Phil Bradley's weblog

Peekier for private searching

There are plenty of search engines that already offer you private searching, such as DuckDuckGo, the UK's Oscobo, and StartPage, so Peekier is another entrant into that busy field. However, while is does all that the other engines do to protect your privacy by not storing searches, IP addresses and the like, it has an interestingly different way of providing you with results. Rather than the usual text links it's more of a visual results engine which gives you tiled results for your queries. 

I've chosen the smallest tile set, but you can get larger if you prefer. You can mouseover an image and see it larger on the screen and you can scroll around the page, but you can't click to go to other pages on the site, which is common with other engines that use this approach. It pulls its results from Bing rather than Google, so you've got a nice alternative.

Of course there are plenty of limitations with it - you can't search for images, news, video and so on. However, as you can see from the search bar, it is giving you some suggested search options that you can try. Is it worth using? If you're already using a privacy enabled search engine, probably not. On the other hand, if you like the tile based layout this might tempt you away from your preferred option. 

Oscobo for private searching

Want to ensure privacy when you search? Take a look at Oscobo, which is a new British based search engine. It's another of the 'we don't track you' crew, such as Ixquick, Startpage and DuckDuckgo. It's a fairly straightforward engine, nothing particularly advanced about it, though it does do a nice line in providing tweets that relate to your subject of your search. As well as web search, Oscobo will search video, images and news for you. If you're wondering about the name, let them explain: "Like all the best companies, we’ve taken some creative license with the name. “Scobo” in Latin means “to look into”, “to probe” or “to discover”. The letter “O” in Swedish, means “not” or “non”. So, Oscobo, to us, means “not to probe, not to track”."

I tried a few searches and they all seemed to work perfectly well. There did appear to be some 'adult' filtering going on, but there weren't any details in their 'about us' which told me anything else. 

Interesting engine - worth a look, especially because it's a .uk engine for once!

Why we must fight the 'snoopers charter'.

Since winning the election, David Cameron has put the Investigatory Powers Bill back on the agenda after it was blocked during the coalition. This bill also known as the 'snoopers charter' will compel a communications service provide to collect and retain data about their users. Any organisation that interacts with their users will have to keep this information, even if it's entirely irrelevant to their own business needs. The prime minister said back in January "In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?” He went on; "My answer to that question is no we must not. If I am prime minister, I will make sure it is a comprehensive piece of legislation that makes sure we do not allow terrorist safe spaces to communicate with each other"

It's a nice idea in theory isn't it - keeping us safe. However, this isn't going to work, and in fact this bill would cause untold damage, so let's break it down a little bit. The obvious first step is going to be that companies such as Twitter and Facebook will have to record information on all of your discussions with friends, and to keep this for a period of time. What happens if they don't want to? Are they going to be banned? What about messaging services such as What's App or Snapchat? They are going to have to be banned as well. I'll come back and look at this in a moment, because there's more to come.

What Cameron really means to do is to ban effective cryptography. Now, cryptography either works or it doesn't, you can't have it working 'a little bit'. So what he wants to do is to ensure that companies would have to introduce some sort of backdoor access to their software so that the British government can take a peek if it wants to. This will not work. It won't work because if a hacker knows that there is a backdoor, it will be found - it's absolutely inevitable and it will probably take no more than hours, not even days to do this. We've seen it often enough with other 'secure' data. 

Now, if a company is looking after YOUR money for example, and it cannot do so safely, what is it going to do? The obvious answer is to leave the UK, which is what Eris Industries have threatened to do. Now of course terrorists are not going to sit back and just say 'ok, you've got us' they'll start to use better encryption software, encrypt their messages and pass them back and forth across Facebook. Facebook can keep all the data that they want, but it's not going to be of any use to the Government. Consequently the government has to take control of your software to ensure that you can't do this. Logically it's got to be able to look at everything on your computer. Now, you use crypto software all of the time - just look at your browser, and when you see the little padlock symbol, that's encryption. When you check your bank details, when you order something online, when you use PayPal, that's all encrypted. 

It's easy to get around of course, since you can simply install a VPN and get access to the data that you want, so the software on ALL computers would have to be redesigned to stop things like that happening - you'd need to end up with an enclosed system like iOS, with every piece of software being checked to ensure that it wasn't concealing encryption software that could be used. We then have 'state run' computers. The next step around that of course is for a terrorist to use something small and powerful like a Raspberry Pi machine. So anyone coming into the country is going to need to be searched to see if they're carrying on. They will need to surrender USB sticks to be checked to ensure that they're not bringing in illegal software. So what about their smartphones? These will need to be checked as well of course.

This brings us back to an earlier point - any software that's on a smartphone that encrypts data that moves between people is going to have to be banned, and this is where the national press are picking things up. 

WhatsApp faces UK ban within weeks from the Express.

WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger ban could be just weeks away under 'Snoopers Charter' from the Huffington Post. 

WhatsApp could be BANNED in the UK under strict 'Snooper's Charter' law from the Mirror.

So let's take this even further shall we? In order to have WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger banned, they're going to need to be removed from the Apple and Google stores. Are either of these companies going to be impressed with that idea? I hardly think so. However, let's say that they agreed to it. Your phone would need to be accessed and the apps deleted. When you go abroad however to a non-totalitarian state you could re-install the software. This means that - as already mentioned - your phone would need to be checked when you come back into the UK and illegal apps deleted. Foreign visitors will need to surrender their phones, or delete the offending apps. Can you image how keen a business person is going to be with that idea, knowing that they're going to find it next to impossible to keep in minute by minute communication with their head office abroad? What about tourists? Can you see them being impressed with the idea that they can't snap pictures of where they are and what they're doing to send to their friends back home?

Next, all new apps going into the stores will need to be checked by British security services. Can you imagine how much that would delay getting material into our computers or onto our smartphones? We're going to go straight to third world status in terms of computing. 

Ignoring all of that - if you can - let's look at the issue of civil liberty. What is being proposed is mass, continuous surveillance by the government. We would - in effect - have no privacy at all, and that's really something that only totalitarian regimes are inflicting on their citizens. Companies that are not keen on assisting this will in effect have to be banned from the UK; a logical conclusion being that we'd not only say goodbye to Facebook messaging, but to Facebook itself. Now, you may well say that these companies are not going to want to give up their huge markets, but equally, it's going to cost them a lot in terms of outlay to produce broken cryptography which is country specific, and their users are going to be less than impressed.  

The insanity of all of this of course is that the government is going to be doing the job of the terrorists for them - making life so much more difficult in the UK. Not only that, any terrorist worth their salt is going to be able to get around these new laws with no difficulty at all. It's only the law abiding, normal computer using individuals who will suffer, because they won't know how to circumvent this. So the honest citizens will be handicapped, and the wicked will remain free to do just what they want.

No doubt that Mr Cameron will say that this isn't what he means at all, and has no intention of banning such apps or messaging services. All this will illustrate however is that he has absolutely no idea what he's trying to do, and doesn't understand the implications of what he is suggesting. Everyone else, from Tim Berners-Lee on down thinks that this is an insane, draconian and anti-democratic concept. And they're right. 

 

 

Google is tracking your every move

Well, probably. If you have a Google account, then it is. If you're using a smartphone and you use it to do just about anything on it, then it really is. Here's a look at my location map for the last month, which is the most that you can pull up in one go:

For good measure, I'm also showing you where I was on a specific day as well! You can choose different time periods, but it's still a maximum of a month at a time. You can see yours by going to the Google Maps Location History page (if you have one - you may need to log into your Google account at first) and then take a look.

Now, if you're freaked out by it, Google does allow you to delete your history for the time period that you're looking at, or for your entire history. If you're worried because you're using your smartphone, you can stop Google using this as well, by going to: Settings > Privacy > Location Services, and turn the slider switch off for Google Maps. If you're an Android user I can't help you directly because I don't use it, but Google has words of wisdom on it that you can use.

Is it something that you should be worried about? Depends entirely on your point of view really. I don't care in the slightest if Google knows where I am, and I actually think that it might be quite useful, certainly if I need to remember where I was on a particular day, and possibly also work out what I was doing. However, if you're particularly concerned about your privacy you can delete it all of course. And if you're that bothered, you'll really need to delete your Google account, and possibly give up using your smartphone as well. I've no knowledge or examples of how Google is using this information, if indeed they are to any great extent (obviously it's very helpful for me if Google knows where I am, so that I can use the mapping service properly), but in all honesty, if they want to, they're going to. And if you really want a one way ticket to paranoid city, even if you do get rid of the location history, how do you know that they don't have a mirror of it somewhere that they're not telling us about?

So - up to you, but I'm not that fussed personally.

The insanity of 'being forgotten'.

The European Court of Justice has just told the world that they are clueless, inept and embarassingly short of knowledge on how the internet works. As you're almost certainly aware, they have ruled that Google is a data controller” under the 19-year-old European law on data protection, and as such could be required not to display links to information that is “inadequate, irrelevant...or excessive”.

There is no world in which any of this makes sense at all. However, let's break it down into various elements, because it's more fun that way.

Do people have a right to be forgotten? There's plenty of material out there on people which is less than complimentary, and much of it is also wrong. A lot of that data is also historical in nature, but unlike incorrect information that just sits inactive in a book or journal, this information can still remain very active. Take the example of Max Mosley, who was involved in a scandal some time back. For most of us, that particular episode is already forgotten, but if you do a search on Google you may (and I stress the word may) see that Google is giving you auto suggest options which relate to the incident. I'm not seeing them on my searches as you can see:

However, other people may. Now, there's not an awful lot that Google can do about that, since Google reflects what the rest of the world does, and if lots of people write about a particular issue, it's going to pick up on that. The real issue is that the content is already out there and will continue to remain out there, whatever Google does. Does Mr Mosley have a right to some sort of protection? Sure he does, but that protection needs to come from him talking to the original publishers of content, not the people who are providing it. Besides, when I see that material, I can also read the entire story and make up my own mind. So whose rights are more important - his to try and make it more difficult for me to find publically available information on him, or mine, to allow me to easily find that information? You may well have some sympathy with the man, which is fine. How about when we look at other people who are requesting that information about them is removed from Google's indexes, such as people with a criminal past, drunk drivers, sex abusers and so on. Do they have the right to be forgotten, or do I have the right to know that they might be living across the road from me? A lot of the people requesting the 'right to be forgotten' are doing so because of their criminal convictions. In the course of every day life many of those people will have the right to have their conviction 'spent' under current UK law, but that's a rather different issue. So the first point - who has the stronger right?

The 'right to be forgotten' isn't a right at all - since they are NOT being forgotten, just not indexed by Google. It would perhaps be more sensible to call it a 'right to censor material about me that I don't like without actually contacting the original publishers of the data'. Moreover, Google intends to indicate in search results if material has been removed as a result of this requirement. Now - if you do a search for 'Phil Bradley' and Google tells you that it has been required to remove material, isn't the first thing you do going to be to go to another search engine? Or if you can't be bothered to do that, go from google.co.uk to google.com since the ruling only applies to the UK version of the search engine.

Why just Google? As we all know, there are plenty of other search engines out there (and if you need them, I've got a list of over 200 search engines), and although Bing is attempting to create a right to be forgotten feature, that's 2 down, 198 to go. And what about new search engines? Who is going to monitor those? No-one, as far as I can tell. So the ruling doesn't actually work on these grounds either.

Next up - who makes the decision on what is in the public interest, as opposed to an invasion of privacy? It's not going to be the courts. Google is going to create a panel who will sift through these requests, and it's got a number of high profile people on it, but they're not going to be wasting their valuable time doing it day after day. It's going to get passed onto some lowly Google employee who makes decisions based on... well, I'm really not sure. Who is going to represent the public interest? What is the 'court of appeal' over this? Deafening silence.

So we've reached a stage when the European Court of Justice is handing over control of information (or at least partial control) to an American corporate. In what world does this make any sense at all?

So there isn't a single sensible reason for this ruling. This will not protect people, either the ones who want to be forgotten, or anyone else. It's ineffective because it doesn't appear to relate to all search engines, and it doesn't even cover all Google search engine variants. It's an abrogation of control to an unaccountable, unelected body. Insane.

Search privately using your favorite search engine.

As we all know, search engines like tracking you - your IP address, your search terms and so on. They use this to build up profiles, store the data and so on. It can be a real pain trying to search without this information being stored, but you can try Disconnect Private Search. This routes your search queries through their proxy servers before they go to the popular search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo. Instead of these search engines knowing that a search is coming from you or your computer, all searches look like they’re coming from Disconnect. They prevent search engines from sending your search queries to the web sites you visit from search results pages, and encrypt your search queries, which prevents your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from seeing your searches.

You can install their service onto your browser, or if you're unable to do that, you can search directly from their website:

When you run your search you'll get a drop down box next to the search box for the engine that you're using, and you can choose to search on Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or Blekko. In actual fact, it's almost acting like a mini multi search engine at that point, since you can flick from one to the other. Not entirely sure why they have added in DDG, as that is already a private search engine, but more is better than less.

You may notice a few differences to the search results - since the search engine doesn't know where you are, it can't provide you with local results, and some advanced search functionality is unavailable, although they're working on it. I think it's worth giving this a go, even if only from the website; it's really interesting to see which searches differ, certainly in comparision to your own results that Google gives you, based on your Google account!

 

 

 

 

 

Immersion of email and big data

Just how much can we tell about someone just using very basic data? I have been playing around with a tool from MIT called Immersion, which looks at very basic information about your emails. I found the tool via an article called 'Think Metadata isn't intrusive?' which if you haven't read it, I would suggest doing so. Basically you give the tool access to your email account metadata—not the content, just the time and date stamps, and “To” and “Cc” fields and it numbercrunches for a very long time (it took 15 hours for it to do mine) before giving you back a series of graphs.

This is the type of information that you get - you can save graphs with or without names, and I've chosen the latter for obvious privacy reasons:

Each circle is a person - and the larger the circle, the more email goes back and forth between you and them. The colours represent groupings; the orange group for example is people closely related to or at CILIP for example. This collection is a total figure of 9.6 years, 367 collaborators and 30,000 emails. Now, if I go back to 2009, before I started working more closely with CILIP, the pattern is very different:

It doesn't take a genius to work out that my work and social patterns have changed dramatically over the three year period - the colours relate to different grouping this time by the way, so the orange now relates to another set of people that I was working with very closely at that period of time.

I can also get other basic details:

and again it's not too difficult to work out some basic information about what I have been doing simply based on the bare minimum details. If I flick across to collaborators it's again very easy to make assumptions about what I'm doing at any given period of time. Obviously it's far easier for me, since we're looking at data about me, so it's an open book, but even if you know very little about me, you can quickly start making assumptions, and they're not going to be too far from the mark, even if you have no idea of the content of my emails.

The idea that the government doesn't want to access the content of your email, but simply have basic details may not - at first glance - be a cause for that much concern. However, it really IS a big deal, and I'd encourage you to consider experimenting yourself. You may of course have concerns about letting MIT have access to these basic details - but then, that's what the UK government want. Think about it.

How many sites have you connected with today? Sure?

Privacy and security are something of a hot button for people at the moment, so I'd like to introduce you to a resource called Lightbeam. It's an interesting Firefox add-on that tells you how many websites you have connected with in the course of a period of time. Now you might say that you know how many sites you've connected with, because those are the ones that you have visited, but not so fast my confident friend! When you visit a site your details can get passed onto 3rd party sites which you're simply not aware of. These sites can track what you're interested in, and can affect the content that you get on other sites - that's why if you do a search in one place for something you then start to see adverts for the same thing popping up on other sites that you visit.

Lightbeam can let you know the extent to which this is happening. I started running it in the background this morning and just carried on working as normal. After an hour or so I took a look at the data that it had collected, and this is what I found:

So although I'd actually only pointed my browser at, and gone to 26 sites my details had been passed onto 186! Some sites are obviously worse than others, and you can use Lightbeam to discover which sites are passing on your details. With Hootsuite for example - a Twitter client - you wouldn't really expect it to be passing on details would you, but in actual fact it's passed on details to 21 other sites. These are not sites that I've visited myself, and many of them I simply don't recognise, so it's not a case of seeing a site come up in a tweet or anything.

As they explain: "The default visualization is called the Graph view. As you then browse to a second site, the add-on highlights the third parties that are also active there and shows which third parties have seen you at both sites. The visualization grows with every site you visit and every request made from your browser."

It's not something that particularly bothers me, but I know that other people will be unhappy with it. It's not a tool that I'll use all of the time, but may try it out every now and then, but it's certainly illuminating.