The niner noteworthy stories of 2016 (week 18)

These are the noteworthy stories, in no particular order, that peaked my interest last week.

De Teletekstpagina die dertig jaar geheim bleef (in Dutch)

In the 1980s when teletext (tv text pages) were state-of-the-art and the only way to quickly communicate nieuws and other information with viewers, a Belgian worker decided to use secret page to send messages to her partner at home. One-way obviously and hidden between the not-so-well-known info-button, she send messages for requesting him to go grocery shopping or pick her up at the train station.
Whilst this is a security-by-obscurity method of sending information and eventually some viewer did discover her usage, it seems the rest of the Belgian Broadcaster VRT never knew until she told her story 1 month before the text-page service was officially stopped.
This however is one way such an obscured form of communication actually does work very well and I congratulate Linda for her innovative use of the teletext service at that time.
source: Het Nieuwsblad (external link, paywall present)
Also published on: Nu.nl (external link)

Hardened Security Features of iPhone 5s Successfully Hacked in LAPD Murder Investigation

From this article we learn two things: the FBI is apparently willing to pay 1 million dollars to obtain an apparent zero-day vulnerability to obtain data which may or may not be useful and if law enforcement really wants to they can obtain data from locked devices. Although as stated in the article, the OS version of the iPhone 5S is unknown which makes determining the real threat to current iPhone users impossible at this time.
source: MacRumors.com (external link)

Companies gun-shy on privacy shield

A clear and complete overview on why the EU/US privacy shield wil probably fall flat on it’s face out of the starting blocks.
As I already stated in this article the problem is and will remain the US agencies blanket used for mass-surveillance.
source: Politico.EU (external link)

The Private Life of Trash

America seems to be an interesting country as privacy is concerned. On the one hand tech companies are asked to write malware, on the other hand the citizens of Seattle can’t be fined for not recycling enough as their garbage is protected by privacy laws of being inspected for that purpose.
source: Bloomberg BNA (external link)

Illinois residents can sue Facebook for photo tagging, judge says

This to me sounds pretty similar to the fundamental rights problems we have with this company overhere in Europe, doesn’t it? For sure an interesting ruling privacy advocates in Europe could benefit from.
source: arstechnica.com (external link)

Concerns raised over broad scope of DeepMind-NHS health data-sharing deal

I doubt this data sharing would stand up against privacy laws, specifically the extension of protecting sensitive personal data coming into force with the GDPR in just about 2 years time.
Having timely warnings on certain medical conditions may be life saving, but handing over all personal medical records because you may or may not have or get a certain condition seems too broad a scope in the first place. What makes it worse is that no artificial intelligence research is done at all, so detecting new cases does not seem to be the goal of this data sharing agreement.
Whatever the actual goal is, for some reason this story made my hairs stand up at the back of my neck for sure.
source: techcrunch.com (external link)

Twitter might be going too far in trying to protect our privacy from US government agencies

All data on the Twitter platform is public, except for private messages obviously. So you would think this isn’t very problematic right? Although the move itself to block access to the entire twitter database seems privacy minded, it’s not entirely sure what they hope to accomplish by this move.
What it does highlight is the data hunger of US intelligence agencies, something we already knew but which is being confirmed time and time again.
source: thenextweb.com (external link)

Stop resetting your passwords, says UK govt’s spy network

No, seriously, it’s a bad idea. Honestly

The only comment I can give here is that everyone is obviously very trusting in any security agencies, specifically the once who would benefit the most of any snoopers charter right?
Seriously, a password manager would be a better advice then this one. Though it does make for an interesting article to read for sure.
source: TheRegister.co.uk (external link)

Dilbert. Browser data and ethics

No comment
source: @PrivacyMatters on Twitter (external link)