Cindy Cohn | Electronic Frontier Foundation | Source URL The recent arrest of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange surprised many by hinging on one charge: a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) charge for a single, unsuccessful attempt to reverse engineer a password. This might not be the only charge Assange […]
Boing Boing | Source URL Back in 2017, the Norwegian Consumer Council published a damning report on the privacy leaks from kids’ “smart watches,” a parade of horrors that included allowing unauthorized third parties to trace your kid’s location, and also to covertly eavesdrop through the watches’ microphones and bark creepy orders […]
Mass Private I | Source URL For years, law enforcement has been claiming that drones will only be used for natural disasters, crime scene investigations, car accidents and rescue operations. That is the bill of goods, being sold to the public but it is all a lie. A perfect example […]
In a major ethical leap for the tech world, Chinese start-ups have built algorithms that the government uses to track members of a largely Muslim minority group. Paul Mozur | The New York Times | Source URL The Chinese government has drawn wide international condemnation for its harsh crackdown on […]
The tech giant records people’s locations worldwide. Now, investigators are using it to find suspects and witnesses near crimes, running the risk of snaring the innocent. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries | The New York Times | Source URL When detectives in a Phoenix suburb arrested a warehouse worker in a murder investigation […]
Tyler Durden | ZeroHedge | Source URL 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 […]
Futurism | Source URL Super Soldiers According to a report in the official magazine of its Defense Ministry, Russian “supersoldiers” are able to use “parapsychology” techniques to crash enemy computers, access the minds of foreign soldiers, and read documents inside locked safes — abilities they gained, according to the article, from telepathic […]
International Man | Source URL In 2015, a 16-year-old student from Jiangsu, China, tried to board a train. She couldn’t even purchase a ticket. The student, Zhong Pei, tried enrolling in classes at her university. But she was not allowed to do that either. Zhong had committed a serious crime: […]
Megan Wollerton | cNet | Source URL The state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act prevents Sony from selling it there. I’m watching Aibo, Sony’s robo-dog, scuttle around the office. Its mechanical joints make slow, noisy work of it on the concrete floor, but I can’t help but be mildly heart-warmed. I’d […]
Patrick Tucker | DefenseOne | Source URL Worries about deep fakes — machine-manipulated videos of celebrities and world leaders purportedly saying or doing things that they really didn’t — are quaint compared to a new threat: doctored images of the Earth itself. China is the acknowledged leader in using an emerging […]
Bloomberg | Source URL Air passengers at a growing number of U.S. airports will no longer need to remove electronics, liquids, and other items from their carry-on luggage at security checkpoints as the Transportation Security Administration rolls out new technology. The TSA took a major step in a broader plan […]
Mass Private I | Source URL The push to turn America’s cities into Chinese-style surveillance networks has found a new partner in Detroit, Michigan. The only difference between what is happening in San Diego and what is happening in Detroit is, they are not using the same smart street lights […]
