Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
The Future Will Be Recorded, on Your Smart Speaker: Always-On Corporate Listening Devices, “Are Certainly Our Future”
June 9th, 2019Mmm hmm. Via: Bloomberg: Amazon’s patent application for an always-on feature for Alexa, its popular voice-activated personal assistant, has raised a lot of concern. “If you’re already freaked out by the privacy implications of smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo,” says Gizmodo, “we have some bad news.” A headline in ScienceAlert is even more direct: “Newly […]
The Future Of School Safety Includes Round-The-Clock Surveillance Of Students
June 7th, 2019Via: TechDirt: To go to school is to be surveilled, on campus and off. The average school hosts a number of cameras, and the average school administration is always looking for more ways to keep tabs on students, even after they’ve gone home. The move towards pervasive surveillance of off-campus activities is generally justified with […]
Trails Made by Starlink Satellites
June 7th, 2019“Please note that the density of these satellites is significantly higher in the days after launch (as seen here) and also that the satellites will diminish in brightness as they reach their final orbital altitude.” I would have added: Please note that this is from 25 of the first batch of 60 satellites of a […]
Project Kuiper Initiative: Amazon Will Spend Billions to Build Satellite Internet Service
June 6th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: Amazon.com Inc. plans to spend billions of dollars building a network of thousands of satellites to provide broadband internet service, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said. The Project Kuiper initiative, disclosed earlier this year, is the type of big bet the company needs to keep making as its massive scale renders smaller endeavors […]
Police Building Surveillance Networks with Amazon’s Ring Doorbells
June 5th, 2019Via: Cnet: While residential neighborhoods aren’t usually lined with security cameras, the smart doorbell’s popularity has essentially created private surveillance networks powered by Amazon and promoted by police departments. Police departments across the country, from major cities like Houston to towns with fewer than 30,000 people, have offered free or discounted Ring doorbells to citizens, […]
Apple Forces Developers to Place Its Login Button Above Google, Facebook
June 4th, 2019Just a few days ago, someone was asking me how to sign into the AirBNB app on her iPhone without using Google or Facebook credentials. I thought that there would be an option to enter her email and password, but there wasn’t. That app forces users to supply either Google or Facebook credentials. I don’t […]
Astronomers Concerned About Starlink Light Pollution
May 27th, 2019Well, it’s not just me. Via: Forbes: SpaceX had kept the logistics of each satellite under wraps prior to the launch, but following the launch it was revealed that each satellite had a relatively large solar panel, perfect for not only gathering but reflecting sunlight back to Earth. This means anyone looking up at the […]
Starlink: Say Goodbye to the Night Sky As You Knew It
May 25th, 2019My children and I like to look at the stars on most clear nights. There is no ambient light pollution where we are so the views are breathtaking. I’ll have to tell them to try to remember the sky as it is now, because it will soon be crisscrossed by thousands of satellites. Ironically, we’ve […]
U.S. Military to Trawl Through 350 Billion Social Media Messages
May 25th, 2019“Individual users won’t be identified in the research, according to the Navy.” Via: Bloomberg: The U.S. military plans to analyze 350 billion social-media posts from around the world to help it track how popular movements evolve. A tender for the project, based at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, calls for screening messages from […]
Robots Conduct Daily Health Inspections of Schoolchildren in China
May 23rd, 2019Wow! Via: New Scientist: Please stand in front of Walklake for your examination. This health checking robot takes just 3 seconds to diagnose a variety of ailments in children, including conjunctivitis, and hand, foot and mouth disease. Over 2000 preschools in China, with children aged between 2 and 6, are using Walklake every morning to […]
