May 31, 2021

Chiang Rai Times: Thai Government Seeks to Link Peoples ID to Social Media Accounts

Chiang Rai Times: Thai Government Seeks to Link Peoples ID to Social Media Accounts. “China is widely infamous for its public surveillance tactics and now Thailand’s government wants to take a page out of their playbook. Thai Security agencies and Thailand’s Digital Economy and Society (DES) Ministry are now seeking ways to supervise peoples usage of social media. The Thai government is now considering linking users’ registration on social media platforms with their ID cards, alleging its as a way to combat fake news, illicit content and fraud.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
May 19, 2021

Facial recognition, fake identities and digital surveillance tools: Inside the post office’s covert internet operations program (Yahoo News)

Yahoo News: Facial recognition, fake identities and digital surveillance tools: Inside the post office’s covert internet operations program. “The post office’s law enforcement arm has faced intense congressional scrutiny in recent weeks over its Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), which tracks social media posts of Americans and shares that information with other law enforcement agencies. Yet the program is much broader in scope than previously known and includes analysts who assume fake identities online, use sophisticated intelligence tools and employ facial recognition software, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Yahoo News.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
May 17, 2021

CNET: Apple reportedly makes Chinese customers’ data less secure

CNET: Apple reportedly makes Chinese customers’ data less secure. “Apple CEO Tim Cook frequently pitches his company as a bastion of security and privacy. He says privacy should be a human right, and he points to the company’s frequent inclusion of encryption and other protective technologies as proof of that. But The New York Times, in a story published Monday, detailed how Apple has increasingly deferred to demands by the Chinese government, ultimately weakening the privacy and speech of users there.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
May 7, 2021

Qantara: Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s monitoring of the digital realm

Qantara: Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s monitoring of the digital realm. “Having taken control of the traditional media, Turkish President Erdogan is now extending his reach to the social networks. A new law has been passed to rein in major digital players Twitter and Google. But the government’s attempt to dominate public opinion is producing some bizarre outgrowths, reports Ronald Meinardus from Istanbul.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
April 24, 2021

The Diplomat: Social Media Is Blurring the Lines of National Sovereignty

The Diplomat: Social Media Is Blurring the Lines of National Sovereignty. “During the Cold War, Soviet citizens were banned from traveling outside their homeland. Nowadays, for economic reasons, authoritarian states have greater motivations for tolerating, and sometimes even encouraging, their populations’ mobility. Online communication has become a platform from which anyone can speak. But equally, integrated communication may provide new opportunities for governments to suppress voices abroad. Unless regulated, surveillance technologies and disinformation techniques will only become more effective in manipulating or silencing public opinion.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
April 22, 2021

Yahoo News: The Postal Service is running a ‘covert operations program’ that monitors Americans’ social media posts

Yahoo News: The Postal Service is running a ‘covert operations program’ that monitors Americans’ social media posts. “The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News. The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as ‘inflammatory’ postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
April 7, 2021

Washington Post: How America’s surveillance networks helped the FBI catch the Capitol mob

Washington Post: How America’s surveillance networks helped the FBI catch the Capitol mob. “Debra Maimone pulled down her American flag mask for a moment on Jan. 6 and gazed at the unruly mob of supporters of President Donald Trump overrunning the U.S. Capitol. ‘Put your mask on,’ warned her fiance, as the couple stood beneath an unblinking array of surveillance cameras. ‘I don’t want them to see you.’ It was too late.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
March 25, 2021

Protocol: Beijing sours on facial recognition, unless it’s the one doing it

Protocol: Beijing sours on facial recognition, unless it’s the one doing it . “Hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras throughout China have been hoovering up facial recognition data without notifying the people attached to the faces. Now, the companies behind the tech are finally under the microscope after a blistering recent exposé — one carried by a major mouthpiece for Beijing, the same government known for its own untrammeled intrusions into private life.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
March 23, 2021

Motherboard: Amazon Delivery Drivers Forced to Sign ‘Biometric Consent’ Form or Lose Job

Motherboard: Amazon Delivery Drivers Forced to Sign ‘Biometric Consent’ Form or Lose Job. “Amazon delivery drivers nationwide have to sign a ‘biometric consent’ form this week that grants the tech behemoth permission to use AI-powered cameras to access drivers’ location, movement, and biometric data. If the company’s delivery drivers, who number around 75,000 in the United States, refuse to sign these forms, they lose their jobs. The form requires drivers to agree to facial recognition and other biometric data collection within the trucks they drive.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
March 15, 2021

Wired: The UK Is Secretly Testing a Controversial Web Snooping Tool

Wired: The UK Is Secretly Testing a Controversial Web Snooping Tool. “The tests, which are being run by two unnamed internet service providers, the Home Office, and the National Crime Agency, are being conducted under controversial surveillance laws introduced at the end of 2016. If successful, data collection systems could be rolled out nationally, creating one of the most powerful and controversial surveillance tools used by any democratic nation.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
March 12, 2021

SecurityWeek: Flaws in Apple Location Tracking System Could Lead to User Identification

SecurityWeek: Flaws in Apple Location Tracking System Could Lead to User Identification. “Vulnerabilities identified in offline finding (OF) — Apple’s proprietary crowd-sourced location tracking system — could be abused for user identification, researchers said in a report released this month. Introduced in 2019, the system relies on the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology for the detection of ‘lost’ devices, and on the Internet connection of so-called ‘finder’ devices to report on their location back to the owner.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
February 16, 2021

India Today: Searching porn on Google in UP? Govt will now monitor and send messages to internet users

India Today: Searching porn on Google in UP? Govt will now monitor and send messages to internet users. UP in this case is Uttar Pradesh, a state in India. “The UP Police on Saturday said that a new team called the ‘UP Women Powerline 1090’ has been set up to monitor people’s internet activities. The team will get alerts if a person searches for porn on the internet. Following this, the Police will reach out to the person to prevent ‘crimes against women’. “

Security & Legal Issues 0
December 9, 2020

Mashable: Activists demand Google open up about user data shared with police

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 more, the letter signatories — which include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, and the Brennan Center for Justice — want Google’s help in resisting what they see as the ‘alarming growth’ in searches carried out by law enforcement.”

Security & Legal Issues 0

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