Tag: surveillance
  • Sep 15, 2017 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Governments,

The Chinese IT giant Huawei has big plans for the cloud in Western markets, with important implications for privacy

Some Chinese high-tech companies may be bigger than you think. The e-commerce giant Alibaba has a market capitalization of over $400 billion. The social media and gaming company Tencent is not far behind, and nearly a billion people use its WeChat messaging service. Baidu is the world’s second largest search engine, and is increasingly strong … Continue reading “The Chinese IT giant Huawei has big plans for the cloud in Western markets, with important implications for privacy”

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  • Aug 25, 2017 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Copyright, Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

Welcome to the Internet of listening, eavesdropping, spying things

There’s a new frontier for digital privacy: home devices that understand spoken commands. That’s impressive and convenient, but it comes with definite risks, as Rick Falkvinge pointed out earlier this week. The product sites of the main players in the so-called “smart speaker” sector – Amazon, Apple, and Google – offer plenty of upbeat advertising … Continue reading “Welcome to the Internet of listening, eavesdropping, spying things”

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  • Jun 21, 2017 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Governments,

Police use of trojans to hack into mobile phones will become routine under new German law

A new law allowing the German police to hack into mobile phones for even minor crimes, is expected to be passed by the German parliament this week [update: the law has now been passed]. Currently, the use of a “Staatstrojaner” – government trojan – is only permitted in order to prevent future terrorist attacks. Under … Continue reading “Police use of trojans to hack into mobile phones will become routine under new German law”

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  • Jun 12, 2017 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Surveillance,

Untangling the other dark web – of pervasive, inescapable, corporate surveillance

Visitors to this site are well aware of how our every move is tracked as we move around the Internet. We know that companies are building minutely-detailed profiles of us, stored on huge databases, and that the information held there not only changes the ads we see, and the prices that companies offer us when … Continue reading “Untangling the other dark web – of pervasive, inescapable, corporate surveillance”

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  • Jun 1, 2017 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • Cryptocurrency, General Privacy News, Governments,

Why the Chinese love clunky QR codes, despite privacy and security shortcomings

As you may have noticed, there’s a lot of interest in bitcoin at the moment. According to one analysis, a key factor driving the digital currency to record highs is rising demand from China. That may be true for serious investors there, but for most of China’s billion-plus citizens, when it comes to digital payments, … Continue reading “Why the Chinese love clunky QR codes, despite privacy and security shortcomings”

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  • May 25, 2017 |
  • Glyn Moody |
  • General Privacy News, Governments,

Aadhaar: India’s billion-person biometric database is the world’s biggest privacy experiment

The use of social security numbers and biometric databases is not unusual these days, but there’s nothing else on the scale of what India is doing in this field. Its Aadhaar system – the name means ‘foundation’ in Hindi – aims to provide everyone in India with a randomly-generated, unique 12-digit number associated with their … Continue reading “Aadhaar: India’s billion-person biometric database is the world’s biggest privacy experiment”

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As horrible as Internet surveillance is, the alternative could have been far worse

While the Internet has turned into a global surveillance machine, with only tech-aware and privacy-aware people opting out of the surveillance, it’s important to remember that we could have had something far worse. In the 1990s, the telcos were aggressively pushing for their own version of a packet switched network – and had they won … Continue reading “As horrible as Internet surveillance is, the alternative could have been far worse”

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