CNBC: Privacy concerns a challenge for Trump administration’s effort to track Covid vaccinations. “The Trump administration’s plan to coordinate existing vaccine registries into a national database for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout is raising privacy concerns among some immunization officials who say the data should remain only with states.”
Mashable: Activists demand Google open up about user data shared with police. “A coalition of 59 civil rights, labor, and civil society organizations sent an open letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai Tuesday, demanding the company be more transparent when it comes to how often it complies with law enforcement requests for user data. What’s […]
Vice: Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company’s Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups. “Dozens of leaked documents from Amazon’s Global Security Operations Center reveal the company’s reliance on Pinkerton operatives to spy on warehouse workers and the extensive monitoring of labor unions, environmental activists, and other social movements.”
Vice: How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps. “The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app […]
ZDNet: Google ‘formally’ bans stalkerware apps from the Play Store. “Google has updated its Play Store rules to impose a ‘formal’ ban on stalkerware apps, but the company has left a pretty huge loophole in place for stalkerware to be uploaded on the official store as child-tracking applications.”
Citizen Digital: Bloggers, social media users with huge following to be ‘monitored by the state’- Ugandan gov’t orders . “The Ugandan Communication Commission has asked social media users and bloggers with a large following to ‘register for monitoring by the state’. Those who fit the bill are required to have registered with the commission before […]
New York Times: Forget TikTok. China’s Powerhouse App Is WeChat, and Its Power Is Sweeping.. “For most Chinese people in China, WeChat is a sort of all-in-one app: a way to swap stories, talk to old classmates, pay bills, coordinate with co-workers, post envy-inducing vacation photos, buy stuff and get news. For the millions of […]
Reuters: Philippine police draw flak for plan to monitor social media on quarantine. “Philippine police drew criticism from netizens and activists on Sunday for a plan to monitor social media to enforce quarantine rules, with critics accusing the authorities of authoritarianism and double standards.”
Motherboard: Amazon Is Spying on Its Workers in Closed Facebook Groups, Internal Reports Show. “Amazon is monitoring the conversations of Amazon Flex drivers in dozens of private Facebook groups in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain, according to an internal web tool and reports left on the open internet and viewed by Motherboard. […]
Motherboard: CBP Now Has a Massive Searchable Database for Devices Seized at the Border. “Every year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents seize tens of thousands of cell phones, laptops, and other devices from travelers at or near the country’s borders, often without charging them with a specific crime. Those seizures give the agency […]
CNET: Secret Service reportedly paid to access phone location data. “The Secret Service reportedly paid for a product called Locate X, which allows the agency to access location data from apps on people’s phones. The agency was thus able to bypass measures like obtaining a warrant or court order to get that kind of information, […]
Stockholm Center for Freedom: Turkey investigated 14,186 social media accounts, taking legal action against 6,743 of them in first 7 months. “Turkish police investigated 14,186 social media accounts in the first seven months of 2020, taking legal action against 6,743 of them on charges of spreading terrorist propaganda, inciting the public to hatred and enmity, […]
Mashable: Google smart speakers secretly updated to listen for more than wake words. “The company admitted Monday, following a report by Protocol, that it had updated an unspecified number of Google Assistant-enabled devices to respond to auditory cues beyond the user-specified wake phrase. Google told Protocol this was a mistake that was quickly fixed, but […]
NBC Chicago: Chicago Will Check Social Media to Help Enforce Travel Order: CDPH Commissioner. “Chicago health officials could check your social media if they believe you may have violated the city’s travel order. The city’s top public health official said Tuesday that social media could be used as evidence to help enforce a quarantine requirement […]
ZDNet: Fawkes protects your identity from facial recognition systems, pixel by pixel. “In a paper (.PDF) due to be presented at the USENIX Security 2020 symposium, researchers Shawn Shan, Emily Wenger, Jiayun Zhang, Huiying Li, Haitao Zheng, and Ben Zhao introduce ‘Fawkes,’ software designed to ‘help individuals inoculate their images against unauthorized facial recognition models.’ […]