Google’s iPhone Tracking

Web Giant, Others Bypassed Apple Browser Settings for Guarding Privacy

The Wall Street Journal, Page One

Google Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal and read the full What They Know series online.


The Surveillance Catalog

The Surveillance Catalog allows readers to peruse secret marketing materials published by companies that make tracking equipment.

Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people’s computers and cellphones, and “massive intercept” gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal and see the full What They Know series online.


Stewart Baker: Why Privacy Will Become a Luxury

Stewart Baker, the former assistant secretary for Homeland Security, talks with Julia Angwin about the need for balancing privacy rights with security concerns. In The Big Interview, Mr. Baker explains why privacy may one day be a luxury available only to the privileged and the rich.


Judges Weigh Phone Tracking

 

The Wall Street Journal, Page One

State and federal authorities follow the movements of thousands of Americans each year by secretly monitoring the location of their cellphones, often with little judicial oversight, in a practice facing legal challenges.

Electronic tracking, used by police to investigate such crimes as drug dealing and murder, has become as routine as “looking for fingerprint evidence or DNA evidence,” said Gregg Rossman, a prosecutor in Broward County, Fla.

The use of cellphone tracking by authorities is among the most common types of electronic surveillance, exceeding wiretaps and the use of GPS tracking, according to a survey of local, state and federal authorities by The Wall Street Journal.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal and see the full What They Know series online.


Secret Orders Target Email

WikiLeaks’ Backer’s Information Sought

The Wall Street Journal, Page One

The U.S. government has obtained a controversial type of secret court order to force Google Inc. and small Internet provider Sonic.net Inc. to turn over information from the email accounts of WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal and see the full What They Know series online.

Plus, more on Sonic.net, the little ISP that stood up to the government.


Latest in Web Tracking: Stealthy ‘Supercookies’

The Wall Street Journal, Page One

Major websites such as MSN.com and Hulu.com have been tracking people’s online activities using powerful new methods that are almost impossible for computer users to detect, new research shows.

The new techniques, which are legal, reach beyond the traditional “cookie,” a small file that websites routinely install on users’ computers to help track their activities online. Hulu and MSN were installing files known as “supercookies,” which are capable of re-creating users’ profiles after people deleted regular cookies, according to researchers at Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal and see the full What They Know series online.


Device Raises Fear of Facial Profiling

The Wall Street Journal, Page One

With this device, made by BI2 Technologies, an officer can snap a picture of a face from up to five feet away, or scan a person’s irises from up to six inches away.

Dozens of law-enforcement agencies from Massachusetts to Arizona are preparing to outfit their forces with controversial hand-held facial-recognition devices as soon as September, raising significant questions about privacy and civil liberties.

With the device, which attaches to an iPhone, an officer can snap a picture of a face from up to five feet away, or scan a person’s irises from up to six inches away, and do an immediate search to see if there is a match with a database of people with criminal records. The gadget also collects fingerprints.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal and see the full What They Know series online.


Web’s Hot New Commodity: Privacy

The Wall Street Journal, Page One

As the surreptitious tracking of Internet users becomes more aggressive and widespread, tiny start-ups and technology giants alike are pushing a new product: privacy.

Companies including Microsoft Corp., McAfee Inc.—and even some online-tracking companies themselves—are rolling out new ways to protect users from having their movements monitored online. Some are going further and starting to pay people a commission every time their personal details are used by marketing companies.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal and see the full What They Know series online.


Your Digital Fingerprint

Companies are developing digital fingerprint technology to identify how we use our computers, mobile devices and TV set-top boxes. WSJ’s Simon Constable talks to Julia Angwin about the next generation of tracking tools.


Race Is On to ‘Fingerprint’ Phones, PCs

The Wall Street Journal, Page One

BlueCava CEO David Norris plans to fingerprint billions of devices. Tracking cookies ‘are a joke,’ he says.

IRVINE, Calif.—David Norris wants to collect the digital equivalent of fingerprints from every computer, cellphone and TV set-top box in the world.

He’s off to a good start. So far, Mr. Norris’s start-up company, BlueCava Inc., has identified 200 million devices. By the end of next year, BlueCava says it expects to have cataloged one billion of the world’s estimated 10 billion devices.

Advertisers no longer want to just buy ads. They want to buy access to specific people. So, Mr. Norris is building a “credit bureau for devices” in which every computer or cellphone will have a “reputation” based on its user’s online behavior, shopping habits and demographics. He plans to sell this information to advertisers willing to pay top dollar for granular data about people’s interests and activities.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal and see the full What They Know series online.


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