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'Social Media Needs A Travel Mode' (idlewords.com)
Maciej CegÅowski, a Polish-American web developer, entrepreneur, and social critic, writes on a blog post: We need a 'trip mode' for social media sites that reduces our contact list and history to a minimal subset of what the site normally offers. Not only would such a feature protect people forced to give their passwords at the border, but it would mitigate the many additional threats to privacy they face when they use their social media accounts away from home. Both Facebook and Google make lofty claims about user safety, but they've done little to show they take the darkening political climate around the world seriously. A 'trip mode' would be a chance for them to demonstrate their commitment to user safety beyond press releases and anodyne letters of support. What's required is a small amount of engineering, a good marketing effort, and the conviction that any company that makes its fortune hoarding user data has a moral responsibility to protect its users. To work effectively, a trip mode feature would need to be easy to turn on, configurable (so you can choose how long you want the protection turned on for) and irrevocable for an amount of time chosen by the user once it's set. There's no sense in having a 'trip mode' if the person demanding your password can simply switch it off, or coerce you into switching it off.
Besides, we already have all the technology we need to keep our data private. It's just that current law won't *allow* us to keep it private. As such, the *laws* need fixing, not the technology.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
A "mode" will be detectable — looking at your screen whoever compels you to show it (a criminal or an officer or both-in-one) will be able to tell, you are in "travel mode" and demand to see the real deal.
The concept you want is Duress Password — which ostensibly unlocks "everything", but hides the things you previously marked for hiding whenever the "duress" password is entered instead of real one.
And you may wish to use it not only to fool overzealous border-guards, but, for example, to hide certain materials from bystanders at Internet-cafes.
There is a "duress" PAM-module in the works for folks compelled to login to their Unix-laptop and a move to add the feature to Cyrus IMAP-server.
But, to reiterate, it is of utmost importance, that your usage of such functionality can not be not only proven, but even suspected. Whoever is in a position to compel you to login, is also in a position to punish you for fooling him...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Besides, we already have all the technology we need to keep our data private. It's just that current law won't *allow* us to keep it private. As such, the *laws* need fixing, not the technology.
They don't need fixing, they need repealing.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
No amount of technology can keep public information private. And no amount of "privacy controls" will make public information private. (See a pattern?).
In fact, "social networks" and "privacy" are an oxymoron. There is no such thing as "privacy controls". "Privacy Controls" are marketspeak for "encouraging marks to over-share". Yes, Facebook and everyone has done their research - people will share more if they get the illusion their data is protected.
In the end, everything you post on a third party website, is public. Thanks to people screen shotting, re-posting, etc, anything you post is public. Even if it's a party for selected individuals, the people you didn't invite will find out anyways.
The only "technology" to keep our data private is to ... keep it private.
Not that I agree with the border proection asking for passwords. But that's a legal issue that can really only be dealt with legally.