Mental Health Apps Are Not As Private As You Think
Mental health apps have been in demand for a while now, but since the pandemic, their popularity grew by over 500%. I downloaded and used a few myself — mainly…
Surveillance
The Next Level of Surveillance: Real-Time AI Detection of Emotions in Video Streams
Surveillance once meant large-scale government spying on citizens, mostly to identify criminal activity, such as terrorism. But things have advanced quite a lot now. Surveillance has even moved into the…
How New Copyright Laws Threaten Privacy and Freedom of Speech
There’s a new US bill that everyone in the privacy world should know about — it goes by the name of “Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies Copyright Act of…
Google’s Radar Chip: Real-Time Biometric Data Collection
Digital surveillance comes in many forms. The traditional kind, where governments spy on you as you move around the Internet, is the easiest to take measures against. A good VPN…
Clearview AI Fined in Italy, Starts Scanning Dead Russian Soldiers in Ukraine
Ever since the facial recognition company Clearview AI appeared from nowhere two years ago, it has remained at the leading edge of its field, not least in terms of ethics.…
How a Few Thoughtless Words about Privacy Led to Huge Political and Economic Headaches for the US and EU
One of the most surprising developments in recent years is how privacy - something that by definition is about small, intimate things – has become a major global force in…
Surprisingly, the UK Has a Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner: He’s Rather Good
CCTV surveillance has been covered many times on PIA blog. Most of the stories are depressing tales of increased surveillance and loss of privacy. One of the worst offenders in…
Drawing the Line: Are Smart Cities Compatible with Human Rights and Privacy?
PIA blog followed Google's Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto for some years, until the plan to create a futuristic smart city was dropped in 2020. The principal problem with the…
The Ultimate Privacy Betrayal: Personal DNA Used for Undisclosed Purposes, without Permission
As this blog has reported, one of the biggest threats to privacy is surveillance advertising. It works by tracking everything people do online — which sites they visit, what they…
Clearview AI Offers to Eliminate Public Anonymity and Destroy Privacy around the World for a Mere $50 Million
PIA blog first wrote about the facial recognition start-up Clearview AI two years ago, when news about its huge database of three billion facial images appeared. Its main market is…