Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
The USA Liberty Act
October 12th, 2017A double round o’ Freedom Fries for everyone! Via: Register: The US Senate Judiciary Committee has unveiled its answer to a controversial spying program run by the NSA and used by the FBI to fish for crime leads. Unsurprisingly, the proposed legislation [PDF] reauthorizes Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – which […]
Google’s Home Mini Needed a Software Patch to Stop Some of Them from Recording Everything
October 11th, 2017Mmm hmm. Via: The Verge: Categorize this under “one of the worst possible PR nightmares for a Google smart speaker.” According to Artem Russakovskii at Android Police, the Google Home Mini he was reviewing was randomly and near-constantly recording sounds in his home and transmitting them to Google. The company acknowledged the problem and is […]
Our Minds Can Be Hijacked: The Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia
October 6th, 2017Via: Guardian: There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity – even when the device is turned off. “Everyone is distracted,” Rosenstein […]
‘Australia Presses for More Facial Recognition in Terror Fight’
October 4th, 2017Via: New York Times: The Australian government wants to strengthen its counterterrorism efforts by making use of a fundamental part of all Australian citizens: their faces. On Thursday, at a national security meeting in Canberra, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is expected to pressure states and territories to hand over the driver’s license photos of every […]
Mystery Surrounds Metal Towers Popping Up In Tunnels & Bridges
September 27th, 2017Nuke detectors is the obvious guess. But if not that, then what? Via: CBS: Mysterious metal towers are popping up at local tunnels, and soon they’ll start appearing at bridges, too. But even people on the MTA board in charge of the towers can’t say why they’re being used or what’s in them, CBS2’s Dave […]
Japanese Banks Are Planning to Launch J-Coin, a Digital Currency Meant to Kill Off Cash
September 27th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review: Japan’s central bank is backing a scheme that could see the the cash-dependent country move toward a digital currency built on blockchain technology. The J Coin, as it’s to be called, is under development by a group of Japanese banks with the blessing of financial regulators. According to the Financial Times […]
Governments Are Testing Their Own Cryptocurrencies
September 25th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review: The people of Sweden are breaking up with cash. The number of banknotes and coins in circulation has fallen to its lowest level in three decades. Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, estimates that cash transactions made up only 15 percent of all retail transactions last year, down from 40 percent in 2010, […]
Shocker: U.S. Allies Don’t Trust NSA
September 21st, 2017Via: Reuters: An international group of cryptography experts has forced the U.S. National Security Agency to back down over two data encryption techniques it wanted set as global industry standards, reflecting deep mistrust among close U.S. allies. In interviews and emails seen by Reuters, academic and industry experts from countries including Germany, Japan and Israel […]
U.S. Navy/National Security Agency Submarine Flies Jolly Roger, “For Morale”
September 18th, 2017Via: Ottawa Citizen: US Navy Commander Corey Barker told the UK’s Daily Mail that the flag was flown for morale, and has no further significance. “There was no real reason for flying the flag, just a part of morale,” he explained. “When submarines come into and leave port they are authorized to fly flags as […]
Forget Equifax, Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
September 12th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: Just for a minute, imagine that hackers have gained access to a database containing sensitive information about hundreds of millions of people. In this totally hypothetical scenario, the theft would be comprehensive—including enough details to do real damage to those whose data had been exposed—and would involve a company that wasn’t widely recognized […]
