Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
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 […]
Renegade DEA Mass Surveillance Operations
March 29th, 2019“It’s just like laundering money – you work it backwards to make it clean.” Via: Nextgov: The Drug Enforcement Administration skirted numerous legal checks on a trio of bulk data collection programs dating back to the early 1990s, according to an internal watchdog. In a heavily redacted, 144-page report published Thursday, the Justice Department Inspector […]
How Android Phones Keep Tabs On Our Every Move
March 29th, 2019I wouldn’t encourage the use of Apple’s mobile devices as an alternative, but Android is essentially malware. Via: El País: As a consumer, you buy a new Android cellphone. It could be any brand, but it is likely to be an Android as they account for more than 80% of today’s cellphone market. You open […]
Logic Signal Analyzer on Intel Processors Would Allow Spyware Operations at Lowest Level Possible
March 29th, 2019Via: ZDNet: At the Black Hat Asia 2019 security conference, security researchers from Positive Technologies disclosed the existence of a previously unknown and undocumented feature in Intel chipsets. Called Intel Visualization of Internal Signals Architecture (Intel VISA), Positive Technologies researchers Maxim Goryachy and Mark Ermolov said this is a new utility included in modern Intel […]
Google Is Conducting a Secret “Performance Review” of Its Censored China Search Project
March 27th, 2019Via: The Intercept: Google executives are carrying out a secret internal assessment of work on a censored search engine for China, The Intercept has learned. A small group of top managers at the internet giant are conducting a “performance review” of the controversial effort to build the search platform, known as Dragonfly, which was designed […]
