The Rights And Liberties Of Our Parents
Our parents had certain rights and liberties that they took for granted, inherited from our grandparents. They have not been passed on to our children. That is an enormous failure…
General Privacy News
Why A “Do Not Track” Flag Cannot Possibly Work
The advertising industry has created a private mass-surveillance nightmare on the web, in addition to the government spooks. One resurfacing suggestion to solve this has been a "no surveillance please"…
Credit Cards, Bitcoin, And Understanding Of Information Hygiene
There is an alarming lack of understanding of basic information hygiene among people at large. In the next decade, this is going to come back to bite quite a few…
Did The West Become “Them” Only When It Was Cheap Enough?
I grew up in Western Europe in the 1980s. My teenage years were characterized by the Cold War between the United States and the now-collapsed Soviet Union. We learned that…
Naked On Camera: Where Is Privacy Heading?
Yesterday, I was caught naked on camera. There was nothing sexual or even exciting about it. I was in a public sauna with a girlfriend, naked as proper sauna culture…
Reactions To Data Retention Ban Shows Hypocrisy Of Surveillance Hawks
Last week, the European Court of Justice - the highest court in the world's largest economy - banned blanket data retention, declaring the federal law on the subject unconstitutional. This…
Heartbleed: Post Mortem
At Private Internet Access, we consider our customers’ privacy and security to be our highest priority. That is our business. That is our expertise. We wanted to take a brief…
So The Beast Of Data Retention Is Finally Dead In Europe. What, Why, How?
Yesterday, the European Court of Justice - the highest court in the world's largest economy - declared Data Retention to be an inexcusable violation of fundamental human rights. The court…
The Problem Isn’t That The NSA Saw You Nude, But Who They Saw You Nude With
When it was revealed that the GCHQ/NSA/FRA spying complex had been intercepting video chat, including nude video chats, there was an uproar along the lines of "the government is looking…
More On Selective Enforcement
In my last post, I elaborated a bit about selective enforcement and the consequences of it. What happens when the police force starts targeting troublesome individuals rather than troublesome criminal…