Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
DHS Plan for Face Scanning at Airports Sparks Alarm
April 24th, 2019Via: The Hill: Lawmakers and civil liberties advocates are calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt plans to begin using facial recognition technology on nearly all departing air passengers within the next four years. The agency’s plan has reignited the fight over the sensitive technology. Critics say facial recognition technology is not […]
U.S. Government Spent Over $500m on Fake Al-Qaeda Propaganda Videos that Tracked Location of Viewers
April 22nd, 2019My guess is that even I would be shocked if we knew the extent of America’s ongoing PSYOP with regard to media. Via: Independent: A former contractor for a UK-based public relations firm says that the Pentagon paid more than half a billion dollars for the production and dissemination of fake Al-Qaeda videos that portrayed […]
We’re All Being Judged By a Secret ‘Trustworthiness’ Score
April 15th, 2019Via: Slashdot: Nearly everything we buy, how we buy, and where we’re buying from is secretly fed into AI-powered verification services that help companies guard against credit-card and other forms of fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal. More than 16,000 signals are analyzed by a service called Sift, which generates a “Sift score” ranging […]
2 million Kiwis Have Police Alert on Their Names
April 15th, 2019Via: New Zealand Herald: Nearly two million people appear in a New Zealand police intelligence system with an alert against their name, inquiries by the Otago Daily Times have revealed. Those in the database are generally flagged without their knowledge, and a leading security analyst says the broad sweep of the system raises privacy concerns. […]
Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police
April 13th, 2019Via: New York Times: The warrants, which draw on an enormous Google database employees call Sensorvault, turn the business of tracking cellphone users’ locations into a digital dragnet for law enforcement. In an era of ubiquitous data gathering by tech companies, it is just the latest example of how personal information — where you go, […]
A Researcher Needed Three Hours to Identify Me From My DNA
April 12th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: Using just my DNA, a genealogist was able to identify me in three and a half hours. It wasn’t hard. I’d previously sent a DNA sample to the genetic testing company 23andMe Inc. and then uploaded my data anonymously to a genealogy website. Researcher Michelle Trostler was able to access my data from […]
Austria Considering Requiring User Identities for Online Platforms
April 11th, 2019Via: The Local: Austria said Wednesday it was considering a law to make it mandatory for big internet platforms to register their users and deprive those behind hate posts of anonymity. “Unfortunately there have been an increasing number of clear violations, denigrations and humiliations online in the past under the cover of anonymity. That’s why […]
Amazon Workers Listening to the Inane Ramblings of Alexa Users to Train AI
April 10th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as “Taylor Swift” and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist. Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a […]
In Trade Wars of 200 Years Ago, the Pirates Were Americans
April 7th, 2019Intellectual property theft!? *pfft* Look into some of the early American fortunes and you’ll find a different sort of piracy. See, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips: Although later generations have taken a glossier view, the Revolution was another grand intermingling of public purpose and private profit—and as […]
Amazon Wants to Launch Thousands of Satellites for Broadband Internet Service
April 4th, 2019Via: CNBC: Amazon is planning to build a network of more than 3,000 satellites federal filings reveal, in an ambitious attempt to provide global internet access. Known as Project Kuiper, the move represents the latest space ambition from Jeff Bezos. Amazon has previously announced its cloud business will build a network of satellite facilities on […]
