The future of privacy is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed
William Gibson is best known for his book "Neuromancer", which popularized the word and concept of cyberspace. He also came up with the phrase "the future is already here —…
Governments
Arsenic in the water of democracy: UK police, politicians and privacy activists clash over facial recognition deployments
Last week's post looked at the increasing number of moves to rein in, or even ban, the use of facial recognition technologies in the US. Another country at the forefront…
Facial recognition concerns go mainstream in the US, as cities and companies bring in bans
Recently, FaceApp was much in the headlines. It allows users to submit photos of faces and modify them in interesting ways – making peple look older, or younger, or changing…
UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand meet to discuss the “ghost protocol” aka built in encryption backdoors
Representatives from the UK, US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand recently finished a two day meeting in London where the countries renewed their commitment to seeking encryption backdoors from technology…
Eyes in the sky will soon see everything – even what happened in the past; is it too late to worry about privacy?
Earlier this year, Privacy News Online wrote about a new generation of nanosatellites that are starting to fill the sky. The same continuing advances in technology that have made these…
What can we learn from Palantir’s secret user manual for police users of its big data software?
Two years ago, Privacy News Online wrote about the mysterious Palantir Technologies. It describes itself as a company that makes "products for human-driven analysis of real-world data". It is a…
US Attorney General demands encryption backdoors at all costs and for you to just accept it
President Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, has demanded the tech industry create encryption backdoors because he views encryption as a security risk. Barr made his illogical thoughts on encryption known…
New research confirms Kazakhstan is spying on connections to Facebook, Twitter, VK, Instagram, Youtube, Google, and more
Kazakhstan is actively spying on its citizens' internet connections to Facebook, Twitter, VK, Instagram, Youtube, Google, along with many other sites. New research published by Ram Sundara Raman, Leonid Evdokimov,…
Amazon’s collaborations with local police turn its Ring doorbell cameras into unofficial community surveillance systems
Amazon was founded almost exactly 25 years ago. Initially it sold books, and people saw it as an interesting early example of e-commerce, but probably assumed that it would remain…
Kazakhstan tries and fails to MITM all of its internet users with rogue certificate installation
On July 17th, 2019, the government of Kazakhstan enacted a new cybersecurity measure that aims to spy on its citizens’ internet traffic. Specifically, the Kazakh government ordered all of the…
