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 —…
Privacy
MiFi 4G hotspots are vulnerable to hacking, use a VPN to protect yourself
Many popular MiFi devices used as 4G hotspots are vulnerable to hacking. A DEFCON 27 talk by Pen Test Partners revealed command injection and remote code execution vulnerabilities in popular…
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…
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…
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,…
Why you need to use a VPN to stop Google and Facebook from tracking your porn habits
A team of researchers from Microsoft, the University of Pennsylvania, and Carnegie Mellon have revealed a study showing that Google and Facebook are keeping tabs on your porn viewing habits…
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…
