Black Hat Briefings, Usa 2007 [audio] Presentations From The Security Conference.

Our right to privacy is under attack today. Actually, no one denies our right to privacy. However, in reality, this right is being eroded more and more as every minute passes. Some of this has to do with the war on terror, but much of it simply has to do with the fact that our online actions can and are being recorded in minute detail. In this presentation we describe some concrete dangers that arise out of this situation and show that the uncomfortable feeling we have when our privacy is compromised is the least of our problems. We also show that a full understanding of these concrete dangers is crucial for coming up with adequate privacy-preserving solutions. Having argued that the erosion of our privacy is a real danger, we discuss solutions to preserving privacy online. Some of these solutions are merely technical, like anonymous web surfing, but solve only a small part of the problem. For example, anonymous web surfing does not help if a user has to authenticate herself in order to access an online se