Daily Archives: October 4, 2012

More On Egregious Privacy Violations

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Last episode (less than an hour old now – you might want to read it first) was about a case of computer rental companies engaging in truly horrifying invasions of privacy. The article I cited finished with a mention of an interview with an anonymous representative of the company DesignerWare, in which he said that he felt his company had done no wrong. DesignerWare is the company that created the software used to steal passwords and get pictures of unsuspecting nekkid people.

They say they’ve done no wrong!? Are you shitting me? They were pure evil!

Wait, no, that’s not quite right. They enabled pure evil. They didn’t activate “Detective Mode” on those computers, the mode that allowed such terrifying transgressions. They wrote the software, and they sold it, but it wasn’t they who turned it on in situations where it wasn’t warranted.

How do we assess the responsibility of DesignerWare? People tried to sue gun makers when people were shot, but with no success. Is Detective Mode like a gun, where the manufacturer can’t be held responsible for the behavior of its customers?

On DesignerWare’s site, they even tout the features they’ve added to protect users’ privacy. But behind the scenes they put in this super-spy-mode feature to help rental companies recover their hardware.

It wasn’t DesignerWare who turned on Detective Mode when it wasn’t warranted. That was something the dickheads at their client companies did. Those bastards deserve to be strung up by their short-and-curlys. No doubt there. But was DesignerWare wrong?

The key word, I believe, is ‘warranted’. Is such an invasion of privacy ever justified? The DesignerWare people would say yes, there are legitimate cases where the rental company has the right to use every means at its disposal to recover its property. Funny thing about ‘warranted’, though – law enforcement would have to get a warrant to conduct similar surveillance. (Well, not any more, but that’s another rant.)

My argument is this: if there’s no legal or ‘warranted’ way to use that software, then at the very least DesignerWare is guilty of fraud for selling it without telling their customers that use of that feature is illegal, rendering it valueless.

Detective Mode is not a gun. Gun companies argue that it’s not their responsibility if their customers use the product illegally. They can do this because there are legal uses of the product, and most gun owners follow those laws. DesignerWare can’t argue that they’re not responsible if their customers use the product illegally, because there is no other use.

So, yep, DesignerWare is evil.

Thanks!

Our Rights, Well-Defended

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This morning I came across this brief article: FTC settles PC spying charges with rent-to-own computers. To paraphrase the text: The FTC caught people participating in jaw-dropping invasions of privacy, and brought the miscreants to justice.

Before we get to the penalty phase, let’s review some of the things these people did without the knowledge of the people using rental computers: They captured screen shots (that could have personal information like bank statements and legal documents), they captured user’s keystrokes (a technique for stealing passwords), and they even used the built-in cameras to send back pictures without the knowledge of the users. Apparently (according to other articles) pictures of children and of people having sex were collected.

There’s no reason to do this if you don’t plan to use that information, and there’s no use for that information that isn’t simply evil.

We can be happy then, that the boys at the FTC are on the job! At the very least, you’d figure Washington wants a monopoly on invading our privacy. So what was the ‘settlement’ they reached with these thieving bastards?

Oh, it was severe all right. They got the bad guys to promise not to do it anymore.

Shit, at least make them pick up litter for a weekend.

Thanks!