The British government has ordered Apple to hand over personal data uploaded by its customers to the cloud for the second time this year in an ongoing privacy row that has raised concerns among civil liberties campaigners. The Home Office issued a demand in early September for the tech behemoth to create a so-called back door that would allow the authorities access to private data uploaded by United Kingdom Apple customers after a previous attempt that included customers in the United States failed,
"They're already farming your clicks and posts to target ads. Now they're mining your conversations with chatbots," Bender said. "The obvious next concern is whether the chatbot itself will start nudging people to disclose information that makes them more targetable."
In their gold rush to build cloud and AI tools, Big Tech is also enabling unprecedented government surveillance. Thanks to reporting from The Guardian, +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Intercept, we have insights into the murky deals between the Israeli Government and Big Tech firms. Designed to insulate governments from scrutiny and accountability, these deals bode a dark future for humanity, one that is built using the same tools that once promised a bright, positive world.
"The preliminary investigation is ongoing, and we are assessing the scope of any concerns and any necessary required remediation," the spokesperson added. "We are in the process of evaluating technical remediation solutions and will act as appropriate. Compliance with the Privacy Act and identifying a solution for this technical problem is critical to the DAF to ensure warfighter readiness and lethality."
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a complaint against social app Sendit and its CEO Hunter Rice, alleging that the company unlawfully harvested children's data, misled users about privacy protections, and violated federal children's privacy law. The complaint, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, accuses the app's parent company, Iconic Hearts, of building its business on deceptive practices while targeting one of the most vulnerable demographics online: children under 13.
Redmond has done so unilaterally, effectively endorsing "shadow IT" - the practice of bringing unapproved software and devices into the workplace. Earlier this year, Microsoft said it had adopted a new approach to shadow IT. "While earlier eras of our IT history focused on trying to prevent shadow IT, we are now concentrating on managing it," the biz said in a blog post. By "managing," Microsoft also means "enabling."
Google announced that Android developers will now have to register. This not only involves paying a fee, but Google also requires the submission of official identity documents and the unique identifiers of all apps they want to distribute. According to F-Droid, this means that independent developers who make their software available via the platform will no longer be able to operate outside of Google.
Security researchers are shining the spotlight on a serious security vulnerability that could enable stalkers to track victims using their own Tile tags, as well as other unwanted violations of security and privacy. Research outlined by Wired shows that Tile's anti-theft mode, which makes its trackers "invisible" on the Tile network, counteracts measures to prevent stalking. Bad actors could also potentially intercept unencrypted information sent from the tags, like their unique IDs and MAC addresses,
Berkeley could soon start planning how to equip the Berkeley Police Department and other first responders with drones to track fleeing suspects, provide reconnaissance during standoffs and gain a bird's-eye view of disasters like earthquakes and fires, among other uses. A proposal from Councilmember Terry Taplin would task the City Manager's Office with developing an acquisition report and use policy for drones.
The ICO said the use of what it calls "robo call technology" - avatar software that allows callers to present themselves as people they are not - is making it more difficult to discern genuine calls from those made by predatory marketeers. It said the telltale signs of such calls include slight pauses before responses (indicating call handlers selecting recordings to play), limited flexibility to answer offbeat questions, identical voices and tones, and no background noise or natural breaks in speech.
The PSNI made 21 applications for communications data to identify journalists' sources without recognising the "overriding public interest" in protecting their confidentiality. The police force maintained a secret register containing the phone numbers of over 1,000 journalists and others, as part of a "defensive operation" to identify PSNI staff who had spoken to journalists. There were concerns about a PSNI operation to monitor the social media posts of investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre.
TikTok's efforts to stop children using the app and protect their personal data have been inadequate, a Canadian investigation has found. Hundreds of thousands of children in the country use TikTok each year despite the firm saying it is not intended for people under the age of 13, according to the findings. The investigation also found TikTok had collected sensitive personal information from "a large number" of Canadian children and used it for online marketing and content targeting.
In March 2021, a 25-year-old US citizen was traveling through Chicago's Midway airport when they were stopped by US border patrol agents. Though charged with no crime, the 25-year-old was subjected to a cheek swab to collect their DNA, which was sent to the FBI, according to a new report. The unnamed citizen was later admitted into the country. Their DNA was added to the FBI's database of genetic material despite the lack of criminal charges.
As reported by Android Central, Instagram's updated user detection process will automatically limit interactions with certain accounts when it determines that the user is under 18, even if the user tries to lie about their age by listing an adult birth date. In Australia, for example, which is moving ahead with its own laws on teen social media access, regulators recently tested 60 different age verification approaches , from a range of vendors.
It's an unfortunate use of advanced technologies, the same ones that are being used to detect and counter misinformation online. It's bad enough that we're having a hard time discerning true from false content, but what if the fake news is tailored specifically for you so that you're the most likely to believe it and consequently share it? Personalised disinformation is the next wave in darkly creative misapplication of technology, and here's how it can work.
Earlier this month, when U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta issued penalties against Google for monopolizing the search engine market, he stopped short of the harshest ones like forcing the breakup of the company. Instead, Mehta ordered Google to share portions of its incredibly valuable search index and user click-and-query data with some of its competitors. This move, which will make it easier for rivals to build their own search engines, is meant to even the playing field in the search space
Last week, Google said its new Pixel 10 phones will ship with a feature aimed at one of the biggest questions of the AI era: Can you trust what you see? The devices now support the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity ( C2PA), a standard backed by Google and other heavyweights like Adobe, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI and Meta. At its core is something called Content Credentials-essentially a digital nutrition label for photos, videos, or audio. The metadata tag, which can't easily be tampered with, shows who created a piece of media, how it was made, and whether AI played a role.
The laws create a new interconnected intelligence system dubbed the Central Intelligence Platform, under which intelligence and security agencies at all levels of government -federal, state and municipal-have the power to access, from any entity public or private, personal information for "intelligence purposes," including license plate numbers, biometric information, telephone details that allow the identification of individuals, financial, banking, and health records, public and private property records, tax data, and more.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers California and most of the Western U.S., just delivered good news for digital privacy: abandoning a phone doesn't abandon your Fourth Amendment rights in the phone's contents. In United States v. Hunt, the court made clear that no longer having control of a device is not the same thing as surrendering the privacy of the information it contains.
Basically, all Facebook users who had an account on the social media platform between May 7th, 2007 and December 22nd, 2022 are entitled to the payout, as they're most likely affected by the data scandal. However, in order to receive payment, you must also assert your claim-which means you needed to join the class action and submit a claim before the August 25th, 2023 deadline.
Walk down the street and you're likelyto be recorded by one of thousandsof security cameras, some belongingto the New York Police Department,others just connected or available to the department's databases. Drive into the city and traffic cameraswill automatically photograph your car, capturing your vehicle's license plate, make, model, color, distinctive markings and even passengers. Post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok and the N.Y.P.D. can scrape and store your messages, capturing your thoughts, plans, political statements and friend groups.
A former WhatsApp security chief alleges that Meta's obsession with performance reviews left millions of users vulnerable and also cost him his job. Attaullah Baig, WhatsApp's former head of security, sued Meta earlier this month, alleging that the company ignored major privacy risks and that he faced retaliation for his cybersecurity disclosures. He said hackers were taking over more than 100,000 accounts a day and that thousands of employees had access to sensitive user data like profile photos, locations, and contact lists, leaving millions of users exposed.
Alphabet's health tech subsidiary, Verily, used the health data of more than 25,000 patients without authorization and actively covered up those violations, a former company executive alleges. The executive, Ryan Sloan, claims Verily fired him after he discovered breaches of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, and reported his concerns to the company's senior management. Patient data in the U.S. is protected under HIPAA, which ensures the sensitive information cannot be disclosed without a patient's consent.
