On 2020-08-05 18:00, marcxdv@??? wrote:
>> I understand the security advantages of using zoom on a laptop not
>> much used for anything else. I suppose the sercurity conern is files
>> being accessible to intruders. Someone made the interesting suggestion
>> of settin up a new account just for zoom.
>
> The concern about using any gratis commercial videoconferencing
> service is that quite a bit of biometric information can be
> collected from you - in particular your voice and your face.
> Your personal files are just a bonus.
>
> Recall a while ago some company called clearview.ai made the
> news - given a picture of a person it finds all the other
> photos of that person online, and does a good job of it too.
>
> Any videoconferencing service is remarkably well positioned to
> generate an excellent facial model of you - given that there
> is a bit of motion and much data of you staring at the camera,
> a high-quality 3D model of your face can be constructed easily.
>
> This biometric information can be abused in so many ways, most
> of which are still to be invented. But recall the cambridge
> analytica scandal. It was supposed to have used rubbish online
> personality quizzes to generate custom ads to fix elections and
> referenda - with some success. Reportedly it is the reason brexit
> actually happened ...
>
> Now instead of having to rely on "do you like cats or dogs",
> the propaganda developers get to actually check out your
> microexpressions and changes in voice pitch... while A/B
> testing their evil on you.
>
> Anyway, if you value your free will then not using closed
> source video conferencing systems is a must.
>
> Similarly if you value your ability enter a store without
> hostile marketing logic giving you digital patdown... Remember
> the occasional news article showing off the big chinese control
> centres monitoring the cameras in some far away city, with
> a neat little onscreen name following every person walking down
> the street ? Odds are quite good that your video conferencing use
> will make it possible to add your name to that list.
>
> Some people are going to say "not possible, the call is
> end-to-end encrypted". Actually no. Illustrative example: The
> intercept reported that zoom claimed end-to-end encryption,
> but instead had one shared key, and used ECB (a really poor
> way of using a cypher). That is why it works so well, as a
> single lost packet doesn't garble the rest of the stream. More
> importantly, unlike Balsamic Vinegar or Zero Percent Fat,
> there is little enforcement of what these terms mean, and
> governments are keen to weaken encryption further. So if you
> ever hear "end-to-end video encryption" it is wise to
> assume "encrypted from your end to their data centre end". It is
> fashionable to use zoom as an example, given their strong
> connections to mainland china, but odds are excellent that
> this is happening on services too, where it is probably done
> better and more discretely.
>
> It is probably also the reason why tiktok is in the news
>
> regards
>
> marc
>

Here's another reason tiktok is in the news

https://news.antiwar.com/2020/08/02/tiktok-ban-for-national-security-or-us-tech-companies/

golinux