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Violet Blue Applied: Session 2
November 30th, 2015
Data and Society


claudia joined us: 
attending a course at nyu: a stratosphere of surveillance
can we escape the frame of surveillance
exchange shopping lists
--> claudia: please check out the book called "obfuscation: a user's guide for privacy and protest"
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/obfuscation (Thanks!)

we did a recap of last meeting
who is the audience
how is the problem conceived and what technology is invoked
it seemed the person was assumed to already be very knowledgeable but also maybe not knowledgeable enough

my issue with the book was that the use case/user did not exist
if you know this, you are likely to know all these other things
who you hope that the user is
a person that cares about tech and knows about it and cares about privacy and does not know about it
that was me for a week
i would distribute this to middle school students
it should be part of a curriculum
it would be beneficial to talk about privacy
and you teach that to 7th grade students
but you need an educated person to be able to explain some of these things or how you go about getting a lawyer

in chapter 4:
what i liked
that she started with an empathizing tone, and emotionally taking care of yourself and remaining calm
what i didn't like:
my mom was swatted
i was working on online harassment
and somebody who is think was from gamergate
called the local police department
and i had already done my threat modeling
anita sarkeesian had retweeted me
it had been a month of regular internet usage
i blocked over 60 people
goodgame autoblocker
randy harper built it
it is a shared block list that pools from a twitter bot
it follows people who are following main actors in gamergate
it needs to be a certain amount
in which case you land on the black list
it blocks over 5000 people
which means that sometimes blocks journalists
those people can email randy and she will remove you
couple of people have asked to be removed but they haven't been because they have been kind of abusive, and they don't think that they are 

i needed a short block list
so i did threat modeling against myself
randy had just been swatted
i only have a couple of hundred followers
i didn't say anything crazy
i have retweeted anti gamergate people
but that was it

someone from the internet called my mom's local police department and they initiated a prank swatting
it is usually a violent crime + hostage situation 
so the person said "i shot my girlfriend and am holding her daughter hostage"
my mom lives in new orleans
the police department regularly deploys a swat team
high rate of gun and gang violence
they didn't think it was real but they had to deploy
she answered the phone, they surrounded her house
she lives in a wealthier neighborhood, otherwise things would have been different

there is a regular release of crime information
i have not seen this elsewhere
this local reporter looked into it
my mom thought it was a prank call
but the reporter found me
i have listed my location in twitter
he looked through my research and found my email

crashoverride: zoe quinns non-profit
it is in some cases a way better resource than this
her directions feel more direct
but i like the way that violet blue talks about first taking care of yourself, going to therapy and also listing tech-savvy therapists
zoe's work is pulled from her experiences
but that is a very specific one

i think this book is great but sites like this get to the point faster and it is a pity that such sites are not organized better
i want to organize and streamline it
i was in a state of anxiety and the page felt like i had this many more things to do

for example, the format of the book is so friendly, you feel the space, it doesn't feel overwhelming
the chapters are succinct
and i was surprised when the chapter was over: wait we have covered everything
font size and space feels so important

even though there is no control+F for a physical book
there is a great index and ToC

my second point: neutral one
crashoverride felt very clearly outlined with 1,2,3,4,5
but the book does not feel partitioned well
there are certain things like
this is the way you should do something
she starts with therapy and then moves to fighting back
and then she says the legal system is not going to help you
but then there is no number
the next thing is get a restraining order
and that felt like such a jump

when i started work on online harassment
most people did not know their perpetrators
it is when you become persona non-grata
then you get sustained harassers

i am much more curious about the data
how many people who face online harassment know their harassers
so, this line of sections felt like a big jump
and then she goes on to describe the legal system
daniel citroen's book does a good job at this in a chapter
which you could summarize a lot of this
laws are different from state to state
and this is where she also gets personal
her history of being cyberstalked
and talk about a couple who met when they were stalking her
but this is too autobiographical
it felt like such a jump
and she started talking about getting your private photos offline
dmca take down and creation of an evidence folder
a jump to a specific use case

final point, she gets into dmca takedowns
it didn't feel like the right chapter for it
that revenge porn is the main form of harassment 
that you know your harasser and they have information about you
but in a lot of harassment
it wouldn't be that but it would be threats and digital stalking
that was problematic
you need a lawyer and a lot of evidence
that would be able to argue and be knowledgeable of all of this
that is such an expensive to go about
i think you need a chapter on cyberrevenge chapter in itself

zoe had fake revenge porn made about her
some of the fake ones felt like they were real
you can photoshop to make things look real
it is not quite revenge porn but it falls under the same cateogry
you can argue that it is artwork, so it doesn't easily fall under dmca
that is a weird territory
that was my problem 


chapter 6:
how to share
it is about media settings and how to dispose of old devices
i just got this new phone, and i was not able to accomplish the switchover
not all contacts transferred

contact migration: claude is an expert on the topic, she thinks that part of the problem is that some of the information is on the device and others are on the sd card

a lot of what she says, maybe all of what she says, is not unlike tips that you come across elsewhere
don't let people automatically tag you
look at privacy settings
and when she talks about friending: you should ask yourself, do i really know this person
it feels like th ese are tips f or teenagers
view your profiles on google+, linkedin as someone else
i tried doing that
facebook: i looked at it and i did discover
you can pretty easily filter your whole timeline and you do this while you are logged in
what is public
and i saw some random photos that were pblic
posters for salsa dance that i have been tagged in
soccer related stuff
that you would know about me
random photos of me that a cousin took of me
the only possible options, through facebook, is says: report/remove tag
i clicked on that
and it asked me, why do you not want the tag
but there was no way to say that the picture was ok but i did not want to be tagged

with the phones
one thing that she doesn't mention
even trusted apps can do dangerous things with your privacy
try to make a decision based on that
she doesn't mention all the crap that the phone comes with
i could probably root my phone
i tried to uninstall and remove these things
but then it says my phone may not work
and i run the updates
cause i want to keep my phone secure
i have dozens of apps I don't want and she does not talk about that

safely disposing old devices
she talks about that 2014 sprint worker had distributed nude photos he had recovered from a disposed customer phone
look online how to scrub your phone
in general you look in settings 
look for factory reset
i am wondering: would i be missing something
with factory reset is there still a risk of recovery
with the sim card
i am going to send the old phone to verizon
but it doesn't say anything about the sim card
throwing it away would be the right thing to do, right?

factory settings would not take care of your phone resyncing from cloud services
sim card: should you throw it away
android: we looked online and it says you should encrypt and then delete
what if the phone fails to encrypt?
Violet Blue generally says you should turn to device providers what to do


if you are trying to provide a solution to people
to say go to this other place, look at this other thing
you should at least cite the place
you should do it this way because so and so said so

in the appendix: there is nothing
she has links to the different social media sites

i have my old iphone
if you think you deleted everything 
there is still a lot that is easy to pull
there is no way to completely wipe your phone when you give it back

claudia:
don't these books make it very individualistic and put the responsibility on the individual
in some cases it doesn't matter
or very individually based rather than something more collective
it is your phone and not the phone of your friends
something that empowers you
rather than protection

on the other side of that is
because this is a book written by an author that has an encouraging voice
you can read this book
or you can make yourself crazy by searching online for an hour
with contradictory results

i frame things, as a curator of digital strategies
she should have said: this is what i would do
i was cyberstalked
that is why i focused on that
i could tell you shitloads about swatting
but then dmca take downs: you need a lawyer and be aware of the law
that is difficult in a state where it is not clear how well the courts understand these problems

panel
one of the panelists was cyberstalked
CA has comprehensive laws around cyberstalking
cause there are many celebrities that live there
that could have been pointed out: LAPD has a department around this
that could be something in the book: you can call LAPD
and try not to tell them where you live.
that is something i want to work on
an app that would help victims
what they can do to prevent swatting
and how do police departments talk to each other
can i call the lapd 
i don't live in your jurisdiction


my mom went to the police department to tell them that she may be swatted again
and that she had been swatted before
but they didn't even have a recollection of the prior swatting they did
there is a lot of human error

did you all see the nyt magazine issue about swatting
these women that use twitch
one of the main characters is a detective
how he tries to put the dots together and to get his colleguas to understand what is going on
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/the-serial-swatter.html?_r=0

since prank swatting is local crime, it does not get put out at the national level
what if, all police stations have to have recordings
you can change your voice
what if it was all the same imber tone
if you use a certain kind of word
or inflection 
they can be used to pin point your identity
if local police department were sharing swatting information
if you could look for patterns
if you took a neutral time zone
my mom is on central time
i am on eastern time
could you pinpoint to smaller groups

this is though the point at which the demand to protect women/feminist positions clashes with years of digital rights and civil liberties
i think those struggles need to be redefined but 

one thing is to train police departments
maybe an fbi liason inside a police department
so that they have to go through another protcol
if there is a doxing, we go through you
it has to however under the framework on what a digital crime is
and then it is going further
it is a digital harassment crime
to define very explicitly what that is
so you list doxing, prank swatting
if it fits this, then it goes onto this national database
is there a way to blend hyperlocal and hypernational without running into a surveillance issue?

how does a girl in small town missisippi gets swatted
how do i explain this to the local police department
that this is connected to all these other incidents
i am the link but i am removed and there is nothing that ties it to me here
and the only linkage other than me is that those states touch each other


are there any numbers?
it is hard to distinguish between prank swatting and harassment prank swatting and accidental swatting

responsibilization: institutions are externalizing risk onto consumers/users
and she seems to accept that

abine: who are their investors
what is the data they are collecting
you can give them your passwords
they can be your wallet
allow you to mask your credit cards and email addresses
and allows you to block tracking

i used deleteme: it is slow and it is not perfect
and they took a long time
they do this on behalf of you
you are not ever completely removed 
but it is half gone

--------- END of MEETING --------


If you made notes that you would like to add, please feel free to do so:



Seda Notes on Chapter 9:
abine:
it's cool, it's expensive!

i am trying out their free services
used it to mask email and get rid of amazon emails
great advantage: the first email they forward to me although i just subscribed and turned forwarding off (i hope this means they have some smart scanning going on).

their privacy policy is somewhat kosher: they will not share your data but will only use it to give you the services
so, what is their business model: 
        $2 per card for cards under $100. An additional 1.5% of the Masked Card Amount for cards made for $100 or more
        so, for a 1000$ purchase 15$s
        in addition to what you pay your bank for the transaction.

capital from general catalyst and another firm
it seems like a boys club...

what does it do to your credit record
in the sense that every website checks to see if you are a "good customer"
what happens to that and is there a greater chance that your purchases will be rejected? i don't know.
they are in the bitcoin business, too


comments from m: 
rejection of self-help/responsibilization with respect to bank security and identity theft
american pragmatism as a way of depoliticizing issues
weird appeal
it becomes an existential argument
if you believe in action as politics and not action as action
you can do this but this is not political action


stealth your mailing address: get a post box at the post office
17-75$s for 6 months for the smallest size

stealth your phone number: You can set up a second phone number using popular ser- vices like Skype (very cheap) and Google Voice (free). Another option is to use disposable masking phone number services, like Burnerapp.com, which will let you create a temporary phone number to use and then delete it forever.
note that abine does this for you, too.

for calls: some people said that their phone did not ring and now that the call was being put through this new company, sometimes the call quality was not convincing.


mailvelope: it is as secure as the plugin. for a while they would leak information because google would make a copy of your email while editing every few seconds
an overview of crypto for messaging/email from eff (what the different applications offer and don't offer)
https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard#methodology
does everybody understand the concept of public and private key?
eff's table is not reliable but it has nice distinctions that one should look out for.