India blocks the Internet Archive Wayback Machine in censorship overstep
The hugely popular internet tool, the Wayback Machine by the Internet Archive, has been blocked by an Indian court order. India has a long history of blocking sites that are…
Governments
Putting the “face” in Facebook: how Mark Zuckerberg is building a world without public anonymity
Facial recognition has matured sufficiently that it is cropping up in real-world applications with increasing frequency, as recent Privacy News Online stories attest. There's one well-known company that is more…
These are the 11 Representatives and 21 Senators that have stood up to the FCC regarding net neutrality
Last week, the FCC received two letters - one signed by 11 members of Congress and another signed by 21 members of Senate. The first letter was titled simply: "In…
How many noted the implications of the European Court of Justice ruling on Internet copyright three years ago?
The European Court of Justice (the ECJ, "the European Supreme Court") ruled three years ago that anything published openly on the web may be freely reused by anyone in any…
Ireland planning to introduce national identity cards by stealth, with no debate and unclear privacy safeguards
National identity cards are an emotive topic. In the UK, the ID card debate raged for years before and after the authorities there passed a law in 2006 to introduce…
Canada incentivizes mass surveillance with a mobile app called Carrot Rewards
The Canadian government is using carrots to lure in new helpers in its quest for mass surveillance powers. A new app called Carrot Rewards is a behavioral modification mobile app…
The Russia VPN ban doesn’t forbid personal or business use of VPNs at all
Putin has signed a new law that increases internet censorship dramatically and has been marked as the beginning of the Russia VPN ban, but does the new law actually ban…
Transatlantic data flows under renewed threat following top EU court’s ruling
Last week, Europe's highest court issued what might seem a fairly obscure ruling on an agreement between the EU and Canada on the transfer of passenger data between the two…
This is how absolutely headdeskingly clueless politicians are at anything IT security related
The Swedish IT leak scandal has caused a governmental crisis: even when having every kind of self-interest to read up on IT security, today's politicians just can't get it right.…
Apple removes VPN apps from the Chinese App Store on government orders
Today, Chinese iPhone users woke up to discover that censorship-defeating apps such as the Private Internet Access VPN app are no longer present in the Chinese Apple App store. The move…