Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of April 30, 2021 As the battle to set 6G standards begins, UK spy agency warns China seeks to “control the global operating system” While 5G is still being rolled out in many areas, some government are already rushing to set 6G standards, and China is at the head … Continue reading “Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: April 30, 2021”
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The European Commission has unveiled proposals for what it terms “new rules and actions aiming to turn Europe into the global hub for trustworthy Artificial Intelligence”. Evidently hoping that the new regulation will set standards for AI as the GDPR set them for privacy, the Commission says: “With these landmark rules, the EU is spearheading … Continue reading “EU unveils proposals for wide-ranging AI regulation with a global reach, and facial recognition systems flagged up as “high risk””
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A couple of weeks ago, this blog wrote about Facebook’s huge data leak of 533 million personal data records online. As that post noted, despite the huge numbers involved, this wasn’t the first time sensitive data had been exfiltrated from Facebook on this scale. And yet on this occasion something has changed. Certainly not Facebook’s … Continue reading “Facebook’s massive data leak starts to have important knock-on effects – and potentially serious ones for Ireland”
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At the beginning of last year, concerns about facial recognition technology increased with the appearance of the start-up Clearview AI. It was problematic for two main reasons. First, the size of its database, which the company claimed held over three billion facial images. Secondly, for its business model, which was mainly based on providing police … Continue reading “Privacy organizations call for facial recognition to be regulated or even banned, as police turn to Clearview AI”
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By now, many people will have heard about the appearance of 533,000,000 Facebook records online, first revealed in a tweet by Alon Gal at the weekend. You can find out whether you are one of the unlucky ones using the excellent free site, Have I Been Pwned, which has now added the latest Facebook account … Continue reading “What the Great Personal Data Leak of 2021 tells us about Facebook, the GDPR, and privacy”
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Privacy News Online frequently writes about surveillance conducted by governments on their populations, or by companies on their users. Less well-known is the connection between governments that wish to spy and the companies that provide the means to do so. Within most Western nations, there are various ways to find out the names of suppliers … Continue reading “Dual-use digital surveillance technologies finally get regulated – a little”
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Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of March 26th, 2021 Countries in the European Union attempt to water down privacy protections With the European Union’s ePrivacy Regulation in the final stretch, seemingly minor changes can lead to massive privacy implications. Current legislation allows for personal data collection by intelligence services, but not for companies acting … Continue reading “Privacy News Online: Weekly Review | March 26, 2021”
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Last month, this blog noted that the EU’s important ePrivacy Regulation has now entered the final stretch of its legislative passage. An article on the Lawfare blog has spotted an interesting section in proposals from the Council of the EU, one of the three bodies that jointly agree new EU legislation. Although short – just … Continue reading “EU nations’ attempt to water down privacy protections could increase tension with US over personal data flows across the Atlantic”
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It was only last week that Privacy News Online wrote about introducing vaccine passports in order to provide additional freedoms to those who have received one of the Covid-19 vaccines. And yet the idea has taken off in a remarkable way, driven no doubt by the desperate desire by both businesses and the public to … Continue reading “Is this the future of Covid-19 vaccine passports: open source and based on the Ethereum blockchain?”
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The EU’s GDPR has had a massive effect on privacy worldwide. But as a post explained back in 2018, there’s more EU privacy legislation coming through which could have a similarly broad impact globally. Where the GDPR governs how personal data is stored, the ePrivacy Regulation is about how personal data is transmitted. The European … Continue reading “The battle over the EU’s far-reaching ePrivacy Regulation enters its final and crucial stage”
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