

Googlers, get a privacy screen for your laptops - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/12/holiday-psa-googlers-get-a-privacy-screen-for-your-laptops.ars

======
niels_olson
The legacy of pen-and-ink classification schemes comes with some flaws. In the
military, if it's that important to be stamped, you shouldn't be reading it in
a public square at all. But the "confidential" stamp is what made it seem
juicy. Without that stamp, the journalist wouldn't have been interested.

But, like most classified documents, I think this also bears out just how much
we over-secretize. I like Assange's view on this: we seem to use secrets to
maintain our own positions within certain networks more than we use them for
anything like "the greater good".

~~~
Hixie
The standards community is like this too. Just consider how many W3C working
groups are secret, for example. You wouldn't believe how much push-back I get
when I ask for everything to be public.

(The W3C even has a second level of secrecy known as "team", which even W3C
members who pay $60,000+ every year don't get access to.)

~~~
pyre
I don't know the reasons that the W3C state, but I can see _a_ reason for
making some amount of the process behind closed doors: the 802.11 'pre-n'
debacle. Vendors taking incomplete standards and running with them before they
are mature enough to use. Of course there is also the opposite danger: vendors
implementing their own 'standards' because the standards body is taking too
long behind closed doors.

~~~
Hixie
The implementors _are_ the working group. Standards organisations don't make
up standards without the implementors. :-) (At least, not successfully. Some
do try.)

Secret working groups aren't secret from the participants, so it wouldn't make
any difference to the case you describe. Indeed, the 802.11 working group
_does_ work in secret, yet still had the "debacle" you mention. (The IEEE as a
whole is not a very open standards organisation.)

Also, hardware standards are a bit more difficult, but in software, you really
want to have experimental implementations long before standardisation.
Otherwise, you end up with technologies that really don't work so well in
practice. But that's separate from the issue of secrecy.

------
eli
When I was briefly a tech journalist, my boss showed me a great trick: Go to
the lobby of the hotel during a conference and just _listen_. It's amazing how
many people forget that others can hear everything they say into their
bluetooth headset.

~~~
joezydeco
Forget the lobby, head to the bar. You get a lot more uncensored information
and opinions after a few drinks.

~~~
eli
Very true. Even better are open-bar parties.

Here's my absolute favorite trick, though: Blow past the PR people, sales
people, and models who typically staff tradeshow booths and find the lone
engineer. Ask questions like, "What's your favorite cool feature that _didn't_
make it into this release?" or "If you had 6 more months to work on it, what
would you have done?"

Even engineers/product managers with some public relations training can't
resist talking about that thing they spent months working on, but didn't make
it into the final release.

~~~
arethuza
[http://www.funnysalescartoons.com/photo/dilbert-sales-
engine...](http://www.funnysalescartoons.com/photo/dilbert-sales-engineer-
tells?context=latest)

~~~
yuhong
Yea, I know. It is the PR 2.0 age, trying to control the message is just
obsolete and fundamentally flawed nowadays. Believe me, this is not the only
problem it causes.

------
ax0n
Everywhere I go, I see people who look at confidential information on laptops
that are facing a crowdfull of eyeballs. Better yet, many of them get up and
leave for a smoke or a piss without locking their screen, leaving not only the
juicy bits there for all to read but corporate hardware unattended and ripe
for the picking. I also hear people divulge way too much information in public
(usually while talking on a phone) such as routing numbers, credit card
details and the like. People need more than a privacy screen. It's as if
situational awareness is some kind of lost art.

~~~
Groxx
How often is it exploited? Are preventative measures, which necessarily get in
your way at some times to some degree, worth it given that probability?

~~~
ax0n
[http://www.google.com/search?q=stolen+laptop&tbs=nws:1](http://www.google.com/search?q=stolen+laptop&tbs=nws:1)

~~~
sorbus
We're talking about information being stolen via evesdropping or looking over
shoulders, not by physically stealing the media the information is in. Linking
to the google news results for "stolen laptop" is therefor irrelevant.

~~~
ax0n
"leaving not only the juicy bits there for all to read but corporate hardware
unattended and ripe for the picking." was indeed one of the threats I
mentioned, and it happens all the time. It's relevant to at least part of the
discussion. "Shoulder Surfing" is very low-tech. How often it's exploited for
personal gain is anyone's guess. Is it really that hard to hit Windows-L when
you have to step away for a moment? To lower your voice (or better yet, find a
better time or place) before yelling your account numbers into that mobile
phone of yours despite the fact that you're in a quiet coffee shop? To take
one of the many open seats where your back is to a wall before you spent hours
upon hours poring through corporate IP on that massive 18" laptop screen?
Sure,it's a trade-off sometimes. It's not always quiet and the good "privacy
friendly" seating isn't always available, and sometimes you forget to lock
your screen but I see stuff that boggles my mind almost daily.

------
dazzawazza
I friend of mine at Google UK was issued with a privacy screen for his
standard issue laptop and told on day one that he MUST use it whenever in a
public space.

It was quite good. Sitting next to him in the pub I could see about 5% of his
screen.

~~~
shawnee_
I bet there is a decent-sized market with untapped demand for laptops /
"tablets" (<http://paulgraham.com/tablets.html>) with a built-in privacy
screen mechanism. The hardware itself could be the screen, either by making
the screen part of the case itself, or through the display which would enable
people to read only from certain angles.

~~~
kmfrk
The "privacy screen" is a physical polarization filter - basically a fabric
you put on your screen however you like.

I don't know of any electrical/mechanical process that could shift the state
of fabric to block light at most angles.

If you buy a crappy laptop from a couple of years ago, you won't even have to
buy a filter to render your screen unreadable from an angle that isn't
perpendicular to the screen. :)

------
boredguy8
Something like this privacy blanket, perhaps? For looking at "classified
documents"?

[http://4.media.todaysbigthing.cvcdn.com/99/79/8626236317aa13...](http://4.media.todaysbigthing.cvcdn.com/99/79/8626236317aa13c4121a51b540613608.jpg)

~~~
reledi
I could see some laptops overheating with that, besides it looking ridiculous
and making your activity even more suspicious.

------
rdl
It is so weird being in the commercial world now where people basically don't
seem to care about things like this. I never do anything on airplanes or in
cafes except read books, watch movies, etc., or other public-source material.
Even personal/social email seems too personal to have on a screen in a shared
environment. Open plan offices shared with people outside my company are just
as bad, but at least then it is sometimes possible to hide in a corner or
telephone closet. I've often ended up going outside to sit in my car to make
phone calls.

------
nigelk
When I was there it was standard practice to use a privacy screen when at
conferences or travelling, and they were delivered to your desk for free if
you asked.

Some people just don't use common sense though.

------
poikniok
"The Googler (I'll just use the masculine pronoun for convenience's sake) was
sitting with his seat back up, while his neighbor's seat was leaned all the
way back. This left a huge gap in between the seats, so that merely by looking
straight ahead and turning my eyes slightly to one side I could see almost all
of his laptop screen."

The author of this article is obviously lying, because if his seat was up and
his neighbor's was back there would be no way to see his screen from behind.
The author obviously didn't think this through well enough.

~~~
jonhendry
It might work if the writer was one row back and two seats to the side of the
Googler, and the person in front of the writer had their seat back up.

------
calbear81
What about a software program that adds some type of filter layer on screen
that can only be seen through special glasses that you purchase?

~~~
pyre
Whatever happened to the idea of making the glasses the display?

~~~
jonhendry
You can get them. They aren't especially pleasant to use.

------
fleitz
Next thing you know people will stop forgetting confidential documents in the
printer.

~~~
kmfrk
They don't even have to do that; if the scanner has any sort of data storage,
you can just check that out once in a while.

------
DufusM
Wow, journalists are pretty much like smug spies. It is disconcerting that I
have to be constantly distrustful of people around me just in case they are
interested in digging around into any of the organizations I belong to.

~~~
swolchok
Not really -- either the information should be revealed to the public (in
which case you don't have to be distrustful of them) or it shouldn't (in which
case you should prevent them from learning).

