Civil Liberties Organizations, Advocacy, Information, and Tools

The rights we are guaranteed in the Constitution and in federal law are sometimes very well-known, and sometimes a little more obscure. Some of them are explicitly guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, such as the right to free speech or the right to keep and bear arms, while others have been inferred from the Constitution and made real by court decisions or acts of law, such as the right to privacy.

  

Some of the essential civil liberties guaranteed in the United States are, in no particular order:

• Right to privacy
• Right to a jury trial
• Right to freedom of religion
• Right to travel freely
• Right to freedom of speech
• Right to be free from self-incrimination
• Right to bear arms
• Right to marry
• Right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures of your property
• Right to freedom of the press
• Right to be free from cruel and unusual punishments
• Right to legal counsel
• Right to assemble peacefully
• Right to vote

But understanding our rights and freedoms is not always easy. And what happens when the exercise of your rights infringes upon the rights of your neighbor? Is one right more important than another? You have the right to free speech. But, does this mean you have the right to yell at your neighbor's house through a bullhorn at three in the morning? You have the right to legal counsel. But, what if you can't afford a lawyer? Should the state have to provide a lawyer for you?

The following organizations and tools can help you understand your rights and freedoms, and can help you retain and defend those rights when needed.

• Access Now - https://www.accessnow.org
• American Civil Liberties Union - https://www.aclu.org
• American Civil Rights Union - http://www.theacru.org
• American Library Association (Privacy) - http://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacy
• Autistici / Inventati - https://www.autistici.org/
• Big Brother Watch - https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk
• Cato Institute - https://www.cato.org/
• Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) - https://cdt.org/about/
• Center for Digital Democracy - https://www.democraticmedia.org
• Chaos Computer Club - https://www.ccc.de/en/
• Civil Liberties Defense Center - https://cldc.org
• Disroot - https://disroot.org/en
• Drug Policy Alliance - http://www.drugpolicy.org 
• Electronic Privacy Information Center - https://epic.org
• Electronic Frontier Foundation - https://www.eff.org/
• Flex Your Rights - https://www.flexyourrights.org
• Freedom of the Press Foundation - https://freedom.press/
• Frontline Defenders - https://www.frontlinedefenders.org
• Fully Informed Jury Association - http://fija.org 
• Gun Owners of America - https://gunowners.org/ 
• Institute for Justice - http://ij.org 
• Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership - http://jpfo.org
• Lucy Parsons Labs - https://lucyparsonslabs.com/
• National Lawyers Guild - https://www.nlg.org/
• National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action - https://www.nraila.org/
• Oath Keepers - https://www.oathkeepers.org
• Prager University - https://www.prageru.com
• Privacy International - https://privacyinternational.org
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse - https://www.privacyrights.org
• Privacy Tools - https://www.privacytools.io
• RiseUp - https://riseup.net
• Seattle Privacy Coalition - https://seattleprivacy.org/
• Tactical Technology Collective - https://tacticaltech.org
• TOR Project - https://www.torproject.org

You may not agree with the stand of every one of these groups, and they may even disagree with each other. Sometimes individual rights and personal freedoms become hot button topics resulting in clashes between otherwise well-meaning individuals. But what is important to recognize is that the infringement of any one of our fundamental rights weakens all of our rights and freedoms.

 

Smart 911

Smart911 is a free, third party (non government) supplemental data service that allows you to create a safety profile that can be seen by emergency responders when you call 9-1-1. The company that owns / runs Smart911 is Rave Mobile Safety.

After you sign up with Smart911; when you call 9-1-1  from a registered phone number, your profile will be displayed at the 9-1-1 center. You can include as little or as much information in your profile as you like. Information may include address, medical and security information. This service is voluntary, so you decide what information you want emergency responders to know about you when you call 9-1-1. 

Part of the intent of Smart911 is to compensate for cell-phones and VOIP phones, which have replaced landline phones by as much 70 percent in some areas.  Cell-phones only transmit a general location data.  With Smart911, emergency crews can be provided with the caller’s exact address, which is especially helpful in finding apartment renters, and hard to find homes in rural areas.

Smart911 prompts registered users to verify their information every six months. However, you should update your profile anytime there is any change to your information.

Privacy Concerns

In 2012, when Smart911 became available in King County, WA, KIRO 7 News published a report "Smart' 911 registry prompts privacy questions".  KHON 2 News (Honolulu) expressed similar concerns in 2015, asking "How much information is too much information for HPD's new Smart911 system?"

Although Smart911 claims that your data profile is only available to dispatchers after you call 9-1-1 from a registered number; a 2013 article in The Missoulian (Missoula, MT) pointed out that information the Smart911 system can be searched even if you don't call 9-1-1. The article stated in part: "The biggest change is that the new system will let emergency officials look up information based on possible needs, rather than waiting until someone calls. "So if there was a severe power outage, we could look up which people in the county need electricity to power medical equipment and act on that information..."  (There is an option to opt-out of pre-screening of your profile, before you call 9-1-1.)

As with any database containing extensive personal information there are concerns of data breaches, hacking, and misuse of the data.

Even the Smart911 (Rave Mobile Safety) privacy policy states: "Rave cannot guarantee the security of user account or other personal information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors, may compromise the security of user information at any time."

So, should you participate in the Smart911 program? While there are privacy concerns with this service; only you can decide what information you are willing to share with the Rave Mobile Safety company, and with first responders and emergency managers in your area.

You may want to associate your cell-phone or VOIP phone with your address to aid responders in finding you during an emergency.

If you have specific health conditions that may require special treatment or that might prevent you from communicating easily with the 9-1-1 call center during an emergency call, you may want to include this information in your profile.

Because Smart911 lets you control what information you include in your profile, and the profile questions seem to be specifically related to information that would be needed by first responders... Smart911 is probably a good tool to consider as part of your personal security plan.

Remove EXIF Data From Your Photos

Did you know that most digital cameras embed hidden information, called metadata, into every photograph taken? And when you share those images, say by uploading them to a social network, that hidden information often stays embedded? And that people can view said information for almost no effort at all?

Metadata connected to photos is stored in a format called "Exchangeable Image File Format" or EXIF. EXIF metadata might include:

• Latitude and longitude coordinates for the location where the photo was taken,
• Camera settings like ISO speed, shutter speed, focal length, aperture, white balance, and lens type.
• The make and model of the camera.
• The date and time the photo was taken.
• The name and build of all programs used to view or edit the photo.

EXIF data can be used by malicious users to inconvenience you at best or harm you at worst. A good example of this danger is seen in the disclosure of John McAfee's location in 2012 when a photo of Mr. McAfee and VICE’s editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro was posted on-line with EXIF data containing among other things, the GPS latitude and longitude co-ordinates of where it was taken. 

Of course you don't have to be on the run from the law to be concerned about EXIF data in your photos. If you post a photograph of yourself standing by your home, EXIF data can reveal your address.

Windows has a built-in method for clearing EXIF data. Simply right-click on your photo, select Properties, then go to the Details tab. At the bottom of this tab click on Remove Properties and Personal Information to open the EXIF removal tool. The tool lets you either create a copy of the image with all metadata removed or pick and choose which properties to erase from the selected file.

Windows 10's metadata-removal tool isn't perfect, and it may not be able to remove all the personal information from your photos.

If you run into issues removing metadata with Windows, you'll need to try a third-party tool such as EXIF Purge. EXIF Purge is a small portable application to remove EXIF meta data from multiple images at once. Be sure to test any tool that use to remove EXIF data from your photos to be sure that it completely removes any data you don't want to share with the world.

Will the UK Require Digital ID to Use the Internet ???

The UK, following the example of China, has proposed that any place providing internet access use bank-account verification to affirmatively identify all the people who use the internet.  UK Security Minister Ben Wallach said that social media companies should bear the cost of tracking the identities of all their users.

Real-name policies have proved to be a boon to authoritarian rulers; in Cambodia, dictator Hun Sen has embraced Facebook, creating a direct pipeline to Facebook's real-name compliance team that his government uses to force critics to reveal their real identities (exposing them to arrest and torture), or leave the platform.

Are we soon to see this same policy in the UK?  (Read more at Boing Boing, June 11, 2018)

The Complete Privacy & Security Desk Reference: Volume II (Available Now)

The Complete Privacy & Security Desk Reference: Volume II: Physical (Volume 2)

The first volume of this series made you digitally invisible. This book continues with your journey and explores complete physical privacy and security in the real world. After 100 pages of updates from the previous volume (Digital), this book explains how to be private and secure in your home and while you travel. You will create a more secure home perimeter, use living trusts, land trust and LLC's to privately title your home, apply physical disinformation techniques around your property, execute a fail-proof firewall to protect your entire home network and devices, install better locks on your doors, enable advanced features of your alarm system, install a proper home safe, modify your vehicles and usage, privately title your vehicle and registration, embrace surveillance under your terms, avoid threats to your safety, secure your belongings from physical and digital intrusion during travel, and become more aware of your surroundings while being prepared to take action. When taken to the extreme, you will be impossible to compromise.
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Volume 1 of The Complete Privacy & Security Desk Reference is a great book, that I highly recommend for anyone interested in data privacy and personal security. Now Volume 2 is available on Amazon.Com.

Choosing a Home Safe

 

When choosing a home safe, there are several things that we should consider, and first among those is what do we want the safe to protect against. Most home safes that you buy at stores like Wal-Mart or Home Depot, or on-line from Amazon are designed to protect against fire and maybe water damage, but provide very little protection against burglars targeting the safe itself. This being said, a burglar targeting your home at random probably isn't prepared to break into a safe of any type.

 

The Sentry fire and water resistant safe (Model: SFW123DSB) has a good overall reputation for home safes costing less than $250. If you choose a Sentry Safe, I recommend that you chose the dial combination model, and avoid the safes with an electronic keypad. 

 

It is possible to quickly defeat the electronic key pad locking mechanisms using a strong magnet, as can be seen in the following Mr. Locksmith videos:

 

Sentry Electronic Fire Safe Opened in Seconds with No Sign of Entry

Open Sentry Safe in less than 5 seconds!

Open a New Sentry Safe XXL with a Rare Earth Magnet

 

While the random burglar is unlikely to be carrying a rare earth magnet, someone who was aware of your safe and who wanted to gain surreptitious entry to it could defeat the electronic lock for about $15.

 

Note that while the dial combination solves the problem of using a magnet to bypass the lock, you are unable to change the factory set dial combination, where with the electronic keypad you can change the combination to your safe as often as you wish.

 

The Sentry Safe pictured above weighs 90 pounds, so while a burglar won't be tossing it in to a bag and running down the street with it, little effort would be required to carry it out your front door to a waiting vehicle.  For this reason you should always anchor your safe to the floor and/or wall with the provided mounting bolts.

 

So, should you invest in a safe for your home? Yes, if you have important documents and such to protect a fire and water resistant safe is a good investment. You also gain some protection against the random burglar who breaks into your home unprepared to deal with a safe.

 

If you have expensive jewelry, cash, or other small valuables in your home, and you are concerned about a targeted burglary, then you should consider a safe specifically designed to resist attempts to break into it. Examples of this type of safe includes:

 

Steelwater AMSWFB-450 2-Hour Fireproof and Burglary Safe

 

Mesa Safe MBF1512C All Steel Burglary and Fire Safe

 

The cost of your safe now increases from the $200 range to the $600 - $700 range, but if you have a few thousand dollars worth of valuables to protect, spending a few hundred more dollars for a more secure safe is probably worth it.

 

If your concern is burglary over fire, you might consider the Gardall LC1414-G-C Commercial Light Duty Safe for around $350. This is a smaller safe (Inside: 13.50" H X 13.50" W X 11.00" D) weight 60 pounds, so you will need to anchor it to the floor / wall.

 

 

 

China’s Surveillance State Will Soon Track Cars Using Mandatory RFID Chips

In a move that comes across as a strengthening of domestic surveillance policies, China will require all new vehicles to have vehicle-identity RFID chips starting next year (2019).

The RFID chips will be read by sensors installed along roads by the government and feed data about the vehicle's location and owner back to the Ministry of Public Security. This kind of RFID scanning is less precise than GPS tracking, given that it only shows when vehicles pass sensors, but it's still plenty to build a profile of someone's habits based on where they drive. (WSJ, June 13, 2018)