Category: privacy Page 3 of 5

A fun night at the movies

On Mon June 1, 2009

In consumer life, happy ending, movies, privacy, rights

CTV News brings glad tidings. Over-zealous theatre personnel overstepped their bounds and their employer had to pay for it. According to the CTV story:

The incident happened in 2007 when a woman took her two daughters to Cinemas Guzzo in Montreal to watch the film Shrek the Third, said CTV Montreal’s Rob Lurie.

Staff at the theatre were searching customers’ bags for video equipment that could be used for movie piracy.

Security guards didn’t find any video equipment in the family’s bags, but did turn up a large selection of snack food, which they asked the family to take back to their vehicle, Lurie said.

“They did so willingly. But they continued the search of the bags and while searching they also uncovered some birth control pills belonging to the older daughter,” Lurie said.

“Needless to say the mother was not pleased to find out in this manner that her daughter had those pills in her possession.”

They stepped so far over the line that they couldn’t even see the line anymore! If the stated purpose of the search was for video recording equipment, even their squawking about the snacks was out of line. One cannot request a search for something in particular, be allowed permission on those grounds, and then pull out anything they want.

The reason I’m so pleased the theatre was forced to pay $10,000 in compensation for violation of privacy is because a search isn’t licence to broadcast the results. This was an egregious violation of the daughter’s privacy. She hadn’t told her mother that she was taking birth control pills. Whether this is a good idea or not, the choice is hers to make. It’s certainly not the theatre’s place to search for video equipment and then haul out her birth control pills for anyone to see.

I don’t know if the compensation is appropriate, but I’m very pleased to see the theatre ordered to pay more than a token amount.

According to the article, Vince Guzzo, vice-president of Cinemas Guzzo, offered his opinion on the judgement:

What the judge is saying is we could search bags, the problem is we have to tell people at the moment of purchasing the ticket with a sign at the ticket booth. And we’re not allowed to put our hands in your bag, which is totally understandable. I don’t want to put my hands in your bag. In fact, leave the bags in the car.

I’d suggest that his interpretation is misleading. They can search your bags if you allow them to. If you refuse, they can refuse you entry. Fair enough.

And if it’s totally understandable, why did his staff do it?

For myself, they wouldn’t be searching my bags. Being a guy, I wouldn’t have any bags with me anyway, but the mere thought rubs me the wrong way. If they choose to deny me entrance, I certainly respect their right to make this decision. Refund my money and I’ll happily take my business elsewhere.

Despite their resurgence, theatres seem to be working to drive customers away. I have to pay $10 to get in the door, and another $10 if I want popcorn and a drink. Once I find a seat, I’m subjected to video projection of ads until the real presentation starts…with ten more minutes of ads. The quality of the presentation is nothing to get excited about. The image is unsteady and soft. The sound is fine, but the extended conversations around me do nothing for the experience. And then, the copy protection codes embedded in the film itself distract me perhaps a dozen times during the movie.

This is worth $20? Really? Requiring me and my companions to submit to a search will certainly affect how often I go to theatres. I haven’t experienced this level of invasive checking locally, but I don’t doubt it’s coming.

If the goal is to drive me away, theatres are pursuing the correct course of action.

Paranoid?

by Rick

On Mon January 26, 2009

In electronics, privacy

Technology is rarely a problem. If there’s a problem, it’s with how it’s used. Technology is a tool, plain and simple. But what if the tool is doing things the user isn’t aware of?

I don’t mean to sound all ‘cloak and dagger’ about it. The simple fact is, electronic devices can do more than the previous generation of the same device. It’s said that 80% of people use 20% of the features. This 80% can be a problem when the owner doesn’t know what they are.

“I Am Here: One Man’s Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle” by Mathew Honan, from Wired, delves into this topic with respect to GPS and other ‘location-aware’ technology in our electronic devices.

This paragraph is an eye-opener:

On a sunny Saturday, I spotted a woman in Golden Gate Park taking a photo with a 3G iPhone. Because iPhones embed geodata into photos that users upload to Flickr or Picasa, iPhone shots can be automatically placed on a map. At home I searched the Flickr map, and score‑a shot from today. I clicked through to the user’s photostream and determined it was the woman I had seen earlier. After adjusting the settings so that only her shots appeared on the map, I saw a cluster of images in one location. Clicking on them revealed photos of an apartment interior‑a bedroom, a kitchen, a filthy living room. Now I know where she lives.

Does the woman even know her phone encodes location data in her photos? Unlikely.

Hat tip to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Nom de plume?

by Rick

On Mon July 7, 2008

In privacy

The coolest name I’ve seen on FaceBook to date: Jennifer Covert. This may indeed be her real name, but it makes for a fabulous pseudonym.

While we’re on about FaceBook, I hate when people use a photo of their pet as their profile photo. Yea, you don’t want to use a real photo. I get that. You’ve got a photo album to which you can upload your photos, so why look like you’re claiming to be a cat?

And you guessed it, I’ve signed up again. I still loathe their terms of service, but I will not upload any photos (except a thumbnail for my profile) and I certainly won’t complete all the info I can possibly enter in my profile. The people who do this much be a market’s dream come true.

As much as I loathed signing up again, there are a huge number of people using the service so I couldn’t resist in looking some of them up.

Bill C‑61

by Rick

On Sun June 15, 2008

In piracy, politics, privacy, rights

Unveiled on Friday, Bill C‑61 is everything we were afraid of. It’s the American DMCA in a change of clothing. In some ways, it’s even worse.

One example is time shifting. Who hasn’t recorded a program to watch later? It’s legal, right? Not in Canada. There was no Sony versus Universal court case here to answer the question. No one was ever charged for this practise as far as I know, but the practise has never been codified in Canadian law. Word leaked out that time shifting would be legalized, but others suggested this was merely a bit of sugar to help us swallow the majority of the bill. The Conservative government can’t even get the sugar right. Time shifting is indeed legal under this proposed legislation, but failure to delete a recorded program immediately after viewing makes you a law-breaker.

Also worse are the exceptions to the restriction on circumventing DRM protection. The proposed legislation does allow for (precious few) circumstances where you can legally break copy protection, but don’t get too excited. The means by which you circumvent DRM are all illegal, whether you’re entitled to do it or not. The legal right to do it is of little use if the means are illegal.

Happily, you can transfer your CDs, to your iPod. Unless the CDs are copy protected, of course. And don’t even try to play DVDs on a Linux machine.

The government has adopted the “Made in Canada” slogan for this legislation despite the fact that it’s obviously not. Industry Minister Jim Prentice would not meet with consumer groups or the Canadian business community. He did have plenty of time to meet with the US Ambassador and US special interest groups, however. As a result, this legislation carries the unusual honour of being disliked by virtually everyone in the country.

Micheal Geist suggests what we can do to voice our disapproval. First on the list is writing your MP. It’ll be a pleasure. That reminds me, I think I need to buy envelopes…

Graphic courtesy of Gaetan Diotte.

Terror plans

by Rick

On Thu May 15, 2008

In computers, privacy

A Slashdot post discusses how to keep your data private when entering the United States. Given that customs officials have the right to examine any electronic device you’re carrying to the point of copying the data or even making disk images. What can one do?

User “loafula” has a neat suggestion in a reply titled “Mess with them”

Make a folder called “Terror Plans” and fill it with images of cute, cuddly kittens.

I wonder how well this would work as it is within the realm of possibility that you could indeed have terror plans embedded in the images using Stegonagraphy. The suggestion is very amusing, but I don’t think I’d ever do it. Why would I want to be delayed and spend an evening in a waiting room/holding cell.

Rather, I’d use the system I have on my laptop right now. The physical drive is partitioned into two logical drives. The first, c:, is a normal Windows boot partition. All my apps are installed there, but the user folders contain only the sample files the Windows install provides. Windows will give the casual user no clue another partition exists. You have to go into the control panel’s Disk Management application to see the boot partition occupies only a quarter of the physical drive. The remainder appears to be an unformatted partition.

To get at the goods, all I need to do is run TrueCrypt, select the second partition, click mount, and enter the password. The d: drive appears, full of my data.

The only weakness is the customs people may be suspicious about the empty ‘space’ if they were to get that far, which I doubt. There are ways around that too, however.

I heard an interesting story about a Canadian legal firm that feels confidential client data should not be subject to wholesale seizure just because a lawyer crosses the border. What they do is leave the data on their firm’s servers. The laptops they carry have Windows and their applications installed, but no data, visible or hidden. When they need the confidential files, they connect to the Internet, establish a secure VPN connection to their firm’s server, and access the data just as they would if they were sitting in their office.

There’s no way the customs officials can seize data that’s not there.