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Okay, so where can I get a copy of the presentation?

I think they should go ahead and give their presentation and include the events of the past week in it. In 2006, Steve Rambam was arrested by the FBI minutes before he was to give his "Privacy is Dead" presentation at the HOPE conference. Of course, the charges were dropped - after the conference was over.

He went ahead and gave his presentation a couple of months later.

I am also reminded of the Russian hacker Dmitri Sklyarov, who was prevented (by way of arrest) from giving a presentation at the 2001 DefCon titled "eBook's Security -- Theory and Practice." According to the Wiki page I linked to, "On December 18, 2002 following a two-week trial in San Jose, California, a jury found that Elcomsoft (the company Sklyarov worked for) had not wilfully violated the U.S. law."

So the tactic seems to be abuse the law in order to suppress speech you don't like, since there are apparently no consequences for doing so.

Another possible example of this tactic occurred last week when the IOC attempted to use the DMCA to force YouTube to take down a video about a Tibetan protest at the Chinese consulate in New York. This one may have been a mistake, as the title of the video was apparently "Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony." But that would make it Trademark - not copyright - infringement, so the DMCA take-down notice was entirely inappropriate and sure gave the impression that their motive was to prevent embarrassment to China, not protect their brand.

A couple years ago, a private investigator named Steve Rambam gave a talk at (well, after) Hope Number Six in New York. His speech was titled "Privacy is Dead, Get Over It."

* Every time I heard someone quip this phrase or something similar, it made me want to scream. But after listing to his talk, I found that I had to agree with the premise. Thanks to the last two decades of technology, there really is no more expectation of real privacy as most of us think about it. Here are some of the key points that I remember from the talk:

* Almost everybody leaves an electronic trail of their daily activities whether they realize it or not. Paying with a credit card, walking through a downtown area, driving through an intersection with a red-light camera, and buying cough medicine are all ways you can end up with your exact location recorded in that particular point in time.

* Practically any company can get more information on you (especially your financial history) than you can.

* The Internet has made it possible to get extremely detailed background checks on anyone you like for a very small fee and almost no effort.

* The U.S. government has fairly tight controls on how they're allowed to compile and use private information on citizens. Corporations, however, do not. There are a number of companies now that do nothing but compile vast amounts of information on everyone they can and then sell full access to their database to government agencies because it's not illegal for the government to *buy* your private information. They don't even need a warrant to access it.

* Ask any investigator and they'll tell you that Google is their favorite tool. Followed by MySpace, Facebook, and blogs. If you have any significant social interaction online, they don't even need to spend any money to find information on you because chances are you've already told the world far more than you realize.

You can hear Steve's talks here: (three parts)

http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy1.mp3
http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy2.mp3
http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy3.mp3

If you're in doubt, just try googling a few email addresses and/or aliases you've used over the past few years. I did just this a few weeks ago and was completely floored. There are traces of my online interactions going back over a decade.

(Posting anonymously because I don't want anyone to get any bright ideas.)

A couple years ago, a private investigator named Steve Rambam gave a talk at (well, after) Hope Number Six in New York. His speech was titled "Privacy is Dead, Get Over It."

* Every time I heard someone quip this phrase or something similar, it made me want to scream. But after listing to his talk, I found that I had to agree with the premise. Thanks to the last two decades of technology, there really is no more expectation of real privacy as most of us think about it. Here are some of the key points that I remember from the talk:

* Almost everybody leaves an electronic trail of their daily activities whether they realize it or not. Paying with a credit card, walking through a downtown area, driving through an intersection with a red-light camera, and buying cough medicine are all ways you can end up with your exact location recorded in that particular point in time.

* Practically any company can get more information on you (especially your financial history) than you can.

* The Internet has made it possible to get extremely detailed background checks on anyone you like for a very small fee and almost no effort.

* The U.S. government has fairly tight controls on how they're allowed to compile and use private information on citizens. Corporations, however, do not. There are a number of companies now that do nothing but compile vast amounts of information on everyone they can and then sell full access to their database to government agencies because it's not illegal for the government to *buy* your private information. They don't even need a warrant to access it.

* Ask any investigator and they'll tell you that Google is their favorite tool. Followed by MySpace, Facebook, and blogs. If you have any significant social interaction online, they don't even need to spend any money to find information on you because chances are you've already told the world far more than you realize.

You can hear Steve's talks here: (three parts)

http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy1.mp3
http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy2.mp3
http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy3.mp3

If you're in doubt, just try googling a few email addresses and/or aliases you've used over the past few years. I did just this a few weeks ago and was completely floored. There are traces of my online interactions going back over a decade.

(Posting anonymously because I don't want anyone to get any bright ideas.)

A couple years ago, a private investigator named Steve Rambam gave a talk at (well, after) Hope Number Six in New York. His speech was titled "Privacy is Dead, Get Over It."

* Every time I heard someone quip this phrase or something similar, it made me want to scream. But after listing to his talk, I found that I had to agree with the premise. Thanks to the last two decades of technology, there really is no more expectation of real privacy as most of us think about it. Here are some of the key points that I remember from the talk:

* Almost everybody leaves an electronic trail of their daily activities whether they realize it or not. Paying with a credit card, walking through a downtown area, driving through an intersection with a red-light camera, and buying cough medicine are all ways you can end up with your exact location recorded in that particular point in time.

* Practically any company can get more information on you (especially your financial history) than you can.

* The Internet has made it possible to get extremely detailed background checks on anyone you like for a very small fee and almost no effort.

* The U.S. government has fairly tight controls on how they're allowed to compile and use private information on citizens. Corporations, however, do not. There are a number of companies now that do nothing but compile vast amounts of information on everyone they can and then sell full access to their database to government agencies because it's not illegal for the government to *buy* your private information. They don't even need a warrant to access it.

* Ask any investigator and they'll tell you that Google is their favorite tool. Followed by MySpace, Facebook, and blogs. If you have any significant social interaction online, they don't even need to spend any money to find information on you because chances are you've already told the world far more than you realize.

You can hear Steve's talks here: (three parts)

http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy1.mp3
http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy2.mp3
http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/privacy3.mp3

If you're in doubt, just try googling a few email addresses and/or aliases you've used over the past few years. I did just this a few weeks ago and was completely floored. There are traces of my online interactions going back over a decade.

(Posting anonymously because I don't want anyone to get any bright ideas.)

Or perhaps the FBI pulled a rather legal two-step: commission a company like InfoUSA to do a more broad, demographically based data-mining, and then when probable cause is established (and it WILL be established, even if only as a "clerical error") you get a FISA warrant for more direct searching and data mining through the credit card companies.

Don't you all know that privacy is dead anyway? If not, you need to listen to Steve Rambam's talk on the subject.

Okay, I know this sounds odd, but hear me out. I am working on a program that dials a modem to random "interesting" numbers and plays back either a message or a number station-type barrage. It can even simulate a conversation if it finds another copy of this same program out there. Why is nobody interested in this software to at least screw with the pattern and content analysis of these traitors? If nothing else, it bogs them down in bogus data and slows them down.

I'm sure a few hundred calls to and from a small "cell" of these programs would sure as hell raise a red flag. Drag them down with bullshit and club them with their own lethargy.

More info on evading wiretaps. Stay safe out there.

(i'm not totally disagreeing) I would suggest that, in the context of this story, the scientist does have the right to licence his work under cc-nc 3.0 That isn't totally the way i though it worked (I live in the UK btw, i think you live in the USA so it may be different). The scientist has to locate funding, whether this is from the university or a commercial entity.... this is breifly discussed here in a hope #6 lecture...

it's also ironic that if you click on his home page, he lists where he and his family were going to be in July

http://www.hopenumbersix.net/speakers.html#pid2

Indeed, and much, much more. Privacy is Dead.

So my question is this. If searching files on a physical device is legal, would it not also be legal for customs to "inspect" all electronic data that crosses international borders?

As I understand US law (IANAL, I'm not even an American) there's a difference legally between data that's in transmission and in storage. One falls under wiretapping laws, one is just under search laws (if I remember).

Here's an mp3 of the talk where I heard about it at HOPE Number Six: http://www.hopenumbersix.net/mp3/16/network_monito ring_and_the_law.mp3

Incidentally, the same conference that I had my laptop searched coming back from. Canadian customs officials, I'm a Canadian citizen. They used spotlight for a couple minutes in a back room and then returned it. I would /love/ to know if there is some legal info about this, since I would have been willing to assert my rights, I'm just not sure what they are in that situation. I figured that they have roughly the same rights as if I was carrying a stack of (paper) notebooks and wanted to read through 'em, but that'd be logical, and I've rarely seen the law work logically where a computer was involved.

There was a talk about this at the most recent HOPE conference by the head of Toool. The audio is avalable for download (128kbps, 16kbps).Toool also has a paper on the subject.

There was a talk about this at the most recent HOPE conference by the head of Toool. The audio is avalable for download (128kbps, 16kbps).Toool also has a paper on the subject.

I'll be a co-speaker at HOPE in NY this next month with Jorge Cortell, and we will be talking about copyright, and will talk about Spanish problems at your desire...

That's the scheduling:

Title: Selfness-Copyfight: From Censorship to New Business Models
Day/Time: Sunday 23 1700
Location: Area B