[ExI] chilling effects

James A. Donald jamesd at echeque.com
Sat Oct 26 23:43:45 PDT 2013


On 2013-10-27 08:25, staticsafe wrote:
> On 10/26/2013 16:24, James A. Donald wrote:
>> On 2013-10-27 00:53, Kelly John Rose wrote:
>>> Thunderbird sends gps to google? That seems a bit odd considering they
>>> are not connected.�
>>
>> Evil state sponsored conspiracy.  The Cathedral. I thought everyone knew
>> this.
>>
>> Thunderbird/tools/options/advanced/config editor/geo.enabled.
>>
>> Set to disabled.
>>
>> Who on this list has not done so?
>>
>> Of course people usually use Thunderbird on their main computer, which
>> generally does not have a gps, but it usually has a wifi card.
>> Thunderbird detects the nearest wifi networks .
>>
>> When google does street view for Google Earth, they also detect nearby
>> wifi networks, so the data supplied by Thunderbird is matched against
>> the data collected by google during street view surveys.
>>
>> Thus, whenever and wherever you use Thunderbird, google can supply the
>> authorities with the closest street address to where you are using
>> Thunderbird, and pictures taken from the street very close to that
>> address.  Thus the authorities not only have your email, which being
>> sent in the clear has no expectation of privacy, but also a picture of
>> building that you are sitting in when sending the email.
>>
>>
>
> What?
>
> Citations please.
>
> http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/geolocation/ says everything to the
> contrary.

David Petraeus would disagree - particularly as he got nailed for using 
email from an inappropriate location, not for web browsing from an 
inappropriate location.  Notice while your link piously gives an 
innocent explanation for what Firefox is doing with a list of nearby 
wifi points, your link does not discuss what the hell Thunderbird is 
doing with a list of nearby wifi points.

The document you cite says that if you OK a website knowing where you 
are, your browser then sends that website (not Google) your location, 
which can indeed happen if you fiddle with the settings.  What, however, 
happens in the default setting, is that if you OK a website knowing 
where you are, your browser does not send them a list of your nearby 
wifi points, but instead tells them to request your location from 
Google.  There seems to be no technological reason why they cannot 
request your location from Google without waiting for your browser to 
tell them to do so, though I suppose Google might be displeased.

Which procedure implies that Google already has a list of your nearby 
wifi points, from which it has already deduced your location.




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