Slashdot Mirror

There are several forms of 'meta cookie' which can be used to uniquely identify you, and which have nothing to do with either Flash or standard browser cookies. For example, check out Panopticlick. There are also older attacks such as history sniffing (defeated in modern browsers, but still available in the majority of active browsers). Plus there's permanently cached files (a JS file with an expiry set unreachably far in the future, with a server which responds that the file is always fresh, while the content of that file is uniquely identifiable information). DOM storage, HTML5 offline cache, and many other vectors are ways to stick information on your computer in ways you're probably not expecting.

Some sites have put together combinations of these approaches to make super cookies which are almost impossible to defeat without simultaneously erasing cache, cookies, flash cookies, all browsing history, and also making sure you're running a completely vanilla OS with a completely vanilla browser install (each addon or font, and many 3rd party programs can contribute to your fingerprint being more unique). If you have an unusual font or two installed, this all by itself can make you uniquely identifiable in a way that no level of browser scrubbing will protect you.

A "super" cookie is one where every means of uniquely identifying yourself has to be simultaneously scrubbed. If you miss even one, the rest are restored.

uh...looking at the Google Chrome team page, I can immediately pick out the following people as being ex-Mozilla employees or contributors: Ben Goodger, Darin Fisher, Brett Wilson, Peter Kasting, Mike Pinkerton, Jonathan Haas, Pam Greene, Jungshik Shin I'm sure there are more that I'm not aware of, but those are all certain.

To get their blog entries back people might be able to use Google Reader. If journalspace provided RSS feeds and if the entire blog posts were part of the RSS feed and if somebody subscribed to the RSS feed in Google Reader one should be able to obtain all blog posts from when the first user followed the blog with Google Reader. Here are some details: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2005/12/google-reader-api.html

MS Patent covers a central system that will be responsible for aggregating various feed formats (RSS, Atom, RDF) and provide a common interface to other programs for using the feed information. Availability of several feed formats and the errors in them makes a nightmare for the applications that need to use feeds. So a common system will be helpful. Several parsers available today to parse RSS and Atom feeds. The most popular one is Universal Feed Parser parses all known web feeds and presents, feed data in usable form that can be used by the application developers. UFP is part of popular open source feed based applications like Planet Feed reader and Democracy Player. So Microsoft's patented process is nothing new. Most of it can be claimed as prior art.

Also Read
Niall Kennedy's wonderful analysis of the MS feed patent.
Blog post by Microsoft Program Manager Lead for RSS Sean Lyndersay defending this patent.

The CIA venture capital company is called In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel invested in Keyhole, who developed the forerunner to Google Earth. Keyhole ownership converted to Google ownership. I had heard from a reputable source that In-Q-Tel also invested in Google during their early days, though it appears that In-Q-Tel no longer holds any ownership in Google. In-Q-Tel invested in other search companies over the years, though they seem to have divested ownership in most of those companies.

There needn't be anything nefarious about In-Q-Tel funding Google. Remember the explosive growth of the web a decade ago. Before google, you knew there was a ton of stuff out there, but there was no way to find it. Web searches were very hit or miss. Google improved search technology tremendously, and a decent search engine is itself a boon to the intelligence community. People in this discussion have joked about keyword searches for terrorists, but seriously, it's an invaluable tool, even if a Google Maps search for Osama bin Laden doesn't put a little pushpin on the appropriate cave. Hate groups and terrorist networks recruit using the internet. Search technologies make it easer to keep track of what's out there.

And heck, I get some benefit from decent search technology too.

Niall Kennedy has started a project to convert to book into an audio book like AKMA did with Lessig's Free Culture. Unfortunately, AKM Adam is a Ph.D., Rev., and author. Niall Kennedy is a junior at UC Davis. AKMA was about to get some high profile people from the blogsphere to record chapters including Dave Winer and Doug Kaye. Niall Kennedy has to date, only recorded the intro himself. Who knows, maybe Niall's project will grow legs and evolve into something like free-culture.org.

I have started to read the book aloud. If you are interested in listening and/or participating please see my weblog entry.