"He put reflective tape on his hat — an attempt to foil facial recognition programs sifting through photos of the crowd."
"This college dropout wants to help you browse the Web in disguise" by Andy Rosen Globe Staff October 03, 2018
It’s a bright afternoon, but that’s not why Greg Tseng is wearing mirrored sunglasses and a ball cap with the brim pulled low. Sitting at a cafe table in Kendall Square, the 22-year-old software engineer and aspiring entrepreneur gestures toward a group of people lounging with their phones out.
Any of them could be taking pictures with him in the background, and uploading them to social networks that run facial recognition algorithms.
“Everywhere you go, something’s watching you. It’s all being recorded,” Tseng said.
That's what "conspiracy" bloggers like me warned about years ago, and we were told we were nothing but "conspiracy" people.
Years later it turns out we were right, and we never even get an acknowledgement or apology.
When he uses the Internet, Tseng assumes a different disguise: a program he’s developed can browse the Web as if he were an entirely different person. His goal is to thwart advertisers, marketers, and more nefarious digital snoops by making them believe they are watching someone else.
With the public awakening to the privacy concerns that Tseng is so acutely aware of, the Weston native is working to develop a commercially available product called Diluvian, based on the program he’s been testing on his own computer.
While he sleeps, travels, or works on his laptop, Diluvian uses artificial intelligence to visit websites it believes would fit the profile of a college-aged woman. In a recent demonstration, the robot played videos by Demi Lovato, loaded online shopping websites, and scrolled through women’s fashion blogs. None are likely online destinations for Tseng, who dropped out of George Washington University three years ago and favors Euro dance music and gym shorts.
Maybe he self-identifies as such.
If you can’t prevent someone from accessing your information, Tseng argues, you can at least prevent them from exploiting what they find.
“You have no idea what the future holds,” he said. “You never know what kind of information can come back and bite you.”
Tseng’s idea captured the attention of the Thiel Foundation, which was set up by venture capitalist Peter Thiel to support entrepreneurs who are willing to forgo college. The foundation awarded Tseng a $100,000 grant to keep him afloat as he tries to bring his product to market.
That will keep you up at night.
Diluvian is a twist on an concept that cybersecurity researchers have been kicking around for decades. So-called data pollution efforts contaminate users’ data to the point that it becomes it’s difficult to interpret.
Many of the Internet’s most popular services rely on tracking browsing data, which they use to create profiles that marketers and others covet for their value in targeting ads and tailoring users’ experiences.
So browsing data is particularly difficult to keep private. Individual websites and Internet services often use “cookies,” installed on browsers to keep track of user habits. And last year, Congress made it easier for Internet service providers to sell information about customers’ Internet activity without their permission.
AndrΓ©s Arrieta, a technology projects manager at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group based in San Francisco, said he believes users are waking up to the realities of what they’re revealing when they log onto the Internet. Cambridge Analytica’s improper use of Facebook users’ data to influence the 2016 US elections, he said, had a big hand in drawing public attention to privacy issues.
Who remembers Cambridge Analytica now?
“The security community was aware of all of this, but users were not necessarily aware of all of this,” Arrieta said. “People did not necessarily understand what they were giving up.”
They still don't.
The foundation makes a product called Privacy Badger, which blocks third parties it catches tracking users across multiple sites. Discerning users can also use tools that attempt to obscure where they’re browsing from, that block sites from loading advertisements or tracking software, and that encourage secure connections whenever possible.
Data pollution is seen by some as a complement to those tools, which aren’t foolproof.
One simple effort, called makeinternetnoise.com, will open tabs in your browser and load random websites.
Steven Smith, a senior staffer at the national security-focused MIT Lincoln Laboratory, last year released a program that browses a huge volume of websites over a user’s network to make it harder to discern information about the real people using the computers.
Knowing of Thiel's involvement, I'm not surprised at all to see the DoD labs at MIT working on it.
About 1,000 people have downloaded a free version of Smith’s creation, but he’s still studying whether it actually achieves its goal of disguising user information to the point where it can fool a sophisticated analysis.
Smith said his program, designed to protect people from snooping by their Internet service providers, is fair game because users need Internet access and have no way to opt out of data collection.
He has ethical concerns, however, about using such tactics against Internet companies such as Google and Facebook. If you don’t like their policies, he said, don’t use their services.
Tseng contends Diluvian’s use of fake “personas” will be better at fooling tracking algorithms than random browsing. Organized misinformation, he says, is more powerful than chaos in preventing the real user’s profile from revealing itself.
Some might call that propaganda.
Tseng hopes to launch a commercial product by next year, at first targeting businesses that want help deceiving hackers who, seeking trade secrets or intellectual property, might monitor employees’ online activity for clues about their work, but he also thinks there will be a market for everyday users who are wary of creating an indelible record any time they want to look something up or listen to music, but Diluvian takes effort and equipment to set up and so far, at least, the Internet has shown that most people are willing to forgo privacy for the sake of convenience.
Whether Tseng is a harbinger of a future where privacy obsession becomes more common remains to be seen.
After it's already gone.
He’s the person who walks out of the room when somebody is taking a selfie. He refuses to Google anything on a smartphone. He uses a Sony Discman to listen to music — in 2018. “It’s unhackable,” he said.
No selfies, please.
Dan Chamberlain, a close friend, was sitting with Tseng in the stands at a demolition derby recently when he noticed Tseng had put reflective tape on his hat — an attempt to foil facial recognition programs sifting through photos of the crowd, (reflected light, Tseng said, interferes with the algorithm), but the more time you spend with Tseng, Chamberlain said, the more his attitude makes sense.
“We’ve kind of gotten used to our privacy being invaded,” he said. “It seems like overkill, but when he explains where the stuff can be used, it’s like, ‘Maybe I should think of doing something like that.’ ”
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Related:
"New facial recognition technology has identified three impostors at Washington Dulles International Airport. Citing a US Customs and Border Protection release, The Washington Post reported that a woman arriving on a Monday flight from Accra, Ghana, presented a US passport, but the facial recognition technology reported a mismatch. A secondary inspection and biometric examination identified her as a 26-year-old citizen of Cameroon, not the United States. The release says the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority partnered with CBP to use biometric entry and exit technology using facial comparison to bolster security and efficiency for international travelers. Officers at Dulles previously intercepted a Congolese man using a French passport Aug. 22 and a Ghanaian woman using a US passport Sept. 8."
Yeah, they asked him to take off his hat.
Also see:
"A health care investment firm that’s backing studies of magic mushrooms to treat depression raised $25 million of capital and may consider an initial public offering next year, according to people familiar with the matter. Atai Life Sciences AG is close to announcing the fund-raising with lead backers Christian Angermayer, a German investor, as well as billionaire investor Mike Novogratz and Icelandic entrepreneur Thor Bjorgolfsson, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter isn’t public yet. Atai owns a substantial stake in UK startup Compass Pathways, which is conducting clinical trials of psilocybin, a psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, as a treatment for depression."
Did yo see the contemptuous grin on his face?
I'd say he was paranoid, but.....
"He decided to sell his farm to a marijuana company. His neighbors are determined to stop him" by Dan Adams Globe Staff October 03, 2018
CHARLTON — Three years have passed since the night Nathan Benjamin Jr. watched his barn and winery burn to the ground, flames spreading uncontrollably as firefighters struggled for hours to find a suitable source of water near his orchard in this rural Central Massachusetts town.
Now, Benjamin’s Charlton Orchards Farm & Winery is at the center of another conflagration: a startlingly vicious fight over a plan to construct one of the country’s largest marijuana farms on the property.
The debate has its origins in the 2015 fire that destroyed the orchard’s winery, knocking out the farm’s main source of revenue and prompting Benjamin’s mortgage lender to claim much of the resulting insurance payout. With little money left to rebuild, Benjamin decided to sell and move on, but the potential buyer, Valley Green Grow, has no intention of offering tractor rides, hard cider tastings, or pick-your-own apples. Instead, it wants to level off the hilltop orchard and construct a $100 million, 1-million-square-foot marijuana cultivation and processing facility with six indoor greenhouses, protected by fortress-like security and replete with its own gas-fired 18-megawatt power plant.
If it wins local approval for the gargantuan project, Valley Green Grow has promised the town a windfall nearly as large: up to $7 million annually, plus $500,000 up front to fund the design of a new police and fire station.
The farm’s neighbors, however, aren’t buying that sales pitch. They’ve launched an all-out assault against Benjamin, town officials, and Valley Green Grow, arguing that the industrial-style facility shouldn’t be allowed on an agricultural property and accusing Charlton’s elected leaders of negotiating the payments in secret. They also say the project could be an environmental “nightmare,” and claim it will dent the value of nearby homes and damage the town’s reputation.
In what is known as the NIMBY syndrome.
The war now includes multiple lawsuits, a dizzying series of contradictory bylaws, and mutual accusations of bad faith.
You win, time to recriminalize.
Valley Green Grow, headed by Dr. Jeff Goldstein, is the same company that was denied permission for a similar operation in North Andover earlier this year.
His lawyer is Jonathan Silverstein, a veteran municipal attorney at the firm KP Law who represents Charlton in marijuana-related matters.
While Valley Green Grow has already signed its contract with the town, the project still faces hurdles, including winning a state license from the Cannabis Control Commission and securing a number of local permits and approval from Charlton’s Planning Board.
The company must also face down opponents of the project, who are trying everything to stop it.....
You vote for something and you think it will be respected, but nope.
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Yeah, they are “not antimarijuana. That’s not what this is about. This is about the wrong project in the wrong location.”
The good thing about marijuana is you can't overdose.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Canada trains 800 officers to test for high drivers" by Josh Wingrove Bloomberg News October 05, 2018
Canadian police forces have given 833 officers specialized drug recognition training, as of Oct. 1, as they prepare to enforce impaired driving laws when the country legalizes recreational marijuana later this month.
Government officials briefed journalists Friday on preparations to crack down on impaired driving once the legal pot market kicks in. Police can begin using “oral fluid roadside drug screeners” as of Dec. 18, according to a government briefing document, which would detect cannabis that’s recently consumed.
The first screening device was approved in August, and is not yet in use in other countries, said the officials, who gave the briefing on condition of anonymity. The screening devices are being described as an additional “tool” for police but aren’t required to investigate drug-impaired driving, according to the briefing document.
Drug-impaired driving has long been illegal in Canada, but police forces are stepping up efforts ahead of the opening of the legal market. There are three new criminal offenses in Canada — one a summary conviction, and more serious ones for higher levels of certain active agents, or for combining drugs and alcohol. Police can now demand a blood sample to be charged, though it’s unclear yet whether that will be done at a hospital, by an ambulance, or elsewhere, the officials said.
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Think of it like getting sap from a tree.
