How the NSA Spies on Us All – Part 2: The 60’s and 70’s
This is part 2 of a series. See: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Complacency or a sense of immunity started to catch up with the NSA in…
Governments
How the NSA Spies on Us All – Part 1: The Early Years
This is part 1 of a series. See: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 The National Security Agency (NSA), hides in the shadows and sleeps with one eye open…
As facial recognition systems continue to spread, so do concerns about their deployment
Facial recognition is hardly new – Privacy News Online has been writing about the topic for years now. But it is becoming more and more the norm, as some recent…
India now allows government agencies to “intercept, monitor, and decrypt” citizens’ computers
On December 21st, 2018, India expanded its governmental spying powers to an unprecedented level - granting ten new agencies the government writ to "intercept, monitor, and decrypt" data from Indian…
Australia passes controversial encryption law, raising serious privacy and legal concerns
On Thursday, the Australian government passed a controversial new law that would allow law enforcement and government agencies to demand access to encrypted communications. Under the new legislation, companies who…
Electric vehicles are sending real-time location and diagnostic data to Chinese government monitoring centers
A couple of months ago, this blog noted how modern vehicles are constantly producing large quantities of data, which has important implications for privacy. An Associated Press article published in…
New Australian anti-encryption bill ripe for abuse
Since 2017, Australian lawmakers have sought to read your encrypted messages on services such as WhatsApp - and now their wish has been granted. As of Thursday the 6th of December,…
Unprecedented: The US Government Just Publicly Identified and Blacklisted Two Bitcoin Addresses
For the first time ever, the US government has added two bitcoin addresses to an official list of sanctions. The addresses are now publicly linked to their owners and it…
Split Key Cryptography is Back… Again – Why Government Back Doors Don’t Work
Governments in the Five eyes surveillance alliance have been relentlessly lobbying for the power to force companies to back door their encrypted data. Every year, a new proposal comes through…
Multiple threats from EU’s GDPR to today’s corporate surveillance and targeted advertising system
Eighteen months ago, Privacy News Online wrote about how pervasive corporate surveillance is threatening the privacy of everyone who uses the Internet. Nearly every move people make online is being…