"Findings from the Open Rights Group report has revealed a lack of oversight surrounding the data retained by the Prevent programme, and the particular harms against children this could cause."
Our report shows the urgent need for a rethink of Prevent.
Scoop: The FBI has released dozens of new documents in an ACLU case concerning its use of Stingrays, detailing ways in which cops are pressured to keep the technology secret from judges and defendants. #privacy#surveillance#police
24/7 GPS monitoring of migrants enabled the UK Home Office to collect vast amounts of personal data, invading people’s privacy and inflicting psychological burdens.
It’s a punitive and offensive measure that has rightly been found unlawful by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
We need to talk about ULEZ (UK). But not for the reasons you think.
The real cause of concern is its use of automatic number plate recognition and the free access to this data given to the Met Police for surveillance.
If UK politicians truly cares about the state of air pollution and the environment, they can’t ignore how the fear of surveillance could undermine climate goals.
"Facebook snooped on users’ Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal"
Das ist vorsätzliches Umgehen von Sicherheitsmaßnahmen und eine illegale Überwachung/Spionage. Wer Meta/Facebook noch in irgendeiner Weise vertraut, der sollte sich gut überlegen, was Vertrauen für ihn bedeutet.
Welfare surveillance powers are being introduced by the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill.
The UK government will be able to access the financial data of ANY benefit claimant. This data could be misinterpreted and sanctions imposed incorrectly.
We've signed this joint letter from UK civil society organisations for the removal of these powers from the Bill.
British man acquitted over London-Spain flight bomb hoax | …SnapChat leaking messages to security services & supporting KOSA? Not a good combo for user privacy | HT @rebeccamkern
SnapChat must* be surveilling their non-encrypted chats (i.e. all of them, but they travel over HTTPS for privacy) & triggering on sensitive words, either on-server or on-client, reporting to law enforcement who then over-react … PLUS they announced support for the illiberal & misconceived KidsOnlineSafetyAct.
The two, combined, are not a great indicator for how they view user privacy.
A Spanish court has cleared a British man of public disorder, after he joked to friends about blowing up a flight from London Gatwick to Menorca […] A key question in the case was how the message got out, considering Snapchat is an encrypted app. One theory, raised in the trial, was that it could have been intercepted via Gatwick’s Wi-Fi network. But a spokesperson for the airport told BBC News that its network “does not have that capability”. In the judge’s resolution, cited by the Europa Press news agency, it was said that the message, “for unknown reasons, was captured by the security mechanisms of England when the plane was flying over French airspace”. The message was made “in a strictly private environment between the accused and his friends with whom he flew, through a private group to which only they have access, so the accused could not even remotely assume… that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, nor by third parties other than his friends who received the message,” the judgement added. It was not immediately clear how UK authorities were alerted to the message, with the judge noting “they were not the subject of evidence in this trial”.
[*] if the cause is not Snap themselves then their transport security is broken and that’s an even bigger story, being either being a weakness in the app or an undocumented man-in-the-middle HTTPS backdoor implemented by authorities in airport wireless transportation
Previously
Scoop for @politico– @Snapchat is the first social media platform to support the Kids Online Safety Act. This comes as CcEO Evan Spiegel joins the heads of Meta, TikTok, X and Discord next week in a @JudiciaryDems hearing on child sexual abuse material. https://t.co/PTKLQpqtHP
This post I co-authored with Falastine Saleh delves into the impact of Israeli surveillance technologies in Palestine and how localized instances of its use contribute to widespread global adoption.
It also highlights how spyware & surveillance companies navigate global scrutiny by rebranding and establishing offices worldwide, all while a network of venture capital firms facilitate their operations & help them avoid much needed accountability:
Prevent (UK) turns safeguarding into surveillance.
Built around counter-terrorism, it conflates ‘victim’ with ‘perpetrator’. The foundation for this is a system of data sharing and retention that exempts itself from protections according to its own logic.
A catch-22 for data rights.
Read our full report, 'Prevent and the Pre-Crime State: How unaccountable data sharing is harming a generation'
Es gibt viele Beispiele die aufzeigen, wie die vielbeschworene Digitalisierung und "Smartifizierung der Welt" vor allem eine Transformation in eine noch autoritärere und repressivere Zukunft bedeuten kann.
Die biometrische Überwachung/Verfolgung von Frauen in Iran und von Kriegsdienstverweigernden in Russland sowie die Zero-Covid-Politik des chinesischen Staates sind offensichtliche Beispiele dafür. Und auch im Überwachungskapitalismus des "demokratischen Westens" werden solche Entwicklungen schon seit einer ganzen Weile auf hohen Ebenen herbeigesehnt, wie z.B. das Dokument "Smart City Charta" von Bundesinstituten und dem Bundesumweltministerium aus dem Jahr 2017 zeigt.
Eine schön deutliche Einordnung dieses Dokuments (im Rahmen einer vergangenen Veranstaltung) findet sich hier:
"But while authorities generally pitch facial recognition as a tool to capture terrorists or wanted murderers, the technology has also emerged as a critical instrument in a very particular context: punishing protesters.
(...)
In countries where demonstrating can come with physical or political risk, large-scale protests have historically offered a degree of anonymity, and, with it, a level of protection. Mass protests are a way for citizens to express dissent as a collective — often under the assumption that “they can’t arrest us all.”
But in the last decade, the spread of facial recognition technology has changed that equation: A lone face in a crowd is no longer anonymous; facial recognition allows #authorities to capture people’s identities en masse."