September 16, 2021

The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history (The Guardian)

The Guardian: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history . “It was a routine bike ride around the neighborhood that landed Zachary McCoy in the crosshairs of the Gainesville, Florida, police department. In January 2020, an alarming email from Google landed in McCoy’s inbox. Police were requesting his user data, the company told him, and McCoy had seven days to go to court and block its release. McCoy later found out the request was part of an investigation into the burglary of a nearby home the year before.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 15, 2021

Hong Kong Free Press: Google handed user data to Hong Kong authorities despite pledge after security law was enacted

Hong Kong Free Press: Google handed user data to Hong Kong authorities despite pledge after security law was enacted. “Google has provided user data to the Hong Kong government in response to three requests made between July and December last year, making it the first US tech giant to disclose its compliance with requests from the local authorities for user data after the national security law was enacted last June.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 15, 2021

Lifehacker: 6 of the Best Internet Browsers for Protecting Your Privacy

Lifehacker: 6 of the Best Internet Browsers for Protecting Your Privacy. “Fingerprinting is a relatively new threat to online privacy, allowing companies to know your browsing fingerprint data. This can consist of your browser version, type, operating system, time-zone, location, plug-ins, fonts, and a lot more. There’s so much data here that the cumulated data can be used to identify a single user. So what can you do about it? If you want to go nuclear, you can build your own tracking blocker using Raspberry Pi. Or you can install privacy extensions like Decentraleyes, uBlock Origin, or DuckDuckGo. But first, you should start with a browser that already has good privacy features built-in (so no Google Chrome, we’re afraid).”

Useful Stuff 0
September 14, 2021

NBC News: Hackers are leaking children’s data — and there’s little parents can do

NBC News: Hackers are leaking children’s data — and there’s little parents can do. “Some schools contacted about the leaks appeared unaware of the problem. And even after schools are able to resume operations following an attack, parents have little recourse when their children’s information is leaked. Some of the data is personal, like medical conditions or family financial statuses. Other pieces of data, such as Social Security numbers or birthdays, are permanent indicators of who they are, and their theft can set up a child for a lifetime of potential identity theft.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 10, 2021

Wired: 20 Years After 9/11, Surveillance Has Become a Way of Life

Wired: 20 Years After 9/11, Surveillance Has Become a Way of Life. “It’s harder to get lost amid constant tracking. It’s also harder to freely gather when the public spaces between home and work are stripped away. Known as third places, they are the connective tissue that stitches together the fabric of modern communities: the public park where teens can skateboard next to grandparents playing chess, the library where children can learn to read and unhoused individuals can find a digital lifeline. When third places vanish, as they have since the attacks, communities can falter.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 9, 2021

Wired: ProtonMail Amends Its Policy After Giving Up an Activist’s Data

Wired: ProtonMail Amends Its Policy After Giving Up an Activist’s Data. “As usual, the devil is in the details—ProtonMail’s original policy simply said that the service does not keep IP logs ‘by default.’ However, as a Swiss company, ProtonMail was obliged to comply with a Swiss court’s demand that it begin logging IP address and browser fingerprint information for a particular ProtonMail account.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
September 9, 2021

The Guardian: Study finds growing government use of sensitive data to ‘nudge’ behaviour

The Guardian: Study finds growing government use of sensitive data to ‘nudge’ behaviour. “A new form of ‘influence government’, which uses sensitive personal data to craft campaigns aimed at altering behaviour has been ‘supercharged’ by the rise of big tech firms, researchers have warned. National and local governments have turned to targeted advertisements on search engines and social media platforms to try to ‘nudge’ the behaviour of the country at large, the academics found.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 8, 2021

Revealed: LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop (The Guardian)

The Guardian: Revealed: LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop . “Copies of the ‘field interview cards’ that police complete when they question civilians reveal that LAPD officers are instructed to record a civilian’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media accounts, alongside basic biographical information. An internal memo further shows that the police chief, Michel Moore, told employees that it was critical to collect the data for use in ‘investigations, arrests, and prosecutions’”, and warned that supervisors would review cards to ensure they were complete. The documents, which were obtained by the not-for-profit organization the Brennan Center for Justice, have raised concerns about civil liberties and the potential for mass surveillance of civilians without justification.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 8, 2021

Dallas Morning News: Texas schools are surveilling students online, often without their knowledge or consent

Dallas Morning News: Texas schools are surveilling students online, often without their knowledge or consent. “Texas schools are rapidly scaling up the use of technology that monitors email, web history and social media posts of potentially millions of students, often without their knowledge or consent, a Dallas Morning News investigation has found. Legal and privacy experts have long raised concerns about this technology and questioned its effectiveness in detecting potential threats. Despite those worries, Texas’ schools have spent millions of tax dollars on these services since 2015.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 7, 2021

Pattaya Mail: Thai Public Health Ministry’s database of 16 million patients hacked, probed

Pattaya Mail: Thai Public Health Ministry’s database of 16 million patients hacked, probed. “Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has ordered investigation into the report that the database of 16 million patients under the supervision of the Public Health Ministry was hacked. Mr Anutin said he received an initial report that the incident happened in Phetchabun province and people should not panic while concerned officials were responding to it.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 7, 2021

Wall Street Journal: Smartwatches Track Our Health. Smart Toilets Aren’t Too Far Behind.

Wall Street Journal: Smartwatches Track Our Health. Smart Toilets Aren’t Too Far Behind. . -10,000 points for not using the headline SILICON VALLEY POO-POO’S SMART DEVICES. “Toilet makers say that their products can provide medical-grade results for some vital signs and urine tests, but a smart toilet that can analyze the broader chemical makeup of waste is likely further off. Developers will have to work out how to prepare samples for analysis and refill the chemicals needed to run the reaction, as well as make the toilet cost-effective, biochemists and diagnostic experts say. Another key barrier is privacy.”

Research & Opinion 0
September 7, 2021

Ars Technica: Microsoft Outlook shows real person’s contact info for IDN phishing emails

Ars Technica: Microsoft Outlook shows real person’s contact info for IDN phishing emails. “This week, infosec professional and pentester DobbyWanKenobi demonstrated how they were able to trick the Address Book component of Microsoft Office to display a real person’s contact info for a spoofed sender email address by using IDNs. Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are domains consisting of a mixed Unicode character set, such as letters from both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets that could make the domain appear identical to a regular ASCII domain.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 6, 2021

TechCrunch: ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities

TechCrunch: ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities. “ProtonMail, a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French authorities managed to obtain the IP address of a French activist who was using the online service. The company has communicated widely about the incident, stating that it doesn’t log IP addresses by default and it only complies with local regulation — in that case Swiss law. While ProtonMail didn’t cooperate with French authorities, French police sent a request to Swiss police via Europol to force the company to obtain the IP address of one of its users.”

Security & Legal Issues 0

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