Searching for "privacy government"
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/india-orders-vpn-companies-to-collect-and-hand-over-user-data/
A new government order will force virtual private networks to store user data for five years or longer.
The directive isn’t limited to VPN providers. Data centers and cloud service providers are both listed under the same provision. The companies will have to keep customer information even after the customer has canceled their subscription or account.
India has a history of applying a heavy hand to online activity.
In April, India banned 22 YouTube channels. In 2021, Facebook, Google Twitter ended a tense stand-off with the Indian government when they largely complied with the government’s expanded control over social media content in the country. In 2020, the country banned over 200 Chinese apps, including TikTok, and ultimately banned 9,849 social media URLs.
Russia-linked spyware found on school laptops given to children by government from r/worldnews
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/russia-spyware-school-laptops-b1790759.html
Upon unboxing and preparing them, it was discovered that a number of the laptops were infected with a self-propagating network worm,” one teacher reportedly wrote
Laptops provided to schools in order to support vulnerable children learning from home during the coronavirus pandemic have been found to contain viruses.
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more on student data privacy and China in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/10/31/students-data-privacy/
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It: It’s taken 3 billion images from the internet to build a an AI driven database that allows US law enforcement agencies identify any stranger. from r/Futurology
Until now, technology that readily identifies everyone based on his or her face has been taboo because of its radical erosion of privacy. Tech companies capable of releasing such a tool have refrained from doing so; in 2011, Google’s chairman at the time said it was the one technology the company had held back because it could be used “in a very bad way.” Some large cities, including San Francisco, have barred police from using facial
But without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year, according to the company, which declined to provide a list. recognition technology.
Facial recognition technology has always been controversial. It makes people nervous about Big Brother. It has a tendency to deliver false matches for certain groups, like people of color. And some facial recognition products used by the police — including Clearview’s — haven’t been vetted by independent experts.
Clearview deployed current and former Republican officials to approach police forces, offering free trials and annual licenses for as little as $2,000. Mr. Schwartz tapped his political connections to help make government officials aware of the tool, according to Mr. Ton-That.
“We have no data to suggest this tool is accurate,” said Clare Garvie, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, who has studied the government’s use of facial recognition. “The larger the database, the larger the risk of misidentification because of the doppelgänger effect. They’re talking about a massive database of random people they’ve found on the internet.”
Law enforcement is using a facial recognition app with huge privacy issues Clearview AI’s software can find matches in billions of internet images. from r/technology
Part of the problem stems from a lack of oversight. There has been no real public input into adoption of Clearview’s software, and the company’s ability to safeguard data hasn’t been tested in practice. Clearview itself remained highly secretive until late 2019.
The software also appears to explicitly violate policies at Facebook and elsewhere against collecting users’ images en masse.
while there’s underlying code that could theoretically be used for augmented reality glasses that could identify people on the street, Ton-That said there were no plans for such a design.
Banning Facial Recognition Isn’t Enough from r/technology
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/facial-recognition-ban-privacy.html
In May of last year, San Francisco banned facial recognition; the neighboring city of Oakland soon followed, as did Somerville and Brookline in Massachusetts (a statewide ban may follow). In December, San Diego suspended a facial recognition program in advance of a new statewide law, which declared it illegal, coming into effect. Forty major music festivals pledged not to use the technology, and activists are calling for a nationwide ban. Many Democratic presidential candidates support at least a partial ban on the technology.
facial recognition bans are the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance. Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we’re in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control. In countries like the United States, it’s being built by corporations in order to influence our buying behavior, and is incidentally used by the government.
People can be identified at a distance by their heart beat or by their gait, using a laser-based system. Cameras are so good that they can read fingerprints and iris patterns from meters away. And even without any of these technologies, we can always be identified because our smartphones broadcast unique numbers called MAC addresses.
China, for example, uses multiple identification technologies to support its surveillance state.
There is a huge — and almost entirely unregulated — data broker industry in the United States that trades on our information.
This is why many companies buy license plate data from states. It’s also why companies like Google are buying health records, and part of the reason Google bought the company Fitbit, along with all of its data.
The data broker industry is almost entirely unregulated; there’s only one law — passed in Vermont in 2018 — that requires data brokers to register and explain in broad terms what kind of data they collect.
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It from r/technews
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html
Until now, technology that readily identifies everyone based on his or her face has been taboo because of its radical erosion of privacy. Tech companies capable of releasing such a tool have refrained from doing so; in 2011, Google’s chairman at the time said it was the one technology the company had held back because it could be used “in a very bad way.” Some large cities, including San Francisco, have barred police from using facial recognition technology.
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on social credit system in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+credit
Facebook’s new general counsel is a Trump adviser who helped author Patriot Act
infamous former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo wrote in his 2006 book that Newstead was the “day-to-day manager of the Patriot Act in Congress”.
The Patriot Act was passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and brought in a series of new federal crimes related to terrorism. The legislation was broad and much of the government’s expanded surveillance powers stemmed from parts of the act. It enabled, among other things, the controversial Section 215, which was used to justify the National Security Agency’s phone records collection programme.
It also had a “roving wiretap” provision, which allowed government to place a tap on all of an individual’s personal devices based purely on the approval of the notoriously permissive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
As The Verge points out, the Patriot Act also initiated the practice of “national security letters”, a procedure by which intelligence agencies can informally request data without any kind of court or ex parte authorisation, citing threats to national security. Facebook fields thousands of these requests every year, the content of which is generally subject to gag orders and therefore remains publicly unknown. In her capacity as general counsel, Newstead will be able to approve or deny these requests.
https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-makes-official-who-helped-write-patriot-act-its-top-lawyer/
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more on privacy in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/04/22/data-interference/
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=privacy
What Happens to Student Data Privacy When Chinese Firms Acquire U.S. Edtech Companies?
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-24-what-happens-to-student-data-privacy-when-chinese-firms-acquire-u-s-edtech-companies
Between the creation of a social rating system and street cameras with facial recognition capabilities, technology reports coming out of China have raised serious concerns for privacy advocates. These concerns are only heightened as Chinese investors turn their attention to the United States education technology space acquiring companies with millions of public school users.
A particularly notable deal this year centers on Edmodo, a cross between a social networking platform and a learning management system for schools that boasts having upwards of 90 million users. Net Dragon, a Chinese gaming company that is building a significant education division, bought Edmodo for a combination of cash and equity valued at $137.5 million earlier this month.
Edmodo began shifting to an advertising model last year, after years of struggling to generate revenue. This has left critics wondering why the Chinese firm chose to acquire Edmodo at such a price, some have gone as far as to call the move a data grab.
as data becomes a tool that governments such as Russia and China could use to influence voting systems or induce citizens into espionage, more legislators are turning their attention to the acquisitions of early-stage technology startups.
NetDragon officials, however, say they have no interest in these types of activities. Their main goal in acquiring United States edtech companies lies in building profitability, says Pep So, NetDragon’s Director of Corporate Development.
In 2015, the firm acquired the education technology platform, Promethean, a company that creates interactive displays for schools. NetDragon executives say that the Edmodo acquisition rounds out their education product portfolio—meaning the company will have tools for supporting multiple aspects of learning including; preparation, instructional delivery, homework, assignment grading, communication with parents students and teachers and a content marketplace.
NetDragon’s monetization plan for Edmodo focuses on building out content that gets sold via its platform. Similar to tools like TeachersPayTeachers, So hopes to see users putting up content on the platform’s marketplace, some free and others for a fee (including some virtual reality content), so that the community can buy, sell and review available educational tools.
As far as data privacy is concerned, So notes that NetDragon is still learning what it can and cannot do. He noted that the company will comply with Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal regulation created in order to protect the privacy of children online, but says that the rules and regulations surrounding the law are confusing for all actors involved.
Historically, Chinese companies have faced trust and branding issues when moving into the United States market, and the reverse is also true for U.S. companies seeking to expand overseas. Companies have also struggled to learn the rules, regulations and operational procedures in place in other countries.
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Iran and Huawei top agenda as Pompeo meets Merkel for 45 minutes in Berlin
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/pompeo-merkel-iran-huawei-agenda-110409835.html
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Merkel to Ratchet up Huawei Restrictions in Concession to Hawks
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-13/merkel-to-ratchet-up-huawei-restrictions-in-concession-to-hawks
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more on data privacy in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=data+privacy
In Major Privacy Win, Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant To Track Your Cellphone
June 22, 201810:41 AM ET
Cellphone providers routinely keep location information for customers to help improve service. And until now, the prevailing legal theory was that if an individual voluntarily shares his information with a third party — for instance, by signing up for cellphone service — police can get that information without a search warrant.
On Friday, the Supreme Court blew a hole in that theory. Writing for the court majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that cellphone location information is a “near perfect” tool for government surveillance, analogous to an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.
While Friday’s decision may limit the government’s access to cellphone data, it has no impact on the ability of private companies to amass, use and sell their customers’ information. That is because the Fourth Amendment only limits government conduct, not private conduct. Only Congress, in enacting legislation, can limit how private companies amass and use information.
see also:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/12/03/power-privacy-internet/
Aral Balkan: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/lib290/2018/03/01/duckduckgo-privacy-free-service/
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more on privacy and surveillance in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=privacy
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=surveillance
Report: Tech Companies Are Spying on Children Through Devices and Software Used in Classroom
By Richard Chang 04/17/17
https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/04/17/report-tech-companies-are-spying-on-children-through-devices-and-software-used-in-classroom.aspx
according to a new report from the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), “Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy”
shows that state and federal laws, as well as industry self-regulation, have failed to keep up with a growing education technology industry.
One-third of all K–12 students in the United States use school-issued devices running software and apps that collect far more information on kids than is necessary.
Resource-poor school districts can receive these tools at deeply discounted prices or for free, as tech companies seek a slice of the $8 billion ed tech industry. But there’s a real, devastating cost — the tracking, cataloging and exploitation of data about children as young as 5 years old.
Our report shows that the surveillance culture begins in grade school, which threatens to normalize the next generation to a digital world in which users hand over data without question in return for free services
EFF surveyed more than 1,000 stakeholders across the country, including students, parents, teachers and school administrators, and reviewed 152 ed tech privacy policies.
“Spying on Students” provides comprehensive recommendations for parents, teachers, school administrators and tech companies to improve the protection of student privacy. Asking the right questions, negotiating for contracts that limit or ban data collection, offering families the right to opt out, and making digital literacy and privacy part of the school curriculum are just a few of the 70-plus recommendations for protecting student privacy contained in the report.
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more on students and privacy
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=student+privacy
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=privacy+government
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/03/us-senate-votes-50-48-away-broadband-privacy-rules-let-isps-telecoms-sell-internet-history/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/03/28/the-house-just-voted-to-wipe-out-the-fccs-landmark-internet-privacy-protections/?utm_term=.34ed3dce7494
Power, Privacy, and the Internet
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/feb/07/power-privacy-and-internet-conference/
- Governments, Corporations and Hackers: The Internet and Threats to the Privacy and Dignity of the Citizen:
https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/126066881/download?secret_token=s-QvmZz&client_id=0f8fdbbaa21a9bd18210986a7dc2d72c
- The Internet and the Future of the Press
https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/126066391/download?secret_token=s-v6mpP&client_id=0f8fdbbaa21a9bd18210986a7dc2d72c
- The Internet, Repression and Dissent
https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/126066389/download?secret_token=s-Udzom&client_id=0f8fdbbaa21a9bd18210986a7dc2d72c
Merkel calls for separate EU internet
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/europe/2014/02/merkel-calls-separate-eu-internet-201421955226908928.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_snowden_here_s_how_we_take_back_the_internet
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/12/03/surveillance-age-and-librarians/
Obama Adviser John Podesta: ‘Every Country Has a History of Going Over the Line’
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/interview-with-obama-advisor-john-podesta-on-nsa-and-cyber-security-a-978297.html
Instead of a no-spy deal, the US has begun a Cyber Dialogue with Germany. In a SPIEGEL interview, John Podesta, a special adviser to President Barack Obama, speaks of the balance between alliances and security and says that changes are being made to NSA espionage practices.
Pls consider the following additional resources on the topic:
Power, Privacy, and the Internet
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/feb/07/power-privacy-and-internet-conference/
- Governments, Corporations and Hackers: The Internet and Threats to the Privacy and Dignity of the Citizen:
https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/126066881/download?secret_token=s-QvmZz&client_id=0f8fdbbaa21a9bd18210986a7dc2d72c
- The Internet and the Future of the Press
https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/126066391/download?secret_token=s-v6mpP&client_id=0f8fdbbaa21a9bd18210986a7dc2d72c
- The Internet, Repression and Dissent
https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/126066389/download?secret_token=s-Udzom&client_id=0f8fdbbaa21a9bd18210986a7dc2d72c
Merkel calls for separate EU internet
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/europe/2014/02/merkel-calls-separate-eu-internet-201421955226908928.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_snowden_here_s_how_we_take_back_the_internet
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/nov/07/are-we-puppets-wired-world/
Are We Puppets in a Wired World?
But while we were having fun, we happily and willingly helped to create the greatest surveillance system ever imagined, a web whose strings give governments and businesses countless threads to pull, which makes us…puppets. The free flow of information over the Internet (except in places where that flow is blocked), which serves us well, may serve others better. Whether this distinction turns out to matter may be the one piece of information the Internet cannot deliver.
by Evgeny Morozov
PublicAffairs, 413 pp., $28.99
by Cole Stryker
Overlook, 255 pp., $25.95
by John Naughton
Quercus, 302 pp., $24.95
by Eric Siegel
Wiley, 302 pp., $28.00
by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier
Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 242 pp., $27.00
by Alice E. Marwick
Yale University Press, 368 pp., $27.50
by Terence Craig and Mary E. Ludloff
O’Reilly Media, 108 pp., $19.99 (paper)
