Ride the Lightning

Electronic Frontier Foundation Releases a “Deep Dive” Into Corporate Surveillance

December 16, 2019

On December 2, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a stunning and comprehensive paper entitled Behind the One-Way Mirror: A Deep Dive Into the Technology of Corporate Surveillance.

As cyber expert Bruce Schneier said, "EFF has published a comprehensible and very readable "deep dive" into the technologies of corporate surveillance, both on the Internet and off. Well worth reading and sharing." Hard to imagine a better recommendation.

Because it is a lengthy paper, I am going to quote the paper's own summary below.

"This paper will focus on corporate "third-party" tracking: the collection of personal information by companies that users don't intend to interact with. It will shed light on the technical methods and business practices behind third-party tracking. For journalists, policy makers, and concerned consumers, we hope this paper will demystify the fundamentals of third-party tracking, explain the scope of the problem, and suggest ways for users and legislation to fight back against the status quo.

Part 1 breaks down "identifiers," or the pieces of information that trackers use to keep track of who is who on the web, on mobile devices, and in the physical world. Identifiers let trackers link behavioral data to real people.

Part 2 describes the techniques that companies use to collect those identifiers and other information. It also explores how the biggest trackers convince other businesses to help them build surveillance networks.

Part 3 goes into more detail about how and why disparate actors share information with each other. Not every tracker engages in every kind of tracking. Instead, a fragmented web of companies collect data in different contexts, then share or sell it in order to achieve specific goals.

Finally, Part 4 lays out actions consumers and policy makers can take to fight back. To start, consumers can change their tools and behaviors to block tracking on their devices. Policy makers must adopt comprehensive privacy laws to rein in third-party tracking."

If you haven't really studied how you are being surveilled by corporate America, online and off, this paper is truly worth a serious read. After you recover from the extraordinary information presented, start taking the steps recommended in Part 4 of the paper. Don't enable your own surveillance!

Hat tip to Dave Ries.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com
https://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson
https://amazon.com/author/sharonnelson