Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: December 4, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8DdL4nDO1I Featured: Privacy News Online - Week of December 4th, 2020 Amazon’s Ring moves even closer to becoming the perfect urban police surveillance system The increased prevalence of Amazon’s Ring…
The US government admits to using the Patriot Act to collect web browsing information
Letters between the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Senator Ron Wyden confirm that the United States government has used Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect web browsing…
CBP wants to create a facial recognition database of every non-US citizen traveler to the United States
U.S. Customs Border Protection (CBP) has filed a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that highlights their ongoing plans to create a facial recognition database with mugshots of all non-US citizen…
Amazon Sidewalk shares your home WiFi network with other Amazon devices unless you opt out
The Amazon Sidewalk program has officially launched in the United States: and it's opt-out. Amazon Sidewalk turns your home's Amazon Alexa device into a bridge device - a router that…
France rocked again by demonstrations against the new “Global Security Law”, which includes mass surveillance by police drones
For the second time in a week, demonstrations took place across France against a new "Global Security Law". The proposed legislation would bring in wide-ranging police surveillance in France, but…
Senator Wyden to introduce legislation to stop the IRS from spying on Americans
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been in hot water and under investigation by its oversight body for buying location information on American citizens without a warrant. Motherboard has seen…
Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: November 27, 2020
Featured: Privacy News Online - Week of November 27th, 2020 Official Trump 2020 App collected phone numbers from contact lists without consent and could sell that data New details about…
Amazon’s Ring moves even closer to becoming the perfect urban police surveillance system
Back in July last year, this blog wrote about Amazon's Ring series, whose key product is a small Internet-connected camera built into a doorbell. At that time, it was already…
Google sued for using 260mb of cellular data per month to track Android users without permission
Google is being sued by individuals that allege that the company uses cellular data without permission to send information back to Google. Google is facing a lawsuit that highlights just…
Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: November 20, 2020
Featured: Privacy News Online - Week of November 20th, 2020 Proposed FTC settlement is a disservice to Zoom customers, says Commissioner The FTC has released its proposed settlement with Zoom…
MacOS Big Sur(veillance) bypasses Firewall/VPN to tell Apple what programs you run on your computer
Some default Apple apps on MacOS Big Sur bypass any VPN or firewall rules set by the user to send information like what programs you run back to Apple. Namely,…
Canada unveils its new privacy legislation – with even bigger fines than the GDPR
As this blog has frequently noted, the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) plays a crucial role in the privacy world. It not only creates protections for privacy online in…
Official Trump 2020 App collected phone numbers from contact lists without consent and could sell that data
Phunware, the developers of the Official Trump 2020 App, is in dire financial straits due to a lawsuit with Uber. This has lead experts and media to question what will…
Proposed FTC settlement is a disservice to Zoom customers, says Commissioner
Zoom and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have come to a tentative settlement agreement regarding the video conferencing company's false advertising of end-to-end encryption along with other issues. However, the…
Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: November 13, 2020
Featured: Privacy News Online - Week of November 13th, 2020 EU continues to push for lawful access (aka backdoors) to end-to-end encrypted data A draft resolution by the Council of…