Data isn’t just being collected from your phone. It’s being used to score you.
Operating in the shadows of the online marketplace, specialized tech companies you’ve likely never heard of are tapping vast troves of our personal data to generate secret “surveillance scores” – digital mug shots of millions of Americans – that supposedly predict our future behavior. The firms sell their scoring services to major businesses across the […]
Schools Turn to Surveillance Tech to Prevent Covid-19 Spread
WHEN STUDENTS RETURN to school in New Albany, Ohio, in August, they’ll be carefully watched as they wander through red-brick buildings and across well-kept lawns—and not only by teachers. The school district, with five schools and 4,800 students, plans to test a system that would require each student to wear an electronic beacon to track their […]
Brain Scans And Artificial Intelligence Invade Schools
Ultra-creepy technology that George Orwell could not have imagined in his most terrifying nightmares is invading government-school classrooms — and children’s minds — all around the world. While many of the Big Brother innovations are coming out of Communist China, they are making their way into American schools quickly as well. Parents, beware. In a video […]
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 […]