In the course of releasing boatloads of data to contestants in its "Beat Netflix's Recommendation Algorithm" contest, they may not have disguised where that data came from as well as they should. The plaintiff, known here as Jane Doe to preserve privacy, alleges that her identity could be divined from the data, and thus threatens her civil right to privacy. Apparently, two researchers compared Netflix reviews to IMDB reviews and figured out some identities that way.

The suit seeks a cash settlement for each of the 2 million Netflix customers involved, and also seeks to stop the upcoming sequel to the original Netflix contest. We'll keep you updated on the suit—it's a pretty interesting one, for sure. [Wired]

"You may want to know about their Worldwide Loyalty Team," Tom told me recently in an email. I read what he had to say. It felt like a description of the Gestapo, without the torture and killing part.

Tom never lived in Nazi Germany, back in the time when the Geheime Staatspolize had the power to get into any house or any office, at any time of the day or night, without any warrant or reason, to seize whatever or whoever they wanted in their never ending search to find enemies of the state. A place in which you had no right to privacy whatsoever. A place in which you were guilty until proven otherwise.

No, Tom never lived in Nazi Germany, nor in East Germany, nor in the Soviet Union, nor in Communist China. He lives in the United States. For sure, he has never been scared of losing his life nor the ones he loves, like thousands of millions in those countries. But he knows how it feels to be watched, to always be considered guilty of crimes against another kind of state. He knew how it felt to have no privacy whatsoever when he was working right here, in a little Californian town called Cupertino, in a legendary place located in One Infinite Loop.

Tom knew about all that pretty well, back when he was working at Apple Inc.

Operation Lockdown

Of course, if Tom had never sent any sensitive information to media outlets, he would have never had the fear of being caught, only to get fired and sued into oblivion by Apple Legal. But the lack of any privacy whatsoever is something that he shared with all his fellow employees.

"Apple has these moles working everywhere, especially in departments where leaks are suspected. Management is not aware of them," he told me, "once they suspect a leak, the special forces—as we call them—will walk in the office at any hour, especially in the mornings. They will contact whoever was the most senior manager in the building, and ask them to coordinate the operation."

The operation, as Tom calls it, is not anything special. It is not one of a kind event. It's just a normal practice, and the process is pretty simple: The manager will instruct all employees to stay at their desks, telling them what to do and what to expect at any given time. The Apple Gestapo never handles the communication. They are there, present, supervising the supervisors, making sure everything goes as planned.

All cellphones are then taken. Usually, they collect them all at the same time, which means that the process could take a long time. If you need to contact the exterior during the time your cellphone is under examination, you will have to ask for permission, and your call will be monitored.

They don't ask for cameras because there are no cameras at Apple: Employees are not allowed to get into the campus with them. If the cellphone is an iPhone, it gets backed up onto a laptop. "In fact, at the beginning they used to say that the iPhones were really their property, since Apple gave every employee a free iPhone," he points out. All the employees are asked to unlock and disable any locking features in their cellphones, and then the special forces will proceed to check them for recent activity.

They back up everything and go through all the other phones' text messages and pictures. If you have porn in your phone, they will see it. If you have text messages to your spouse, lover, or Tiger Woods, they will see them, too. Just like that. No privacy, no limits.

While all this is happening, the employees are ordered to activate the screensaver on their computers, so the special forces are sure there are no chats happening between employees or with the exterior. They are told not to speak, text or call one other when the lockdown is happening: "It is like a gag order, and if the employee does not want to participate, they are basically asked to leave and never come back."

2009 Is Like "1984"

Of course, all this is voluntary. Management recommends that you relinquish your phones. If you don't do it they will fire you, or they will investigate why you didn't want to give them your cellphone. Simultaneously, everyone is asked to sign NDA's during the investigations, even though they already signed Apple NDAs to work there.

"I was at several events. When they find what they are looking for—which they usually do—the person is asked to stay until the end of the business day. Then he is asked to leave the premises quietly, escorted by security," Tom says. While he's there, the special forces hang around, watching. "There is a lot that goes behind doors that I don't really know about. I do know, however, that they really interrogate people that are serious suspects, intimidating them by threatening to sue."

There is no way to know how often this happens, however, as everything is handled very quietly. The same Worldwide Loyalty Team does many other things to keep everyone in check, from searching out the email history of every employee—which is also a normal practice in other corporations and government agencies—to seeding fake images to catch potential leaks and diffuse the hype about some product introductions.

As Tom was describing all this, my mind was getting back to all I've read about Steve Jobs and Apple, back when he was El Capitán of the brave group of free pirates who created the Macintosh. The Mac was a secret project too, but there was no secret police making sure there were no leaks. After a hard day of work, all the Mac team sometimes played on the beaches of California, careless and happy, confident that this new revolutionary computer would change the world, one desktop at a time. All of them shared information, there were no seeeecrets, and that's why they came up with an "insanely great" computer, as Steve Jobs himself used to refer to it.

And while I understand that secrecy is paramount to success in today's extremely competitive market—hello, dear marketdrones—now I look at this story on the Worldwide Loyalty Team, and it makes me realize how much Apple has changed. From a happy hippie company, to a company that does KGB-style lockdowns and Gestapo interrogations that end in suicides.

I wonder if the special forces have ever chased anyone through the Infinite Loop campus, dressed in their full regalia:

I wouldn't be surprised.

There are convincing arguments to be made for law enforcement agencies' access to location data, like in missing person cases, kidnappings or maybe fugitive situations. It just seems like it ought to be a little more mediated than this:

[At the Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Gathering conference] Sprint Nextel's electronic surveillance manager Paul Taylor described an automated system that law enforcement could use to easily look up subscriber whereabouts.

They can submit a request for a particular user's location up to every three minutes, for a period of 60 days, which accounts for the 8 million figure. What else does Sprint collect about you, for sharing?

Sprint keeps 24 months worth of URL history for some devices and that's not even because of law enforcement. "It's because marketing wants to rifle through the data," [Taylor] said.

The marketing data retention sounds like the kind of thing you might unknowingly sign off on in some kind of unintelligible user agreement, and the location stuff could conceivably be used only in palatable ways (if you broadly consider warranted wiretapping palatable) but they're both reminders that your telco—no, this isn't just Sprint's issue—knows a lot about you. Or, more to the point, that the average cellphone user has no idea how much data their wireless provider is collecting (or can collect) from them, and specifically, how it's used.

Queasy yet? No worries! There's a pharmacy two blocks to the west, and one block to the south. And they have your favorite pills. [PCWorld]

According to the NY Daily News, a recent internal memo instructed NYPD officers to commit such acts of battery-removing, IMEI-jotting kindness. The idea behind it is to assemble a database which would allow them to match phones used by a suspect to past, present, and future crimes. It's almost romantic how you'll gain a lifelong relationship with the NYPD through this process, but, like many other newfangled relationships, this one is being called into question. Some are arguing that it circumvents warrant requirements and infringes on the rights of a suspect. I argue that I won't carry a cellphone if I go on a crime spree in New York. [NY Daily News]

Photo by mskogly

The plan is simple: A company called Internet Eyes wants to stream CCTV feeds from businesses—or anyone willing to pay them $30 a month—that want their cameras to be watched by humans 24/7. At the same time, they are signing up bored citizens, peeping toms, pervs, and any other loser wanting to watch those camera feeds. These people don't pay a dollar. Instead, they will get paid: Up $1,600 to whoever reports the most crimes happening on camera.

The viewers—who will monitor four cameras simultaneously—can report a crime in real time using the companies web page, which will send a CCTV frame to the owner of the camera via SMS. The watchmen, however, wouldn't know the location of the cameras, which will change every ten minutes.

The company says they are serious, and that this is not a game. According to Tony Morgan, their managing director:

This isn't a game - it's serious. This is all about crime prevention and it could be very, very effective. At the moment people look at CCTV and think someone might or might not be watching so they commit the crimes anyway. Once this gets going and we get signs saying that the CCTV is part of our scheme, it will be an extra deterrent because people will know they are probably being watched.

Needless to say, civil liberties groups are protesting the concept. Protest all you want, but this looks like it may happen. To give you an idea of how far this may go, Britain has one camera per fourteen people, even while the Metropolitan Police said in an August internal report that only one crime for every thousand cameras in London was solved.

Señor Alan Moore, you are the true Nostradamus. Off to get a Guy Fawkes mask, peeps. [IBTimes]

The technique, called variance-based radio tomographic imaging, processes signals from a 34-node IEEE 802.15.4 wireless network. It's the protocol for personal area networks used by home automation systems such as ZigBee.

The basic idea is straightforward. The signal strength at any point in a network is the sum of all the paths the radio waves can take to get to the receiver. Any change in the volume of space through which the signals pass, for example caused by the movement of a person, makes the signal strength vary. So by "interrogating" this volume of space with many signals, picked up by multiple receivers, it is possible to build up a picture of the movement within it.

They were able to detect movement in a room to within a meter or so, which is pretty good. They won't be able to see what you look like in the shower, however, so I'm going to call this a good advancement. But be careful, researchers. Don't try anything sketchy. [Technology Review via Slashdot]

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

Section 201 of the bill also seems to imply that the government can reserve the right to regulate "critical" private networks, which could include the disclosure of information.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government.

Naturally, there has been a lot of debate on both sides of the issue—some are calling the redraft unsettlingly "vague" while others insist that a bill of this nature is essential in order to protect our nation's digital infrastructure. What do you think? Is this crossing the line or should the government have the right to exercise its power over private networks? [CNET]

The Craigslist pitch is classic:

Dont bother with those anti glare filters that do not work . Stop those pesky peekers who cant seem to mind their own busniess while your working on your screen…. Trend setters says Laptop Burka is the newest hot ticket on the market today ! Own yours today .Patent Pending…

Real or not, +1 for creepy ingenuity. [Craigslist]

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

Like all the best Onion pieces, this video takes the bizarre and scary concepts we ignore despite being right in front of our faces, and spells them out in blunt, hilarious language. As the "Google Exec" says, "If you don't want to give us complete access to your most private thoughts and feelings, that's fine! You can just toil on the hinterlands, and die young."

But my favorite part has to be the consistent juxtaposition of Google's bright happy basic colors on all the terrifying privacy guards and equipment. On the other hand, even if this horrible airless prison was real, I'd probably still get excited about the next Android phone. You win, Google. You win everything, ever. [The Onion]

Specifically, it's the IBM Social Network Analysis for Telecom Business Intelligence data mining tool, or SNAzzy for short, and it knows all about who called who and for how long on the network of "one of the largest mobile operators in the world."

The purpose of this snazzy snooping, as explained by Big Blue researchers, is to spot "churners" on a cell network who might influence their circle of friends with "profit-threatening behavior." The reasoning goes that when one person ditches a cell network for greener pastures, they can inspire their friends to do the same. Enter SNAzzy, which can apparently recognize this behavior, alert the carrier, and allow them to swoop in with retention materials and keep their remaining customers happy. It does this by mapping out call behavior, time, and a bunch of other heavy metrics that seem to be copy/pasted right out of the NSA.

Better still (I say sarcastically), IBM is already eying larger deployments beyond telecoms into areas like social networks. Personally, I can't wait to see what my Facebook picture stalking looks like when presented to me in graph form. [IBM va Slashdot]

When we don't have privacy, then freaks with bullhorns start showing up. Keep our phone numbers unlisted. Keep our cellphone records private. Keep us safe in your loving arms, Ivan.

So damn right. To give you an idea about how easy it was to get this information, the only thing that John did was sign up for one of those "free cell phone records" listings and scan it for the cells and home addresses of the CEOs from the big three: Randall Stephenson of AT&T, Dan Hesse of Sprint Nextel, and Ivan Seidenberg of Verizon. There were a lot of Stephensons and Hesses, but only one Ivan Seidenberg. He confirmed the information and off he went in his car, ready to deliver his message about how important privacy is by showing him exactly how these awful information keeping policies could affect us.

Mr. John Hargrave, we love you. [Zug.com]

The high end Chameleon product costs $10,000 and is targeted towards government offices that really need to protect secrets and are willing pay. It works by learning the unique way that a user's eye jumps around while reading, called their "gaze pattern", and calibrates the text on screen to match. To anyone else, the screen sees a constantly changing jumble of text, to the user, he sees a Gizmodo liveblog.

A cheaper, webcam-based version called PrivateEye is just as interesting. It detects your eyes so that if someone comes in the room and you turn away to address them, the screen will automatically blur to obfuscate whatever you were working on. It also displays the face of the person looking over your shoulder in a little video thumbnail so that you can see who's coming in, and that person can see that YOU know he's in the room. PrivateEye is available now on Windows machines for just $20. [Oculis via Baltimore Sun via BalTech]

The Mail has assembled the above infographic to explain how the ISA system works, but it's fairly simple: Cars are outfitted with computers loaded with speed limit data for public roads, and monitored via satellite. In "Advisory" mode, the dash readout indicates if you need to slow down, and smiles at you if you do. In the hilariously named "Voluntary" mode, the computer will actually seize control of your throttle, letting off the gas until you ease back down to the speed limit.

You can't blame people for having a mid-scale privacy freakout over this one, but a few crucial factors keep it from being downright Orwellian: First, it's being deployed in London cabs, government cars and buses, so it's not being expressly imposed on private citizens; second, the system is local—as in, it reads its own GPS data to calculate speed and decides on a course of action without remote input—and has an override switch, which, based on my experiences with London cabbies, I suspect will get plenty of use. (And serve as a brilliant rant subject conversation piece).

But still, satellite speed control? That's worse than speed cameras. And the mere existence of this technology—not to mention the government's involvement in its development—certainly feels like a step in the wrong direction, even if this particular use is relatively benign. [Daily Mail]

It really is a glorious website—it's constantly updated, with a great design and meticulous, nicely presented statistics that makes the Smoking Gun look a decade behind the times. Seriously, I can find everyone who's committed a crime in the last 60 days in Hillsborough County under 5 feet tall in two clicks. Suspect your crazy uncle got booked for picking up Grettle, the neighborhood's call granny last week? Search by name and zip. Ridiculous, amazing, scary and marvelous all at once. Clicking on the scrolling list gives you a pop-up like this guy who obviously didn't get to fully enjoy his 4/20:
It's also got a semi-live feed of crime stories from the St. Petersburg Times, who runs the site using info pulled from the county sheriff's open website. Will the growth this kind of site put an end to police and sheriff's departments making their arrest stats and requisite mugshots so easy to mine and re-package? Or we are looking at a near-future where your drunken sprees be posted to your Facebook wall automatically by your friendly neighborhood police department? [Mugshots]

Privacy, privacy, privacy. First there was the Blackberry visor for those who tried to hide the fact that they were looking at porn. Now enters the cleverly hooded USB keypad, which allows individuals seeking a certain level of privacy to do their work in the field with the utmost discretion. It's also sure to put paranoid pencil pushers at ease. Sadly, this is the category of number-punchers I fall under. I'll be hunched over my desk tip-tapping away while some shmuck try to peek over my shoulder. Too bad shmuck, you won't be able to see a thing (Please ignore me when I'm typing on my regular keyboard).

Whether you are a sneaky person or Excel monkey, the most covert of number pads is available for $18.99. [USB Fever via Geeky Gadgets]

Before the visor, people might have simply guessed that you were surfing porn on your mobile while at work.

"Well, his face is flush," they'd think to themselves, "and he's sweating a bit too much for such a cool day in the office, but maybe he's just walked up a flight or stairs or something."

But then, after you attach this loud, outrageous $9 black thing to your Blackberry, you will have confirmed what you're really up to, and then some.

Either that, or you're the world's most paranoid business executive or pencil pusher. Whatever. It's bad news all around. [New PC Gadgets via Gear Diary]

Google was already forced to blur faces and license plates, but the pile of complaints has resulted in some images being pulled completely. Google doesn't appear to be legally obligated to remove the photos; in a statement, a spokesperson said, "The images you see on Street View are the same images you would see if you were to walk or drive down the road yourself," which is one of those "we're being nice but we don't have to" kind of explanations. Luckily, images will stay up unless Google receives a complaint, so here's hoping some of those entertaining nutballs don't hear of their Street View fame. [Daily Mail]

While we've had RF-blocking paint to cellphone signals for some time, manufacturers have been thwarted when attempting to stop higher frequencies, like we have on home networks.

Now a team of researchers from the University of Tokyo has developed an aluminium-iron oxide that blocks radio frequencies up to four times beyond existing anti-RF technologies. The paint puts out a magnetic field that resonates at the same frequency as the electromagnetic wave (in this case, a radio frequency) you're looking to block.

The good news is that the material shouldn't be expensive to produce. Right now it's estimated to run $14 per kilogram. Assuming our math is correct, if the average gallon of paint runs 2 pounds, then a can of Wi-Fi blocking paint would be $50 to manufacture. That's not super cheap, but neither is the lifetime of blackmail after your neighbor deciphers your network password and threatens to show the world your earnest, self-shot modeling portfolio. [PCWorld via Unplggd]

According to the Daily Mail, schools have installed new cameras to watch and listen to "pupils as young as four". Apparently, the authorities are worried that the aforementioned pupils can disrupt lessons when the teacher's back is turned, and they want the cameras to identify them.

Coincidentally, Shadow Children's Minister Tim Loughton is chairman of Classwatch, the company installing those surveillance systems. Nor surprisingly, teachers and human rights organizations are up in arms against the technology but, quite frankly, who cares about CCTV in classrooms when the bloody things are basically installed all over the place in the United Kingdom?

Alan Moore was right. [Daily Mail]