[slackline]

Couple of useful resources for protecting your privacy online (now drastically compromised in the UK thanks to the passing of the IPBill Snoopers Charter).

prism-break.org

privacytools.io


If anyone is bothered about their ISP (including your mobile 3G/4G provider) holding records of their browsing for a year (a requirement of the IPBill) then using a VPN is a sensible starting point (on Android you can use OpenVPN Connect although I prefer the alternative OpenVPN Connect).

[Catcheemonkey]

Really useful - thanks.

Do you know anything about options for protecting iOS devices? The first link suggests that privacy may be compromised by iOS itself, irrespective of the software you run on it.

Apple make lots of noise about security - but I find it quite easy to believe their products are flawed given how prescriptive they are to developers.

[slackline]

No I don't own any Apple products.  They do however use encryption and stood up to the US Government when they refused to unlock the phone of the  San Bernardino shooter.

Both of those articles have more information/details/advice than I know or could provide.

[mrjonathanr]

If anyone is bothered about their ISP (including your mobile 3G/4G provider) holding records of their browsing for a year (a requirement of the IPBill

+ 1 for wanting to maintain privacy on Apple gadgets

Well done for bringing this to our attention Slackers, thanks.
edit: thanks added

[Bubba]

Unfortunately it will now be legal for the UK Government to insist a backdoor is incorporated into whatever software they specify.

VPNs will be become useless. Not just from the official threat, but it will only be a matter of time before black hat hackers and criminals will also find ways to exploit those backdoors.

For a while, we'll be able to use non UK VPNs, etc but of course the next logical step is that it will be made illegal to use such software.

Nobody will take any UK security software seriously from now on, this will be a disaster for the industry. I guess it remains to be seen how foreign companies play along with the UK Gov requests.

[slackline]

Unfortunately it will now be legal for the UK Government to insist a backdoor is incorporated into whatever software they specify.

VPNs will be become useless. Not just from the official threat, but it will only be a matter of time before black hat hackers and criminals will also find ways to exploit those backdoors.

Hadn't clocked that aspect of the IPBill.

More information highlighting it at El Reg.

I wonder how that will pan out with open-source software such as OpenVPN or more broadly the Linux Kernels Cyrpto API and general open-source projects, particularly those focusing around encryption, many of which are international efforts and can't have backdoors hidden in them by virtue of the open source code.   

It would be really, really dumb to criminalise the use of encryption technologies  when things like TLS/SSL are required for secure networking for things like banking/financial transactions. 

[slackline]

Transport For London tracking via WiFi

[Oldmanmatt]

What do you make of this Slackers?
Not an area I have any understanding in, so...

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-entire-internet-will-be-archived-in-canada-to-protect-it-from-trump?utm_source=mbfb


All posts either sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek or mildly mocking-in-a-friendly-way unless otherwise stated. I always forget to put those smiley things...

[slackline]

What do you make of this Slackers?
Not an area I have any understanding in, so...

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-entire-internet-will-be-archived-in-canada-to-protect-it-from-trump

I'm no expert either.  Its a short article with little depth or details, but it seems to me an entirely reasonable and precautionary step to take for archive.org in light of the prospect of censorship in the US.  Freedom of speech (which is the focus of protecting the information held in archive.org) is a separate issue of protecting your personal privacy though, which was my intention on starting this thread (although there is some overlap).


Slightly tangential to this thread but related since it is based on tracking individuals and the algorithms then used to influence our search results I thought this is an interesting read on the pernicious consequences of being tracked and how algorithms can be manipulated...

Google, democracy and the truth about internet search


I've had Ghostery and uBlock Origin installed for a few years now as well as Privacy Badger since it came out but have recently added Self-destruct Cookies to the arsenal (all linked from the prism-break article in the first post of this thread).

[slackline]

Court of Justice of the European Union rule that the mass retention of browsing habits by ISPs covered in the Investigatory Powers Snoopers Act is illegal

[slackline]

Full rulling by CJEU

“With respect to retention, the retained data, taken as a whole, is liable to allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained.

“The interference by national legislation that provides for the retention of traffic data and location data with that right must therefore be considered to be particularly serious. The fact that the data is retained without the users of electronic communications services being informed of the fact is likely to cause the persons concerned to feel that their private lives are the subject of constant surveillance. Consequently, only the objective of fighting serious crime is capable of justifying such interference.

“Legislation prescribing a general and indiscriminate retention of data does not require there to be any relationship between the data which must be retained and a threat to public security and is not restricted to, inter alia, providing for retention of data pertaining to a particular time period and/or geographical area and/or a group of persons likely to be involved in a serious crime.

“Such national legislation therefore exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary and cannot be considered to be justified within a democratic society, as required by the directive, read in the light of the charter.”