Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Surveillance via Mobile Phones

How do I surveille thee?* Let me count the ways...™

Just when you thought it was safe to go to the mall.

Updates:
- TechCrunch Location Technologies Primer (4 Jun 2008)
- ReadWriteWeb Location Awareness: Scientist Admits to Secretly Tracking 100K+ Peoples' Phones (4 Jun 2008)

[via schneier]

Related Posts:
Surveillance via Pizza Delivery
Surveillance via Abandoned DNA
Surveillance via Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems

* with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Announcing Shyttr.com beta



With all the talk of signal vs. noise lately, we're announcing a new tool to help you harness the honey wagon of noise:


http://shyttr.com/


Update:
More reasons to love the British [Fake Steve Jobs re:Shitterton]

Related Posts:
Nihilister.com

[Apologies to shyftr]

Monday, May 19, 2008

Surveillance via Pizza Delivery

How do I surveille thee?* Let me count the ways...™

Consumerist has a privacy Pop Quiz up today: "Can The Pizza Delivery Place Sell Your Personal Information Without Your Consent?"

Interestingly, the ubiquity and frequency of pizza deliveries make these shops ideally situated to collect multiple phone numbers and addresses on their customers, not to mention your topping preferences.

I was quite displeased the first time I called a local shop and they knew my physical delivery address even before I spoke, despite my unlisted phone number and PO Box mailing address.

Related Posts:
Surveillance via Abandoned DNA
Surveillance via Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems

* with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
[image credit: wikipedia]

Friday, May 9, 2008

In a Twitter about Twitter (gross generalizations)


A graph of Average Number of Following versus Average Number of Followers among Twitter users:



A funny outlying data point: