Digital Rights Group Asks EU to Ban Biometric Mass Surveillance
European Digital Rights (EDRi) is asking the European Union to ban all forms of biometric mass surveillance. The organization’s latest paper also calls for the suspension of any such programs that are already in place, noting that biometric surveillance is currently being explored in at least 15 EU member states. EDRi is a digital rights […]
Contact tracing by app: life-saving or invasion of privacy?
For many Americans, it’s only a matter of weeks before the cell phones in their pockets start measuring how close they’ve come to COVID-19. But advocates, scientists and researchers are monitoring the spread of something they deem to be important, too, and that’s how close these mobile applications come to invading privacy and encroaching on […]
COVID-19 could set a new norm for surveillance and privacy
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the ways we interact and has everyone thinking more about our health and well-being. But that shift in mindset means that daily activities like going grocery shopping or simple things like standing in an elevator will come with even more surveillance strings attached. The response by governments and the tech […]
Shin Bet Receives Three Week Extension to Tap Personal Cell Phones
The Subcommittee on Intelligence, Secret Services and Captive and Missing Persons, chaired by Lt.-Gen. (res.) MK Gabi Ashkenazi (Blue and White), has approved a three-week extension of the emergency regulations permitting the Shin Bet (General Security Service) to assist in the national campaign to curb the spread of the coronavirus by tracking the cell phone […]
Kansas City Forces Businesses, Churches to Keep Lists of Visitors for COVID-19 Tracking
As part of its partial reopening of “nonessential” institutions, Kansas City, Missouri, is now requiring businesses and churches to maintain lists of people who enter their doors, an Orwellian policy established ostensibly to enable the city health department to respond quickly to reports of COVID-19 exposure. On Thursday, Mayor Quinton Lucas (shown), a Democrat, issued […]
The Surveillance State Thrives During the Pandemic
From cellphone tracking to drone eyes in the sky, perused health records, and GPS ankle bracelets, an epidemic of surveillance-state measures is spreading across the world. It’s all done in the name of battling the spread of COVID-19, of course, since every crisis is used to justify incursions into our liberty. But long after the […]
Social credit: the dark side of blockchain
As much as I believe that blockchain technology has the potential to solve many of the problems humanity faces today, I also fear what can happen if blockchain technology is used to take away the privacy and rights of individuals, wrote technology executive and former hacker Trent Lapinski in an article for Cointelegraph. Do you want to live […]
Growth in surveillance may be hard to scale back after pandemic, experts say
The coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented global surge in digital surveillance, researchers and privacy advocates around the world have said, with billions of people facing enhanced monitoring that may prove difficult to roll back. Governments in at least 25 countries are employing vast programmes for mobile data tracking, apps to record personal contact […]
Controversial Mass Surveillance Program Has Identified 500 Coronavirus Patients, Shin Bet Says
More than 500 coronavirus patients have been identified in Israel so far by a controversial digital mass-surveillance program, the Shin Bet internal security service revealed on Thursday. “Without quickly finding them and putting them into quarantine, they surely would have unknowingly infected many more people,” a Shin Bet statement said. The Shin Bet noted it […]
Ring gets ‘dinged’ for its video doorbell privacy
While “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices open up new worlds of convenience, they’ve also introduced new security vulnerabilities. At the risk of overgeneralizing, many of these vulnerabilities stem from the ease of set-up and use that make these singular-purpose devices so attractive. They tend to be scaled down, with little internal memory, and lack strong […]