Privacy
Amazon and Google don’t like you calling their smart speakers “surveillance devices”
The companies are trying to battle the negative perception of their smart speakers.
Amazon offers US Prime Day shoppers $10 to install data-harvesting extension
If users interact with the Amazon Assistant extension, their browsing data is connected with their Amazon account.
Apple has indirectly campaigned against state privacy laws, report shows
Apple appears to only be interested in federal privacy laws, not individual state laws.
Edward Snowden: New tech systems need to be created to protect rights of internet users
Snowden was the keynote speaker at Open Rights Group’s OrgCon 2019.
Amazon Prime Day is a bonanza of privacy-invasion and surveillance hardware
Prime Day is a time of the year where these smart devices sell like hotcakes.
FBI to increase social media monitoring efforts
The bureau has announced that it’s going to increase social media monitoring of “persons of interest”.
Amazon employees urge CEO Jeff Bezos to stop working with Palantir that helps ICE deport illegal immigrants
Palantir’s founder is Peter Thiel, a supporter of President Donald Trump.
The New York Privacy Act goes beyond GDPR and introduces idea of “data fiduciary”
The proposed law is stricter than both European privacy laws and California’s proposed law.
UK police are still investigating journalists over the Edward Snowden case from 2013
UK’s National Union of Journalists criticized it by saying that reporting about unlawful surveillance was in the public interest.
US tech companies with ties to Google are helping Middle East dictators, report suggests
The report suggests that US surveillance tech is being put to bad use in the Middle East and North Africa.
Italy outlines free public Wi-Fi program, raising potential privacy concerns
Getting people used to free public Wi-Fi opens them up to the dangers of hidden private honeypot networks.
UK Home Secretary pushes crime facial recognition tech that only worked 8 out of 42 times
The technology has been called illegal by civil rights groups.