Star 0

Abstract

You are under surveillance. We all are. If you're targeted by a government, nothing you can do will save you. But even if you aren't, the metadata of your life is being gathered and stockpiled by collection capabilities that even Orwell couldn't have imagined, and it's not just being done by governments. The big data industry is rapidly growing and may soon be on par with NSA-style mass surveillance, but with a different goal: to learn everything they can about you in order to sell your information, and sell you the next new thing. Encryption is only half the battle. Your metadata is often more valuable than your data. Every route you drive, every social media post you make, every aisle you visit in the grocery store, every email, every check-in, and every site you browse is being collected and correlated. The intelligence community calls this pattern-of-life analysis, and there's not much you can do to prevent it. Hiding behind seven proxies won't protect you from Google, the NSA, or the app on your phone with global permissions. This complete erosion of privacy impacts every one of us, and there is a complete lack of transparency around this. In this talk, a former NSA professional will cover a variety of the techniques used by the mass surveillance industry to analyze an individual's metadata and develop a profile of you, your activities, your affiliations, and what you are likely to buy next. Techniques that can be used to prevent selected activities from being associated with your true persona will be covered, with a focus on making your true persona blend in with the masses.

Slides