Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Britain: Dementia Patients to be Tracked by Smart Meters
February 4th, 2019Just dementia patients… *wink* Via: DailyMail: The NHS is to use energy smart meters to monitor dementia patients in their homes. The devices will track patients’ daily routines, such as when they boil the kettle, cook dinner or turn the washing machine on. They will flag up any sudden change in behaviour which could indicate […]
One Of The Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working With The FBI
February 1st, 2019Via: Buzzfeed: Family Tree DNA, one of the largest private genetic testing companies whose home-testing kits enable people to trace their ancestry and locate relatives, is working with the FBI and allowing agents to search its vast genealogy database in an effort to solve violent crime cases, BuzzFeed News has learned. Federal and local law […]
Inside the UAE’s Secret Hacking Team of U.S. Mercenaries
February 1st, 2019Via: Reuters: Two weeks after leaving her position as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. National Security Agency in 2014, Lori Stroud was in the Middle East working as a hacker for an Arab monarchy. She had joined Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to […]
Google Manipulates Users Into Constant Tracking
February 1st, 2019Via: Forbrukerrådet: Google tracks users through “Location History” and “Web & App Activity”, which are settings integrated into all Google accounts. For users of mobile phones with Android, such as Samsung and Huawei phones, this tracking is particularly difficult to avoid. – Google is processing incredibly detailed and extensive personal data without proper legal grounds, […]
Prisons Across the U.S. Are Quietly Building Databases of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints
January 31st, 2019Via: The Intercept: In New York and other states across the country, authorities are acquiring technology to extract and digitize the voices of incarcerated people into unique biometric signatures, known as voice prints. Prison authorities have quietly enrolled hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people’s voice prints into large-scale biometric databases. Computer algorithms then draw on […]
China’s Military-Run Space Station in Argentina Is a ‘Black Box’
January 31st, 2019China – Argentina – Patagonia ground station: Outrage, spying, unspecified doom in the media. United States – Australia – Pine Gap: *crickets* Via: Reuters: The United States has long been worried about what it sees as China’s strategy to “militarize” space, according to one U.S. official, who added there was reason to be skeptical of […]
Smart Coolers: Now Your Groceries See You, Too
January 30th, 2019Via: The Atlantic: Walgreens is piloting a new line of “smart coolers”—fridges equipped with cameras that scan shoppers’ faces and make inferences on their age and gender. On January 14, the company announced its first trial at a store in Chicago in January, and plans to equip stores in New York and San Francisco with […]
Google’s Sidewalk Labs Plans to Package and Sell Location Data on Millions of Cellphones
January 29th, 2019Ah… It de-identifies the location of cellphone users. Mmm hmm. Via: The Intercept: Most of the data collected by urban planners is messy, complex, and difficult to represent. It looks nothing like the smooth graphs and clean charts of city life in urban simulator games like “SimCity.” A new initiative from Sidewalk Labs, the city-building […]
Pope Francis Unveils New ‘Click to Pray’ App
January 22nd, 2019Via: New York Post: The Holy Father launched an app called “Click to Pray” on Sunday that’ll allow the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics to join him in prayer. The pontiff has a profile on the Android and iOS app that shows Catholics around the globe what he’s currently praying for. Users can then click […]
‘The Goal Is to Automate Us’: Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
January 20th, 2019Via: Guardian: The headline story is that it’s not so much about the nature of digital technology as about a new mutant form of capitalism that has found a way to use tech for its purposes. The name Zuboff has given to the new variant is “surveillance capitalism”. It works by providing free services that […]
