Big Brother is Watching You

The resources listed below aid in that cause in that they discuss a range of examples of mediated and restricted information exchange. They also reveal that the surveillance state is functioning internationally, as seen in recent revelations that malware is embedded into PC firmware and cell phone SIMs at the point of production and in the revelation of our country’s surveillance of leaders of even “friendly” nations. Most important, these resources show the overlapping uses of mass information collection for corporations and government.
~Jesse A. Lambertson, "Careful, You're Being Watched: Surveillance and Privacy"

Laura Poitras, director of the Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour, says "People are starting to understand that the devices we carry with us reveal our location, who we're talking to, and all kinds of other information." We already know that Google shows you ads, and that you can edit your settling to "control the ads that are delivered to you"; your Facebook NewsFeed also has ads targeted for your specific interests or demographic, and on January 26th Facebook announced that their Audience Network (FAN) would be expanding. Every time you download a new app for your phone, you give the app permission to access a lot of information from your device, and do you even know what the app is using the data for? Have you heard about the "Google Security Princess"? Her job is try to hack Google, to find flaws in the system before "blackhat" hackers do. There have been so many hacked sites in the last few years, from the Target fiasco of 2014 to the infamous Ashley Madison debacle last year - when you give sites your information, seems like you are always taking a risk.

What are you doing to protect your privacy and secure your information online? How is your password strength? PC World recommends controlling your digital footprint by checking your settings on social media and being careful about what you post; using different identities on different sites; and browsing privately. Also, the library has many items of interest, whether you want to know what the issues are right now or want to find out more about the history of surveillance.

Current titles

I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy by Lori Andrews

Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance by Julia Angwin

Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single Superpower World by Tom Engelhardt

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection by Jacob Silverman

The Rise of the American Corporate Security State: Six Reasons to Be Afraid by Beatrice Edwards 

Privacy in the Age of Big Data: Recognizing Threats, Defending Your Rights, and Protecting Your Family by Theresa M. Payton and Theodore Claypoole  

Inside the NSA: America's Cyber Secrets [DVD]

Terms and Conditions May Apply [DVD] 
 

History of surveillance

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid

The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? by David Brin

The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State by Shane Harris

Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin

The End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance is Becoming a Reality by Reg Whitaker

More Awesome Than Money: Four Boys and Their Heroic Quest to Save Your Privacy from Facebook by Jim Dwyer 

 

How do you feel about surveillance, be it done in the interests of national security or by a corporation? Laura Poitras also says, "There are people who are always going to try to engage in activity that is illegal and they're going to try to subvert surveillance. But everyone should not give up their liberties and rights to privacy because some people are going to [do that]. We shouldn't stop or limit our basic liberties because some people are going to engage in criminal activities." The Pew Research Center has done a study that found "that there are a variety of circumstances under which many Americans would share personal information or permit surveillance in return for getting something of perceived value." Let us know your opinions in the comments.

For more books on this topic, try a subject search of "Privacy, Right of" and "Electronic Surveillance".

Links
Recommended by Library Journal

TorProject—Anonymity Online

Aside from listing several technological open-sourced projects built with privacy and anonymity at the core, this site is also a reference for research related to Internet freedom.

Apps/Technology 

ChatSecure

DuckDuckGo

Enigmail

OTR (Off-the-Record) Chat

RedPhone and TextSecure

Online Privacy

Last week, an essay by young adult author Kathleen Hale was published in The Guardian, detailing a time when Hale stalked a woman who had posted a negative review of Hale's book on Goodreads. Since then, there has been much discussion online about what this means for book bloggers and privacy, so I thought I'd share some useful tips I've found about online privacy.

But first, let's talk about why it's important.

As evidenced by Kathleen Hale's situation, people can find out a lot about other people online. Once you have someone's address, it's really easy to plug that address in to something like Google Maps, and not only see where on the map that person is, but you can also see satellite pictures of the house. Now, there might not be much you can do about that, but this isn't the only reason online privacy matters.

It matters because any information you put online will never go away. You can delete a photo you posted to Facebook, remove a blog post you wrote, or delete something you Tweeted about, but that doesn't mean it's gone. Why? Because people can save things you post online. Pictures you post can be downloaded and saved. Things you Tweet can be saved as screenshots. And, as the website iKeepSafe points out, you never know what search engines have crawled your information and stored it.

And all of that matters because the details you share online can reveal information about you that you wouldn't otherwise want people to have: where you work, your habits, the places to which you travel.

So, what can you do?

Use a pseudonym

Many of the things I've been reading strongly recommend not using your real name, and instead using pseudonyms online. While this might work for you on Twitter or a blog, it might not work as well on Facebook. It's entirely a personal preference, but be aware that if you use your real name on your social networking sites, it makes it just a little easier to find you. Do a Google search for your name, putting your name in quotes (e.g., "John Doe"). You'd be surprised at what you might find.

Get a post office box

Depending on how you use social media, you might also want to get a post office box. For most of us, this probably isn't a concern, as we typically don't post our addresses online; however, as the Kathleen Hale situation shows us, it's sometimes beneficial to have a post office box that you can use online instead of your address, if you need to do online shopping, if you review products online that have to be mailed to you, etc.

Don't talk about where you are

Many of us love to talk about what we're doing. We use Facebook's check in feature, we post photos of our vacations, and we love to tell our social media followers what we're up to at any given time. And while this is okay for some things--say, if you're want to tell your followers about the amazing book you're reading--it's not as okay for other things.

If you want to talk about your amazing vacation or the day you had at the zoo, that's awesome; however, it might be best to not use Facebook's check in feature and to not post about where you are until you get home. While I've known that not posting online about being on vacation is a good idea, I had never considered not posting about being at the zoo while I'm actually at the zoo. It makes sense, though. If you're posting about your day at the zoo while you're there, guess what? It's now easier to find you. It also means people know you aren't home, so you've made your home vulnerable to break ins.

Disable your mobile device's geotagging feature

Here's another big one that I hadn't thought about before. If you use a smartphone or a tablet to take photos and upload them to social networking websites, make sure the geotagging is turned off. Geotagging embeds the location of where you took a photo into the photo itself, and people who view your photo can also view the embedded location information. Tech-Recipes has a great article on how to turn geotagging off of Androids, iPhones, and Blackberries.

I think, though, that most important thing about online privacy is talking about it: what it is, why it's important, and why it's a good idea to not reveal more information about yourself than you would if you were in a roomful of strangers.

If you have any other ideas on how to protect your online privacy, let us know in the comments!