. Right now on this page there are several scripts connected to Google’s servers running, and one that’s operated by Google for a company called “DoubleClick” which is a notorious and long standing invader of privacy.
I see from what you’ve said that you’re a software developer and I’m not in any way attacking you or your area of expertise in IT. My brother-in-law is a retired software engineer for the design and development team at GM and my sister is a retired DBA (Data Base Administrator) from one of the biggest defense contractors. I have a ton of really cool defense industry swag 🙂 I have a pretty good idea of what your field of expertise is and have worked in my capacity as a networking and security specialist with lots of folks whose jobs would likely be very familiar to you. I mean you no disrespect at all and please take what I say in the positive spirit with which it is intended.
Being a software developer or engineer is a great, very lucrative field. It doesn’t touch much on a lot of other fields though, unless you’re developing software for those particular fields of course. Still, people who lack a decades long familiarity with the IT world in general would generally take the word of a software engineer as readily as any other “computer expert”.
I personally for my part would never dream of telling a software engineer or developer how to write code. I also realize that being a software engineer does not automatically qualify someone to tell me about security and privacy and so would appreciate reciprocation of the courtesy.
So here’s the thing. If you don’t want to have a gMail account or be associated with Google in any way, that’s your business and I support your choice thereby. If you don’t have need of Amazon for procurement of any sort, more power to you and I support that too. But just because you’ve made those choices does not mean you’ve materially enhanced your privacy or security. Because that’s not how this works.
The invasion of privacy occurs when you use the internet however you use it. Being as I do know how this works I’m willing to accept the risk/reward ratio and I also know how to mitigate that to some degree. Generally it’s not worth a lot of effort in mitigation because none of us are important enough to merit a whole lot of scrutiny. There are literally billions of hits on Google per day (sometimes per hour) and running a close second now is Amazons AWS. Even with the power of IT, that’s a lot of noise to signal ratio.
Remember above when I said what scripts are running on this page? That’s one of those mitigation efforts, I know what web pages are doing on my machine. I block the DoubleClick script and allow the rest of them because they are “mostly” harmless. As in the listing in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for Earth, not as in “mostly harmless riots”. I know that by using other people’s networks, networks I do not own nor in any way control, I’m going to cede some privacy but I still make the effort to contain that a bit by not ceding privacy to known bad actors. Like DoubleClick. But …
I have three gMail accounts, which means I have three Google accounts, and I use them all constantly. One of them is an account issued to me by the National Weather Service so I can function in my capacity as an Advanced Storm Spotter and Net Control Operator (NCO). I shop on Amazon because it saves me days and days of driving around town trying to find the things I need and between the other people who live at this address and myself we get some sort of delivery almost daily. I have an Amazon Business account that I procure things for clients that they need, too. I’m not particularly worried about any of that when it comes to any sort of privacy that matters. I don’t care if Google and Amazon know I like fishing. (For fish, in the water, not phishing.) None of those or any other entities can track me cross-site to pop-up what they think are relevant ads for marketing to me. In fact, I hardly ever see an ad because I block almost all of them too and … Those ads are far more of a threat to your real privacy than having a Google or Amazon account.
For instance, if you see those little FaceBook, Linked-In and such icons on websites, those are tracking you. I never see them, they’re blocked on my network. There’s a lot more to this than blocking a couple icons and I’ll be happy to explain if you ask me to, that’s just an example. There are things like zero pixel links and other stuff, lots of other stuff, that are out there on very nearly every web page you load up.
… and you do “load up” a web site. Your machine or device sends a request to a server somewhere “out there” and that server sends code back to your machine or device where your machine or device then runs that code.
My point here is to urge you not to be lulled into a false sense of security. If you don’t want those sorts of accounts, that’s fine and like I said, I support your decision. If you’re foregoing those kind of accounts because you think it materially enhances your privacy you’re just going without for no good purpose.
Lastly, I also understand and fully support anyone who does not want to patronize Google, Google IS eviI. Or enrich Jeff Bezos with their custom, Jeff is problematic too. If you can get by without such things, more power to you and I applaud both your resolve and your ability to live without those things. But if you think that you’re contributing to your privacy thereby and not blocking iffy scripts, tracking icons, zero pixel links and all the rest of that kludge you’re mistaken and you might as well sign up for gMail and Amazon Prime. While you’re looking at them the other guys are picking your privacy pocket unawares.
You are reading much too much into what I said. I simply recited what I do to protect my privacy. I did not suggest that my methods were prefect nor was I telling you or anyone else what to do to protect your privacy.
The fact is, I understand that any computer with any kind of “protection” software that is turned on, running, and connected to a network IS NOT SECURE. It can be hacked. About all you can do is make hacking so costly that it is not worth doing. Accomplish that and it is “good enough”.
I have long known and understood that to have a totally secure computer system it must be disconnected from any network, powered down, turned into dust, and sprinkled in a working blast furnace. THAT is a secure system. If you actually want to use it, it will be vulnerable to attack.
Well, thank goodness I was “reading too much into what you said”. I clearly must have mistaken the connection you appeared to make between controlling your privacy and not having a Google or Amazon account. Silly me, I’m sure someone as well versed and intelligent as yourself knows that’s not so to any meaningful degree. I can’t imagine what I was thinking Maybe I was thrown off by the fact that the sentence you wrote about not having certain online accounts immediately followed the sentence you wrote that said “I protect my personal privacy.” … and we all know that would be a crazy assumption to make. So I’m just at a loss to explain how I came to such a far-fetched conclusion.
I’m sure you already know all the rest of this but for everyone else I’ll amplify a bit on how online threats to privacy and security (often one in the same threat) work. You can go ahead and ignore the rest of this post, Lionell, I’m sure I’m just covering ground you trod decades ago and I don’t want to make the mistake of reading too much into what you say again. Therefor this doesn’t apply to you for all those reason and I am not citing nor responding to anything you said for any reason. Moving on …
If online threats were DC current from batteries the connection and amplitude would be in parallel, not series. A 12 volt battery can only generate around 12 volts (actually a bit more for a fully charged car battery, but that’s digression) as it sits by itself. If you get another 12 volt battery there are two ways you can hook them up. If you hook them up in series, you get 24 volts. Three give you 48 volts, 4 gives you 60 volts, etc. If you hook them up in parallel you still only have 12 volts but you have more battery power in the form of duration and resilience to current draw, assuming that both batteries are identical and freshly charged.
If you go online on the internet, that act is a single hazard and your first battery. The more you do, the more batteries you add. In a “parallel” sense. If this were not so, about the 10th or 15th website you visit every day would destroy your computer because in series the voltage, or threat level, adds up very fast. Think what might happen if you hooked 20 batteries up to your car and put 240 volts of DC current to your starter. I have probably thirty tabs open in the browser I’m using and 15-20 open in another browser on another monitor (which is excessive, I know) and if the threat increased with every website I should be sitting in a smoking crater by now. The voltage, or threat level does not increase appreciably as long as you do not engage in risky behavior but no matter what you do it never goes to zero either. Like anything else in life, if you choose risky behavior you court the risks consequential to that behavior.
This is not an exact analogy so everyone save your time and mine by skipping the relation of volts to amps and how current does not increase in serial connections and all of that silliness. I’m trying to put this in simple enough terms that people who aren’t as gob-smackingly brilliant as Lionell can understand so just give that stuff a pass.
Like our friend Lionell here, I too have been working in the IT field for decades. I choose to have an Amazon account, several Google accounts, and at least one Microsoft One Drive account that I can name off the top of my head … Oh yeah, and I’ve been using Yahoo Mail Premium for decades and for the same reason I’ve had the same cell phone number for decades with no more attendant risk than the cell phone number brings.. None of those things constitute “risky behavior” to threaten either my privacy or my security.
Being as I work in IT, I’ve learned a few things about avoiding risks and not all of those things are obvious to the casual end user, so you have to take into account that my level of experience might be a little greater than some people though there’s no doubt at all that there are people who know a lot more than I do — but … In nearly 40 years of working in this field I have never had an exposure and compromise to a threat to privacy or security on my personal equipment … That I didn’t bring on by risky behavior that I knew was risky, and that I was well aware of the source and vector of the risk. I have never, ever experienced a threat generated compromise that I could not in one way or another defeat and recover my personal digital equipment from.
I’m being very specific in how I word that paragraph because I’m trying to be absolutely honest and candid. I certainly have sand-boxed a virus and let ‘er rip to study what it would do. I have done intentional destructive testing. I have had the OMG moment where all my security stuff tripped and you know … “File xyz contains a virus, do you want to erase or quarantine?” flashing in a box atop the system tray. I’m not saying you can’t get in trouble, you certainly can. But you’re not going to get in that kind of trouble from using Google, Amazon, or any other primary vendor.
I use a lot of script blockers, ad blockers, two anti-virus programs and an anti-malware program that can run in parallel (there’s that word again) without fighting like a herd of bobcats in a gunny sack, etc. I’m careful about what I do because those kinds of defenses keep you from stuff like drive-by attacks and identity theft. Nothing is foolproof but you must realize where the threat comes from, you have to recognize the threat to avoid or counter it. That kind of material, significant threat just does not exist in a Google or Amazon account.
Now if you go haunting gambling sites, looking at nekkid people websites (I don’t want Scott’s arbitrary and capricious keyword filter to send my post into cyber-limbo forever, you know the kind of sites I mean), using a lot of cracked software and all those other things that are actual, real, true risky behavior unlike using Amazon or Google, you’re going to get tanked. You asked to get mugged the same as if you walked down the street in a bad neighborhood in Detroit at 3 AM. So you will get mugged and that’s your own fault but …
It won’t be Google or Amazon’s fault. That’s not what those companies do. Oh, they’re eviI alright, just not that kind of eviI. If it bothers you a lot that Amazon tracks your purchases, notices that you like to buy fishing gear and tries to sell you more … That’s not the end of the world and it’s not really an invasion of your privacy.
Even that rarely happens to me because I block all that stuff and you can do that too with a little research. I’d be more than happy to give you some pointers and I’m sure our friend Lionell, who has worked with computers for decades and decades, could help you out too if he is so inclined.
Now that we have all of that out of the way, remember I said “different kind of eviI”? Yeah, Google and Amazon and a bunch of others, in fact almost all of the internet, is stealing a valuable commodity from you without paying you one single cent for it. (I’m not even going to start on the other eviIs, liked political bias and censorship, that’s another topic.) That commodity is your data in the form of buying preferences and habits, time online at a certain website and a whole lot of stuff like that. They take it and give you nothing at all for it, then they mine that information trying to find a way to influence your spending so they can capitalize both on what you spend and on the mining, organization, compiling and sales of that sort of information. But that is NOT an invasion of your “privacy” any more than using a club card at a supermarket to get a lower grocery bill is invading your privacy. That’s how those grocery store cards and such work TOO.
They don’t peek in your bedroom at night, they don’t look at your bills to see if you might be growing marijuana and have a high electric bill, they don’t save your private, non-public conversations to later blackmail you with, they don’t care if you wear boxers or briefs as long as you buy your underwear from them … In short they do not commit egregious invasions of your privacy. They don’t need to do those things, they’re making bank on mining your digital life.
So if that’s all that important to you don’t go online and whatever you do don’t buy anything online ever. Never. If that’s your choice then I, as a fellow Free American, support your choices even though I do not share them. All that said, having an Amazon account will not compromise your privacy to any meaningful degree. Full stop,
Of course Lionell knows all this and I’m sorry for ever thinking otherwise.
I must have hit one of your hot buttons to deserve such an irrelevant word salad. Do you want Ranch, Italian, or Russian dressing your salad?
I will now ignore any of your future posts. Please return the favor.
I was just having good-natured, well-meaning fun, and providing a little information for people. Much depends on the “tone” you have in your head as you read something. You can be sore about that if it suits you. Feel free to ignore me all you like but I don’t consider that a “favor” nor will I ignore you and the things you say. I’m afraid I can’t honor your request. I don’t know because I haven’t checked if you can block me, if so feel free to do that too. Then you won’t see what I say (even though everyone else does)..
Have a great day, Lionell 🙂
What Reasonable Expectation of Privacy? The real question these days is Reasonable even an enforceable standard anymore and if we cannot even define reasonable anymore is there even an argument?
The fact that YOU can’t define “reasonable” does not mean it can not be defined and is therefor inoperative. The fact that you do or don’t define a word has absolutely no impact upon the thing the word referrers to. This is assuming the word referrers to something that actually exists and is not built of total fantasy and imagination. To hold otherwise is to be a war with reality and that is a war that cannot be won. Realty is exactly what it is and is not exactly what it is not. There is no other option. Your responsibility, as a human, is to be in accord with that reality as best you can. You WILL fail to the degree you default on that responsibility.
For a time you might be able to pretend you are winning, given enough human sacrifice and high enough piles of dead bodies to pay the bill. Eventually the apparent winning will end, the bill will come due, and the amount will be everything you are and could have been. See every failed civilization, nation, and tribe over the past 10,000 years for instructive detail.
… and homo sapiens tribe over the last 300,000 years.
Or every life form or precursor bio-molecular combination that failed to survive by replicating or reproducing over the last 3800+ million years.
See http://digitome.net/ for one of the many things I have accomplished.
Very nice site!
The Legal Standard is and has always been based on What a Reasonable Person would do my point is now it has become Practically Impossible to define Reasonable any more and without the common agreement on Reasonable the entire basis of Justice and Legal comes into question. It has Zero to do with my inability to define reasonable but with the Courts, Legislative and Executive being unable to do so or articulate a common or mutually understood version of it. As an Experiment just ask 5 or 10 people you run into during the day to define it you might be surprised at the results.
That is all very true. The attack on what was a commonly held and accepted but not rigidly delineated definition of a “reasonable person” is part of the overall war on our way of life. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems to me that you are saying this is a negative aspect of how the language is being used destructively. The well established paradigm of “Reasonable Person” has shifted to something that can no longer be relied upon, the phrase has been rendered meaningless
Formerly, a “reasonable person” would be someone who did not expect to walk off the face of a cliff and float or someone who having inflicted a gunshot wound to the chest of another would not be expected to assume that person would continue living without aid. Now, thanks to the left “reasonable person” has joined the ranks of words like “racist”. Words that no longer fit their common dictionary definition but mean “anyone who opposes us cannot possibly be a reasonable person and if they do not subscribe to our narrative they must de facto be a racist..”
It’s not “just” the definition of a reasonable person, a lot has been redefined, skewed, blurred or recast to mean something other than what was a common application of a word. Take for instance the world “liberal” which we now have to apply the qualifier “classic” to, as in “classic liberalism”, in order to be understood not to be referring to someone who thinks airplanes and cows are eviI. Or that you can buy a train ticket to Hawaii … Thus a “classic liberal” is a lot more libertarian and a lot less radical leftist.
I get it. It is clear and makes sense. At least to me. I don’t see any failure on your part to get your point across.
Cults do this kind of thing all the time. In a cult the word “community” does not mean those of us in a certain geo-political area all striving for a common good, it means the cult and anything outside the cult is outside the “community”. If you’re speaking with a cultist about community you’re talking about two completely different things. When you say “We want what’s best for the community” the cultist then wholly agrees because what you said is interpreted as “We want what’s best for the cult”.
I find it quite interesting that the left feels the need to redefine or even destroy commonly accepted vocabulary in the same manner as a cult would do. This is an intentional tactic, not a “social trend” in either case.
It is also true “common agreement” cannot by itself establish the truth of a proposition. It only establishes there is “common agreement”. Just because the government says so also does not establish the truth of the proposition. The proposition has to, in fact, align with reality. All a government can accomplish by decreeing truth in contraindication to reality is violate individual rights. Ultimately it is nothing but human sacrifice and building mountains of dead bodies.
Reality is NOT optional and the more you or any collective, including governments, try to evade that fact the more failure that will be experience.