privacy ninja

#PrivChat

PC at Its Peak While Android, iPhone & iPad are Just Taking Off

parislemon:

Horace Dediu presents yet another amazing way to look at the rapidly evolving computer industry (here are Dediu’s other fascinating looks of the past few days).

The PC looks like a rainbow at its peak.

The Macintosh looks like a roller coaster with a misleading small first hill that tricks riders.

Android, iPhone, and iPad look like fireworks just taking off…

Retail Big Data & Privacy

This is a fantastic example of the overlay of retail, big data, and privacy:

Servicemarq (@servicemarq)1/16/12 9:51 PM”Also developed a way to tell retailers who would be interested in a red dress in London for example, we then use clusters to suggest others.”

Although we’re not decrying this innovation, it needs to be done with both conscience and consumer consent (e.g., an opt-in for an entity to collect, store, aggregate, and — especially — sell location and search data).

Twitterize Yourself makes visual sense...

The New Cyber-Industrial Complex

In a fantastic article from December second’s issue of The Guardian, Pratap Chatterjee wrote on the “The New Cyber-Industrial Complex” — a new industry that secretly vacuums up the data and preserves it forever on high-end servers that hold many petabytes (a million gigabytes) of information.

The article cites WikiLeaks outing 300 documents that shine a light into this industry.  WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange couched the data with some splendid commentary:

Previously, we had all thought, why would the government be interested in me, my brother? My business is not interesting; I am not a criminal. Now these companies sell to state intelligence agencies the ability to spy on the entire population at once and keep that information permanently. In five or six years’ time, if your brother or someone becomes of interest to that company or the government, they can go back in time and look to see what you said or what you emailed.

Chatterjee goes on to further cite the Orwell metaphor, which (in our humble opinion) is overused … so we simply avoid it.

Here at privacy ninja we’re a covert clan of data junkies, privacy wonks, and even legal experts, and we all have something to say.

Although it pains me to say this (being published in them myself) most scholarly journals are too niche and stodgy to connect with most people.  Therefore, privacy ninja shall serve as something of a scratch pad for witty sarcasm and poignant notes for you (the savvy 21st century person you are) on a myriad of technology enabled threats to western notions of privacy (which vary widely & will be discussed here too).

We’re apolitical.  We’re cheeky.  And … well … to be honest, we’re angered by the general lack of commonsense in the rising technologies that affect our rights and personal lives.  Follow us on twitter @PrivacyNinjas.

- @PrivacyNinjas