08-15, 15:00–15:50 (US/Eastern), Marillac Auditorium
In the past year, a number of investigations have revealed the outsized role of a few select companies in gathering, storing, and selling the location data of millions of devices - and by extension people - worldwide. These companies largely use technologies which power the online advertising industry in order to collect and disseminate this data. To make matters worse, this data has been both provided to private investigators on the mere assurance that they plan to work with law enforcement, and has been subject to data breaches which put the privacy of millions at risk. This talk will elaborate on the technologies, data flows, and industry players which comprise this complicated ecosystem. Most importantly, it will cover some basic steps you can perform to protect yourself against the wide array of location privacy harms your device subjects you to. The presenters will show tools and techniques they’ve developed to allow users to take back ownership of our devices, rather than our devices owning us.
Lena Cohen is a staff technologist with EFF primarily focused on developing Privacy Badger - a browser extension used by over three million people to stop companies from tracking their activity as they browse the web. At EFF, Lena also works on issues of commercial surveillance, the data broker industry, and consumer privacy. Lena holds a degree in computer science and science, technology, and society from Brown University.
Bill Budington is a longtime activist, cryptography enthusiast, and a senior staff technologist on EFF’s Public Interest Technology team. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and cited by the U.S. Congress. Bill’s primary interest lies in dismantling systems of oppression, building up collaborative alternatives and, to borrow a phrase from Zapatismo, fighting for a “world in which many worlds fit.” He loves hackerspaces and getting together with other techies to tinker, code, share, and build the technological commons.
