FTC Hired Hacker to Help With Privacy Issues

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It looks like the Federal Trade Commission learned the hard way that hiring hackers probably isn’t the smartest thing in the world.

Given this history, he was surprised when the Federal Trade Commission offered him a job in 2009. Soghoian, 29, was the first of a handful of technologists the agency recruited to investigate corporations for violating consumers' privacy.
 
From reading the article it sounds like America could use more people like Soghoian.
 
Screw the whole article... this is the scaryyyyyy PART!!!!!! (especially if you are a Sprint Customer in the past and/or now)

Still, being a fed had perks. In December Soghoian's FTC credentials let him secretly tape Sprint ( S - news - people ) executives bragging at an industry-only security conference about how they'd turned customers' GPS information over to law enforcement 8 million times in a year.
 
Yes, big brother is watching you --through-- your cellphone.

I imagine within 20 years, another 'terrorist' action will occur on us soil which 'would have been totally prevented, if we forced all cellphones to record all activity at any given time within an audible range and forwarded to government databases when not in use' and 'record GPS from every phone in the world updated every 3 minutes' with records kept until the last 10 years.
 
I'm failing to see how he's a hacker... It seems everyone who does something techie-ish is a hacker...
 
I'm failing to see how he's a hacker... It seems everyone who does something techie-ish is a hacker...

Because that sort of is what 'hacker' means originally.

Due to popular media and common use, hacker is for the most part interchangeable with black hat and cracker.
 
I'll second KataIDT. I have seen several definitions, and I think they can be summarized by someone who researches, and plays with a technology to understand it and gain the ability to use it fluently. That often exposes new information and understanding of the system leading to novel uses. That doesn't mean it is a malicious intent. Hacker was originally a positive term.
 
Yes, big brother is watching you --through-- your cellphone.

I imagine within 20 years, another 'terrorist' action will occur on us soil which 'would have been totally prevented, if we forced all cellphones to record all activity at any given time within an audible range and forwarded to government databases when not in use' and 'record GPS from every phone in the world updated every 3 minutes' with records kept until the last 10 years.

So, that machine from The Dark Night.

When that day comes, I will literally rip the GPS chip out of my amazing cellphone. Until then, integrated GPS makes Geocaching much easier!
 
I'll second KataIDT. I have seen several definitions, and I think they can be summarized by someone who researches, and plays with a technology to understand it and gain the ability to use it fluently. That often exposes new information and understanding of the system leading to novel uses. That doesn't mean it is a malicious intent. Hacker was originally a positive term.

Exactly. It's only thanks to the Mass Media (gee, what terms DON'T they slaughter :rolleyes:) in the '90's that "hacker" started to mean "black-hat".

I don't care about it, I'll still call myself a hacker (even though I'm not even close to skilled in black-hat stuff) and if I get weird looks, I explain ("It doesn't mean what you think it means, it means I like messing with computers and technology at a deeper level. People who steal your info and create botnets are called 'black-hats' in our community.").
 
I saw on a web forum one day a person talking about how he was able to locate a persons house in google maps using the GPS data attached to the person's uploaded photos taken on their iPhone. He even posted the persons location on google maps.

I don't own a cell phone so no worries for me but do all cell phones attach GPS data to the photo or just Apple cell phones? Hopefully that is a user option and the person obviously didn't know it is.
 
It's a good start, says Soghoian, but in his humble opinion the feds still have a long way to go. "One of the things that's become abundantly clear after being in D.C. for a year," he says, "is that many of the people making the rules and setting the policies have absolutely no idea how the technology works." Or the technologists.

well duh..no shit.. That is always the case.
 
Because that sort of is what 'hacker' means originally.

Due to popular media and common use, hacker is for the most part interchangeable with black hat and cracker.

Better would be someone who modifies or tweaks software or in some case hardware to get past current limitations.
 
I saw on a web forum one day a person talking about how he was able to locate a persons house in google maps using the GPS data attached to the person's uploaded photos taken on their iPhone. He even posted the persons location on google maps.

I don't own a cell phone so no worries for me but do all cell phones attach GPS data to the photo or just Apple cell phones? Hopefully that is a user option and the person obviously didn't know it is.

I'm not sure which ones do and don't. Any device with a digital camera and GPS has the capability to do so. Something like the FxIF addon for Firefox will let you easily see location (and other) data in image files. The example shows location data in an image from a Canon EOS 350D. I'm not sure if that was added in later, or if the camera itself includes GPS, but it's something to keep in mind with just about any newer digital camera.

The iPhone geotagging stuff was a bit of an issue because the iPhone had been tagging pics all along, but there was no interface to see it. Suddenly they released a new firmware and everyone could see on a map exactly where each picture was taken. It's a bit creepy, but also a bit cool. I have a bunch of pins around my house, some at a friend's house, some places I visited, etc.


http://hacks.mit.edu/misc/faq.html
Aren't hackers the people that break into computer networks?
Maybe to the rest of the world.
Many of us at MIT call those who break into (crack) computer systems "crackers." At MIT, a "hacker" is someone who does some sort of interesting and creative work at a high intensity level. This applies to anything from writing computer programs to pulling a clever prank that amuses and delights everyone on campus.
 
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