Dare I say it, deepfakes have triggered an era of human questioning the actual reality of things right in front of your face. I am curious about folk you are truly off-grid i.e. no smartphone, no internet connection and purely using cash for stuff. Making one’s life inconvenience hardly seems worth the effort, but I still long for a Faraday Jacket.
Point of Privacy
I came face to face with an obvious Ai driven face recognition terminal at the payment desk of a high street retailer.
So not only do they have my payment history and patterns, but my full bio iD (obtained without my permission). Should I submit a subject access request or just let it fly. Maybe I just shop somewhere else now or cover my face on every purchase.
I guess it’s the same approach that cash machines take when your image is taken on every withdrawal.
The most unnerving element was watching the small screen at the payment point with my face being tracked. There are no hiding spots in public spaces so just get used to it.
I did catch a glimpse of a social media campaign encouraging people to go totally offline for the day seemingly in protest of how connectivity dominates our personal lives. The real challenge is we don’t really have the mental toughness to turn it all off.
Tweaking your victim profile
The Netflix movie – The Accused was so intensely accurate in terms of what has happened and could indeed happen again to someone being wrongfully accused via our glorious social media ecosystem.
I had to stop watching it halfway through just to analyse the touch points (spoiler alert) –
Reading classification – personal threat, injury detail, discrimination, suicide
The victim profile
| Threat / event | Possible risk counter measures |
| High number of followers 200+ | Do you know all these people? |
| Open profile – public access to personal data, followers, posts etc | Limited how unknowns can tag you |
| Connected family and friend’s profiles are open and contain meta data such as location details, home address etc | Limited how unknowns can map your relationships |
| Phone location services open | Turn off when no Apps not in use |
| Images taken by 3rd party in public revealing location | Tough one to tackle as people are always snapping |
| CCTV data mapped with social media | Almost impossible to hide |
| Monitoring a hashtag in real time | No real reason to do this unless you are actually going to react |
| Online rumour pushed as fact | Response to accusations in real time by key social media channels, put out a pubic statement, engage a legal advisor. |
| Online threat to life reported by phone | Report online and get a crime number |
| Open-source intelligence (OSINT) data used to compile and share personal data on public forums anonymously. | Check yourself to see what you are sharing publicly |
Newly Identified Defendants
The arena of International Law, Digital crime and Money creates an absolute boiling pot of complex, interconnected issues that can sometimes be difficult to understand. The case of Microsoft Corporation, Plaintiff verses Defendants in a Civil Action No. 1-24-cv-2323 in Virginia USA where the plaintiff disabled the abuse of their system and then took legal action is bedtime story reading.
The defendants were truly global and included end-users of a hacked system. Defendants were named and shamed but apparently the legal counsel of the plaintiff had personal information leaked publicly (Doxing).
So much for privacy.
No one in the case is off-limits and brings a point that privacy is a gargantuan task nowadays where even high-level operatives are vulnerable to attack and exploitation.
Explicit bias on your face
Explicit bias is often expressed openly and can manifest in various forms, including discriminatory behaviour, language, unfair decision-making, or competition in plain sight. 7+ million viewers witnessed a loaded test where Candidate 1 had bugs over her mouth and Candidate 2 bugs were at chin level.
Both candidates apparently had the same number of bugs in their helmets but the evidence suggests this was not the case.
Candidate 1 was never going to win.