Record Growth For Privacy Search Engines In Wake Of NSA Revelations Steve Watson Infowars.com January 14, 2014
“Snowden Effect” Sees Web Browsers Steering Clear Of Big Names When you “Google” something, you do not necessarily have to Google it, particularly if the NSA has backdoor access to your search terms. That’s what record numbers of web users are discovering as they flock to privacy oriented search engines in the wake of Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s ongoing leaks. In 2013, the search engines StartPage.com and Ixquick.com saw their traffic numbers double, with more than 5 million total daily searches, amounting to over 1.25 billion searches for the year. Now the operators of those services say they are bracing for record numbers of new users in 2014. “Every time Edward Snowden shares a new revelation about government spying, we get an influx of new users,” said company spokesperson and privacy expert Dr. Katherine Albrecht. “He has promised to reveal more in 2014, and from what we’ve heard, he’s got two more years of content, at least.” Albrecht, a regular guest on the Alex Jones show told Infowars “Consumers are rightfully outraged that governments are eavesdropping on those services and commandeering access to those databases.” StartPage and Ixquick market themselves as “the only third-party certified search engines in the world that do not record your IP address or track your searches.” StartPage allows users to access Google results with privacy, while Ixquick is a meta search engine that provides private search results that do not include Google results. “Our privacy policy is very simple,” Albrecht noted. “We don’t collect any information—Nada. Zilch. Zero. No IP addresses are recorded, and no tracking cookies are used. If any government comes knocking, there’s nothing for them to get. Period.” The company is based in the Netherlands, meaning that it is not beholden to US jurisdiction, and can credibly vow to not adhere to US government surveillance or data collection programs.
The same cannot be said of Google, which has a detailed relationship with US intelligence. While Google’s chief legal officer has urged that the company is not “in cahoots with NSA”, we have exhaustively highlighted how Google has an intimate and secret relationship with the National Security Agency, as well as ties to the CIA going back to the company’s inception. Both Google and the agencies in question have refused to elaborate on the relationship, and the Department of Justice has actively worked to keep the information out of the public domain. The NSA PRISM spying scandal has engulfed practically every major online company, and despite blanket denials of involvement from the likes of Google, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft, alternative privacy oriented internet tools have consequently seen a huge boost in traffic as web users are ditching the giants that apparently aided government snoopers. As reported by Search Engine Watch last year, other privacy search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, have also experienced record levels of traffic. Tools such as as Cryptocat, which encrypts chat messages before they are sent and Tor, which facilitates anonymous surfing, saw downloads increase exponentially. It was then revealed by Snowden that the NSA had rather unsuccessfully attempted to crack such tools. The Demand that StartPage and Ixquick have seen has led executives to launch a new privacy-friendly email company: StartMail.com. While they were optimistic over it’s inception, while it was being developed, they never expected over 50,000 people to sign up to beta test the new service, which is rolling out this year. “We thought we’d get interest from a few thousand people, but the response was so overwhelming, we were forced to close the beta signup early,” said Albrecht. “It may have taken Internet users a while to make sense of Snowden’s revelations and figure out what to do about them, but now they are clearly responding in huge numbers,” Albrecht observed. “The backlash against government intrusion into the lives of average citizens is making private search and email services a hot commodity in 2014.” STOP USING GOOGLE AND START USING https://ixquick.com/ OR https://www.startpage.com/
10 Ways Ixquick Helps You Take Back Your Privacy 1. Ixquick doesn't store your IP address, use tracking cookies, or make a record of your searches. We do not keep any information about the people who search through Ixquick or what they search for. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. 2. Ixquick protects you from NSA surveillance and spying. Your search session with Ixquick is protected through powerful SSL encryption so no one - not hackers, not your ISP, not even the federal government - can eavesdrop on your searches. (Read more here) 3. Ixquick gives you high quality results in complete privacy. When you search with Ixquick, we remove all identifying information from your query and submit it anonymously to multiple other search engines for you. We get the results and return them to you in total privacy. 4. Ixquick is a Dutch company, so it is not under US jurisdiction. Because our company is based in the Netherlands, US data collection programs like PRISM, the Patriot Act, FISA courts, etc. do not directly apply to us. We have never cooperated with spying programs like PRISM. (Plus we have no user data to begin with.) 5. Ixquick offers a free proxy with every search. With our proxy, not only can you search privately, but you can view the pages you find through Ixquick anonymously and in complete security. To learn more, please see our combined Startpage/Ixquick proxy overview video here. 6. Ixquick is third-party certified for privacy. We not only promise our users total privacy, we back up those claims with rock-solid evidence, through stringent third-party auditing and certification. Here are details: http://www.european-privacy-seal.eu/ws/EPS-en/Ixquick-starpage 7. Ixquick has been doing privacy longer than anyone else - since way before privacy was "cool". Our company was founded in 1999, and we've been focused on privacy since 2006. 8. When it comes to security, Ixquick runs the tightest ship on the Internet. We've been ahead of the privacy curve for years, and we consistently outscore other search engines on independent measures of security. We were the first search engine to offer default SSL encryption, and now we are the first private search engine to offer Perfect Forward Secrecy and the latest version of Transport Layer Security. 9. Ixquick breaks you free of the search engine "Filter Bubble". Major search engines now "personalize" or "pre-screen" the search results they serve you, based on what they know about you from past searches and other services you use. While some people love this, others see it as privacy-invading censorship. Regardless of your views, with Ixquick, you get clean, anonymous, non-filtered results every time, because nobody knows who you are. 10.By using Ixquick, you send a powerful pro-privacy message in the marketplace. Each time you use an online service, you cast a vote in support of the policies and practices of that service. By using Ixquick, you are casting a powerful vote for a private Internet where people can access information anonymously without fear of government surveillance or reprisal.
Privacy. It's not just our policy, it's our mission. Robert E.G. Beens CEO Ixquick.com and StartPage.com
Google’s Reach Expands Into Your Home More Via $3.2 Billion Nest Acquisition Larry Dignan Between the Lines January 14, 2013
Google said Monday that it will pay $3.2 billion in cash for Nest, which makes smart thermostats and smoke alarms. Rest assured that Google is hoping to plug smart homes together with Android devices, its developer ecosystem and treasure trove of data.
Nest launched in 2011 to strong reviews. Since its launch, Nest's smart thermostat has been replicated by larger players such as Honeywell. Google CEO Larry Page said that Google is "excited to bring great experiences to more homes in more countries." For Google, Nest founders Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers will bring some more design knowhow to the search giant, which has a hardware side of the business via Motorola. Fadell led the team at Apple that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone.
On the data front, Google could ultimately harness more information about individual homes and their energy usage. Nest, however, did indicate that home data would stay in its company under its privacy policy, which is owned by Google now, and only be used to improve products. Nest was poised to launch a developer program in early 2014. Consider the moving parts: 1. Google has mobile access via your smartphones and various apps on multiple platforms. 2. Google has multiple ways into your living room via Android and Chromecast, a streaming TV gadget, as well as tablets and PCs. 3. The company had tried to monitor energy usage with utilities, but scrapped the plan in 2011. 4. Google's Android will increasingly be in your car. 5. And Google is working the robot market. It remains to be seen how all of these efforts fit together, but it's clear that Google's tentacles are spreading. Analysts said that Google's purchase highlights the importance of the connected home and Internet of things. Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett said: Google's acquisition of Nest affirms the growing strategic importance of the idea of the connected home. It also shows that Google increasingly believes in hardware/software solutions, such as Nest has built, rather than just building operating systems for other manufacturers to implement in smartphones, Chromebooks, and TVs. In a blog post, Fadell said: Google will help us fully realize our vision of the conscious home and allow us to change the world faster than we ever could if we continued to go it alone. We’ve had great momentum, but this is a rocket ship. Google has the business resources, global scale and platform reach to accelerate Nest growth across hardware, software and services for the home globally. And our company visions are well aligned – we both believe in letting technology do the hard work behind the scenes so people can get on with the things that matter in life. Google is committed to helping Nest make a difference and together, we can help save more energy and keep people safe in their homes. Google and Nest are familiar as Google Ventures has been an investor in Nest. Fadell added that Nest will continue to have its "distinct brand identity." Rogers posted an FAQ for nest customers and hammered home the distinct brand theme. Here's the excerpt:
Will Nest continue to support iOS so I can have the Nest app on my iPhone or iPad? Yes, absolutely. We’ll continue supporting iOS, Android and modern web browsers so you can check in on your home and control the temperature from wherever you are. Will Nest and Google products work with each other? Nest’s product line obviously caught the attention of Google and I’m betting that there’s a lot of cool stuff we could do together, but nothing to share today. What will happen to the Nest warranties on products? No change there – we stand behind our products like we always have. Will I still be able to find Nest products at my local retailer? You bet. We intend to continue selling through the same partners in the US, Canada and the UK. Will Nest customer data be shared with Google? Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services. We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change.
What Secrets Your Phone Is Sharing About You Elizabeth Dwoskin The Wall Street Journal January 14, 2013
Fan Zhang, the owner of Happy Child, a trendy Asian restaurant in downtown Toronto, knows that 170 of his customers went clubbing in November. He knows that 250 went to the gym that month, and that 216 came in from Yorkville, an upscale neighborhood. And he gleans this information without his customers' knowledge, or ever asking them a single question. Mr. Zhang is a client of Turnstyle Solutions Inc., a year-old local company that has placed sensors in about 200 businesses within a 0.7 mile radius in downtown Toronto to track shoppers as they move in the city.
The sensors, each about the size of a deck of cards, follow signals emitted from Wi-Fienabled smartphones. That allows them to create portraits of roughly 2 million people's habits as they have gone about their daily lives, traveling from yoga studios to restaurants, to coffee shops, sports stadiums, hotels, and nightclubs. "Instead of offering a general promotion that may or may not hit a nerve, we can promote specifically to the customer's taste," says Mr. Zhang. He recently emblazoned workout tank-tops with his restaurant's logo, based on the data about his customers' gym visits. Turnstyle is at the forefront of a movement to track consumers who are continuously broadcasting their location from phones. Other startups, such as San Francisco-based Euclid Analytics Inc., use sensors to analyze foot-traffic patterns, largely within an individual retailer's properties to glean insight about customer behavior. Their success speaks to the growing value of location data. Verizon Wireless last year began crunching its own location information from customers to help retailers see which neighborhoods shoppers arrived from or limited information about their habits, such as restaurants they drive past. Apple Inc. AAPL +1.99% recently released its iBeacon technology, which can be integrated into sensors to read customer's smartphone signals in brick-and-mortar stores. But Turnstyle is among the few that have begun using the technology more broadly to follow people where they live, work and shop. The company's dense network of sensors can track any phone that has Wi-Fi turned on, enabling the company to build profiles of consumers lifestyles. Turnstyle's weekly reports to clients use aggregate numbers and don't include people's names. But the company does collect the names, ages, genders, and social media profiles of some people who log in with Facebook FB +3.27% to a free Wi-Fi service that Turnstyle runs at local restaurants and coffee shops, including Happy Child. It uses that information, along with the wider foot traffic data, to come up dozens lifestyle categories, including yoga-goers, people who like theater, and hipsters. A business that knows which sports team is most favored by its clients could offer special promotions on game days, says Turnstyle's 27-year-old founder Chris Gilpin. Czehoski, a local restaurant, hired an '80s-music DJ for Friday nights after learning from Turnstyle that more than 60% of the restaurant's Wi-Fi-enabled customers were over 30. But as the industry grows in prominence, location trackers are bound to ignite privacy concerns. A company could, for example, track people's visits to specialist doctors or hospitals and sell that data to marketers. "Locations have meanings," says Eloise Gratton, a privacy lawyer. Marketers can infer that a person has a certain disease from their Internet searches. A geolocation company can actually see the person visiting the doctor, "making the inference that the individual has this disease probably even more accurate," she says.
Mr. Glipin says his data doesn't include doctors visits or sensitive health information, nor does he sell his profile data to marketers. He is considering offering more detailed profiles based on the logged-in information, an endeavor that would be legal in Canada as long as consumers provided consent. "We know there is more value to be extracted from this data," Mr. Gilpin says. "But we're wanting to move cautiously and turn on the tap slowly—in a way that doesn't offend customers." In the U.S., companies don't have to get a consent before collecting and sharing most personal information, including their location. A bill, proposed by Minnesota Senator Al Franken, would require consent before collecting location data. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission settled its first location privacy case in December, against an app developer that misled consumers into believing their location data wouldn't be sold to marketers. Some customers have concerns. Aj Tin, a university student and customer at Rsquared CafÊ, was surprised to learn that by logging into the Wi-Fi at the coffee shop, he was enabling Turnstyle to track his movements and offer other local businesses an aggregated profile of his activities. The disclosure form tells consumers they will be tracked, but not how aggregated personal information will be distributed. "Privacy is cheap," Mr. Tin said. Even as they covet the data, stores and businesses recognize it is a touchy subject. "It would probably be better not to use this tracking system at all if we had to let people know about it," says Glenna Weddle, the owner of Rac Boutique, a women's clothing store that is a Turnstyle client. "It's not invasive. It might raise alarms for no reason." Viasense Inc., another Toronto startup, is building detailed dossiers of people's lifestyles by merging location data with those from other sources, including marketing firms. The company follows between 3 million and 6 million devices each day in a 400-kilometer radius surrounding Toronto. It buys bulk phone-signal data from Canada's national cellphone carriers. Viasense's algorithms then break those users into lifestyle categories based on their daily travels, which it says it can track down to the square meter. For example, by monitoring how many times a consumer visits a golf course in a month, Viasense can classify her as a casual, intermediate or heavy golfer. People whose cellphones move at a certain clip across city parks between 5:30 and 8:30 every morning are flagged by the algorithm as "early morning joggers." The company identifies "youth" by looking at phone signals coming from schools during school hours and nightclubs, and home locations by targeting the places phones spend each night. Viasense, which says its clients are grocery chains, a large concert venue and a billboard company, then overlays that data with census and marketing lists the company buys from data brokers to deduce demographic information, like whether the cellphone's owner is in a high-income bracket. Viasense doesn't gather personal information or know any of its users' names, but CEO Mossab Basir says it is
simple to figure this out. A person who has enabled location services on an app in which they upload information publicly, such as Twitter, TWTR +0.67% is broadcasting their location and their identity—or at least their handle—at the same time. "People are probably unaware of how much they are making available," says Mr. Basir. "That's why it's a very delicate subject for us. It's kind of Big Brotheresque." A username is considered personal information, which under Canadian law can't be collected without the consent of the user. In most of the U.S., consent wouldn't be required. Right now, the only way to opt-out of geolocation is to either switch off the Wi-Fi on a cellphone, or make a request through a website of one the data companies like Turnstyle that has an opt-out option. As these companies operate mostly behind the scenes, the nascent industry is keeping a close watch on Google Inc. GOOG +2.35% and Apple. With their Android and iOS mobile operating systems, respectively, Google and Apple know the location of every customer's Wi-Fi-enabled phone—far more location data than any startup could access. The Silicon Valley giants aren't allowing access to such data by outsiders. Both Google and Apple declined to comment. Places where people didn't think they were being watched are now repositories for collecting information, says Ryan Calo assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law. "Companies are increasingly able to connect between our online and offline lives," he says. Read more
Warning To Washington DC The District Of Criminals: Nullification is Catching On Infowars.com January 14, 2014
Neoconfederatism! Racism! Slavery! Nullfication is Catching On VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cOcTrclc_8
INFOWARS.COM BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND